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Fearless Flash For Speedlights

I love shooting portraits with small flashes and judging by the number of questions I get about the subject, I’m not alone. I’ve run many workshops on the subject, I use speedlights during my live talks to camera groups and yes, I really do use them in my day to day work. But I’ve never made a complete video series on how to get the most from them… until now.

I’ve been working on the Fearless Flash Photograghy video series for the past few months and I’m really thrilled it’s finally completed.
More info here…

If you’re looking to get big results from small speedlights, this course is for you and I’ll walk you through everything you need to know to get up and running with speedlight photography.

In this video series you’ll learn more than just what gear you need, you’ll discover the craft of working with speedlights as I put theory into practice on some simple but stunning shoots. Working with three great models, I’ll share my favourite one flash setups and double light setups that can be quickly reproduced in any studio big or small, permanent or portable.

The course is packed with great information but you don’t need a specific camera or flash brand to follow along. It includes plenty of lighting diagrams and a BONUS video with my quick tips for post processing the images shot during the making of this series.

You choose to either rent the videos and watch online for a month or buy the series and download or watch online at anytime.
More info here…

Hereford Photo Walk

On the 31st October 2015 I visited the beautiful city of Hereford for a day of photo walking. I’d been invited by Olympus UK who organised the event and we were hosted by the LCE camera store in Hereford.

Never having visited Hereford before I’d done my research and planned a route I thought would be photographically interesting and just the right distance to fill the two and a half hours I had for both the morning an afternoon walks.

You can see a selection of photo from the day and read a little more of what happened by clicking this link
https://slate.adobe.com/cp/uEg3I

I used Adobe Slate to create that web page and it’s a brilliant free tool for telling a photo story. It’s been around on the iPad for a few months but very recently it launched on the web which is how I made mine.

I loved the high quality, full frame images and the way the pages scroll together. It looks beautiful on a computer and even better on a tablet or phone. I’m pretty sure I’ll be using it again soon.

The photo walk was a free event organised by Olympus UK but anyone with any make of camera was welcome. I saw Canon, Nikon, Fuji and Pentax cameras being used by the walkers as well lots of Olympus bodies and lenses, many of which were on loan from Olympus for the walk.

You can found out about upcoming events on the Olympus Imaging Space and if you’d like me to do a photo walk near you, don’t tell me, tell Olympus 😉

5 times your camera meter will be wrong

Camera metering systems are pretty amazing and I’m usually very happy for the evaluative metering systems in my cameras to figure out the exposure and leave me to get on with sorting the composition.
But no matter how smart modern metering systems become, there are still times when they can get fooled, so here’s 5 times you might want to ignore what the camera tells you and go your own way.

1: Light coloured subjects
White in a photo looks amazing especially when it’s clean and pristine. The trouble starts when there are lots of white or light colours in your shot. Why? Because cameras assume that most photos average out to a middle grey tone. Whilst that’s more or less true most of the time, large amounts of bright colours can fool the meter into under exposing and making your photos darker than expected
Solution: Dial in positive exposure compensation

2: Dark subjects
The other side of the coin is also true. Dark, low key subjects will become artificially bright (over exposure) if the meter is left to its own devices. Just like with light tones, the more dark tones you have in the shot, the more incorrect your meter will become.
Solution: Dial in negative exposure compensation

3: Off camera Flash
Camera meters work great with ambient light but flash is a very different animal. If you have a dedicated speedlight attached to the cameras hotshoe, then things generally go well but take the flash off the camera and you’ll find yourself on your own for metering. Put simply, the flash of light is way too short a time for the cameras meter to measure the light.
Solution: Switch to manual mode and use a flash meter

4: Long Exposure with ND Filters
Super dark 9 and 10 stop Neutral Density filters can push shutters speeds to extreme lengths and create amazing eye catching shots, they can also cause exposure issues. This problem is confined to DSLR shooters and happens because light can leak back through the viewfinder bounce off the mirror and cause an exposure error.
Solution: Cover the viewfinder… or go mirrorless!

5: Back light
This is where random things can happen. Picture the scene. You have a background that’s brighter than your subject, perhaps it’s a building against the sky. One of two things can happen if you let the meter do its own thing. Either you get detail in the sky and the buildings go black or you get detail in the buildings and the sky goes white. Murphy’s Law dictates whichever happens you wanted the opposite.
Solution 1: Dial in positive exposure compensation if you want more detail from the shadows
Solution 2: Dial in negative exposure compensation if you want more detail from the highlights

Wild Woodland Workshop Wrap-Up

UPDATE:
Scroll down to see the gallery from the September woodland workshop

It may have taken months of planning but last Sunday everything came together perfectly for the Wild Woodland Workshop. A group of 12 photographers descended on Driver Wood Paintball for a day of photography among the trees, paths and paint balls.

