Pictures, Videos and other meanderings…

The Hat, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

Recently bought some gels for the flash units from ebay, and have been trying them out, they can give quite interesting effects.

This picture was taken with a flash on camera right with an orange coloured gel on it and a shoot through umbrella on it, the other flash was simply left bare behind her.

I set the white balance on the camera to tungsten, as that matches the flash with the gel on it, and also why the un-gelled flash came out blue.

I kinda like the effect, and i have a whole bagfull of gels and wireless triggers, just need another couple of flash units for use outside and anywhere, as the one at the back has no manual controls on it, so it was getting a bit flashy for the model as both flashes were firing on full power – you could feel them go off!

Watching TV, originally uploaded by Coleslawz.

First step in using artificial light is to get a balance – unless you’re using only one light source of course.

In this photograph, my son is lying on the sofa watching TV, and behind him is the window, so I had nice window light which was fairly diffused as it’s overcast and with around a foot of snow outside, that gives the hair and backlight.

On the right of the frame, I had a 580ex flash on a stand fired through a white translucent umbrella at 1/4 power.

This gives light without it looking like flash and good detail in the image with the contours and textures of his jumper.

Increasing the strength of the flash caused it to overpower the window light too much and resulted in a much flatter image.

Balance!

Spent some time thinking about this, I have lost a lot of inspiration over the past few months, and it’s time to stop the rot.

I plan to get my flashes out and take them back to basics, I haven’t had any truly inspiring shots that I’m happy with so it’s time to make time to do this.

Understanding flash is not an easy concept to get your head around as I remember well from when I first started using it and now is the time to revisit all those lessons that I learned to ensure that I’m getting what I want from it and producing good quality, well lit and interesting photographs.

One of things that you need to do when you want to be great at doing something, is to constantly practice, and that practice should include the things that you are good at and the things that you are not good at – as that way you can get good at them – all takes practice, so for that, it’s back to basics with light and lighting – kinda looking forward to it, and it starts today.

Hopefully I’ll keep the blog updated with my trials and tribulations as then I will have a reference to look back upon if anything becomes a bit grey in my mind and if anyone else finds things that they can use, feel free to ask any questions as one of the best ways of learning something is answering questions that you don’t know the answer to – go and find out!

Happy 2010!

boxing day

Short video testing the new camera video function, more test than art at this stage.

Also testing the blog update thing from Youtube – seems ok, but it missed out a title.

Don’t Stop Me Now

My Parents Golden wedding anniversary party, I thought it would be good to something different to liven it up a bit, so we did a Queen video.

Had a really busy summer, and looking back through all of the photographs that I have made this year (I can tell they are this years as they are in the 09 folder) it’s apparent that the majority of the work is for other people.

Now this isn’t a bad thing in a way, but I do like taking photos for myself as well, as deliberate practice helps you to improve and then you can use that when customers come along.

I have a wedding to photograph tomorrow, then a couple of weeks with no bookings, so i plan to use that time to do some of my own stuff – plus it’s a good excuse to get out of the house and get some exercise which always helps with the waistline.

I did go out last week in Oxford with my old pentax film camera, and that was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and really relaxing, good company as well as my wife Sandie was with me – haven’t got a clue what the pictures look like, as I haven’t had them developed yet, but when I do, Ill put some up here and write a little about them – that way I won’t forget what I was thinking when I took them.

Looking forward to me time

Choirs

Had a fun few weeks, first off photographing the Afropean Choir at the Oxford Folk Festival and at their own concert at the North Wall centre in Summertown, Oxford. They were a couple of stunning performances and I got some great photographs from there. Sandie, my wife, filmed the Oxford event and a sample of the quality performance is available on youtube, photographs from the events can be found at http://www.tonyculshaw.co.uk/afropean/ and for the North Wall Performance, they are at http://www.tonyculshaw.co.uk/afropean/afropean_northwall/index.html

Corsets

I also had a really great morning spent photographing five lovely young ladies in suitable attire for boudoir. A big thanks to Tash, Lynne, Louise, Kate and Sandie for putting up with the cold and helping Caroline and myself produce some stunning photographs. I’d also like to say a great big thanks to Chloe who did all of the make-up – I’m not sure she knew what she was letting herself in for, I hope she’ll lend us her services again in the near future! I’ll post some photos soon!

Had a fantastic couple of weekends, photographing the Grays - six kids running about the place tests your reactions with a camera I can tell you! It was good laugh, and we got some great photographs that I’m sure they’ll enjoy for years to come!

Giggles

Also been practising with different ways of using the light, I really like the effect of photographing into the light, it gives the pictures an ethereal quality that you can’t replicate with studio flash – well, you judge for yourselves, comments are more than welcome.

extreme contre jour

Later this week I’m going to be at the Oxford Folk Festival with the Afropean Choir, which is quite exciting – I’ll post some photos after the weekend!

This weekend I had a great photography session with George at his house. What do you do with a man who has dreadlocks like he has? Well you get him to shake them around, thats what!

Took quite a few using natural light only, then we broke out the flash for some high contrast outside action, he was very energetic )

George running up the garden

Well here we are, well into the ‘new year’ and despite the best efforts of the recession, I seem busier than ever. Bookings for 2009 are continuing to come in, and if I’m not careful there’ll be no time left for holidays!

Next week I’m heading off to Focus On Imaging to see what the latest and greatest kit is, and also look at some of the different print labs and album manufacturers to see if I can broaden the range that I offer, for the moment though, it’s essays and evaluations for my college course along with work and all the other stuff that keeps the wheels turning.

Before any more photography kit becomes a reality though, I think it’s time to upgrade my PC. This one has done a sterling job over the past couple of years, but it is starting to feel really slow especially when dealing with high resolution photographs and HD video, I have my eye on a Dell Studio XPS but I might wait till the prices come down a bit – not to mention Dells website is currently broken so I couldn’t order it if I wanted to.

I have also been practising with low key lighting set ups, with the gracious help of my lovely wife who still seems to put up with me after all of these years, I do like the photographs but I think I need some more room to set up the lights etc. than my house allows for – so if anyone has a nice big house that I can use and wants some similar photos done as the one below, get in touch and I’ll give you a good rate!

Low key lighting