This topic contains 8 replies, has 0 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
Hi All,
Just put up the first tutorial to show how I shoot photos for the site. I wondered what to do for the first one- whether to start with something specific like aperture settings on the camera etc. In the end I decided to just show what I do on a normal photoset, the way I sorta think about things. Was it at all interesting? I tried to explain what I was doing and why.
Let me know what you think so I can plan out some more tutorials for the coming months (assuming you are interested at all that is!)
Cheers, Hywel.
🙁 🙁 🙁
Did ANYBODY look at the tutorial video/pics? Were they even faintly interesting?
🙁 🙁 🙁
Hywel.
Edited By Hywel on 1144419921
Yes, I looked. But I was all out of Round Tuits this week and had to wait to get a fresh supply in.
And yes, it is interesting to see how you do things and what sort of equipment you use to take your photos. I’d like to see this kept up as a series – one tutorial every month or so.
Anyway, I expect a lot of people are on a “check Restrained Elegance weekly” schedule, so you might not get a lot of response until after the weekend.
A few odd questions:
How often have dropped your light/flash meter? Do they bounce well?
How warm do you keep your studio? On one hand, I’d expect that you’d keep it on the warm side of 70 F for the sake of all the scantily-clad models 🙂
On the other hand, I find the UK climate hard to intuit. I tend to think of it as being the same as the northeastern US (New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio/Southern Michigan, etc.) but then I look at the map and see that it’s latitude is the same as the Frozen Wastes of Canadaâ„¢ – so maybe your models all have antifreeze in their blood. :p
Hi Hywel
I for one have kinda been looking forward to this feature, just had a hellishly busy couple of weeks with far too much travel to contend with, just caught up with what you’re up to.
My portrature isn’t my strongest discipline but I’ve done enough to know my way around a shoot, more interested in the later tutorials to be honest, still, I must confess I was curious (and impressed) to see a bit of the new studio setup.
You’ve done a few sets in which, (can’t believe I’m about to type this) for my money the photography is the most impressive aspect and I kinda notice the model afterwards (see what I mean, i know.. i know.. don’t say it..). Your recent shot with Paige apparantly lit only by an overhead spot and candles is certainly such an example (sorry Paige) to the extent I vowed to experiment with re-producing the look when my diary backs off a bit. A brave concept indeed, I never seem to get away from nice safe natural light with a fill and/or reflector. Tough contrast on Paige’s shoot, I guess you shot manual exposure, big aperture, mid ISO but even then I guess the shutter would dictate the use of a tripod? Interesting colour cast, gel on the spot? perhaps a natural light white balance or was it produced largely by the candles themselves?, what the hell is the Kelvin of a dozen candles anyway?? heh There’s no way i could have resisted a very low power, diffused fill flash, perhaps mounted at a very low height etc.
I could go on but I’ll stop there, for purely my own selfish interests I’d like to see how you do the low light stuff as I’d guess its the area all of us amateurs have least experience of.
Many thanks for your efforts and of course Belle too, who apparently even sneezes cute.. 🙂
M
Hi
Yes i loved it , i like this extra side to the site, showing how the photosets are achieved, cant wait for the camera lesson, so i can try a few new tricks at home
Cheers
j
Hi Guys,
Phew! Glad at least some people had some feedback 🙂 🙂 🙂
How often have dropped your light/flash meter? Do they bounce well?
Flashmeter? Once or twice, but yeh it bounces. No moving parts so it is pretty tough. I’ve dropped camera lenses once or twice (usually think… crunch… that sounds expensive) and camera bodies once or twice too, but they seem to have survived. Falling studio flash units make a lovely expensive tinkle-crash noise as the glass dome shatters into a hundred pieces… had one of those blow over outside once (it was weighted down, but not heavily enough to cope with the very sudden gust of wind) and knocked one over in the studio once as well. But hey, I’m a professional photographer, I shoot anything up to four days a week, and it is all insured.
How warm do you keep your studio? On one hand, I’d expect that you’d keep it on the warm side of 70 F for the sake of all the scantily-clad models. On the other hand, I find the UK climate hard to intuit. I tend to think of it as being the same as the northeastern US (New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Northern Ohio/Southern Michigan, etc.) but then I look at the map and see that it’s latitude is the same as the Frozen Wastes of Canadaâ„¢ – so maybe your models all have antifreeze in their blood.
Studio is kept at a temperature suitable for boiling lobsters (which is what I usually feel like, being a big bloke and not feeling the cold anyway). A lot of the girls are REALLY cold people, so even with the heating on full-blast at 25 degrees C (80 F roughly) they are still definitely on the chilly side. Jasmine and Belle seem to manage to be cold unless the temperature is actually higher than body temperature!
The Uk’s climate ought to be similar to very chilly bits of Canada, but it is actually VERY much milder than that. The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current bringing warm water from the tropics right across the Atlantic and it meets the Eurasian continent at British latitudes. So our climate is much warmer than you’d expect, but also a lot wetter because the winds pick up a lot of moisture from that warm sea water. Being coastal, we also tend to get more moderate summers than in continental interiors too as the sea cools down the land by comparison in summer. So basically we have warm wet winters and cool wet summers, compared with what you might expect.
