Harmonica and Guitar

Combining my love of photography and music by photographing my Yamaha guitar with my latest addition, a Hohner Crossover harmonica. Two quality sounding instruments that do not fulfill their true potential by virtue of my enthusiastic yet somewhat limited efforts.

My only light comes from a Nikon SB910 speedlight hand held to camera left, pointed at and bounced off the ceiling for soft light, and triggered wirelessly via Nikon's great CLS system.
My camera of choice was a Nikon D300s fitted with the excellent and sharp Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 non stabilised lens, fully zoomed at 50mm, shutter speed of 1/160th of a second with aperture of f5.6 and iso set at base 200.
Edited in Lightroom.

Geisha with Fan

Same lighting as the previous post.

Geisha Warrior

I got to photograph a geisha for an assignment yesterday that involved props and a lot of makeup. The lighting was simple enough. Main light is a Nikon SB910 from camera right and about two feet higher than the model's head at 1/1.7th power bounced into a black backed umbrella. The background light was a Nikon SB700 at 1/64th power mounted on a really tiny light stand I got off Amazon which was flagged to stop spill onto the back of the model and faced sloped up towards the black background. I changed things up a bit by mounting a tungsten filter on the SB910 and setting the camera white balance to tungsten as well, which means the background light shows up a beautiful blue while all is perfectly normal with the light on the model.

Sweeney Todd does his thing...

Another from the Sweeney Todd photo session.

Lighting the same as previous photo, i.e.:
I had my main light, a Nikon SB700 shooting through a 1/8 grid at 1/20th power from high to camera right, and to fill the shadows I shot a Nikon SB910 into a black backed umbrella at about 1/40th power to camera left and just about level with the camera's height. Both Speedlights were triggered wirelessly via Nikon's awesome CLS wireless triggering system.

Sweeney Todd portrait

Took an interesting Sweeney Todd portrait yesterday that required a more "stage lighty" type look. Having worked on stage lighting many years ago I know that it can often be a little more hard and direct than we like in most photographic portraits. I had my main light, a Nikon SB700 shooting through a 1/8 grid at 1/20th power from high to camera right, and to fill the shadows I shot a Nikon SB910 into a black backed umbrella at about 1/40th power to camera left and just about level with the camera's height. Both Speedlights were triggered wirelessly via Nikon's awesome CLS wireless triggering system.

Middle-Eastern themed Portrait

A three light portrait with a Middle-Eastern style theme.

Three Nikon Speedlights used, one gridded from camera left as main, one snooted from camera right slightly behind the subject and higher, one through a brolly to camera right for slight fill. All controlled and fired via Nikon's excellent CLS wireless trigger system.

Film Noir Style "Strobist" Portrait

Decided to try something a little more dramatic today and shot this film noir style portrait with a snooted Nikon SB 910 shooting from high camera right directed down to Ellie's face and a snooted Nikon SB 700 splaying some light onto the background from camera left and slightly lower than Ellie's head. Both Speedlights were triggered via Nikon's fantastic CLS wireless trigger system.

I am rather satisfied with the dramatic atmosphere of the portrait and I think it harks back quite well to the early Hollywood film noir movies.

How to be a good Artist, Photographer, whatever...

Applies equally to anyone in the creative arts... ;-)

John Scotts restaurant in Göteborg

Moving Tram After Sunset.

In Göteborg, Sweden.

There's a time and place for free photography.

Courtesy of What The Duck        

Photograph of D400!

I know, that was cruel... but I couldn't resist! :^)

Have a great weekend folks!

Nikon 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G still my favourite Portrait Lens!

Every time I shoot this gem of an 85mm lens it embeds itself more firmly as my favourite portrait lens regardless of whether I am shooting head and shoulders or full length portraits. (For full length I just stand further back...) This portrait was shot at f2.8 on my crop sensor Nikon D300s and the backgrounds are just wonderful!

It is also not at a ridiculous price point and would generally be within affordable reach of most people who spent much more than the price of this lens on a new Nikon dslr body anyway. The small(ish) expense is certainly worth the jump in IQ that it provides.

Have speedlights, will Portrait...

The best way to improve your portrait photography is to invest in a Speedlight... or two, and a wireless trigger system to be able to fire those flashes off camera. I use a cheap but reliable Phottix Strato system combined with two Nikon Speedlights and it has never let me down. Just make sure to have the batteries fully charged before you start and keep some spares handy too.

In this shot I have a Nikon SB700 to camera right shooting through a 105cm white umbrella set to 1/16 power and behind the model I have a Nikon SB600 on 1/64 power with no light modifier at all. My camera is at 1/200s, f2.8, and iso 200, handheld. I hate trying to shoot portraits on a tripod preferring to be able to adjust to my subjects movements freely.

Keeping the Lighting Simple for a Street Portrait

When you have a lot of lights and like to work in a studio set-up utilising at least three of those lights for portraits (sometimes more...) then it can be very liberating to get out into the open air and do some portraits on the streets of LA (affectionate term the locals give to our small town of Landskrona) and be restricted to using a simple single Speedlight set-up. I have a Nikon sb700 on a light stand shooting through an umbrella to camera right and a little higher than the subject. Everything is on fully manual for consistent control. The sb700 was set to 1/64th power and triggered wirelessly with a Phottix trigger system. Camera was set at 1/200s, f2.8, iso 400 and I used my favourite portrait lens, the Nikon 85mm f1.8. For good measure, here is a pull back shot of the scene showing the light firing: