Photographer and visual artist working in the RiNo Art District located in Denver, Colorado. Photography services for musicians, dancers, artists, models, fashion designers, and small business

Its been said soo many times, but there are always people coming into photography that have yet to hear it. I’ve seen videos over at fstopper showing how a cell phone can create professional results. I get asked about lenses and lights and triggers all the time and I tell them that yes I do shoot with Alienbees and pocket wizards and giant softboxes, but I started off with 1 light and an umbrella just like everyone else. This week I will go over even more lighting hacks that have worked for me so well.

The Late Show
My friend from Arizona, whom I’ve worked with several times before, was in town and of course we had to get together to work something out. I had a short window to work with her and with my latest schedule trying to sell my house, keeping the other business afloat, and a million other issues arising in this so call life, I didn’t have much thought into what I wanted to do with her. My girlfriend, Marguerite always wanted to do something where we sewed someones eyes and mouth shut. I had a really great idea for that concept, but the location I wanted to use for it ( a Public Storage building ) went away….ok I stopped paying for it…. and I didn’t know where else to do it. I still want to do the idea, but well we just decided to do something with it this night. I was not really sure what my idea would be, but Jen told me she was bringing her violin with her so I thought it would be interesting to have a violin player that was blind and mute. Ok well I decided it that day so I was really pushing for a concept that would make this late night worth it. We started around 11:30pm. We were tired from a long day, but we were determined to get something.

Shut Up and Don’t Listen to Me

I had spent an hour lighting up a piece of the studio that I have not used before. In my head I was placing lights and adding gels to try and get an underground sewer/catacomb feel. I had all the lights and modifiers in the world at my disposal, but I lacked the energy and time to have it all figured out by the time my model arrived and make up was only going to be 30 minutes. On top of all that, my favorite modifier would not fit in the space I was lighting. The ceilings are too low for it, which really pisses me off, but I deal. I was going to light her with it, but then decided I could just go for the stand by of using a beauty dish. The issue I have with the beauty dish is that it does not light full body shots as well as I like, especially the angles and distances I use. I kept lighting different areas of the scene and adding colors, but in the end I could not get my model lit to match the vision in my head. I spent a lot of time and showed up early to get this idea figured out, but in the end, time, and lack of thought time beat me. We tried a couple shots with the final light set up, but I was just not liking it.

Less is More
Here is where my point gets driven home. My first shoot with Jen was at another studio and I had the same problem. I was working with Jason to get the back of the studio lit, but I was just not happy. I remembered that moment and decided to try it again. It was a simple shop light attached to a human light stand/MUA/tired girlfriend.

I had her hold the light in the angles and distances that I wanted and just went to town. Jen could not see or talk, so I just had her play. She is really good at doing her part as a model so I let her do her thing. I don’t have to micromanage her at all. In the end the best shots were made with a simple light that anyone can buy and use.

Soo…
I hope this story inspires you and helps you overcome the idea that you need a ton of fancy equipment to get good results. When I was part of the Colorado Strobist group, I brought in 2 of these lights and hung them ( very poorly I might add ) from some light stands and did some portrait shots with them. The catch lights in the subjects eyes are cool and give them almost a cat light look…..ok maybe not the best for traditional shots, but if you have a friend, or at least someone who lost a bet, have them play human light stand and try out some fun stuff. To me, getting a shot technically correct is always a great achievement, but whats more important is that you do something that makes you happy and represents what you are trying to accomplish as a photographer. Trust me, trying to take photos to please everyone else will only make you miserable and want to quit ( or maybe take up drinking ).

Here is the complete set of the series of this impromptu shoot. A little time, some make up and some hair spray is all we really had

I share a studio space with my friend and fellow photographer, Jason Paul Roberts who does really great work with musicians all the time. I got asked if I wanted to shoot a band because his schedule just couldn’t line up with the deadline they had. I agreed to work with this band and was contacted by Christian the same day. The band Destino Musical needed some shots fast and was wondering if I could “chroma key”. I have not done any green screen work, but have done plenty of shots where I blew out the background in order to isolate the subject. In my paranoid brain, I took his request literally so I headed over to Denver Pro Photo and bought some green seamless and headed to the studio to test out the background.

