Knittage simply lit

When Inny needed some snazzy new shots of her knitted wares recently, for use on her blog and online shop, we used the absolute bare-basics approach of 'one camera, one lens, one light'. The location/studio arrangement was also just about as simple as you can get - a living room coffee table table.

What you see in the picture here is the lighting set-up... A single SB-800 with Pocket Wizard (for wireless connection to the camera); attached to the front is a diffuser panel (for nice, soft, even light). A Magic Arm was used to support the rig just off to camera right, positionable back and forth, left to right, as required.

The camera, incidentally, was hand-held.

You'll notice daylight striking the 'set' from the front - this was taken out of the equation not by closing the curtains, but my letting the flash be the sole light source (and adjusting settings accordingly). Flash light is perfect for close-up detail work, as it is very clean and crisp.

As many of you know, I don't believe in relying on post-production in order to 'save' poor technique - clearly, it makes far more sense to get things looking the way you want them at the time of capture. Case in point - the image you see up top is essentially unaltered.

The most Photoshop work that was applied here was to the image which ended up as Inny's banner - a simple case of choosing the crop and superimposing her logo, to end up with this:


Photo shoots are expensive, time consuming, stressful affairs, right? Nope. This little lot took all of about 10 minutes from setting up to taking everything apart, including time to arrange the object (a Spring Greens scarf, no less!), discuss framing options and, of course, sip a nice cuppa.

Indoors, up-country

With the weather getting better (well, I am an optimist!), it would be nice to think that all our assignments will be set outdoors from now on. Being realistic, of course, this won't be the case - by default, some projects dictate an indoor set-up. Think product and food photography, room sets and medical sector - that sort of thing.

April saw a trip up-country to Cumbria, to undertake a follow-on shoot for a hotel set in the glorious Lake District. I love the outdoors and this area of the country always holds great appeal, so the long drive up there didn't seem half as bad when faced with such a backdrop.

The task at hand was to photograph a number of recently-refurbished bedrooms and some of the finer details contained therein. For this, I used one of my favourite setups - one tripod-mounted camera, two lenses (wideangle for overviews, standard for closer details), and one/two mains-powered lights, each bounced off the ceiling.

Now, the joy of lighting any subject is that there exists a great deal of flexibility - and therefore potential visual results - in the equipment we can use. On location outdoors, for example, regular readers will know I am a great fan of using small, lightweight flash guns, making the most of wireless technology.

However, when photographing room sets, I nearly always turn to the use of 'continuous' lamps, specifically a set of 1000-watt halogens. These are great, and typify the essence of lighting. Simple and 'no-frills', they produce a very natural light, enabling me to see immediately how the subject is looking, where shadows are falling and where any unwanted highlights might appear, even before I take the first test picture.

Having spent many thousands of pounds on the refit, it made sense for our client to again make use of strong imagery in the marketing of their hotel. And as GBP produced the previous set of pictures, it also made sense to have us back so as to keep a continuity.

In these tough economic times, there is a tendency for businesses to hold back on their advertising/marketing activities and, unfortunately, one of the first casualties of this action is frequently professional photography. Out of this, two observations can be made:

• Firstly - 'in-house', 'DIY' photography often has a negative effect on your business. For example, you might have a nice website and a great product, but many is the time we have seen poor 'snap-shot' imagery not just completely undermine the efforts of a web paid designer, but also make a company's product/staff/service look second-rate and amateurish when compared to those of their competitors.
  

• Secondly - any marketing company will tell you that when times are tough, the last thing you should do is cut your marketing spend. Rather, you should invest (within your budget, of course) in keeping your product/service in the minds of existing and potential clients. When things calm down, you will then be ahead of those competitors who have held back - clearly an advantage.
  

A final note about these last points, in something of an ironic twist - It doesn't have to cost as much as you think to employ such professional services, but not heeding these warnings can/will have a profound effect on your business, to the point where it is very difficult to recover from such a 'cutting corners' approach.

It doesn't cost anything to ask for advice or opinion, so feel free to get in touch or speak up in the comments section of this post!

Simply effective product photography

Another little product shoot from earlier this month, a further example of how I like to keep things nice and simple. The products in question were a range of samples produced by a local firm of screenprinters, engravers and precision engineers. We have created images for this company in the past, and the purpose of this assignment was to show off the new line aimed at the medical profession.

One empty meeting room, one camera, two lights and a plain card background - that's all we needed in order to produce a set of simple yet effective pictures which can be dropped into the company's website, brochures and all manner of marketing material.

