Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
Over the years, I’ve invested in many ways to hold lighting equipment, but recently I found a light stand that seems to get very little attention. The K&F Concept Heavy Duty Light Stand.
Now the name a little misleading. This light stand is more of a sturdy travel light stand, and you should use it accordingly.
It’s no secret that we use Set a Light to test our photo lighting before we start a shoot. (We talked about it here, here, and extensively here). We even used it to play around with models under lockdown. While I used the software quite a bit for photo projects done with strobes, it lacked in the cinema section. But now, they released a new version, and I am blown away by the possibilities it opened.
If you want to play, there is a trial version in this link; if you need some motivation, though, read on.
Today I’m out here with Chanda AM, and Chanda will help me illustrate how to balance ambient light with strobes. I love shooting in this situation with ambient light and strobe light. I want to be able to combine the ambient light here in this beautiful area with strobes. So the way I generally do this is:
If you are on the creative side, it’s hard to stay at home without any humans to shoot. If you are not familiar with Set.A.Light 3d, it’s a piece of software that creates realistic studio setups, including pretty realistic models.
So if you are stuck at home, and can’t transform it into a studio, or if you have no one to shoot, this can be a perfect way to feed your creative needs.
I’m still shooting portraits and doing creative work on a very regular basis. I have experience in various genre, I ran a studio, I have taught both workshops and one-on-ones, and I’m quite a sociable chap. Despite all that, you probably never heard of me; I’m ok with that. All that aside, it is now 2020 and I’m now in a 12-weeks lock-down in a small bungalow, looking after my mother and daughter.
I’m lucky in quite a few ways; I have some great local friends who are making sure we have what we need, and I have my daughter who as well as being beautiful, is also very keen on becoming an MUA.
So stick a gorgeous daughter/wannabe MUA/model and a photographer with a passion for throwing light in a bungalow. What are we supposed to do now?
With all the LI-ION strobes going around, it is sometimes hard to remember that not so long ago, most strobes had to be connected to a power outlet to actually work. But with the rise of the battery-operated strobe, the AC-powered strobes are now cheaper than even and provide a great opportunity to get started in a studio for almost no money at all. The Godox MS200 (Amazon | B&H) is a prime example of that.
I recently was contacted by Godox to review their new MS200 200ws monolight. Being on the low budget end of the spectrum at $99.00 on Amazon or B&H, I did not expect too much. I was quite surprised by the value of this value monolight.
It was a while since I was thinking how to perfectly center the Godox H200J bare bulb head in the S-Type Bracket. The AD200 and the S Bracket just cant be centered. Surfing the net, I came across this post by Ken Tam.
Ken thought of removing the screw to secure the headlights accessories. Perfect, but this does not make it more difficult to mount the reflector disc when we combine the AD200 with the S-Type Bracket.
The name of this installment is meant to be a joke, but anyone who follows the blog knows that I’m is a little bit color-obsessed. This image is a play on the highly popular orange and teal color scheme, using the complementary contrast between orange and cyan
Sometimes you want a hard light to make a statement, but sometimes you want a soft light, a light that draws little attention to itself. That was the case with our Model in a Red Dress shoot.
Taking a 180 degrees turn from our color-bursting portrait, here is a very soft black and white portrait and how to build a great setup for it.
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