Green Blood

Jason and I set up a section of the studio for seamless backdrops so I installed the green roll and placed our trusty test subject, Head ( with hair down to see if I can erase the background through strands of hair ) front and center. I typically go for a F8 exposure of the subject and lit the background ( not perfectly ) about the same. This was just a test shot so I didn’t spend too much time getting exposure right.

Photoshopping the background was easy enough using the Color Range too from the Select menu. I didn’t have much knowledge of the group I was shooting and I didn’t really warn them that with a chroma key shot, they had to make sure the colors they wore would not conflict with the background or all hope is lost. I had my laptop with me and loaded some sample shots in and one thing I noticed was the color bleed onto my jeans.

This was not looking great for what Christian was asking for, but the main goal of chroma key is to easily remove the background from the subject and be able to replace it with something else ( usually done in film ). The studio was very hot and it was getting late so I went home to think about what I wanted to do. I had to deliver a product, but I went with my experience and instincts and came back the next day.

The Shot According to Zack

It was very hot in that studio. Running around getting everything in place just to get a simple background type of shot is more difficult than it sounds. Ladders, gaffers tape, a towel, and a new Canon 5D Mark II that has never been used in a photo shoot ( I bought it for film making ). Anyway, I decided to use a set up that I read about a couple years ago from the blog of Zack Arias. I thought it was a very simple yet effective set up and I have used it for a couple of situations in the past. The theory is to light the subject separately from the background.

The set up is not complex. The most difficult part was getting the giant soft box lifted up and positioned. Because of the low ceilings, I was not able to lift it as high as I normally would, but this worked out. As you can see in the first photo, the floor is actually raised up. The advantage here is I can stand on the lower area and shoot from below. With the giant softbox so low, it really made a difference. I set up the giant softbox using a portable background rig and a super clamp. The AB400 was used because I needed less power to light the subject than the background. I was aiming for F8 for the subject, which means the background had to be around F11.5. I have the viewfinder on my camera set to show the blown sections of the photo for a reference of how well I lit the background.

I need to PP

The shoot went well. If I could go through it again, I wish I would have used smaller marks for the band members to stand on. I went through a lot of photos removing it in Lightroom and I also wish I could have had them wipe their feet more. There were 6 people to shoot and I had to talk to all of them, coordinate who was going next, etc. There were a lot of people to pay attention to and I just needed to slow down. Lesson for the kids out there. The more perfect you get your shot in camera, the less work you do. I shoot raw, so my color balance is set to flash, but I use a SpyderCube at the beginning of each shoot to make sure I get the color of the light as well as any bounce from the colors of the wall.

The beauty of the lighting set up is that the background is blown out, which makes it easier to extract the subject. My Lightroom workflow goes something like this:

1) reject – remove all the bad shots ( yes there are a few )
2) narrow down shots to Final ( 5 stars )
Possible replacements ( 4 stars ) and
If-All-Else-Fails ( 3 stars )
3) sometimes I color code groups ( each band member gets a color for example )
4) Filter the starred shots and crop
5) I go back to the SpyderCube test shot, grab the color balance and apply to the first shot. Then I set up my color palette. For this shot, I went through each member, did some exposure changes and sync’d the rest. In other types of shoots, I will play around with my color treatment and when its set, Ill sync all photos
6) spot removal
(sometimes 5 and 6 are interchanged)
7) Things needed in Photoshop are then done here.

I opened up the final shots in Photoshop and just selected the blown out areas and inverted to get the subject. I made an empty file to place all the extracted members and just moved them around until I got the shot at the top of the post. The group shot was just a composite of all the individuals placed together.

The shoot was a success and after all the prep and worry, I felt it turned out well for what they were asking for. Here are some samples from the shoot. If you have any questions about any of the processes, throw a comment down.

I created this blog to be the main point of interest for photographers looking for learning from my years in photography as well as potential clients interested in my work and how I do things. Eventually, I’ll create my own custom pages ( rather than downloading existing ones ) and make this my main page.

Photo galleries are taken from my flickr page using plugins for wordpress. Check out my links on the side bar to see more content