Band shoot

"The making of..."

About a week ago a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to do a photo shoot for a metal band together with him. Of course I thought this was a very cool idea, so yesterday evening I packed my gear and we went to shoot some cool images of "Born Of Flames".

 

(The photo's shown in this blog are not (yet) edited)

First we shot some photo's of the complete band outdoors. I used a remote triggered Canon Speedlight 430 EXII with a shoot-through umbrella for this. It was still pretty bright outside but I wanted to make some darker looking photo's. To achieve this I used the manual mode and dialed in a low ISO value and a high aperture value. The shutter speed was 1/200 as this is the speedlights synch speed.

 

f/13 t:1/200 iso:400 23mm

f/13 t:1/200 iso:400 21mm

f/13 t:1/200 iso:400 18mm

f/13 t:1/200 iso:400 27mm, used reflector on front man to create fill light

After the outdoor session we shot some "action-shots" inside. Here we used some studio flashes with a snoot  (drummer) and gold-reflection umbrella's which were positioned at a low angle. It was hard to focus these images as the light was very low. The auto-focus system didn't know what to do with it, so I had to use manual focus. But also for the human eye it was hard to see if the image was sharp.

 

f/5 t:1/200 iso:800 46mm

f/4.5 t:1/200 iso:400 42mm

f/5 t:1/200 iso:400 59mm

f/4 t:1/200 iso:800 25mm

f/4 t:1/200 iso:200 33mm

It was pretty cool to do this shoot. It's not every day that you get a band-shoot request for a grunting metal band. For safety, I put some wet tisues in my ears during the action-shots :-)

Flash experiments

External Flash, possibly even harder to use than a DSLR itself, at least if you want correctly lit photo's. Therefore it is wise to experiment with it as much as possible. To perform some experiments, I made a small Do-It-Yourself studio in the garage. For now, let's call it 'Studio Le Garage' :-)

Studio "Le Garage"

So what can we find in "Le Garage"? Of course we have a nice (cheap :-) ) tripod with the DSLR on top of it. On the right there is the flash on a not-so-professional stand, with on the floor a even less professional diffuser (an Ikea storage box). We also have a reflector (at the foot of the tripod in the photo) which is a piece of white foam board that I found in the back of a painting that we bought years ago (never throw anything away ;-) ) As a background I use a black piece of fabric that I bought for 2 Euro per meter at the market.
The flash is a Canon Speedlite 430EX II that is remotely triggered by the Canon 600D (wireless).

For my saturday morning experiment, I wanted to create some low-key (dark) photo's.

Experment 1

As a first flash experiment I made a self portret. A low key photo with some pretty harsh shadows. The flash was not on full power mode and not diffused. Also, no reflector was used to create fill light.

Experiment 2

For the second experiment, I diffused the flash using the Ikea-storage-box-diffuser. On the other side of my face I used the reflector which I held myself, just outside the frame. As you can see, the shadows are much softer.

Experiment 3

Next experiment: always nice to use a model so that more photo's can be made using different settings and setups. Unfortunately I only made a few photo's when the flash batteries went dead :-) For this photo, the same setup was used as experiment 2.

Experiment 4

This photo was not made in "Le Garage" but in the living room during a bright day! The background (just normal living room stuff) was darkened out by increasing the apperture (f/32) so that hardly any light reaches the sensor. The light that is vissible in the photo is created by the off camera flash. Using this method, low key photo's can be made without having a special dark background, everywhere and every time of the day.

Getting creative

Are you experiencing one of those boring sunday afternoons, you don't know what to do, or you feel like shooting some nice photo's but you want to create something 'different'? Then it's time to get creative! So get your gear together and go for it!

Below the example photo (Featuring 'Franky Potter') you'll find a youtube collection from the people at DigitalRev, with great creative ideas that you can try out yourself.

Levitation Photography example

How to do Smoke Photography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ld_ervQfKyM

How to do Levitation Photography
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaSH0d60Zso

Cool Long Exposure Photography Ideas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T24_uq0AY6o

How to: Flash Photography - Bikini Powder Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21hhPuXU0Ls

"Stuck at Home" Photo Ideas #1: Tiny People Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E8u0QKjf65Q

"Stuck at Home" Photo Ideas #2: How to Shoot a Water Curtain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx-pPHaJp60

"Stuck at Home" Photo Idea #3: How to Shoot Freelensing Photos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WerEA1BZRYA

A new Hobby

In 2012, I decided it was time to start with a new fresh hobby. For a while already my interest shifted from video to photography, so I decided to buy a Canon  EOS 600D with the EF-S 18-55mm kitlens, and a small camera bag with room for an extra lens (from which I wasn't sure I would ever buy) or my Sony HDV camcorder. This all went fine for about 2 months, then the camera bag became too small! The first extra lens was the 'Plastic Fantastic' Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II, and the second a nice Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD. The 'old-new' camera bag had to make place for a bigger model, the Vanguard UP-Rise 43 Slingbag, which could hold my entire kit, including the camcorder... Until... Until I bought a Cokin filter set, and a Canon Speedlite 430 EX II. But that's ok if I leave the camcorder out of the equation, which is fine. So everything still fits... for now... :-)

Canon workshop

One of the things that 'excelerated' the 'photographic fire' was the 1-day digital photography workshop that Canon provided (for 25 Euro's) with the purchase of the camera. So I went to the 'FotoVakSchool' on a saturday and had a great time with some fellow enthusiasts (and all fresh owners of 1100D, 550D or 600D camera's). The (basic) in's and out's of the camera where explained in a very nice and understandable way. I can really recommend this workshop to anyone starting this great hobby! (But be prepared for the consequences ;-) )

Favourite Lens

My favourite lens at this time is definately the 50mm. You can create fantastic images with it with a very shallow depth of field, as shown in the image above in this post. The price is around 90 Euro's so anyone starting with a Canon dslr should buy it!

Purpose of this Blog

With this blog, I want to share my experiments and learnings in the field of photography. And hopefully it can be of some use to the starting DSLR user, like myself. Maybe we can even help each other out with burning questions!

Let's just see what happens :-)