This month's blog is about natural light.
I think we all know the nice pictures and melow effects you can get from natural ambient lighting, and I really appreciate the nice photos you get when using indirect bounce light from a sun light augmented with just a few fill lights.
As nice as it is when you have a well lit room with just the right ambience, not every room in the house offers the correct lighting, and you need to augment the light with reflectors or strobes. In the pictures below, I used natural light from a westerly window and a few extra stroblights to augment as fill lighting. I also found in this case, using a warm ambient color balance would really look nice, and so I calculated (from experience) a white balance of 7500K would suffice. Additionally, the stronger light would enable the use of higher F-stops and better focus, as I wanted all parts of the subject in focus, unlike my other more creative shots, where a shallow depth of field was needed. I also did not need a tripod as the shutter speeds enabled stable shots. This fine line is around 1/60sec before I see problems with blur and resort to a tripod. Oddly enough, my S8 galaxy cell phone gets away with 1/10sec ok, and I certianly use it where I can take advantage of that and it's wide aperture and small focal length.
In some of these, I had to lower the F-stop to get a narrower depth of field to drown out the background, and this is commonly done when I just want the subject in the frame and want to remove everything else that detracts from the image. Also, I really don't like hard shadows, and this can come from a poorly placed flash system, so the key is to use a flash diffuser and or shoot the flash backwards into a umbrella. However, in small rooms, getting all that equipment in is a challenge.
These were promo pics for Doll4Ever, and later in the month, several new ladies are being delivered for photos. I hear they have the new squatting evo skeleton that enables better positions, and I will surely try to see if I can get those to work for me.
Till next time,
Mishka
Click image for gallery and full-size photos.
Comments
Thanks for the Tips
I appreciate your documentation on how you achieved the pictures you posted. My first doll is currently on the way and I want to be able to take pictures that make her as real and flattering as possible. Your blog helps.