Here is a time-lapse video showing the process, from start to finish. Be sure to check out the selection of images at the end of the film:

Business Brain: Part 2

Last month, I posted the introduction to an assignment I was asked to undertake recently. The premise was to illustrate 'the business brain', with an emphasis on telephonic communication. If you missed the intro (Part 1), you can check it out here. As for Part 2... keep reading to find out how our initial thoughts developed into the resulting image.

OK, so having finalised the envisaged look of the picture, the next thing to do was make sure all the props were in place. As I said in Part 1, the 'brain' itself came courtesy of Ebay, but the question was - would it look right? How to decide.... hmm....? Obviously, we met up in a neutral place - in the car park of a local hotel on this occasion - to find out. Picture the scene then, as two cars roll up (under the watchful gaze of the hotel's surveillance cameras, no doubt)... Man 1 gets out of his car, greets Man 2 and partner, before producing brain out of a nondescript carrier bag and plonking it (technical term) on the rear of Man 2's car. Oh, how we would love to see the fuzzy grey camera footage from those few minutes - fame at last, eh John?!

Back at base, the only 'physical' things left to sort were the background and the spiral cabling which would be fixed directly onto the brain. The picture on the left here shows some early contenders - but none of them were quite right, and it was agreed that only a true 'spiral' cable (such as that found on telephones) would do. Sounds kinda obvious, but you have to try these things. As it happens, we actually decided to use the lead from an electric guitar, as this was nice and chunky (another technical term!) - an important factor to make sure it stood out in the picture.

With props sorted, then, it was time to think about the background. In order to create an infinity curve (a background with no 'horizon'), we went with a simple piece of A1 (24"x30" approx.) blue card which would offer a nice range of tones - from 'highlight' to shadow - dictated by the lighting. I already had this card to hand, and it turned out to be the perfect shade for our purposes. (I always keep a stock of backgrounds for small table-top arrangements such as these).

Now we're getting to the 'fun' bit - how to go about attaching the cable to the brain. In this picture, you can see the brain, cable, background card, wire cutters and... hair clips! Ironically, I have no other use for such items as hair clips (as colleagues testify all too regularly!), but these little pieces of metal did a great job of holding the cable in position. The process involved cutting off the rounded tips and pushing the clips into the foam-filled brain.

Here's a little 3-minute time-lapse video (shot on the G9, naturally) showing the somewhat labourious task:



Well done if you watched that all the way through - it really was that exciting in real life, too! But it's the result that counts so... you know...

Having put everything together, here is what the finished object looked like. Again, the G9 was used to take this quick snap to send off for approval (the picture also acted as a reference during the main shoot itself). Of course, the hair clips are clearly visible here; we got around this, ultimately, by using contrasty lighting and good old Photoshop to remove them at the post-production stage.

You'll also notice that the plugs are not shown in the picture. Nothing as drastic as cutting them off - they were simply cropped out of frame.

As for the lighting, we kept this really simple too. Ridiculously so, in fact - just one Nikon SB-800 mounted directly above the set-up on a Super Clamp, firing through a 2ft Bowens soft box (for a more diffused effect) and angled forward slightly. This gave a pleasing shadow underneath the brain, as well as a nicely graded fall-off effect on the background. Oh, and the flash was triggered wirelessly using a couple of Pocket Wizards. And yes, in answer to all you Strobist techies out there, I could just as easily have used the SU-4 function for this purpose.

Here's another time-lapse (somewhat more visually interesting, I hope!), showing how it all looked. Again, note the really simple arrangement - why complicate things?!




And the final result? Well, you've just seen the image itself (supplied in both colour and black & white), at the end of the video. As for the brochure - with text and bordering put in place, and a couple of final tweaks at the design studio, the final cover looked like this. Again, very simple, allowing the image and text to convey the message.

There is often a great misconception that 'studio' shots require grand set-ups, excessive lighting and high production costs. While this may be the case with larger projects, it does not have to be the case a lot of the time. Sure, on this outing the shoot location may not be the most glamorous - but so what? It is, after all, the resulting images that count. You'd be amazed how many 'high profile' assignments for large companies and corporates are actually shot in less-than-thrilling surroundings - but again, who's to know? And working on-site with our clients, using improvised studios, is a great way to get to know the way their businesses work, too.

If you have any thoughts or questions relating to this post, the shoot, technicalities or the way we work in various 'studio' arrangements, please feel free to air them in the comments section by clicking on the link below. Remember, it's all about sharing information and spreading the word - so it'd be great to get some discussion going!

