There comes a time in every wannabe-photographer’s life when he has to rest his camera and ask himself, ‘what the fuck do I shoot now?!’

I went through one such existential crisis last weekend. Which is when my good friend Pradeep called. ‘So, what are you doing over the weekend?’, he asked.

‘Uhh, nothing much.’

‘So are you up for a shoot?’

‘Sure,’ I said. I am always happy when I am offered the opportunity to outsource certain parts of the photography process, like say, zeroing in on a subject, and emotionally blackmailing them into posing for me. I’d some very pleasant photo-sessions with Pradeep, and the opportunity was too well-timed to be ignored.

Which is until he turned up over the weekend, and revealed what he exactly had in mind. He wanted to shoot me. Gulp.

‘Ideally, I would do a ROFL right now, but the maid hasn’t swept the floor yet,’ said the Missus, as she passed by the living room. ‘Try not to break too many things.’

For the next couple of hours, I sat in front of all the lighting equipment, following instructions like ‘look to the left, now look at me, don’t slouch, intense expression, how about a smile…’ Surprisingly, these words sound simple enough when you’re behind the camera. But when you feel like scratching your balls and throwing up at the same time, and the photographer tells you to ‘hold that intense expression’, you know you’re having a bad day.

Mid way through the shoot, I realized that I needed some leverage to convince Pradeep not to make these images public. So, I suggested that he too pose for me. He agreed. Alas, he turned out to be a natural.

The above image is one from the shoot. Pradeep seemed to be following my instructions, but now that I think about it, he was probably just recalling my intense expression. He has a mean streak.

The lighting setup is one of my favorites. A beauty dish was used as the main light – this is basically a fancy way of saying that a flash was thrust into a steel bowl so that the entire inner side of the bowl acted as a light source. This makes the the light larger than a bare flash, resulting in soft, even light, since it falls on the subject from more directions. This, however, is not as soft as when you use a softbox (which is even larger, and hence softer). The result is a gritty lighting effect. The lights reflected off the subject’s eyes (called catch-lights) also come out as big circular disks – this adds a bit of punch to the image. A couple of portable flashes were placed on either side of the subject, lighting up the contours of the face. These lights were a little brighter than the main light, which is why you see the white patches on the forehead and cheeks.

In terms of post-processing, I followed the same method as detailed here.

In retrospect, the shoot was enjoyable, except for the times when the missus decided to peep in and say things like, ‘are you sure you don’t want a Digene?. So, we have decided to do this more often, but preferably with a third person as a subject. I only have so many intense expressions.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

Review: Focus on Lighting Photos

I have blogged about the awesome Mr. Fil Hunter before. His much-acclaimed book, Light: Science and Magic, is probably the first to be picked by every amateur who’s trying to get a little more serious about photography. But as with most scholarly work, this book too is not without a flaw. In fact, it was such a glaring omission, that I occasionally found it embarrassing to recommend this book to others. What is it, you ask? This book, and I am not making this up, didn’t have a single contribution from yours truly! Fallen of your chair yet? No? Damn you.

But the good Mr. Fil Hunter is a decent chap, and he has the humility to own up to his errors in judgment. And he did just that with his new book, Lighting Photos. It involved a lot of convincing, whining and groveling of course, but I don’t want to get into all that. Suffice to say that the matter has now been resolved and everything is finally alright with the world.

Lighting Photos is the new title by Fil Hunter and Robin Reid. As with the rest of the Focus On series, this book picks up a specific area of photography (in this case, Lighting) and aims to equip the reader with a working knowledge of the craft to enable her to start taking photographs instantly. Lighting Photos breaks down the intimidating subject of lighting setups into bite sized doses, and illustrates, through detailed examples, on how to get specific results. It’s ideal for people starting off in photography as the recommended equipment is fairly basic, and doesn’t require you to sell your kidneys for that fancy stadium-sized soft-box or over-engineered beauty dish. It is full of tips from Pros and inspiring photographs from contributors across the world. And once you’ve mastered these, you graduate to L:S&M

Amazon UK is still running a Free Shipping Scheme for India, methinks. So, you might want to hurry up. Go and click this link already!

I spent a lot of time mulling over what excerpts of the book I would like to include in this blog. And going by pure merit, here are the 2 pages that I think clearly stand out. And oh, the fact that both the pages have contributions from yours truly is entirely coincidental. I am very fair that way. Ahem. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

Applause. Bow. Thanks!

