Initially, Nico wasn't convinced that she wanted to participate in the photo shoot.

Most of the time, I try to get the shot right in the camera. I’ve never thought of myself as a Photoshop artist, although I use Photoshop on a daily basis for minor things like removing blemishes and adjusting color. However, sometimes an idea just calls out for a change to the “normal” policy.

Heidi came to me with the idea of doing some fun and slightly surreal portraits with her family. We would use some Photoshop tricks to make an unusual final image. The key was to convince the talent, her daughter Nico, to go along with the shoot. Nico’s a little bit camera shy. However, with the promise that she could dress up like a princess, and wear a little makeup, a deal was struck. We decided to shoot the photos with a “tea party” theme, to match the princess outfit. The final image was going to be Nico holding a teacup with her parents inside.

Because Nico needed a little bit of encouragement to warm up to the idea of being in front of the camera, we practiced by taking some pictures of Heidi and David. Not only did seeing Mom and Dad in their photos allow Nico to get more comfortable with the studio, but it also gave me the opportunity to practice some of the techniques we’d use to create the final composite image.

Eventually, with the aid of Heidi and David’s skillful persuasive skills, Nico felt comfortable enough to pose for her photo. She did a great job imagining she was holding her parents in the cup, and keeping her pinkie fingers out like a proper lady. Next, we photographed Mom and Dad. I put them against a light colored background so that it would be easier to blend them with Nico’s dress. I had them hold a sheet of cardboard in front of them on the same angle as the edge of the teacup in Nico’s photo, so that it would keep their hands in line and help the pose look  more natural.

Finally, we put it all together in Photoshop. I cut Heidi and David out of their background and dropped them into the photo of Nico. I used a layer mask to clip around the fingers as closely as possible. I used Photoshop’s puppet warp feature to adjust David’s arm a little so it looked like he was leaning on the edge of the cup. I duplicated Heidi and David’s layer, clicked on the “preserve transparency” button, and filled it with black. This created a silhouette of them, which I dropped underneath their original image layer. By applying a Gaussian blur and dropping its opacity down to about 20%, it created a shadow. I masked out all of this shadow except the areas around the fingertips. This added a little bit of depth to that transition between them and the cup. I also brought in a little bit of this shadow under David’s elbow, so it looked like he was casting a shadow on the right side of the cup. Next, I created another shadow layer, with even more Gaussian blur, and dropped it behind David and Heidi’s layer onto Nico’s dress. The higher level of blur implies a greater distance, and I found this improved the impression of depth. Finally, I used the blur tool to blur David and Heidi’s fingertips a little bit, so they’d match the slightly out-of-focus appearance of the edge of the cup.

The final image is pretty entertaining, I think, and is definitely not your average family portrait. Thanks to Heidi and David and Nico for helping me to create something a little different.

Bonus images

Here are the two “practice images” we shot to help warm Nico up to the idea.

Similar Posts

No related posts.

Technically, the shoot was pretty simple. I shot in aperture priority mode so I could control the depth of field. I would decrease the aperture for some of the shots to lengthen the shutter speed, giving a little more blur to the fast-moving water. A stabilized lens helps in this situation so you can shoot hand-held at long focal lengths without worrying about camera shake. Shooting at the right time of day really helps. We were there in the late afternoon, when the sun was still high enough to get over the lip of the waterfall and into our shooting area, but still low enough to provide a nice rim light on Shan, and a soft glow to the water droplets. It wasn’t quite golden hour, but still late enough for the atmosphere to filter out those ugly UV rays.

Similar Posts

1. The Black Fairy in the Swamp
2. Field fairy shoot
3. The Golden Hour

Anyway, Laura is a bursting fountain of ideas. She’ll bring an idea to me, and it’s up to me to compress it into the rectangular frame of a photo. In a recent shoot, Laura wanted to put a black fairy in a swamp with an interesting dead tree. She’d found this location on a drive in the country, and asked if we could do a photo there. I scouted the location with her, and we decided the tree would make a great counter-balance to a sculptural costume piece she’d made in her studio. The sculpture, along with the tree, would form the wings of the black fairy, and communicate the concept of her connection to nature. Whenever there’s an opportunity to scout a location before the shoot, I do it. Sometimes time constraints or other circumstances don’t allow this, but if it’s at all possible, I’ll take the opportunity. Scouting a location allows you to come prepared for any difficulties the site may present, as well as giving you an idea what time of day and weather conditions will yield the best shooting conditions.

