Tag Archive for: reflections

Cheap can be more fun than you think

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Is gear important?

I hear it all the time: the focus on gear.

“My lens is cheap,” “I have an old camera,” “I only have one strobe,” etc.
In all honesty, of course, gear is important, but you can create awesome art/photos, etc., with your phone nowadays. My motto over the year has been, “If people look at the quality of the pixels, the image is not strong enough.” That doesn’t mean you can just “wing” it and not care about your gear, but it shouldn’t be the main focus.

The same goes for sets. They are important too.
When people look at my portfolio, a lot of people don’t realize that most of the shots were taken during workshops or events. As you will understand, we don’t have a lot of time to create sets, and of course, we love to stay on budget, and that’s what today’s blog post is about: Cheap sets.

Fun and cheap sets

With photography, it helps when we don’t focus on light but on shadows; this is something you probably heard from day 1. The shadows tell you almost everything about the light source used, the angle, distance etc., but one step further is to realize we don’t really work with light but with reflections.
This also explains why we can use black reflectors to take out the shine on someone’s head, for example.

Reflections and shine

And don’t we just love it when something gets a beautiful “glow” in a shot?
Reflections can be a problem but also something really cool you can use in your image.
Today we take a look at some very cheap material you can buy in most party shops. It’s called (well, at least this one) holographic material, and we used it to build a nice background for one of the sets during a workshop. You can even get it in different colors.

A good technique is to use your phone and shine over the material; this will show you how the material reflects and should give you a good idea of how to use it in your shoot.

Fresnel for high contrast

When I used my phone to shine over this material, it immediately started to glow. So, for this setup, I knew we could hit the background with some harsh light for some extra contrast and “oomph” in the shot. If you shoot this with a soft box, it can work fine, too. But it will be a lot less extreme. So on the model, I’m using the Nanlite Fresnel spot (this is one of my favorite modifiers for a great classic high contrast look). The nice thing about a Fresnel is that you focus your light, and even when you use it on the extreme settings, it still has a wonderful effect on the skin of the model.

To make sure the material also shines and to get some nice color effects, I’ve placed two Geekoto GT200’s with the Rogue magnetic system with a red gel on one side and a blue gel on the other.

Together, they created a very nice blend of color and light on the model, plus the material gave a wonderful glow, especially when our model leaned forward.
So let’s take a look at the results from this setup, and in the next blog post, I show the behind the scenes video.

cheap sets

During the workshops, we always try to do 3-4 totally different sets, and this is just one :D. We often try to create cheap sets.
Also want to visit a workshop?
Visit fotografie-workshops.nl for more information. The workshops are in Dutch, but if you let us know a few weeks in advance, we can switch to English.
Don’t want to travel?
It’s also possible to book a full day 1:1 online workshop; see here for more info.

A pure white background and floor, plus accents on your model with just three umbrellas

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A white background, floor, and accent on your model with just 3 umbrellas?

Seems impossible… it’s not

Shooting with a white background and floor is far from my favorite setup, but sometimes you have to 😀
When I started with photography the white background was hot. And used all the time (I was always more of a light grey fan). So of course I had to learn how to shoot it.

The first problem I ran into was getting the background completely white.
This is easily solved by moving the model forward and just blasting the background. But when cameras became better and the headroom larger it became more and more problematic due the the enormous amount of light reflecting back from the background. So how to get that pure white background?

Special modifiers to get a white background

The first thing I tried was of course lighting the background with open reflectors, or softboxes. And although it worked ok it never was 100%.
So enter the special background reflectors.
The idea behind these is that they “focus” the light on the background and spread it out evenly.

a modifier which makes it easier to get a white background.

By the way, it’s more easier if you have two of those.

And although it worked a lot better than a standard reflector it’s far from perfect.

The solution(s). How I made a white background and floor

Floor

So let’s not make the blog post too long and immediately jump to the solution.
Let’s start with the floor.

Without a doubt, this one was the most difficult to crack.
You can use extra strobes on the floor. But that also meant the light fall off on the model would look unnatural with loads of light on the feet.
You can use Photoshop of course. But that would mean the model just floats in the air, so you can start adding shadows again. Long story short this is not doable when you need to deliver 50 images to a client. You simply can’t edit every single image in detail unless you have a very large budget.

The solution is actually super simple and gives an awesome effect.
Just put some transparent plexiglass on the floor.
The plexiglass will reflect the light and give you an instant perfect white floor and as a bonus a great reflection.
The added bonus when using transparent plexiglass is that you can also use it on other color backgrounds and get some stunning reflection effects. But for today let’s keep it on white.