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

It seriously doesn’t.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve been getting an unprecedented number of queries regarding the self-portrait I’d uploaded on my Flickr stream some time back. Mom called twice, and Dad rang up an hour back to ask if I was feeling okay. Even my brother called up and asked me to take down the image immediately – apparently, it’s extremely inconvenient having to explain to everyone why his brother has nothing better to do than to click flattering photographs of himself and uploading them all over the web. He’s just jealous. Anyway, here’s the image that has created such a buzz at MIG Block 2, Old University Colony, Guwahati.

Light Setup: Back to Joel Grimes/ Dave Hill territory here. A regular 3 light setup. Two rim-lights to light my sides, while a soft-box acts as the main light from over the camera. I used a studio strobe inside the soft-box. And since I didn’t trade my kidneys for that one, it didn’t come with any way to control the intensity of light. So, that pretty much meant that I had to adjust the rest of the lighting around this big, ugly light. The rim lights are our good old Vivitar strobes, set at 2 stops higher than the main-lights. That’s just a fancy way of saying that I played around with the settings on the Vivitars till the light they threw was brighter than my main light. That’s so that you can see that shiny highlights on the edges of the painfully handsome face. The simplest way to go about this is to first just switch on the main light, and take a decent image. Once you’ve adjusted the shutter speed and aperture as per this, you then add one side light. Then another. I know. Very complicated. I am a genius. Bow.

Step 1 (Preparation): On to the post processing now. Here’s how the image looked straight out of the camera. More or less. I added a duplicate layer and played around with the curves to give the contrast a bit of punch. Then, I went on to clone out some of the bumps and irregularities on the face – this took me around a decade. Once I was satisfied that I was looking human again, I went on to step 2.

Step 2 (Shadows/ Highlights): This is the most important step. Here’s where we start giving the image the final shiny look. A lesser mortal will use Dodge/ Burn. But that would be too simple. (I have to justify a blog post, no?). So instead, here’s what I did. I created two blank layers, and in a flash of genius, renamed them Highlights and Shadows. For the Shadows layer, I took a small, soft brush and ‘black’ as the foreground colour. Opacity was set to somewhere between 5 to 10. Then I went on to darken the already dark portions of the photograph. This would mean the creases on the t-shirt, the vertical shadows framing the cheeks, the laugh lines, etc. Also, you might choose to  darken out some of the distractions on the background. The result might not be readily obvious to you. In case you feel that the opacity is too low, be bold and crank it up to 15 or something – you’ll still be able to modify it later using the layer’s opacity. Anyway, the end result – you should just be able to make out the painted areas when you toggle the visibility of the shadow layer.

For the highlights layer, use the same setting as for the shadows layer, and choose white as the foreground colour. Now, paint over all the areas where the light from the flash was visible. This would include the extreme edges of the face, the hair to the left, the edges of the neck, and the creases of the t-shirt. I also chose to accentuate the sweat drop on the nose for some reason.

Step 3 (High Pass Filter): The next step is to select the original layer, and run a high pass filter on it. I went kind of nuclear on it, choosing a setting of around 200. Since it was a new layer anyway, it could do no harm. Also, I’d just been shouted at for not watering the plants. So, wasn’t in the mood for subtlety. Anyway, once done, I changed the blending mode of this layer to ‘soft light’ to tone down the disco.

Step 4 (HSL): I could leave the image here, but being the perfectionist, I chose to surprise you and add another layer of complexity – literally. I revisited the original layer, and added a Hue-Saturation adjustment layer. All I did here, was to change ’Master’ to ‘Red’, and brought down the saturation till the image started looking like one of those gritty, Christopher Nolan meets Guy Ritchie kind of images.

End Notes: For obvious reasons, I cloned out the logo from the t-shirt. You’ll be aware that my deal with Adidas has finally expired. And in the interest of artistic freedom, I’ve chosen to not renew it. Well that, and I just thought I’d look cooler.

If the above ileads to some horribly discoloured and zombie-style images on your computer, please note that the method is not mine. It’s actually a mix and match from a lot of sources. Chief among them are Joel Grimes, Dave Hill and Scott Kelby. If you love the method, on the other hand, remember that you read it here first and you owe me your kidneys.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

Have you heard of Dave Hill?