I took the photos above on the day of the shoot. These “sketches” are an important part of my editing process as we move towards getting the final shot. I tried various combinations of pose and camera position and orientation. I experimented with different focal lengths to try to come up with a good balance between drama and distraction.

As a side note, one factor of primary importance to me is the comfort of the model or subject of the photo. If the person you’re shooting is uncomfortable, you’re almost certain to get a bad photo of them. This is one reason Laura wasn’t wearing her costume in the sketch photos until we needed it to figure out the composition. I don’t want to feel rushed because she might be feeling uncomfortable or awkward in a costume. So, we avoid putting the costume on until absolutely necessary.

There were a lot of competing elements in this location, including trees, bushes, tall grasses, reflections, clouds, etc. I wanted to keep the black fairy clear of distractions, but in balance with other environmental elements so she would stand out. At the same time, we were limited by the fact that the tree had to be in the right position in the frame to form that other wing. In the end, I found just the right spot and focal length to get the shot. Laura was standing on a chair, which was slowly but surely sinking into the marshy ground; we had to work quickly once her costume was in place, otherwise our whole setup would have toppled into the swamp! Laura did a great job of looking serene, even as the chair inexorably tilted towards the water. We’d been blessed by a stormy-looking sky that day, so I snapped a series of bracketed shots so I could maintain the detail of those beautiful clouds. Later, I discovered that judicious processing of the RAW file allowed me to extract the detail from just a single exposure.

Here's the final image of Laura Hollick as the Black Fairy in the swamp.

Similar Posts

1. Field fairy shoot
2. Behind the Red Bird
3. Red tree winter

Before I start using a new tool on clients, I normally do some experimentation to get a handle on its operation. Usually, this involves taking pictures of inanimate objects and doing self-portraits before actually showing anyone the results.

The photo above is one of those experiments that I did with the Hartblei. It took a lot of fiddling under pressure, because this kid was biking around like a maniac, and I really wanted to capture him in front of the car before he gave up the game and went to do something else. With the Hartblei’s nearly infinite combination of tilts, shifts and rotations, it did take a few tries to get this effect predictably. Fortunately, on the kid’s last pass, I got the shot. The area in focus is thrown diagonally from the foreground to the background, with other areas rendered in a very pleasant bokeh, which is just a fancy way of saying “out of focus.”

Getting this shot of the Flatiron Building in Manhattan was a little easier, because I had all the time in the world to mess around with the lens to get the right areas in focus.

After a great deal of experimentation and failed attempts, I finally felt ready to use this lens with a client, in the studio. The client is a musician, who is releasing an album in the next month or two. We needed to shoot some portraits to use in the CD liner notes. My goal with this particular shoot was to get a kind of low-contrast feel which I felt matched the melancholy mood of his music, as well as the cover art for the CD. I envisioned everything being a sort of monotone beige, with the clarity of his eyes being the most outstanding features of the image. The eyes would already be isolated because of color, but isolating them further with focus and shallow depth of field really adds a lot to the laid-back mood, I think.

It was pretty easy to accomplish this with the 50mm f1.2 lens when he was more or less face-front to the camera. The area of focus is at a constant distance from the back of the camera, producing a very traditional shallow depth of field effect.

However, he had a great profile, and I wanted to be able to shoot this angle without losing the focus that fell mainly on the eyes and not elsewhere. This is where the Hartblei really came in handy.

By bending the lens so that it threw the area of focus across the front of his face, even though I was facing the side of his face, I was able to keep his eyes isolated in focus, while the rest of him softly blended away.

I remember sitting with a friend years ago, marveling at a book of Karsh’s portraiture, admiring his masterful control of depth of field. At that time, I wondered how he achieved this effect. Now I know it’s because he was using a massive 8×10 view camera with bellows that allowed him to similarly throw focus onto whichever plane he wished. Those cameras were cumbersome and difficult to adjust. These days, with small SLR cameras, it’s possible to get similar results, but in a more spontaneous and casual fashion. I’m looking forward to using this new trick more often in the future.

Similar Posts

1. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
2. Toy car
3. Coney Island in the sun

Hartblei 65mm f3.5 Super-Rotator lens.

I had some fun today. It was a beautiful spring morning, and the parking lot at my building was mostly empty. I decided to play with my new car and my Hartblei Super-Rotator lens. I picked up this lens on eBay last year, but haven’t used it a lot. The Hartblei is an f/3.5 65mm tilt-shift lens that can rotate both tilt and shift segments 360 degrees. What does this mean? It basically means you can put together some pretty crazy focal planes.