I was joined by Robert Pugh, who is a brilliant photographer, educator and Olympus ambassador, not to mention all round good guy. Having a second photo trainer on-board gave the day extra value in so many ways, not least that we could split into two groups so everyone got plenty of time to work with both models.

Rob’s morning was spent with model Fern Meaeve in a grassy clearing and some wonderful overcast light. It was the perfect light for a workshop with everyone being able to shoot with ambient light or with a splash of fill flash.

For me it was a little more rough and tough as I worked with model Kerry Allingham at the paintball parks wooden fort. Luckily for us, Kerry is an experienced paintball marshal and knew how to handle the guns. None the less, everyone wore protective eye wear during the live fire session.

The afternoon saw a change of look. Kerry was transformed into an archer and disappeared deeper into the forest. Only the plumes of smoke from the colourful smoke grenades gave them away.

My afternoon was spent with Fern who had a lovely fairy-tale look. We stayed close to the paintball offices and thanks to a lovely long power cable, I was able to run an electric smoke machine to add a layer of mist to the scene.

There’s nothing more frustrating to me than seeing a workshop organiser shooting photos for themselves at the expense of the attendees. As a result I hardly have a single “good” photo from the day. Fortunately, the photographers who joined us took thousands of shots and below are a few that I’ve been sent so far.

Finally I’d like to thank the unsung heroes of the day. They include the staff at Driver Wood who allowed us use their facilities as a photo location. Anna Matos and here amazing box of make-up. My friends Steve and Stevie, who assisted brilliantly all day. Finally my biggest thanks goes to Sam, who pulled my crazy ideas together and created a workshop unlike any other!

UPDATE
Such was the demand, we ran the workshop for a second time in late September. Once again I was joined by Rob Pugh and Fern who worked just as hard as ever to make the day as brilliant as before. Joining us was model Charlotte Baker and make-up artist Alex Vleck.

Below are a selection of photos from the 12 photographers who came along and made the whole day another massive success.

Day to night in a flash

Shoots at night can yield some stunning photos but the lack of light has a bunch of problems that can easily trip you up… literately. However if you have a little bit of flash know how, it is possible to do a portrait shoot and make day turn to night in just a few steps. Here’s how I did it in four steps

Step 1 – Underexpose the ambient

Unless you live in the Polar regions night time is usually associated with a lack of light, so the first thing I had needed to do was convince my camera to see less light. One way to do this is by using exposure compensation and dialing in a negative amount but because I was going to use flash to light the model I took a different route.

Flash and Manual mode go hand in glove, so switching to manual is the way to go. After setting the aperture to f/4 and the ISO to 200 the correct shutter speed turned out to be a feeble 1/10^th second. By halving the shutter speed to 1/20^th I underexposed the ambient light by 1 stop. 1/40^th second gave me another stop and finally 1/80^th second underexposed by three stops and gave a shot that was dark but not black.

Step 2 – Set the flash

1/80^th second gave a nice dark background but also underexposed the model, that’s where flash comes in. With the key light in place all I had to do was set my flash meter to match my camera (1/80^th sec, 200 ISO) and adjust the flash power until I hit f/4 on the meter.

So now I’ve got the flash power to match my camera setting and giving a perfect exposure on the model, however the same camera settings are under exposing the background keeping it dark.

Once the key light was in I added a second light to separate the unlit side of the model from the dark background.

Step 3 – Moon light

Thanks to Hollywood we assume that the moon always comes out at night and it produces blue light. Of course neither is true but let the dream live I say. Turning the warm afternoon light blue is as simple as setting the wrong white balance. Switching to Tungsten or Incandescent white balance will do the job in camera or it can be changed in Lightroom / Photoshop Camera RAW.

The blue looks great on the background but a bit odd on the model, so to warm her up I added an orange gel to the main flash. There are gels marked as CTO (Colour Temperature Orange) which should perfectly balance out the white balance but I don’t have one. Luckily Lightroom / Photoshop Camera RAW can easily fine tune the colours, especially if you do the same as me and shoot a gray card in the same light.

