A Simple Headshot (of Myself)

I needed a new headshot for something recently, and I figured it might be fun to expand a little on something I started playing with while shooting my friend Mairi. I wanted to work on getting my backgrounds blown out to pure white.

I think this was mostly due to reading the great Zack Arias “White Seamless Tutorial”, and trolling around on The Strobist again. I also just got my camera back, so it was as good a time as any to put it through some paces… (Plus, I needed the practice).

So first, here is the final result after all of my fiddling:

Could have been a lot worse, I think…

So my first desire in shooting this was to play with getting the background blown to pure white. I happened to have a whiteboard in my office conference room that I figured would be a good background to start with.

The Open Source Portrait (Equipment & Environment)

As promised, I thought it might be fun/helpful to walk through a portrait shooting session from start to finish using only Free/Open Source Software (F/OSS). This is my personal workflow, and hopefully I can do the subject some justice.

A Model Idiot.

I'm going to walk through the creation of a portrait of my friend Mairi that I did not too long ago. I had been wanting to shoot with Mairi for a while, and only recently got a chance to sit down and actually do it quickly. For reference, here is one of the final results that I'll be walking through the process for:

Mairi 6 - possibly my favorite from the shoot.

I say "quickly" because this image was almost spur-of-the-moment, shot in a less than ideal location with about 10 minutes of setup to dial everything in (oh - and was shot while I was keeping an eye on my 2 year old daughter who was running around playing).

The next tutorial in this series is here:
The Open Source Portrait (Postprocessing)

Slow Light (Light Painting)

Still there after all these years by Pat David on Flickr.

A while back I was too cheap (lazy?) to get around to purchasing some speedlights and in typical DIY fashion for me, I figured I could replicate most results using nothing more than a flashlight. So one evening with my friend Sean and his wife, we decided to try out some long exposure light painting ideas.

To be clear, the term "light painting" is often used to describe painting light onto an image where the bulb is visible, and used to create something visual in the final result. This is NOT what I am referring to here. I've seen plenty that are nice, but I don't personally have much interest in doing this:

Light Painting by VFS Digital Design on Flickr.

As far as I'm concerned, the definitive "light painting" of this type was done years ago by Picasso:

Pablo Picasso draws a centaur in the air
Vallauris, France, 1949 Gjon Mili

I absolutely love the quality of the light fall-off when using nothing more than a flashlight to illuminate a scene during a long exposure. The ability to move around and to selectively place light wherever you want it at whatever intensity you desire is surprisingly fun once you get started. So let's get started...

Visualize Photography Lighting Setups in Blender

The most patient portrait model in the world...

Not too long ago I finally got around to picking up a decent manual flash for exploring lighting and speedlight techniques. I picked up a Yongnuo YN-560 Speedlight Flash for Canon and Nikon, and my friend Sean was kind enough to send me his old radio triggers to play with. I was mostly all set to start exploring the world of off-camera lighting...

I say mostly because though I had a rough understanding of how I wanted to use the light, I was not well versed on what could be done with it. So I spent a bit of time on the Flickr Strobist Group, and read through all of the Lighting courses on the Strobist site. There is an absolute wealth of information on the site, and I cannot recommend it enough.

Having a reference for how the contribution of different types of light will affect the final outcome is very handy for me. I've seen people who have taken the time to setup lighting diagrams where they will modify a given light for direction/angle, and cycle through many possibilities to help as a reference (Here is one cheat-sheet from DIY Photography).

This is nice, but what if I wanted to visualize the effect multiple lights will have all simultaneously? I guess I could go and shoot every, possible, variation, but I am really lazy. Plus, I don't have access to a model with the patience to sit there while I fiddle with multiple lights, multiple times.

It occurred to me that I already had a great tool for doing this visualization already installed on my computer. That tool is Blender 3D. I already had been using this open source 3D modelling tool for some time, and was familiar enough with it to be comfortable emulating my lighting setups. All I needed was a good model.

5 minute portrait - Coworker Emily

5 minute portrait - Coworker Emily, by avhell.

I've really wanted to experiment with different lighting techniques and to start incorporating flashes off camera for some shots. I just haven't gotten around to purchasing any flashes or triggers yet (though it is on my wish list). As such, I have to be a little more creative when coming up with ideas for lighting some pictures.

In this case, I had to take some new photos for the employee poster we have at work. I could have just snapped a shot of them right at their desks, and I'm sure it would have been fine. After thinking about it for a minute, though, I decided to try something a little better. All I had was my trusty Olympus E-P1, a 17mm lens, and whatever I could find in my office. I like a challenge!

I felt the on-camera flash would be a little too harsh here, and I didn't have any way to angle the flash head to bounce the light off anything (but still wanted nice fill on the subjects face). So I thought a nice portrait for this scenario could benefit from the same lighting a ring light might give. I just don't have a ring light in my office lying around. I do, however, have a couple of desk lamps that might fit the bill. Et Voila!

I stole two fluorescent desk lamps from my co-workers, and set them up on a table pointing directly at Emily's face from the sides:

There was also a ceiling fluorescent fixture in my office providing some fill light from above. Because the desk lamps were low power, I had to really get them close to the subject (along with the camera). If you look, you can actually see the two desk lights being reflected in her eyes.

I thought it came out pretty good for scavenging lighting supplies from around the office. After the first one, I decided that I might as well go ahead and re-shoot everyones picture in the office for the poster:

Office Family, by avhell.

And a great big "Thank you!" to my coworkers for allowing me to use their images here! (btw, that's me in the top left)