Night Portraits by day

I was recently asked to take someones portrait, however they had something specific in mind and it required a dark, night feel to it inorder to create the right vibe. The problem we had was that the person was only available during the day!

Anyway, unperturbed I set off to meet them at the local woodland armed with my Canon 7d, a 24-70mm f2.8 and an ND2 filter, along with the usual speedlights and stands.

We didnt have to go far into the woods to find a really good spot, and with it being midweek there was hardly anyone around - only a couple of dog walkers and some middle aged guys playing with RC aeroplanes :D

We got set up clearing a few dead branches and placing the speedlights and tripod etc.

After a few test shots I dialled down the ISO and metered to get a reading, set the camera to match the metered reading then added the ND 2 filter.

The result was a dark environment in daylight :)

Next the flashes were set up to fall on the subject with minimal fall off, and hey presto, we were up and running.

Experimental Photography - College Assignment

Well, College assignment for this half term is all about experimental stuff. So it involves a bit of pinhole work, some work done on the scanner, timelapse and stopframe could also be in there. Im also lucky enough to have been bought a Lensbaby composer for Christmas by my loveley wife, Emma, so Im going to use that aswell.

To start I thought Id have a go at a bt of pinhole photography as Ive never had the opportunity to do it. For my first attempt I used an oval shaped sweet tin, and with this in hand I went into the studio. Now to shorten the time required I figured it would be better to use more light on the subject so, I switched on 4 studio lights, put them onto full and pointed them at my subject, two coke bottles and a mannequins hand.

This was the negative - it needed reversing in photoshop to create the actual image:

Quite chuffed with this for a first attempt, but it took so long to do with 10 minute exposure time and the need to change the paper between shots in a darkroom. I remembered that my old Diana F+ camera ( plastic lomo style toy camera) had a pin hole setting by removing the lens, so I dug it out, dusted it off and had a go with it:

This was much easier as it takes a standard 120mm film and so although the exposure time was still long, 5-10 minutes depending on weather conditions, it meant I could take several images on one film.

Next time I'll let you know about how the main assignment went.

Steve