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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Quarters


The Quarters
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
We had to dash out between traffic to get this one! we'd wait for a red light and the six of us would literally run out, take the shot, and run back to safety. The sky was overcast, and backlighting is pretty obvious in this one! Two Sunpak 383's triggered by Skyports and held by a couple of the band's friends. The sunpaks were snooted, and our helpers were sometimes too concerned about oncoming traffic to point the light accurately. Someone hit their horn and the guy with the guitar responded in typical rock star fashion! Pretty cool. Looking at this shot now, I should have worked harder on eliminating all the clutter in the background. Electrical wires, poles, parked cars. I learn something new every shot.

Monday, July 23, 2007

Sambrose Automobile


Sambrose Automobile
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
A Sunpak 383 super handheld to camera left, and another one behind the guys on a stand for backlighting. Broad daylight. Triggered by Elinchrom Skyports. It's nice to have a band that doesn't mind looking happy for a change.

Cidersweets


Cidersweets
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
These guys insisted on doing one of those multiple exposures, so I went along with it. The whole thing only took about half an hour, including the Photoshop work, thanks to a little pre-planning. The camera was on a tripod for the 4 separate shots. I made sure there was just enough overlap between the shots so that there was no obvious grouping that would ruin the illusion, but not so much that it would take too much time to complete the job. It's important to minimise the shadows and have relatively flat lighting with this sort of thing. It's really hard to paint in shadows, or eliminate them when they're not supposed to be there. I had somebody holding a Sunpak 383 Super triggered by an Elinchrom Skyport, standing directly in front of the guys for each shot, and just brushed her out later. Compositionally, the big area in the top right was intentionally left uncluttered for the typography.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Amy


Amy 1
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
Amy was kind enough to allow me to take some shots in some not so typical locations.
Sunpak 383 on a stand just to the left of the camera, firing into a shoot-through umbrella. Another Sunpak, (snooted with a toilet roll) further back down the alley, just out of shot, camera right, aimed at Amy's head. The sun also gave a little bit of backlighting.
Desaturated in Lightroom. That's it. Except for the crowd of onlookers behind me!
It was after this shoot that I finally realised that no matter how careful you are with lighting and location, if expression isn't there, it will never be a great portrait. This is almost wholly the responsibility of the photographer in my opinion. While this shot of Amy is pretty good technically, it was the first of the session, and I hadn't been concentrating on making Amy feel confident and relaxed. It took a while before I was able to make her feel comfortable and we finally got some great photos.

Masketta Fall do Harry Potter

Masketta Fall get the Harry Potter look!
You can see flare from one of the lights creeping into the shot on the right edge of the pic, about 3 metres down the alley. The other light was to camera left. Both lights were Sunpak 383's on stands triggered by Skyports, and snooted with the empty rolls from toilet paper. Snooting the light makes it appear more dramatic. The Sunpaks were set to full power to overcome the ambient light. (it was the middle of the day)
The toughest part was making sure everybody was lit by both strobes.

The Reefs


The Reefs
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
The Reefs were nice enough to do a big jump for me.
Two sunpak 383's on stands either side of the camera, triggered by Elinchrom Skyports. In the alley where I work. (I don't actually work in the alley!?) I wanted the sun to backlight the shot, but it wouldn't come out for me. Maybe next time!
I've had lots of questions about the post processing, but it's not really any great secret, but if the lighting and the exposure aren't just right, it will never look right.
I open the unsharp mask dialog box and crank up the Radius slider so that it's greater than the Amount slider. The opposite of what you'd normally do. I then desaturate slightly. Then repeat untli it stops looking good. This look is starting to become a little dated now, with photographers like Jill Greenberg and Dave Hill being much better at it than I am.

Kickers


Kickers
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
In the studio with a black backdrop.
This is a single flash setup with a slightly diffused Sunpak 383 overhead and bounced into a reflector underneath the girls. They were five or six feet from the backdrop and I made sure there was no light falling on it.

The Dudes in the studio


The Dudes in the studio
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
This is one of the shots I took in the studio for a band called The Dudes. Sam's hair looked good, and I figured I could feature it, but not in a "hey check out the hair" kinda way.
I used my trusty Sunpak 383 Supers bounced off big pieces of A2 paper taped to the wall. Triggered by Elinchrom Skyports.

Friday, July 20, 2007

me


Brendan O'Shea
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
The last day of my motorcycle trek around the Southwest USA on the biggest, loudest, smelliest and blackest Harley I could get. The public swimming pool at Twentynine Palms had just opened for the season, and since I hadn't seen water for about a week at this point, I made good use of their showers. Thanks guys!