Tilt-shift lenses are great at creating a “miniature” effect. It’s the perfect effect to make a fun statement about how small Pepper, my little MINI Cooper S is. I parked Pepper rakishly in the middle of the lot, and climbed the metal ladder to the roof of my building, because the tilt-shift miniature effect only really works if you’re shooting from a high angle.

Because the Hartblei is a completely manual lens, it doesn’t communicate with your camera body at all. The camera’s display told me that my aperture was f/00. I dialed in f/3.5 on the barrel of the lens, and then used the camera’s meter to determine the right shutter speed.

I shot a few different angles, experimenting with different combinations of tilt, shift, and rotation. I have to admit, it’s a bit hard for me to predict how the different tilts and shifts will affect the final image, but half the fun is in the trying.

In the end, I found the miniature effect to be pretty convincing. The unexpected planes of focus and unusual depth of field created some fascinating results, and made Pepper look like a die-cast metal toy.

I have some more examples of this miniature effect in my photos from the bell tower in Xi’an, China.

Similar Posts

1. Me and my twisty lens in New York City
2. Coney Island in the sun
3. Bending your bokeh

We hired Sarah to model the clothes, and she did a great job. Sarah was a pleasure to work with. She’s an expressive model who is able to quickly find a pose and expression to match what needs to be communicated in the photos. Hair and makeup artist Sue Upton created a number of different looks for Sarah, so the photos would have some variety.

Sue Upton and Lissa Hill getting Sarah ready for the first photo of the day.

I went with high contrast lighting to emphasize the high contrast look of Lissa’s designs. I set up a single Alien Bees B800 strobe above Sarah on a boom, with only the standard silver reflector and nothing to diffuse it. I positioned Sarah close to the white background so she’d cast some interesting shadows.

Similar Posts

1. Boys, babes, bikes and Lissa Hill Leather
2. 5 tips for beginner models
3. We all scream for ice cream

After taking a few photos with the bulb intact, I put it in a plastic bag and smashed it. Then I dumped the pieces onto a glass plate and drenched it in “blood.” I shot a few frames, but discovered that the corn starch was drying in a very un-bloody way on the big shard of glass closest to the bulb’s base. I carefully extracted that piece with needle-nosed pliers, washed it, then put it back into the composition.I believe in getting photos as good as they can be in camera so they don’t have to be Photoshopped to death, so to speak.

I shot these photos with a Sigma EX 105mm f2.8 macro lens. I staged it inside a light tent I borrowed from a friend. It was lit from below and from both sides by Alien Bees B800 strobes.

Similar Posts

1. The Golden Hour
2. The Black Fairy in the Swamp
3. Yoga on the falls

Anyway, the shoot was fun. I got the wind machine out to blow that wild purple wig around. Ice cream was melting all over, and drops of it were blowing everywhere in the wind. Even a couple of days later, I’m still finding drops of melted ice cream plastered in various places around the studio. I kept the lighting very simple. It’s just a single Alien Bees B800 strobe with a silver umbrella for high contrast light that really makes the colors sparkle. I pumped the flash up to high power, and stopped the lens down to around f/11 to get lots of depth of field so you could see what was in Agatka’s outstretched hand, while also keeping her eyes in sharp focus.

I presented the final images in a triptych because I didn’t want to lose the sense of motion in the shoot.

Similar Posts

1. The Black Fairy in the Swamp
2. Behind the Red Bird
3. Lissa Hill Leathers

This time, we shot Laura as a red tree growing in a forest. The concept illustrates Laura’s mission of growing spirit on Earth. There was some setup involved. First, we had to find the perfect stand of trees. Laura had located a spot out in the country where there was forest on both sides of the street. Then, we had to wait for the weather. The vision was to have fresh snow on the ground. When the day finally came, we packed up the car and headed out to that little forest. We drove along this stretch of road slowly a few times, scanning the woods for the right spot for the photo. I wanted to find a spot with mostly vertical trees, with few fallen trunks and distracting diagonal branches. I also wanted the right sized clearing for Laura to stand in, as I wanted her to appear to be part of the continuous forest, rather than feeling like she was wedged in, or was surrounded by too much space. Finally we spotted the right place. Here’s what it looked like from the road.

