Source of inspiration for child portrait photography
17.11.2011  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
Every now and often a photographer might suffer from a block, be it isnpirational or motivational. Taking good portraits that are fresh and lively can be a hard task to accomplish. Most of the time I have tons of ideas running through my billions of neurons, but sometimes I have a moment when I hold my camera and just wonder what to do next.

Photographing a child is dependent mostly on the child itself, but even if you would have the kindest and most lovely child in front of you to photograph, this is not helpful at all if you don't know how to photograph the child.

My biggest source of inspiration is online service called Flickr, where you can post your photos for others to see, create collections and sets and also join groups. Flickr contains thousands of different groups focusing on a specific topic. I belong to couple of groups focusing on child portrait photography and I have learned a lot from these groups.

http://www.flickr.com

In addition to adding own photos to Flickr, a user can also browse other users' photos and tag them as favorites. This list of photos can later be browsed in one page. This is the inspiration, in addition to my daughters, I was talking about. I have marked numerous child portraits as my favorites and visit this collection quite often.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arturgajewski/favorites

I also visit some of profession child portrait photographers to admire their work. This also gives me a lot of motivation to keep doing what I do and also inspire to become even better portrait photographer.

http://www.ajatonjoki.com

http://www.lapsikuvaus.fi


Portrait shoot with my daughter Aliisa
13.11.2011  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
It's been a while since I last wrote here, so I appologize for my absence. I discovered joy in piano, so the photography stuff got a lot less attention for a year.

Week ago I came across a beautiful child portrait that was taken with natural light only and perhaps little reflector. I started to go through some tutuorials and Youtube videos about natural light portraiture and finally yesterday got an erge to take my older daughter for a photo shoot in the nearby old silk factory area.

The weather was fully overcast and depressing gray. Light, however, was just perfect as sun is diffused by the clouds and there are no harsh shadows at any time. The only problem were Racoon eyes, which were due the fact that the light was coming from straight above. This issue can be fixed quite easily:

- use buildings, cars and other structures as natural reflectors
- use a silver reflector to bring light from the louds onto the face

Because I was photographing alone, I took my Lastolite's Tri-Balance reflector with me. It has a silver reflector on one side and combination of gray, black and white sections on the other side for easy white balance reference for post processing. The Tri-Grip has a handle which you can have a grip on, so that you can bounce light with your one hand and operate your camera with the other hand.

Due to the nature of light during this photo shoot, I had to use the reflector quite close to Aliisa's face, but at few moments she got excited and held it herself in certain position while smiling at the camera.











I used the following gear for these portraits:

Canon EOS 400D
EF 50mm f/1.8
Lastolite Tri-Balance

And here is the picture of the Lastolite Tri-Balance reflector, which is really easy to operate with just one hand.



Links to tutorials and videos I referred to earlier:

Natural Light Training Video

Use top shade for great portraits

How to create fun, dramatic portrait

Finding light in open shade

Utilizing open shade in portrait photography


Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 and child portrait photography
8.9.2010  |   Add comment   |   Read comments (2)  |  Permalink
At the very beginning of my photography I purchased Canon's EF 50mm f/1.8 lens because it produced sharp images and was very vast lens. After a while, I decided to get rid of it since it was too tight indoors.

Now years later and a whole lot more experience behind, I decided to get this lens again. Perhaps I would finally get a spark to take more portraits of my quickly growing daughters. Because I like 50mm as a focal length for portraits and large aperture of 1.8 for the bokeh, this lens was obvious choice for me. Some time in the near future I will probably upgrade to 1.4 version, but for now I will focus on using this lens.

I will not go more in-depth about the structural quality of this lens not the issues with focusing sound and speed as there are tons of discussion and arguments for and against this lens already. These things really don't matter to me as long as I have a lens the yields results like below.

