'Pregnant Glow'

This is a shot of my wife; we’re expecting our first child in just under a week’s time (eeek!), and we wanted some nice photos of the ‘bump’ – this is our favourite shot from an evening’s photoshoot we did in our lounge last week. I’m still learning lots about off-camera flash, but I’m really happy with how this shot came out.

For anyone who’s on the fence about whether to try their hand at off-camera flash, I really recommend going out there and doing it. Sure, there’s a lot to learn, and it can seem daunting at first, but when you get a really nice shot, it’s all worth it. There’s also a fantastic book about off-camera flash called ‘The Speedliter’s Handbook’, which I did a review of – it really talks to you in a no-nonsense, practical way; cutting through all the jargon and just showing you how to light things – I heartily recommend it.

For this shot, we got rid of some paintings on the wall in our lounge, and I set up my 580 EX II Flash in a softbox, camera-right (using the fantastic Lastolite Ezybox 24″ x 24″ Softbox Kit). The below lighting diagram is my (incredibly bad) way of showing you how the lighting setup looked like (idea taken from the great GuessTheLighting.com)

Yep, I'm obviously not an artist...!

I couldn’t really show it in the drawing very well, but the softbox was actually positioned a little way behind my wife, so it was pointing a little bit more towards camera, rather than directly at her. This meant that the light from the flash wrapped around her somewhat, and gives a really nice sense of depth to the image.

I shot at ISO 100 so that the image was as clean as possible, and used a shutter speed of 1/250 sec and aperture of f/8 so that no other light – apart from the flash – was part of the exposure. There were some low-level lights in the room (so we could see what we were doing, and could achieve focus!), but because I was shooting at 1/250 sec, with an aperture of f/8 and ISO 100, it meant that this low-level light was not part of the exposure – exactly what I wanted, as I just wanted the light from the flash to be the only light source.

So, I dialed in those settings, and took a test shot (before turning on the flash). The shot looked totally black, which is what I wanted. I then turned on the flash, using the 7D’s built-in wireless trigger capabilities to fire the 580 EX II through the softbox. After some trial and error with changing the power of the flash (I shot in manual flash mode, changing the power of the flash down if I thought it was too bright, or up if it was too dark) I got the shot above!

As I mentioned above, I really recommend reading ‘The Speedliter’s Handbook‘ if you want to get into off-camera flash; I tried to find out information on the internet about doing it, but didn’t find information half as good (or half as easy to understand) as in The Speedliter’s Handbook.

'The DogFather'

Sorry if you’re a little tired of seeing photos of my dog on the site, but, what can I say?, she ‘s just such a great photographic subject!

I wanted to get a bit of a different shot to normal, more of a dramatic/moody look – so I used some some flash bounced off the wall (to the left of the photo; my dog’s right) so that one side of her face was illuminated, whilst the other was in shadow. I think this worked to create a nice sense of depth in the photo.

As in most cases, I focused on her nearest eye, and I’m really happy at how sharp it came out. Focusing on the eyes like this is normally a safe bet, as the eyes are the things a viewer is naturally drawn to when looking at a photo – so if the eyes are nice and sharp, you’re halfway on to a winner already.

I shot in Aperture Priority mode, and chose a wide aperture of f/2.8 – this meant a nice, shallow depth of field was created, where her eyes are in focus, but her nose and collar were not. (I did a tutorial on how to blur the background/foregound in your photos a while back, which you may be interested in)

For post-processing, I used Lightroom 3, and converted the shot to black and white – I felt that the colour was distracting from the overall ‘moodiness’ I wanted to create; it just looked better in black and white. As I normally feel that black and white shots look better when they have a boost in contrast, that’s exactly what I did with this shot.

A bit of a crop so that her head took up the entire frame, and so her eye was nicely over a ‘rule of thirds’ cross-section, and voila, ‘The DogFather’ (thanks to my niece for the inspiration for this particular photo title…!).

I’ve been taking lots of shots in lowlight without a flash recently, which I love to do, but it has meant that my flash has not been seeing much use – so I thought I’d whip it out for a few portraits over the weekend. And I’m very glad I did – it’s made me fall in love with bounce flash all over again!

To take this shot, I angled the flash head on my Canon 430 EX II so that it pointed towards the ceiling, and chose a wide aperture of f/2.8 so that the background would be nicely out of focus. I dialed in a a -1 step of exposure compensation, as I wanted the background to be a bit darker than it would have been normally – so my subject would stand out  nicely against it.