Step 4 – Moody Mist

This is the fun bit. Again I’ve got the movies to thank for this but adding a little bit of mist seems to sell us the whole night feeling. It also helps to cover up anything distracting in the background and by adding a third light right behind the model (and the smoke) adds a splash of light to an otherwise dark scene.

There are many ways to make smoke. Being a long way from a power supply I opted for smoke grenades. You’ll find them at your local paintball / airsoft park and whilst they’re not cheap, they do offer a safe and reliable source of smoke. I used two Enola Gaye smoke grenades which gave around 90 seconds of smoke each. Yes after all that setting up the whole shoot was over and done in under three minutes!

So there you have it, day to night is perfectly possible and whilst the results are very different from really shooting after dark, they look pretty darn good to me.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGsQxXUEvc4[/youtube]

How Focal Length Affects Your Background

There are many reasons for choosing one lens over another and which one you shoot with can have a massive impact on the final photo. Like many photographers I love the flexibility of zoom lenses and often have to make the choice of shooting with a wide angle and short telephoto lens. At first glance the choice of lens is pretty obvious… if I want to go close I shoot with a telephoto focal length and if I want to see more I zoom out with a wide angle focal length.

Look around on the internet or ask your photography peers and you’ll find that the general consensus is that wide angle lenses increase perspective distortion and telephoto lenses compress background. It’s common knowledge but sadly, it’s also not true… although I completely understand why so many photographer think it is.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbESqYkodmQ[/youtube]

In the video above I explain and show how changing focal length alone doesn’t affect compression or distortion but moving your feet does

Google focal length compression and you’ll see photos like the one below and as you can clearly see the more I zoom in the more the background appears to grow in relation to the model. We call it background compression and it’s a really handy trick to learn.

But in order to keep my model (The amazing model Fern Meave ) the same size I had to increase my shooting distance as I zoomed in and it’s that increase in distance that causes the background to compress. Let me say that again…
Increasing your focal length does NOT compress your shot, increasing your distance from the subject does. Unless you want your subject to be small, once backed up you have to zoom in to maintain the composition and that’s why so many photographers will tell you telephone lenses compress your shot.

To prove the point. Take a look at the photos below. For the one on the right I used a 200mm lens, the one on the left is a from a shot taken with my 24mm lens and the middle image is a tight crop from the centre.

The distance from myself and the model was the same in each shot, only the focal length changed. Spot the difference? Ignore the the depth of field difference between the two shots, that’s a side effect of the different focal lengths and I’ll save that for a future blog post. There really is no difference in compression and perspective distortion when you change lens focal length.

So if background compression isn’t caused simply by zooming in, do wide angle lenses increase perspective distortion? No they don’t (excluding exotic lenses such as fisheye’s). With a wide angle lens you often go close to fill the frame and that increases the distortion. In theory you could take a wide angle shot using a 200mm lens, you’d just need to take lots and lots of images and join them together like a jigsaw puzzle. Search Google for Gigapans to see this in action.

Still not convinced? Here’s a simple test to try, no camera required… next time you’re in front of the bathroom mirror, get your head really, REALLY close. Close one eye and look around at your refection. Your nose will look huge, your ears will look small and all because you’re close to the mirror. Step back and your face will appear as normal as it was before.

Food Photography Workshop

One area of photography that you may not know that I work in is food photography. You’ll rarely see any food photos on this blog but there’s plenty over at Sams Kitchen, which is the blog run by my wife Sam.

Sam is a food writer and recipe creator and also a darn good food photographer. Her work regularly appears in various foodie magazines as does her (and my) photos.

A few weeks back we ran a food photography workshop and will be running it again on the 13^th June… Details of the next food photography workshop are here.

The workshop was aimed at bakers who wanted to improve their food photography and photographers who wanted to learn the real basics of how the camera worked whilst photographing some great looking baked goodies.

The day was great fun with Sam demoing various food set ups and style tips, whilst I ran around answering camera questions and running through some really quick and simple post processing trick in Photoshop Elements.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziA0gCr2X28[/youtube]
It was really great to see people getting excited about food photography and discovering how really simple changes in styling and shooting made huge improvements to the photos.

If you’d like to get involved in the next workshop visit www.samskitchen.net/?page_id=1682 for more information.

My Photography Show 2015 Schedule

There’s only two weeks to go until The Photography Show opens its doors at the N.E.C. in Birmingham and I can’t wait. Running from the 21^st – 24^th March, it’s the UK’s biggest and busiest photography show and it’s packed to the roof with major photographic suppliers and small independent retailers.

