White Out

I recently organized a photo-shoot at Faith Blackwell’s studio in the Stutz Building with model Olivia Ogden. Shooting with me were local Indianapolis photographers Faith Blackwell & Laura Poland. The theme for this shoot was High Key. This is a technique that I wanted to try, for no other reason than I hadn’t tried it and it looked kind of cool. After reviewing multiple High Key images, reading up and organizing the location and model, I gave it a go.

Photographer Faith Blackwell & Laura Poland with Model Olivia Ogden

The effect to be achieved in high key is to overexpose the background so it’s completely white. There are several ways to get this effect but I planned to accomplish this effect using multiple studio and speedlights to throw as much light as I needed on a white background to over-expose it to the point of where there were no pixels at all.

Faith’s studio has one wall completely white. Since there is a dark grey floor I simply taped with white tape a 6 foot piece of background paper against the lower part of the wall and swept it out over the floor about 4 feet. I then used 2 Nikon SB-600 speedlights on light stands with a white umbrella. The setup faced the wall set back about 3 feet. Both speedlights were triggered with Elinchrom Skyport universal triggers. Speedlights were set at ¼ power. The goal was to use the umbrellas to broadly throw a diffused light against the white wall.

Model Olivia Ogden

I then set up 2 Elinchrom D-Lite 4 strobes with softboxes set at approximately 1/3 power 45 degrees both sides of the background approximately 6 feet back. The D-Lite 4’s were triggered with internal Elinchrom Skyports.

During the shoot I varied the power of the softboxes mainly to backoff the fill lighting. The goal of these lights was to provide an even focused light to be thrown on Olivia. I was thinking originally using just ambient light or just one softbox to get move shadow, but I went with the wrap-around lighting. In hindsight I should have used less light on my model. We also used a hand held diffuser in several shots to eliminate glare from the ambient light coming from the window.

All shots were taken with a Nikon D300s in manual mode. White balance was set to flash although I was shooting in RAW. Initial settings were shutter speed at 1/200, aperture set at f/5.6, and ISO at 400. I varied all settings throughout the shoot. All shots were with a Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 G. I varied the aperture throughout the shoot.

I had asked Olivia to bring several changes of tight fitting clothes one with a dark top and one with a light top. Minimal makeup. The 3 of us then took turns shooting away for about 1 ½ hours. As always Olivia made our work simple by easily transitioning from pose to pose.

Near the end just to switch things up we asked Olivia to run a series of poses infront of a large south facing window. This provided sufficient ambient light as the sun had moved well overhead. We added fill light with one Elinchrom D-Lite 4 set as ¼ power and bounced some sunlight using a piece of white foamcore board.

Overall, it was a fun shoot doing both full body and headshots. We easily achieved the desired high key effect with minimal issues. The speedlights did the trick providing a very even exposure against the white background. Personally, I like the full body shots the best. However, if I do this effect again I would definitely back down the light being thrown on the model or vary the power of the light on one side so I can get shadowing and therefore more depth to the model’s face. Of course I could do the shadowing post processing, but it’s not the same.

Tip and after-thoughts:

• Build the light. For my shoot I set up all 4 lights in addition to the ambient light in advance and did test shots using all 4 lights. Next time I would start with the lights on the background, shoot some test shots of the model, add 1 strobe for the key light, take test shots, and then add a second strobe for fill light. I would then vary the power of the strobes to get different shadowing.

• For high key your histogram is important but a bit misleading. Because you have the background overexposed you will have a large peak on the right side of the histogram. Therefore, about ½ way through the shoot I switched the “blinkies” on and this gave me better visibility if I was blowing out the models face which I didn’t want to do.

• If possible shoot tethered. I think I could have locked down my setting much quicker if I had a bigger visual image as soon as I shot. I’ve shot tethered before, but didn’t think about it during this shoot.

A Strobist's Night Out

photo credit to Ashley Adcox

In an earlier post I detailed the photoshoot a group of Indianapolis photographers and models did at the Stutz Building. I organized the shoot through the Flickr Indianapolis Strobist group. A great time. Thought I would post the team picture. From left to right are: Faith Blackwell (her studio was our base of operation), Amanda Jo Welch (model), Olivia Ogden (model), Ashley Adcox, Bovary (model), Diablo (model), Steve Griffey, yours truly (in the RAW t-shirt) and Paul D'Andrea.  Photographers Lora and Dave Olive not present for the photo.

I can't wait until we do this again. It's a strobist's dream date.

Stutz Model Session

One of the areas I’m spending time is model photography.  I’ve combined this with my increasing interest in flash / strobe lighting.  One place to give this interest a workout is through a local Flickr meet-up group, Indianapolis Strobist.  A group of 7 local photographers, including myself, got together yesterday evening for a model shoot I arranged.