So few days ago we went to my daughters' figure skating club and after the lessons I grabbed my daughter for a quick photo shoot. I selected maximum aperture of f/1.8 and went ahead focusing for the eyes. Few results below:


Coloring black background with a strobe and color gels
15.8.2010  |   Add comment   |   Read comments (2)  |  Permalink
I have been trying out who know how many different types of background but I always came to the conlusion that the most suitable for me are my gray patterned collapsible backdrop you must have seen on my portraits before and the one I recently purchased which is black/white collapsible one. I bought it from Digitarvike.fi store which I have purchased a lot of different photography related products from them and continue to do so. I recommend this store to everyone for the great products the have and great customer support if you ever would need one.

Helios black/white collapsible backdrop

Black background, as funny as it may sound, makes a perfect color for making white or colored halo behind the model. The things works in such a way, that you put a Stofen light modifier on your flash and then place the strobe about three feet from the background facing it. Place it so that the stand and flash is behind the model so they won't show up on the final image.



Then all you need to do is to find the power setting which is good enough for the effect you want. I usually start with 1/4th power setting. Below is an example on how the backround light illuminates the background when the model is in fron of the strobe.



Then you just pop in the key light and the portrait is done.



Next comes the coloring the background. Best and easiest way is to still use the same black background and add a color gel into equation. By placing the color gel between your background strobe and Stofen, you illuminate the bakcground with the color. You can also mix different colored gels to get exciting colors as well.

Little word of warning: When you use color gels, make sure the model is far enough from the background in order to prevent to color spill into model's hair. If the model sits too close, especially blonde hair can be colored with that color as seen below.


DIY gobo, snoot and grid snoot
18.4.2010  |   Add comment   |   No comments  |  Permalink
Even though sunny day, we have a cold and windy conditions. Kids are staying home and I had some free time in my hands, so what is a better chance than this to work on some DIY light modifiers?

So I went through couple of DIY tutorials on the web but after all decided to use my own gray matter and work on a design that would fit my strobes and needs. This ain't no astrophysics after all.



The materials are simple:

- One microwave popcorn box
- Electrical tape
- Painting tape
- Five black straws from Ikea
- Couple more pieces of cardboard

I started with a grid snoot as I knew this will take most of my time. The popcorn box was surprisingly good for my strobes so that I didn't have to bend the cardboard much at all. I just cut out some of it to make it a nice frame around my 430EX strobes. Black straws I cut so that each was about 3cm in length and I needed 9 straw pieces per row. I placed te cut pieces side by side so that there was no space between them and then I stuck them into the painting tape like in the picture below. By glueing them into the frame would have looked more pro, but takes much more time and patience which I don't have either... especially patience.



When all five rows where in place, I taped all rows together with another round of painting tape.



After this all I had to do was attach the straws into the frame. I created double-sided tape from the electrical tape to attach the straws. When the whole package was done, I wrapped it again with couple of rounds of electrical tape to make the frame stronger. Some of the corners had empty space but I don't see this as a problem.



Below is a picture of what kind of light this grid snoot produces. Because the grid was done with circular straws, the spot will be circlular as well. If you would have rectangular straws the outcome would have been rectangular as well. The shape of the grid snoot does not affect the light shape on the wall.



Next I built a snoot which was a whole lot easier to accomplish. I used the popcorn box for this but you can use your favorit cereal box as well. Just make sure you empty it first.

After I cut out a frame with perfect fit with length of about 15cm, I taped the electrical tape around it to make it strong. Now you can squeeze it flat to fit it in your camera backpack and when you need it you just grab it out and form it according to your needs.



Light travels according to the direction of snoot but disperses some of the light around the target as seen on the picture below.



This snoot procudes a little larger light spot as the grid snoot.



I haven't tried these light modifiers in my portrait shoots yet as my younger models are not up to modelling today. Once I do get them to model for me I will post some results here.

I also built a gobo but since the gobo is just a rectangular cardboard, I will not go into how it was built. Anyone can cut out a rectangular peace of cardboard I would presume.


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