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Tag Archives: behind the scenes
How I created the LE52Weeks-9: CD Cover
The specifics for this assignment was as follows:
The music group is a String Quartet. The music they are playing is this piece:
String Quartet in F, By Maurice Ravel
This image will be a square… as CD’s are square.
You have two options:
1. Musical instrument on location. (Violin, Viola, Cello)
2. Musician with instrument on location
Yes, I know most of you do not have a spare cello sitting around for a prop… So we will make a third option:
3. Get creative… How would you make a CD cover without a quartet, or the instruments? I can think of a few ways… can you?
How I approached the shot
I knew just before the deadline for this assignment that I would be attending a residential orchestral weekend away so I knew that I had access to a number of instrument and players. I choose to work with a cellist that I had worked with before, and decided to go for a close in shot of the instrument with the idea that it could imply any of four instruments within a string quartet.
I decided to approach the shot with a single light source to have a dark and mysterious feel to the image. To narrow done the beam of light from my off camera flash I decided to go with a black straws snoot grid with the aim of targeting the light solely around the bridge area of the cello. The resulting shot is as seen below.
From here it was a matter of selecting a crop, obviously square, and then processing it in photoshop. The part where the image really started to come alive with more contrast and bringing out the colours was when I converted the image from the colour mode of RGB to LAB. From here I chose to apply the image, changing the blending mode to Soft Light and experimented with the different channels. Finally a text layer was applied to complete the CD cover.
What do you think to the final result? How would you have done things differently if given the same assignment?
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How I shot Evie Farrah’s Fashion Portraits
At the beginning of the month, I had the chance to work again with the lovely Evie Farrah to create some fashion images for her model/ performer portfolio. The original plan was to re-shoot her burlesque routine from the Black Velvet Burlesque night a few evenings before, but on the evening of the shoot we had a change of plan, as you will see from the images.
The thing that did not change was my idea to experiment with a single light source. I had been inspired to try this after reading some articles over at Damien Lovegrove’s ProPhotoNut website. The result of this was to experiment with the lighting setup as shown in the diagram below.
The only main change throughout this studio session was the positioning of the beauty dish. I was roughly varying it from 60-120 degrees to the camera left. The image at the top is the result of one of these setups. To see more images from this session, you can visit either my Facebook Fan Page or my Flickr stream.
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Please subscribe to the blog to be kept informed of my photographic activities and interests.
The Making of LE52Weeks-3: Still Life
Set-up Shot:
As you can see from the set-up image, I am using a DIY Light box, made from cutting two sides out and taping bits of white bed sheets to these areas. Inside the box, on the top side is a white poster-board to aid with reflecting light. There are two different coloured backgrounds in use, a white and a black ground, that are taped in place.
Two speedlights are placed at 45degress to the box, both set to E-TTL and dialled down -1 by using the Flash Exposure Compensation on the Master, non-firing flash sat on camera.
Result:
Post Processing:
Processed using Scott Kelby’s 7 Point System that includes:
- Adobe Camera Raw Processing
- Curves Adjustment
- Channel Adjustments (LAB colour/Apply Image)
- Shadow/Highlight
- Painting with Light
- Layer Blend Modes & Layer Masks
- Sharpening Techniques
Then finally the image is inserted into the layout to get the image at the top of the post.
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