The photographers that showed up were: Lora Olive at www.livepixlive.com, Ashley Adcox at www.koruimage.com, Steve Griffey, Dave Olive, Faith Blackwell at www.faithblackwellphotography.com , and Paul D’Andrea at www.pdaphotography.com

 The meet-up took place at the Stutz Building in Indianapolis.  I’d been to the Stutz a few times in the past as it houses many local artist studios, and they have an annual Stutz Artist Association Open House.  I thought this would be a perfect location because the building has old-style industrial windows, lots of dark halls, industrial fixtures, etc.  On top of this one of the photographers in the group, Faith Blackwell, has a studio in the Stutz.  This was perfect as it allowed us to have a base of operation for our equipment.

I wanted to keep the effort organizing this shoot simple as I have a day job that makes WAY more money than my photo gig. With the help of uber portrait & event photographer, Paul D’Andrea we put a call out for local models.  Good thing Paul has good contacts because I came up blank.  I pinged several models I’ve worked with previously, and reached out to several models through ModelMayhem but came up dry.  Either the models were booked / busy or I received no feedback from anyone on ModelMayhem.  Oh well, since I don’t have a reputation as a model photographer I’m not surprised at my results.  However, with Paul’s help we lined up 2 models we’ve worked with before, and 2 models new to many of us.

Models Bovary & Diablo (MM # 720400) are dynamite together.  They know several of the photographers in the shoot so the chemistry was there. Amanda Jo Welch (MM # 18955491 & 1069732) joined us and had major skills, and Olivia Ogden (MM # 365545) was amazing.

As we’ve done before we broke off into groups and photographed in groups of 2-3.  Since I had an extra Elinchrom Skyport trigger it was easy for me to have a couple of photographers join me.  We took turns with a series of shots and then traded off the triggers.  I started off with Ashley & Steve along with model Amanda.  Later Ashley moved to another group and Faith joined the Steve’s.  We worked Amanda in about 5 locations.  One on a bench, against a set of industrial windows with the sun to her back, another location with the sun to her face and natural lighting to her back, one series in a dark hall, and finally a set with a speedlight directly behind her hair.  We shot for about 2 hours.

In almost all shots I used my standard 2 speedlight setups that I’ve discussed in a previous post.  This time however, I switched out one of my LumiQuest Softbox III with an RPS Studio Softbox RS-4030 set up for a speedlight.  This setup as previously blogged makes for a speedy setup and easy to move around.  We also mixed in a red gel on one of the speedlights which created interesting effects. 

Finally, we headed back to Faith’s studio to cool off (it was uber hot in most of the Stutz) and to try our hand with the other models.  I shot about 15 minutes with Bo and Diablo with the amazing lighting setup that Paul had arranged. 

Finally, Lora and Dave joined me and model Olivia to work some of the hallways.  This time I replaced the RPS Studio Softbox with a standard umbrella (I know, old school).  However, it was so hot in the Stutz the adhesive backed velcro on the Softbox delaminated and the softbox kept falling off the holder…no kidding.  I could have used my LumiQuest Softbox III, but I wanted to try for more diffused light.  In one series the hall was so tight that I could only fit one umbrella in.  I simply set it high and shot below it.  Worked great to add diffused light.

Finally, Steve joined me and we moved Olivia in-front of an old freight elevator.  After a number of normal shots using the umbrella setup, I put a second speedlight behind Olivia and aimed it at the elevator.  This gave some really interesting backlighting effect.  Also we then turned it forward and did a number of shots with the flash firing forward.  Overall, some interesting effects.

In all of my shots tonight I was shooting with a Nikkor AF-S 24-70mm f/2.8 lens and set my camera to manual.  Manual settings were 500 ISO, exposure at 1/100 to 1/160 of a second and f/stop at 6.3.  The speedlights mentioned are my Nikon SB-600's.

Bottomline, we had a great time doing our strobist thing.  As always, can’t leave a post without a few tips: 

·         If you are going to shoot in a group with paid models and plan to split the cost, make sure you get the number of shooters tied down ASAP.  Without it you can’t determine the number of models to hire and $$$ each photographer has to pay without knowing the numbers.

·         Make sure everyone knows the location, route and timing to meet.  We spent about 30 minutes of our 3 hour shoot getting people together and organized.  Remember the meter is running on the models

·         Bring nametags – this may sound really silly but for meetups like this not everyone knows each other

·         Make sure everything, triggers, camera & rechargeable batteries on your speedlights are charged.  If not bring extra batteries.  I did this and was happy I did.  I went through all my batteries.

·         Experiment with lighting and model poses.  Some of our setups worked and some didn’t.  But you know what?  The shots that I didn’t think would work actually came out really well.

·         On hot days like yesterday make sure everyone has water and gets a chance to take lots of breaks.  This includes the models as well.