Now that we have the floor covered (pun intended) we have the background to light.

Background

For this, the solution is actually much simpler and cheaper than you might think.

white background, white floor and accent on your model

 

Here you can see the setup we used for the shots with Claudia from the previous blog post.

Umbrellas for a white background and floor

As you can see I’m using two white Rogue umbrellas, on our Geekoto GT400 strobes, at the back. And these are more important than you might think at first sight.
The placement of those two is vital for the end result and also gives you a lot of flexibility.

The first task for the umbrellas in the back is of course lighting the background and floor. So they are placed behind the model aimed at the background with the shoot-through part. However, a white umbrella also reflects so we have a light source that’s pretty unique. It lights both what’s in front but also what’s in the back, and that’s actually the whole secret or trick in this setup.

By choosing the right angle of the back umbrellas it’s possible to light both the background and also give a very accent light on the model.
In loads of setups, you can see 2 strobes on the background and 2 strobes as accent plus your mainlight which means you need 5 strobes for one setup.
By using umbrellas you can bring this back to just 3 strobes, and also the costs are considerably lower than using background reflectors and for example striplights as accents.

For example, we sell the Rogue fiberglass umbrellas in a nice travel kit edition with a black umbrella plus sleeve (here used as main light) and one white umbrella in a travel kit for € 116,00 the extra white umbrella retails for € 23,00

Now if you don’t like the accent lights you can always place two large flags between your model and the umbrellas and take away the accent lights.

And how about just 2 lights?

You might wonder, can we also do this (getting a white background and floor) with 2 strobes and 2 umbrellas?
That’s the nice thing about umbrellas.
The disadvantage is that the light spreads around very easily. But that’s also the advantage if you know how to control it 😀

Now when you use one umbrella on the back the accent light will of course just be on one side. But when you look at the end result it’s absolutely a setup that you can use.

Conclusion of white backgrounds

White backgrounds can always be tricky due to the amount of light that spreads everywhere.
But by using the right light modifiers and placing them correctly in the scene a lot can be done for a very low budget.
And let’s be honest. These images are straight out of the camera with just a little boost in contrast, as you can see the background is almost pure white and the only thing you have to take out are the seams of the plexiglass, which in most cases can be done in seconds.

So the next time you need a pure white background, why choose the expensive and difficult route?
Just use three or two umbrellas and some plexiglass and deliver images almost straight out of the camera.

check out the video about the Rogue Umbrella’s

 

Or this short, also with model Claudia about the Umbrella 

Digital classroom with Kimberley

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Digital classroom is without a doubt one of the most intense things I do online.
The idea actually started out as just having a camera on during a photoshoot, we did this a few years ago and people loved it, being able to see what we do during a photoshoot. At that time there was not much going on to be honest, it was mostly seeing the model being in makeup, some movement in the studio and of course the Photoshoot, but still people loved it.

 

Years later we wanted to pick this up again but with todays market you have to do something unique so we thought hard and decided we would let YOU the viewers interact with the shoot, but as soon as the cameras rolled and we were live things changed…. I love teaching and that was exactly what I started doing, explaining what we were going to do, showing the light setups, giving tips and even showing the complete retouch process….. this was a huge succes and now we can do these broadcasts every month thanks to companies like BenQ and Rogue/Expo imaging because without them this would never be possible.

 

Today I can show the digital classroom we did with Kimberley and watch this space on Monday for the results.
Enjoy… oh and if you REALLY want to do us a favor…. subscribe to our channel via this link…..

 

Now this is of course free, imaging what you get with one of our instructional videos you can order from our site, make sure to check them out and learn even more in depth techniques and tips.

 

Topics include :
Small flash, the light blaster, Rogue flash benders, how to meter light with a light meter, the new Sekonic 478, how to prevent reflections in walls, windows, glasses etc, how to coach the model, angles, gear, retouching in Photoshop and Capture one, tinting with Aliens Skin X and Capture One, some cool retouch tips and MUCH more…..

Using natural light and a bit of reflection

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The following shots were taking with natural light, well actually the last one (with the sun reflection) was a shot with added strobe.
Now one of the tips I want to share with this blogpost is looking for location.

 

Often we walk past location that look 100% uninteresting for our photoshoots, however if you look a little bit better/longer or, as I often call it, with your photography eyes some locations can be really nice. I always love reflections and windows are great for this, however I also love structure so older buildings are a true treat for me and I love using them to shoot against. This building actually is on the other side of the road from our studio and we often use it during our workshops or sessions (It always helps to have good relations with your neighbors :D)

 

Marie November 21 2013-86-Edit

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