Cheers, Hywel.
You’ve done a few sets in which, (can’t believe I’m about to type this) for my money the photography is the most impressive aspect and I kinda notice the model afterwards (see what I mean, i know.. i know.. don’t say it..). Your recent shot with Paige apparantly lit only by an overhead spot and candles is certainly such an example (sorry Paige) to the extent I vowed to experiment with re-producing the look when my diary backs off a bit. A brave concept indeed, I never seem to get away from nice safe natural light with a fill and/or reflector. Tough contrast on Paige’s shoot, I guess you shot manual exposure, big aperture, mid ISO but even then I guess the shutter would dictate the use of a tripod? Interesting colour cast, gel on the spot? perhaps a natural light white balance or was it produced largely by the candles themselves?, what the hell is the Kelvin of a dozen candles anyway?? heh There’s no way i could have resisted a very low power, diffused fill flash, perhaps mounted at a very low height etc.
I am trying to think back to exactly what I did with Paige. I’d certainly have had the camera on manual exposure and used the meter to judge the light (then double checked with the camera histogram as I did on the tutorial).
I think that set with Paige was a continuous tungsten spotlight plus the candles, I can’t see any signs of any fill in there. I probably left the camera on daylight colour balance to deliberately go over the top on the warm glow, which brings out the candles a treat (candles burn very cool, so the colour temperature of their light is only about 2000 K, compared with 3200 K or so for Tungsten and 5600 K or so for daylight). I don’t *think* I used a gel on the spotlight, but I might have done- might have put a gel on and used tungsten colour balance.
They were mostly shot at 1/125th of a second (to keep camera and subject blur to reasonable levels), f/1.8 aperture for a shallow depth of field on an 85 mm portrait lens (though some of the shots used different lenses- there were some fish-eye shots with a 16-35mm and some with a 50 mm lens as well I think). They were shot at ISO 800 – a bit of a gamble as the noise is getting quite severe there but the results were OK after a little careful unsharp masking and a little lifting the mid-tones with tone curves on some shots.
No tripod- I never use one if I can avoid it in any way possible. They take away all spontaneity from the shoots, and I really like to move while I shoot. That’s especially true when the model is tied up and so has limited movement herself.
Even a low low power flash would have wrecked the feeling of these shots- too bright (even if fired through scrims), too harsh (even if diffused), and too blue (even if fired through gels). Normally I light everything with flash but there are times when it just works much better to go with continuous lights. Thankfully the noise levels on modern digital SLRs, especially Canons, are good enough that you can get away with it.
I could go on but I’ll stop there, for purely my own selfish interests I’d like to see how you do the low light stuff as I’d guess its the area all of us amateurs have least experience of.
Many thanks for your efforts and of course Belle too, who apparently even sneezes cute..
I’ll see about doing a low light tutorial then- I think I want to do apertures and shutter speeds first, then natural vs. continuous vs. flash lighting, but a low light set is an interesting one as it combines several of those aspects.
LOL she does sneeze cute doesn’t she? I’ll tell her that! 🙂
Cheers, Hywel.
Edited By Hywel on 1144524148
@hywel wrote:
Studio is kept at a temperature suitable for boiling lobsters (which is what I usually feel like, being a big bloke and not feeling the cold anyway). A lot of the girls are REALLY cold people, so even with the heating on full-blast at 25 degrees C (80 F roughly) they are still definitely on the chilly side. Jasmine and Belle seem to manage to be cold unless the temperature is actually higher than body temperature!
One can’t tell what temperature the room is from a photo or video except by indirect evidence – and in the tutorial I was getting mixed signals from what you were wearing, what the make-up lady was wearing, and what Elle was (or wasn’t :)) wearing.
The Uk’s climate ought to be similar to very chilly bits of Canada, but it is actually VERY much milder than that. The Gulf Stream is a warm ocean current bringing warm water from the tropics right across the Atlantic and it meets the Eurasian continent at British latitudes. So our climate is much warmer than you’d expect, but also a lot wetter because the winds pick up a lot of moisture from that warm sea water. Being coastal, we also tend to get more moderate summers than in continental interiors too as the sea cools down the land by comparison in summer. So basically we have warm wet winters and cool wet summers, compared with what you might expect.
Well, I know that intellectually, but it’s hard to grok emotionally: If US/North America weather is ‘normal’ then UK/Euope weather is… quaint. And if UK/Europe has ‘normal’ weather, then US/North American weather is wild & woolly and fit for a howling wilderness.
I’ve got an oddball request :oz that I think might be best filed under the tutorial series. I’d like to see a photoset of RE’s props (bed, shaggy rug, & various chains, cuffs, collars, stocks, etc.) without any models in them.
Sort of a “show off what you have” set. Or maybe a “the slavegirls have escaped!” set.
The forum ‘General Chat’ is closed to new topics and replies.