Next, we had to unpack all our stuff, including camera, tripod, lenses, costume, chair, mirror, props, etc. We had to tread carefully, approaching the scene from the side and back so as not to disturb the beautiful fresh snowy landscape in the foreground. We set Laura up on a chair to give her the extra height required by her tree costume. I tested the composition and exposure while she was still wearing her winter clothes, because we wouldn’t have much time to shoot with her in the costume before she turned into an icicle. It was cold!

When we got the composition we wanted, I locked the camera down on the tripod, and we got Laura into her costume. The long skirt and red top were held together by fabric ties and plastic clamps. It’s not exactly comfortable or easy to wear! In fact, after we got her all strapped in, Laura was pretty much immobile.

I worked pretty quickly to get the exposures I needed. I took three bracketed exposures of each shot: regular, 1.5 stops above, and 1.5 stops below. I used continuous drive and a shutter release cable so that as little as possible would move in between the exposures. In contrasty scenes like this, I think it’s a good idea to bracket because it will allow you to merge the details from the various exposures to end up with something with wider dynamic range. It’s not exactly HDR photography, but more like the techniques that film photographers like Karsh used to use when sandwiching bracketed negatives to create richly tonal scenes under difficult lighting conditions.

I also shot at f2.8 and at f9.0. Normally, I love shooting f2.8 because I like to isolate my subject. But, in this case, the forest was as much the subject as the trees, and I had a feeling I’d want to make use of the extra depth provided by the smaller aperture.

Shooting done, we got Laura out of that costume and bundled up again in her winter jacket. I’m sure that was quite a relief. When I got the images back to the studio and into the computer, I was glad that I’d shot all those bracketed exposures as well as the f9.0 shots. There was very little work to be done on the photo to make it “perfect.” I emphasized the brightness and misty atmosphere of the forest by using a low-contrast process of the over-exposed bracketed shot. This also gave Laura’s skin a lovely translucent quality. I brought detail into the costume by masking in the regular exposure. I didn’t need the under-exposed version. I cloned out some of the excess branches and debris to keep everything as vertical as possible. Light sharpening brought out the detail in the bark of the trees.

The photo looks amazing at high resolution. I can’t wait to present it in an exhibition in some huge format.

Similar Posts

1. The Black Fairy in the Swamp
2. The Wind Angel appears
3. Prevailing Winter

The process began with some preliminary snapshots to experiment with the poses and the positioning of the painting. Sue then sketched a few different bird designs onto these printouts to get a rough idea of how it was going to look. We wanted to add a branch so that there would be some context to the pose, and so it wouldn’t look like Laura was just floating there in mid-air, but rather stepping off into the unknown with the red bird as her guide. In the sketches below, you can see that Sue used white correction fluid to highlight the best image so that it could be most easily projected onto the backdrop for tracing and then painting.

Painting Laura and the backdrop took hours of meticulous work. The shoot was spread out over two days because we actually shot two completely different poses. Each of the poses required different background and body painting. It was a test of patience and stamina for everyone involved.

The actual photography was quite simple. I wanted good depth of field and even, soft lighting with few shadows. Two Alien Bees B800 flash units set close to their maximum power, modified with brolly boxes provided this bright and diffuse light. I also wanted to stand fairly far back and shoot with as long a focal length as was possible. Laura’s big studio gave me lots of room to do this. All of these techniques were designed to flatten the image so that it would blend Laura with her surroundings as seamlessly as possible.

Here are the final images. What do you think?

Please also read Laura’s fascinating blog post about this shoot.

Similar Posts

1. To white then blue
2. Happy Canada Day!
3. The rainbow bird takes flight

That’s why my friend Zura’s recent blog post Sexy vs. skanky or How to photograph sexiness caught my attention. I commented on that post about how I approach photographing sexiness. In this post, I’ve expanded on those comments.

So, the first question that arises is, “What is sexy?” The answer is different for every single person. I can only answer it by discussing it with her, observing her, looking at example images that she brings, etc. to get an idea of what is sexy to her. Then, I can coach that out of her through posing, expression, lighting, wardrobe and mood. We look at the photos as we go along and mutually decide what’s working and what needs adjustment. If she feels that she is coming across as sexy, then she’s more likely to be emotionally committed to the process, and I’d never want to be as arrogant as to unilaterally layer on my own visual language.

