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Friday, October 26, 2007

backlit dessert


backlit dessert
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
I did a shoot at a restaurant recently, and they wanted us to take some food shots. Softboxes didn't work at all, so I just used 2 bare strobes, one as a backlight, and the other in front filling the shadows. Seems you can't have dark parts or deep shadows in food shots. It has to be bright, and a little overexposed to look fresh. Bare strobes contribute to the specular highlights, like in jewellery cabinets. I checked out the histogram on some food shots I really liked, and there was practically no detail at all in the darks. So I did the same.

Tilting and shifting


cait & tys
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
I ordered a new Canon 45mm tilt shift lens on a Monday morning from an online New York store, and by Thursday afternoon it had arrived here in Australia and I was using it on a job. Now that's service! There are stores here in Melbourne
that take longer than that to return a phone call. But I love this lens. The kids are six or seven feet apart, but their eyes are in focus. I tilted the lens to it's max, and everything is totally out of focus except a very narrow plane. Depth of field at 2.8 is very small, so it takes some skill to focus, especially when you're trying to focus on two points at once. This is a manual focus lens, and when you've got it tilted or shifted, auto exposure doesn't work, so there's going to be quite a few bad shots over the next few weeks while I get the hang of it, and hopefully some very unique ones.

Monday, October 22, 2007

polarized recording studio


recording studio
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
After spending half an hour moving the camera fractions of an inch to avoid reflections from the lights in the recording studio, I thought I'd try my polarizer. Instantly I got that hi-tech look that I see in the glossy mags. And no reflections. I always figured a polarizer was good for making skies bluer, and that's about it, but they're actually a very handy filter to have around. I was trying to figure out the lighting on a studio car shot that looked very hi-tech, and I figured there must be a hell of a lot of photoshop going on. Then I noticed a checkerboard pattern on some of the windows. I've seen the same thing while driving around with my polarized sunglasses. At certain angles laminated windows have this pattern.
Try a polarizer when shooting highly reflective metal or glass objects. People wearing glasses. People with shiny skin. Shoot an LCD computer screen and you can dial it down to totally black.
If you want to get experimental, put a polarizer on your lighting as well.
I shot this using ambient light only. No Photoshop.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The Band Who Knew Too Much


The Band Who Knew Too Much
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
I spent a couple of hours with these guys and did some shots at the bar, some at a boxing gym, and a couple of these more formal shots for a promo poster. This was a challenge to light because of the cramped room we were in and the low dark ceiling. But I still wanted a more dramatic backlit look. I ended sticking a couple of Sunpak 383's in the back corners just out of shot, firing into the group, and a brollied 430EX filling in front. The classic problems with this shot are:

1: keeping everyone in the frame evenly lit

2: with the lights in such close proximity to the subject, light falloff was a major problem. The guys closest to the light were in danger of blowing out, while the ones further away were potentially in darkness.

Ordinarily I'd have the lights much further out to prevent that, but the room was way too small.
(I'm kinda surprised the shot worked out actually.)

Thursday, October 4, 2007

quarters jump


quarters jump
Originally uploaded by brendan.oshea
This looks like a composite, but is actually a single shot. It's for the cover of the Quarter's new CD. If I had a bigger studio I would have been able to blow out the background to avoid the shadows, but I'll get rid of some of the more troublesome ones in Photoshop later.
This the first session with Pocket Wizards instead of my trusty Skyports. Lighting was 2 Sunpak 383's either side and slightly behind the band fired into brollys. Front light was a bare Canon 430EX.
I had a fair idea of how Chris was going to jump, so I got Ivan (on the left) to lean over a little so he'd be peeking through the gap.
This was like the second take and it worked out pretty good. Working with musicians is pretty good sometimes because when I count them in for the shot, they're on it. For some people it's like "1-2-3...blink!"