If you haven’t, may I please request you to pause for a moment, reflect on your worthless existence, and give yourself a couple of hard slaps. Then, click on the link above and stare at his gallery for a while. Chances are, post that you might want to slap yourself again. Don’t let me hold you back.

The Dave Hill look, as it is referred to in general,  is perhaps one of the most discussed about and attempted methods of photography today. Most people are in awe of the look, but since they cannot even reach near, they just convince themselves they hate it, it’s too cosmetic, it’s all PS, and blah, blah. I am undecided. Regardless of whether I like it or not, I’d still like to learn how to achieve that look. If I’m successful, it will make me feel powerful, and confirm my childhood suspicion that I’m a genius. If not, well, I HATE DAVE HILL too!

Firstly, I don’t claim to have figured it all out. Granted, I’m a genius et al, but I’ve still not grasped this method in its entirety. So, what I present here is strictly WORK IN PROGRESS.’

So, let’s get to it. While all of Dave Hill’s creations are heavily Photoshoped, it helps to keep in mind that this does require a good photograph with a particular kind of lighting to achieve the final effect. (An image of poop with the ‘Dave Hill’ look is…er…an image of Poop nonetheless. There are a whole lot of post-processing wizards out there attempting this with stock images, but ending up with nothing more than severe cases of dodged and burnt fingers. Similarly, there are photographers who’ve tried fitting in lights in every nook and crevice of the frame, but with similar results. Also, it doesn’t help that the creator himself seems to have a lot of fun contradicting himself every once in a while while revealing tiny tidbits about his ‘oh so secret’ method, and watching his followers scampering around in rabid frenzy.

The kind of lighting that Dave Hill uses in his images is called wraparound lighting (not really, but it is now anyway). There will be a soft main-light illuminating the subject from the front. To this will be added some rim-lights. These are comparatively hard light sources positioned behind the subject from either side of the frame, highlighting the subject’s edges as defined by the camera’s perspective. The difference between the two sets of lights would be around 1 or 2 f-stops (that’s Greek for aperture settings). What this does is give the lighting a nice wraparound lighting, as if wrapping itself around the contours of the subject. It also gives you a nice little, mildly intimidating phrase to throw around that comes in handy in various situations.

Cheap Friend & Wannabe Photographer: ‘Hey Rishi, isn’t it your turn to buy beer?’

Rishi (staring at reflection of self in mirror): ‘Yes, will be with you as soon as I figure out the f-stop differential used in this singularly inspiring art nouveau piece employing the highly acclaimed wraparound lighting.’

Cheap Friend & Wannabe Photographer: ‘Er…ok. Catch up with you then…in 2012…’

Other characteristic elements of a Dave Hill creation would be a lot of dynamism. Thankfully, for you, I am not talking about the photographer’s personality here. All of his frames have some kind of a dynamic feel to them – either something is happening or about to happen (That immediately rules out Karthik as a subject, as the only thing that happens in his life happened about 28 years ago). Also, he contrasts this dynamism with a very wide depth of field, keeping almost the entire background in focus. (Since I’m God, I disregarded this last bit in this example).

We will follow 4 simple post processing steps:

Step 1: First, we need to do a bit of healing. Make liberal use of the spot healing brush and the cloning tool to eliminate any blemishes, potholes or craters on your subject’s body. In case you are photographing Om Puri, here’s when you should say ‘D’Oh’ and quit. For others, you are looking for a reasonably flawless looking skin, as otherwise, what we’re going to do next will amplify the imperfections further, making everyone look like Om Puri (I love the actor, but he’s just not Dave Hill-ish material).

Step 2: Next, you create three duplicate layers of your healed layer, and name them (bottom up) Median 30, High Pass 5 and Mask. Please be sure to carefully replicate these names otherwise your computer is liable to go up in smoke in under 30 seconds of your doing this. That, and the fact that it helps you remember the steps. Once that is done, select the layer named ‘Median 30′, and apply FILTER>NOISE> MEDIAN with a value of 30. Then, select the layer titled High Pass 5, and apply OTHER> HIGH PASS, with a setting of 5. Change the blending mode of this layer to ‘Overylay’. Next, log on to your bank account, and transfer all your money to my paypal account. After that, move on to the layer named Mask, and apply a mask over it. Fill it with white. Now, take a nice soft brush (0 will do fine), and having selected the white mask rectangle to the right of the layer thumbnail, start painting your subject’s skin with black. Take care to stay away from edges and sharp areas like eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, etc. What this will do is make your subject’s skin look awesomely soft, while still preserving enough detail so as to differentiate it from Barbie’s butt. Do this for all of the exposed skin.

