Natural light

When photographers talk about photography, especially when they talk about model photography, they  usually end up in discussions about photography gear .

Off camera flash, ring flash, Sunbounce and the lot. Everybody has his or her own ideas and opinions about what is best and how to use the goodies. I have been one of those guys who was perfectly happy with a simple reflection screen. On a rare occasion I have used off camera flash. But I must admit that using all this stuff is not really my thing.

Why not, well because of a number of reasons.

• I always had the feeling I was missing some goodies, triggers, light modifiers, light stands, CB ... you can never have enough goodies :)
• I felt limited by the goodies, having to put my model on the exact spot, telling her not to move.
• Every shot asked for a complete new setup, losing out on valuable time.
• Having to rely on assistance to setup and hold screens and/or flashes. 
• ...

So why was I still doing this? Probably because we humans have the urge to follow the mainstream. Everybody is doing it, so it must be good. And do not get me wrong when properly applied it is good. Unfortunately there is a lot of crap out there as well. And I strongly got the feeling I was part of the crap. So I decided to go back to the roots, learn model photography in  the simplest possible way. Me, myself and I Canon ... and of course a model :)

Following shots are made with nothing but natural light. Are they ok? Judge for yourself. I have my doubts, which I've added after every section.

Last Saturday we had a nice sunny day in Belgium, The ideal weather for a great shoot ... NOT

Lets see what we can do. Everyone knows you have to put the sun in the models back so lets try that.

bwa ... not too bad, we do have some disturbing high lights in the hair, the contrast between the sunny side and the dark side are quite challenging, but I do not mind the high lights, it adds some atmosphere to the photo's so ... yeah it's ok. What however bothers me are the gray skin tones.

Rules are there to be broken, let's go to the sunny side.

Nice saturated colors, enhanced in the second photo by setting the white balance to shade. And although this is nice, it does come with some other challenges, not so much for the photographer as for the model. Looking into the sun for too long, will blind any human being. Shooting from this angle is really harsh on the model.

Shade, the solution? shades come in all kind of shapes. Moving into the dense woods, a step into the dark. But make sure you have got some light in the background, to keep it interesting.

 

I kind of liked it, skin tones were not to bad, although not perfect. Problem I did encounter, I had to pump up the ISO to 400 and shoot at 2.8 which left me with a not so perfect sharpness :(

Foliage matters. I was looking for some nice diffuse light on this perfectly sunny day. Going into the woods was a good idea but not just any tree will do. Foliage matters, to thick foliage will leave you with to little light. To thin Foliage will leave you with high lights on more or less unpredictable places. So find yourself a nice tree which will render you the perfect diffuse light. The following photo's were all taken while the model was shielded from the sun by the trees. I guess it is just a matter of finding the right tree.

 

In general I was happy with the outcome, perhaps one could argue that some of the photo's are a little bit dull ...But then again a photo is more than perfect lighting. With the right model at hand, even when the light is not perfect, you can still get the viewers attention. Eve certainly had my attention, by the way thanks again for the lovely shoot Eve.

Living on the edge. There was just one other thing I needed to do. I had some shots in the sun and I had some in the shade. Now it was time to shoot in the twilight zone. Where the sun meets the shade, I tried two different settings, again using trees and other flora. Stand in front of the tree compared with the sun that is, Let the model approach the border between shade and sun. Do the same but this time stand behind the tree compared to the sun. It does create some high lights which are evil for most photographers. I happen to like evil :)

This sums it up for now. Next post will be one about natural light when shooting indoors. That's going to be a nice one :)

In case anyone is wondering, these photo's have not been post processed except for some minor modifications, mainly white balance and some slight exposure adjustments. The normal 1 minute stuff :)

USB drive gone bad

And yet again a non photography related post. I'll try not to make a habit out of it.

Yesterday I was copying some stuff onto my USB drive when all of the sudden it stop and told me the drive was write protected ???? WTF !!!

First I tried to format it, but windows would not let me, because ... well you know ... the drive is write protected (windows is consistent, you have to give them that much credit)

So I started googling, read a lot of stuff about installing tools (probably full of spyware and other unwanted stuff) which could fix the problem or others telling me to modify the registry using regedit. I did not take the time to try these things out since most people who did try ended up with a USB stick which was still not writable.

After an hour or so I stumbled upon a useful blog, explaining what could be the problem, Some hidden program on the USB drive  was probably responsible for the problem, this program is always launched at start-up. making the USB drive write protected.

The simple trick is to prevent windows from launching the program at start-up. And sometimes things can be easy. Insert the stick while holding down the shift key. The USB drive will be recognized and no programs will be started. In my case, the USB drive was no longer write protected. I was able to format it without a problem. Of course this might not work for all of you, but it did work for me :)

Next post will be about photography again, I promiss.