But this isn’t just another trade show, there’s also loads of things to see and do. There’s a constant stream of live demos and talks from some of the best photographers in the UK and beyond, there’s also hands on workshops and masterclasses.

I’ll be there for the whole four days giving various talks and demos on Photoshop, Lighting and Photography. If you’re coming along it would be great to meet you and the best place to find me is at one of my talks either in the Adobe theatre, the Guild of Photographers “speakers corner” or in the Behind the lens theatre.

Saturday

10.15 am	Adobe theatre	Video Editing In Photoshop
1.00 pm	Behind the lens	Take & Make Great Photos
2.30pm	Guild of Photographers J75	Fearless Flash Photography
3.30 pm	Adobe Theatre	Make your photos look amazing with Photoshop

Sunday

10.15am	Adobe theatre	Video Editing In Photoshop
2.30 pm	Guild of Photographers J75	Fearless Flash Photography
3.30 pm	Adobe Theatre	Make your photos look amazing with Photoshop

Monday

10.15 am	Adobe theatre	Make your photos look amazing with Photoshop
12.30 pm	Adobe theatre	Hidden gems in Photoshop for photographers
2.30 pm	Guild of Photographers J75	Fearless Flash Photography

Tuesday

11:00 pm	Adobe theatre	Make your photos look amazing with Photoshop
1.15 pm	Adobe theatre	Hidden gems in Photoshop for photographers
2 pm	Adobe theatre	Video Editing In Photoshop
3 pm	Guild of Photographers J75	Fearless Flash Photography

All my demos are free and available on a first come first served basis. There’s no need to book but as the Adobe theatre in particular has limited seating I’d recommend getting there early!

Show tickets are free for professional photographers and the trade (if booked in advance) and £13.95 for enthusiasts (£18.00 on the door)

Getting your photography noticed

Recently I recorded a series of short videos as part of the Lovers of light” photography competition. In this clip I have a few words to say about getting your work noticed.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10TGbr0XfTQ[/youtube]

Who’s your audience
The first step to getting your photography noticed is deciding who you want to be noticed by. Are you trying to attract customers, looking to reach corporate clients or seeking the approval of your photography peers. If you know your target audience you can start planning a strategy to reach them.

Find your style:
Shoot what you love and it will show in your photos. It might be that you have a hobby or sport that combines well with photography or maybe you have a passion for a type of photography and want to explore it.

If you shoot and share a random selection of photos your audience will be most likely be the same.

Develop your style:
Sticking to a style that you can explore and develop will also help you develop a band of followers who share your style. But don’t get stuck in a rut, challenge yourself to try new ideas within your area of photography. Look at the work of photographers you admire and try and emulate their shots. Don’t try and reproduce the same shot exactly but give it your own spin.

Be Social:
Social media is a great way to talk to fellow photographers and share your work. Post new photos to your social media channels regularly and post your work to more than one place. Stick at it, the more you post the greater the chance you’ll break through.
Don’t give up!

And finally, enter competitions. Even if you don’t win you’ll gain experience and have a reason to shoot more. Remember the first step of winning a competition is to enter. http://www.velux.co.uk/loversoflight

Tips for buying a camera

With the January sales either looming or already here, you might be considering buying a new camera. Now I’m not going to tell you which brand and model of camera you should choose as there are countless options out there and not one of them is right for everyone. However here are some things to consider when buying a camera

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P_3lgXYkpM[/youtube]

The two most important questions are…
What sort of photography will you be mostly shooting?
How much do you want to spend?

Answer those and your search can begin in earnest.

There are basically four types of digital camera. DSLR, Compact System camera (CSC), Bridge Camera and Mobile phone. All types have their pro’s and cons

If you’re want the best quality images then DSLR is probably the way to go. If you’re after great quality but with less bulk the CSC is the answer for you. Need portability and flexibility? Then a Bridge camera could be the answer. If you just want a point and shoot then the mobile phone ticks that box.

Don’t forget the lens. If you’re buying a DSLR or CSC then you’ll need to budget for a lens or two. When it comes to image quality the lens you use can make a bigger difference then the camera it’s attached to.

Bridge cameras are famed for their super long zoom lenses but often that comes at the expense of a true wide angle. The lens is built into the camera so make sure it can do what you want before you buy one.

Mobile phones can get a hard life inside pockets and bags. Before you take a photo check the lenses is clean and scratch free.

Whatever style of camera you choose and whatever name is printed on the front, remember it’s the person behind the camera that makes truly great photos happen.