Practical Session 11/2

Unlike last week, there was no run to Chris’ lecture. I was on time. He comes in, looks at us and tells us what he’s going to need to setup. He looks at me and say “[Insert photography terminology here] Honeycomb” I get up and I stroll into the room with all of the equipment, I grab the stuff I know and to illustrate exactly how I felt about today I shall use some stills from my favourite films.

This is the room with all of the equipment in. This is how I see it. It’s a little cave full of things that are wonderful- Half of which I’m yet to be acquainted with.

This is me when I’m trying to look like I know what I’m doing and there’s other people confidently picking up pieces of equipment that they know what they are doing with. I just pretend that I’m planning everything out.

I managed to find something that remotely looks like a honeycomb pattern, and I find something that it attaches to. It’s all going pretty well...

I can’t look at this picture without laughing hysterically. This is an absolutely perfect representation of how I feel when I’ve gone to get something and I’ve brought it back not feeling entirely sure that it’s the right thing. I’m pretty sure this is the exact face I make too. It's like I'm waiting for Chris to tell me it's wrong.

Chris has a new light I've never seen on the floor, it's called a gobo. Well, it's not; the gobo are the little steel discs that are inserted into the light fixture are called Gobos. These are really cool.  We're also using a different camera. A Canon 700D, there are a limited number of these at the Hatch and they are better at capturing skin tone. The first gobo that is picked by the group is a leaf-like one. You can use the spotlight to make the pattern appear on the model. It's a really quirky way of adding 'drama' and mood to photos. However it becomes increasingly clear that this isn't for every brand. 

We've also got two lights on stands with the honeycomb attachment on them. The light is really soft, and it doesn't light up the set. They just add a soft glow to the rest of the photo. They light the hair really nicely.

After a few test shots, it becomes apparent that you really need to adjust the light and really think about where you want the projection to fall on the model.

Handy note: Is the photo underexposed?

1. Change the Aperture
2. Turn the ISO up 100 --> 200
3. Adjust the flash. 

A little note on Health and Safety, part of the universal spotlight attachment gets really really hot. So it's not clever to touch that.


We tweak the lighting and start getting some really cool photos. Chris is repeating himself and keeps talking about composition. As a group I think we do really great photos but when you see other groups they are far more experimental with their poses. I think this is really important to think about.



Chris turns one of the lights to face the photographer and nips off and comes back with a ladder/steps and asks who fancies going up on it to block out some of the light to create really cool photos. I'll pass thanks. I don't really like ladders. We change the gobo to what I like to call 'Creepy Branches' This is my favourite that we've used yet because I don't think it looks tacky.






We then added coloured Gels.

We moved the lights around more. Added some black polyboards.

By breathing on the lense, you can create a flare. This is another really handy effect to know, it's really simple and yet really effective.

SET CHANGE! *Cue Chris doing his normal witchcraft that'll probably take me another 30mins to do*

Introducing:

- A large shallow softbox. This has an extra baffle in it which means the light will be defused three times.

He's breaking the rules that he's told us. We shouldn't light from directly above as it creates shadows and it isn't flattering.



Here's a great example of how this lighting looks on a man. It's sinister but it still works. (Not being offensive Chris! You know what I mean)




I was actually on reflector duty in these two photos. I just wanted to light her face because we'd angled the softbox slightly and it made her skin look flawless.



Even though I'm not the most photogenic in my class, I really like the contrast of my hair and the blue gel that was held in front of the camera lens. Again, I had never even thought of holding a gel up to the camera lense.



Some other important notes from this session include

Using a template that's been designed for us

1. Use the cropping icon in CaptureOne
2. Overlay
3. Drag the PDF into this box

JPEG is a compressed version of a TIFF.