Oh, and for more behind-the-scenes GBP videos, check out us out on YouTube.

Thinking outside the box... literally

One of my favourite types of location to photograph in is a factory or warehouse. There's just something about the lighting that really lends itself to potentially atmospheric images; I love the softness of their overhead illumination, and by working simply with the available light we can get a real sense of the subject matter in its simplicity. One of my assignments this week was in just such a place.

On arriving at the warehouse, however, the conditions appeared less than favourable - a very dimly lit building with no windows, and what light there was fell to the ground in patches. First up, then, we had to stop and re-think how best to illustrate the primary elements we were trying to get across given these conditions - specifically, the overall space, capacity, professional methodology and organisation of the client. Thankfully, there was a saving grace in the form of the key subject matter itself - bright yellow storage boxes - so we ditched the idea of using our SB-800 flashes in favour of the ambient light. Exposures, therefore, were in the region of 1-4 seconds - and for this we brought out the tripod and grip equipment.

This picture, shot on the G9, gives a good indication of the working conditions. Dark corners at the ends of the shelving, ranging through to highlight areas nearer the roof. This particular 'scene' was actually one of the brighter areas. Incidentally, all ground-level static shots were taken with a tripod-mounted Nikon D200 at ISO 100. Lens choice varied between the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM ultrawide and the Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 AFS IF-ED DX Nikkor.

Ground-level stuff is all very well but, you know, sometimes you just need something extra... And that's where the crane came in, taking me up to a height of aroun 26 metres - near enough to the very top of the building. Still working with the available light, I switched from the tripod to a Super Clamp/Magic Arm combo, which was attached to the basket of the crane. Given that there was no cross-wind(!) and that I was able to stand perfectly still, this arrangement was perfectly adequate for getting sharpe, blur-free pictures. It even did a great job at supporting the Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AFS telephoto, which was used for isolating staff from their surroundings.

With any shoot like this, what we are trying to produce is a varied set of images which informs would-be customers not just about the product, but about the process, too. Multiple tools such as clamps, lenses and lighting enable us to do this. Accordingly, we shot a number of supporting photographs showing specific details of the filing system as well as portraits of other members of staff carrying out their specific roles within the operation.

The glamour of 20-hour work days

Sometimes, my week just runs away from from me, taking each 24 hours – and, by default, my plans – with it. I've alluded to this before, and it is something which, with hands held aloft in surrender, is simply the way my work pattern can go over the course of seven days. Anyway, I had just such a week recently...

The Monday in question was spent editing wedding pictures shot at the end of the previous week, along with taking care of emails and phone messages left over the weekend. Then in the evening, it was off to a long-standing local corporate client to photograph their board members' meeting.

The following morning, having had 3 hours' sleep, I attended one of my regular early-morning networking meetings, before heading to the office to crack on with editing those informal portraits from the night before. For all you budding photographers out there, here's a top tip: Never underestimate the powers of a good cup of hot tea to get you though a bout of sleep deprivation!

It was at this point that I received the phone call that would dictate the remainder of the week. Of course, I already had plans, but thankfully on this occasion there was nothing that couldn't be switched to another day or taken care of during the evenings. And the call?... A very last-minute request to carry out assignments in Glasgow on the Wednesday, Northern Ireland on the Thursday and Wales the following Monday! Duly, I obliged. Which in itself caused an initial 'challenge'.

The Glasgow shoot required me to be at the airport for a 7am check-in. Given my weary state, I just couldn't face a 2-3 hour drive in the early hours, so the sensible option was to take the train. Problem was, in order to be at the airport on time, the only possible train I could take set off at 11:30pm on the Tuesday night – meaning a 3-change, 7-hour journey and... yes, you've guessed it, no sleep.

So, with thoughts of... er... 'forget that' in my mind, I arranged to travel up to London that night and stay at a hotel, so as to make an early start on Wednesday morning. This would also mean another early start (4am)... but at least is was a shorter onward journey consisting of taxi ride and connecting train.

Without naming and shaming, I have to say that hotel was possibly the worst one it has ever been my misfortune to stay in. Which didn't help matters. Waking up several times during the night and sneaking out through an empty reception because – I conclude – the duty staff had forgotten to set his alarm, I really wasn't set up all that well for the day ahead. But the flight to Glasgow passed without drama, too.

The Glasgow shoot itself went well, photographing the interior of a retail store. Rather than simply recording the overall department views, we also picked out unusual angles and details, making use of a range of lenses including two of my favourites – the Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM ultrawide and the slightly aged Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AFS telephoto. The brief was typically tight, but with a pleasing degree of flexibility to enable my creativity to show through (remember, we photographers are not paid simply to 'press the button' – it's also that lateral thinking around ideas and the ability to visualise the end results and, ultimately, the output).

Speaking of which - the subsequent images from that day will initially be used in-house and at a conference in the coming weeks. As another shoot for the same client was scheduled in for Friday, a selection of those images were emailed to the Creative Director's office the following morning, to make sure we were all on track for the second shoot on Friday...

... which was an altogether more reasonable affair. The train to Cardiff meant that I could get a decent amount of sleep the night before and the shoot was set for 11am-3pm, and I was back in the office by around 7pm, to back up all the images, follow up phone message and prepare for the following day.

The Northern Ireland shoot was postponed for a few weeks; time, to allow completion of the next shop's refit ahead of the photography.

Last but not least, that Saturday saw me photographing another wedding - thankfully very local and, all said and done, I was finished by around 2:30pm, which enabled me to edit the pictures before uploading them to the GBP website that evening. As such, the couple in question will find an email waiting for them just as soon as they can get to a computer – meaning that, potentially they can view their pictures whilst still on honeymoon. You know, sometimes I just love this modern technology!

So there you have it – a typical week in the glamorous world of professional photography. I wonder what the next 7 days holds in store for me...?!

Business Brain: Part 1

It's amazing what you can buy on Ebay, isn't it? From antiques to clothes, music to animal feed, there really is very little you can't find online. Me, I've just taken delivery of a new brain. Not before time, some might say! But wait, don't start jumping up and down excitedly just yet. Let me explain.

I received a request last week to produce an image for use on the cover of a promotional brochure; the underpinning message was along the lines of 'the business brain'. So, with thinking cap firmly in place, we set about putting some ideas down on paper and searching for reference material – again, the internet is a great tool for this!

The first obstacle to overcome was the 'brain' itself... Initial thoughts (see image at left) led us towards creating a basic framework on which the object would be constructed – chicken wire and papier maché is always good for this; however, given our time constraints, we turned to Plan B - good ol' Ebay!

You can see what we came up with in the picture above.

Ironically, we anticipte that the actual 'brain' will not feature a great deal in the final picture; it will be there simply to act as shaping tool, and will be predominantly hidden by a length of spiral cabling. The main emphasis of the image is on communication and specifically business communication.

This job will be completed in the next couple of days - a simple studio shot, lit simply, containing our basic model components and a plain background. Keeping true to our theory of 'why complicate matters?', the picture's success will lie in the fact that all elements work well together in a no-fuss, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) approach.

More to come - including a video of the whole process from start to finish!

EDIT: Part 2 can now be found here

Oh, and for more behind-the-scenes GBP videos, check out us out on YouTube.

It must be wide angle week!

We like our toys, us photographers. Cameras, lenses, tripods, clamps, flash guns, bells and whistles - they're all great.

But owning these things is only half the fun – we want to see just what they can do in 'real world' scenarios. It's a bit like owning a Ferrari (I would imagine!) - looks good in the garage, but you really want to take it on the road to see what all the fuss is about.

Sometimes I get to play with toys before deciding whether or not to purchase them. Prime example - todays shoot, at White Hart Lane, the home of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club. Nothing glamorous for this one, just some standard product placement photography in and around the stadium. And the toy – Nikon's ultra-wide angle 14mm lens.

Part of the brief was to shoot some supplementary images alongside those of the products, for use in national, trade and local press – and I jumped at the chance of giving the football pitch/stadium the 14mm treatment. With its angle of coverage set at around 114 degrees, it takes in a huge vista which allows plenty of cropping options, if required, at the design stage.

Incidentally, this was the lens which I also used in the course of a recent shoot on the water, as described in this post, and came in especially handy for a set of pictures of a motor boat interior. So it's now had a couple of outings, and by all accounts is a great piece of kit.

Just to push the boundaries that little bit further, I am also getting to play with another ultra-wide angle lens this week, in the form of Sigma's 10-20mm, which offers an impressive 102.4-63.8 degrees coverage! Yes, I am like a kid in a sweet shop, and no, I make no apologies for it. I even have some test shots lined up already for the weekend. I can't wait!

Of course, these lenses have many more uses other than simply capturing wide scenes and interiors where space is at a premium. They enable me to create pictures which are just that little bit different and when combined with powerful lighting, as you will see in future posts, the results can be incredible.