Step 3: Next, we apply the LucisArt filter. But before that, remember to flatten your image and make a duplicate layer to minimize the damage you’re most certainly going to do next. Go to FILTER> LUCIS. Set the control on the top-left of the screen to Whyeth, and the mix level to 30. There are 7 buttons on the bottom of the panel, of which the first would be selected by default. This will do just fine. Press okay. Chances are that what will now be presented to you will probably not look pretty. Play around with the ‘transparency of this layer till you’re satisfied.

Step 4: Then comes the fun part. This is where the Dave Hill look really comes out (It better, as it’s the last step). Flatten your image again, and create a duplicate layer. Select the burn tool from the tools palette, set it’s exposure to somewhere between 10 – 20, and setting to ‘shadows’. Now, run the tool over all the shadow areas of your image. Try it first on the clothes of your subject till you get the hang of it. When you think you’ve done enough, do this some more (remember, exposure is at 10 to 20, so you might have to apply this more than once to see any visible difference). Next, select the dodge tool and repeat the process over the highlights on your image, with the setting at ‘highlights’ and the exposure value at anywhere between 5 – 10.

As a finishing touch, add some vignetting effect by applying FILTER> LENS CORRECTION. If you’re not as lazy as I am, you’d have hopefully taken the extra trouble of actually setting your composition against an interesting background – so, you might want to do some colour correction and sharpening there, If you are, then you can just sit back and gloat at your new creation.

This should do it. You should now be the creator of your very own Dave Hill image that you can flash around and blind your wannabe-photographer friends with.

And how have I evolved this elaborate method? I haven’t. There is this noble soul out there called Joel Grimes, who like me, is a very gifted photographer. And unlike Dave Hill, he believes in spreading the knowledge. Do visit his blog for some very nice tutorials on wraparound lighting and post-processing. In fact, I’ve learnt the initial skin softening process from him. For the rest of the method, I’ve relied on another resourceful individual called Google.

Do let me know how your results look. And throw in a few pointers if you figure out something that I’ve overlooked.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

Having loitered around the Strobist blog for well over a year now had lulled me into a comforting complacency regarding my photographic skills. I was living a fairly satisfied existence, occasionally uploading a DIY-soft-box lit image of a frog here, and a bare 285HV backlit portrait of a grasshopper there. Accolades from such varied and credible sources as ‘Flickr Rose Awards – Post 1 Comment 8‘ and ‘You Are My Flickr Star – No Invites Required‘ helped perpetuate the illusion that I’d arrived. Also, the fact that David H. talks about lighting the same way I would may be  talk about making coffee didn’t really help infuse any realism into the situation. Photography is simple; don’t know what the big fuss is about, I’d tell myself as I clicked through pages and reverse-engineered another upload from Chase Jarvis.

Boot Camp Two, Assignment One was posted sometime earlier this month. The brief was simple: a headshot. Use all the learnings that you’ve been spoon-fed here, here and here. Even an idiot couldn’t get that wrong. I mean, headshots are to photography what nuclear tests are to North Korea – they should happen naturally, no? So, as with all previous assignments, I decided to do the exercise mentally. I’d prop in a light here, and a reflector there, the subject would be X ft away from the background, which would in turn be lit with a snooted strobe, gelled to a warm orange hue. The 5th strobe to the left would provide the rim light. Voila! A dazzling headshot of a corporate looking middle-aged guy gazing into the middle-distance shone through. But just as I was about to file another successful session into my extensive imaginary portfolio, an old nagging feeling made me pause. Somewhere inside of me was a kid that still felt a little less cuddled; it still yearned for the elusive pat on the back, or the nod of acknowledgement from the Gurus 1 & 2 themselves! So, I decided to give it a go. For real. What did I have to lose, after all?