Composition-wise, I focused on the eyes, and positioned them around the top third of the frame, and then took the shot. Although it was a nice photo right out of the camera, I played around with Adobe Lightroom for a bit, and used the Stellar Guru GreenGold preset for the final image you see above.

I still think that natural-light photography is great, but I’m starting to explore flash photography a lot more now too, as I’m really happy with the portrait above.

Have you tried some bounce-flash photography? Let me know in the comments below!

I took this shot whilst on a walk with my wife and mum on Christmas Day – we were just ambling past this house when this gorgeous dog popped up, gazing at us with those adorable eyes! I just couldn’t resist taking a couple of photos.

It’s not the best photo, technically – the dog itself should have been sharper, for instance; I should have took my time and focused on the eyes. But, I was afraid the dog may get spooked and leave, so I shot quickly. You never know if you’re going to have time to re-compose and focus perfectly, so for instances like this – where the shot may get lost if you hesitate, or take too much time – I think it’s best to shoot away (you may get the time to take another, more-controlled photo after, but you may not get a shot at all if you took too long in the first place…).

I like this portrait of a friend I took at a recent gathering; I like the light, the shallow depth of field (obtained by using a wide aperture of f/2.8), and I like the fact you can see me taking the shot in his sunglasses’ reflection!

By the way, apologies if you follow my photography blog and noticed the lack of updates lately – I’ve been away on holiday, and then, as luck would have it, fell ill whilst I was away.

Bonus shot! Here’s a pic of me taking the photo above – thanks to my friend, Stew, for letting me use his photo on my blog. Yep, that’s me, the guy with no hair below…

Hairy Horse Mouth is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to use the image on your site, as long as you include a link back to this page.

Camera: Canon T1i
Lens: Canon EF-S 55 – 250 mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/320 sec
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 250 mm
Shooting Mode: Aperture Priority
Photoshop: Increased the contrast, and converted to black and white.

'Bird Of Gloom'

The Story Of The Shot

This was taken on a recent trip to St. Ives in Cornwall, and was the only photo I really liked from the day. I was actually waiting outside while my wife was shopping, and I noticed this bird above me, and thought it would make an interesting shot. It was daylight, but a bit cloudy, so I chose a relatively low ISO of 200, and I shot in Aperture Priority mode (‘AV’ on my Canon camera). I shoot in this mode a lot, as I often want to control the depth of field in the shot, but, in this case, it didn’t really matter too much what aperture I used, as the background was the distant sky.

By using my telephoto lens ‘racked out’ to its longest focal length of 250mm, I managed to get pretty close to the bird, and I framed it so it was just to the right of the shot, with the wire creating a pleasing diagonal across the image. By increasing the contrast, and converting it to black and white in Photoshop, I think I’ve created quite a strong, impactful image – I especially like all the ‘white space’ in the shot, and how this deeply contrasts with the black bird.

Critique The Shot

What do you think of the photo? Write a comment below and let me know – all your thoughts are really appreciated.

'Swan Feet'

Swan Feet is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Feel free to use the image on your site, as long as you include a link back to this page.

OK, it’s about time I actually show some of my photography, I suppose! Please bear in mind that I’m obviously not a professional photographer – I’m just learning, all the time learning, just as you probably are. So I’m not approaching this in a ‘wow, look at my amazing photo’ kind of way – far from it! Instead, I want to feature some shots that I’m just happy I’ve taken, and share with you some information on how I ‘got the shot’. Hopefully this will become a regular feature – as long as I take some more decent(ish!) photos I suppose…!

How I Got The Shot

Camera: Canon T1i
Lens: Canon EF-S 55 – 250 mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO: 800
Focal Length: 154 mm
Photoshop: Just black & white conversion

The Story Of The Shot

For me, the main thing that makes this photo stand out is because of its unusual viewpoint – a close up of swans’ feet is not your typical ‘swan’ kind of shot. I wanted to shoot something different, so I got down low, and, by using a relatively long focal length on my zoom lens of 154 mm, and a relatively large aperture of f/5.6, I achieved nice blur on the foreground/background – with the sharpness on the furthest away foot drawing the eye in nicely.

With the great textures of the feet and the ground, the photo really benefited by converting the shot to black and white in Photoshop. No cropping or anything else was done to it.

Critique The Shot!

What do you think of the photo? How could I have taken it better? Perhaps you would have used different settings, a different format or viewpoint – perhaps edited it differently in Photoshop? I’m just learning (hence the title of this website, ‘Learning The Light’!) so any thoughts or tips would be most welcome – just leave a comment below.