Subject: K2. A friend from MBA days, who quit his job in an MNC to start off a microbrewery (the first in India). Looking at his track-record, it was unlikely that his risk appetite would be a factor in his agreeing to pose for me. Besides, he badly needed some decent shots to be circulated in the print media to accompany all the articles they were suddenly featuring him in. Done.

Location: This was a bit tricky, since I was spoilt for choice. I could do the shoot in Corner A, B, C or D of the living room. But the Pro that I am, I choice point E, which happened to be bang in the middle of the living room. The wall (background) was about 4 feet away from the subject, and gave me enough freedom to more or less do anything with it. Inverse Square Law, et. al.

Shoot: K2 was asked to sit on a chair. I would have preferred him standing, but he’s inconveniently tall, and shooting him standing up would mean the support beam on the ceiling of the living room would creep into the frame. I could have Photoshop’ed it out later, but since I am a Pro and all, I wanted to post this as is. Besides, it helps to have your subject seated and comfortable when his confidence in you is evaporating with each passing second. The original thought was that K2 would be holding a pint of his beer, and just benevolently beaming into the camera. But K2 and beer do not a model subject make. So, just a dignified look into the camera would have to suffice. As for lighting, I had two 285HVs, and my subject’s sparkling white teeth. I decided to place one of the 285s inside a DIY softbox that had mysteriously appeared in our house about the same time the missus had lost a sari, some earrings, a curtain, some cardboard that used to cover the hole that was left after the old AC was disposed off, and random pieces of furniture. This would be the soft light that would gradually fall of K2′s face from frame right to left. As for the background, there would be the other snooted 285 that would create a pleasant halo, which would perhaps match K2′s light blue t-shirt.

Surprisingly, doing an actual shoot adds various unforeseen dimensions to one’s thought-process. The simple case of the 285HV on the BG, for example. In real life, it just wouldn’t conveniently hang in the air, behind the subject. Similarly, the reflector would keep sliding down the chair just as I clicked, occasionally taking the 285 down with it. Nor do I remember having to answer the door for the milkman, the newspaper guy, the grocery salesman and the postman every time I thought I had the perfect f-stop figured. And, do any of you recall the strobist site ever mentioning anything about subjects that insist on calling up every person on his address book just as the shot is ready? I couldn’t help feel frustrated, not unlike the time I went around the city unsuccessfully looking for something called VALs in every photography store in Mumbai.

Anyway, back to the shoot. Things, as you can well imagine, weren’t looking up. My subject was getting increasingly restless and talkative, my lights were falling apart and my ego was taking a stroll out on the street waiting for the next SUV. But I wasn’t going to give up. Being the super-resourceful strobist that I am, I decided to give it one last try. Here’s the rather complicated lighting diagram for your reference.

One of the tougher decisions I had to make(apart from deciding between the postman and the newspaper guy) was to zero in on the number of light sources I wanted. I’ve noticed that if I go into a shot without having a definite idea of the desired output, I very often find myself unnecessarily adding light all over, till my subject begins to resemble the Eiffel Tower. If I have 4 strobes, for example, I somehow find a way of fitting them all into the setup, regardless of what the marginal utility is. It helps to have a tight brief in mind.

On a more sober note, THANK YOU David Hobby for giving us this!.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.

As I sat in front of my laptop, twiddling my thumb and scratching my head (yes, I CAN do both at the same time), a divine revelation came on to me:

“It’s tough to write a blog post on photography on a photo-blog without new photographs…”

As I told you, it’s divine. But everyone deserves a break, right? So allow me to cheat just this once. I’ve no photographs to talk about, nor do I have any tips to share (I did learn a couple of new ways to tie my shoe-laces, but I don’t really think there is an audience for that sort of thing). What I do have, is an announcement. An announcement so earth-shattering and <insert similar word here> that I was contemplating writing a post announcing this announcement (but I took pity on you).

I give you the rOllon Flickr Group!

If for some reason you still haven’t left, let me tell you something about this group.

1. It does NOT give out awards

2. It does NOT spam

3. It does NOT support human cloning

It does, however, contain some truly amazing images from some very talented photographers that I admire on Flickr.

Entry to this group is strictly ‘invite only.’ This is so that I am able to maintain a good control on the quality of images, and get up every morning feeling very, very important.

Enjoy!

Note: All copyright of the images above with their respective photographers.

©2012 rollon. All Rights Reserved.