Zura’s post compared two advertising posters from the Montreal Metro. One of them showed a woman on silk sheets, with a sort of sleepy come-hither look that Zura found offensive because to her, it says, “I’m not terribly aware of what’s going on right now, maybe it’s a good time to take advantage of me.” In my experience, some women find the half-lidded, sleepy look sexy, and that is their personal expression of sexuality. Some might even find that expression to be empowering because they feel it radiates their sexual power and intent. Because it’s authentic to them, it ends up being inherently sexy. Others are more aggressive, or kinky, or explicit, or any number of flavors of sexuality that personally suit them.

Anyway, I think that first image is mediocre. It’s stiffly posed in order to position and highlight various products that the image is designed to sell, rather than trying to convey an overall message of sexiness. The expression is pasted on the model and doesn’t look natural or particularly authentic. I think it fails just because it is poorly conceived and executed, not because it’s sexist. The second photo is of a woman wearing an elaborate lingerie outfit, standing provocatively and addressing the camera directly with her eyes. To Zura, this communicates, “Hey there tiger, I have some hot ideas about what I’d like to do to you and have done to me, how about it?” I agree that it’s a better photo. However, I believe this photo could be construed as sexist too, because of the obvious Photoshop body modification done around the waist to make it crazy skinny. Some may argue that the woman in the first poster represents a more healthy body image than the woman in the second poster. Personally, I’m not adverse to doing this kind of modification on photos when my client requests it. Photography, particularly the boudoir kind, is illusory anyway, and if she feels it adds to her allure, then why not?

In my opinion, “sexy” and “sexist” aren’t one-size-fits-all. No matter how you shoot something, there will always be people who find it sexy, and there will also be people who are offended. The best approach is to find what is authentic and appealing to their intended audience and go with that.

I’ve included a gallery of my own photos below that I think express a range of various expressions of sexiness.

Similar Posts

1. Photo density
2. Remembering the tsunami
3. Be thankful for what you’ve got

I was inspired by how Thais in Phuket reaction to the event. Despite the daunting destruction and chaos, they rolled up their sleeves and got to work repairing the damage. Rubble was swept into neat piles and cleared away, flowers were replanted, and construction got underway to rebuild demolished structures. Tourists, whose money is the lifeblood of the region, stayed away from Phuket in droves, and the normally bustling resorts were nearly deserted. So much had been swept into the sea. Almost everyone there had lost friends and relatives to that giant wave. Instead of lapsing into despair, Thai workers did what needed to be done, and then took to the beaches and played joyful games of soccer. The joy and energy was infectious, and that evening as I stood in the soft sand and panned my lens across that scene, I captured one of my most personally meaningful photos.

I’ll always remember the Thai way of adapting, flowing and rolling with the punches. If you can take this to heart, you’ll always land on your feet with a smile, no matter what the universe throws at you. This approach can be very useful to photographers. We’re often at the mercy of weather, equipment failures, financial limits, wardrobe, client demands, and other uncontrollable factors. Often, our intricate pre-made plans get demolished in an instant. Having learned to stay in the present and to observe its many opportunities has made a big difference to me. Although I always hope for ideal conditions for every shoot, I feel confident that I can adapt to create compelling photos in nearly any situation. Try it some time. Whenever you catch yourself bemoaning what you perceive to be a negative turn of events, re-examine the situation to see if it contains any hidden advantages.

Similar Posts

1. Be thankful for what you’ve got
2. What makes a photo sexy?

In this particular photo, the exposure was 13 seconds at f8. Shot normally, the well-lit church would be completely white and overexposed. My technique is to use hold the lens cap close to the lens, obscuring the brightest parts of the image. In the photo above, I covered the top portion for at least 9 seconds of that 13 second exposure. I move the lens cap back and forth quickly during that 9 seconds, so that the area is blended, and doesn’t just appear as a darker circle in the final image. The bottom part of the image gets the full 13 second exposure, so the reflection is nice and bright.

The lens cap is great for most things, but experiment with other items for blocking the light. When I first started using this technique, I was using my fingers to block the light, but I found that I’d get strange color patches in the image because light was reflecting off my skin and into the photo. I find that a soft piece of black cloth is the best, because it reflects no light, and can be folded into different shapes to be more precise with the dodging. Plus, it won’t scratch your lens as you move it around.

I always try to get the exposure as close as possible to perfect in the camera. That way you don’t lose image quality or create excess noise by manipulating the levels too much in Photoshop.

Try this out and be creative with it. Let me know how it goes!

Similar Posts

1. Bright lights, big city
2. Taking back the Tea Party
3. Shirley on Aliso Beach

It was a very hot and sticky weekend in Manhattan, and I had lots of opportunities to try the lens out. To me, the cool thing about a tilt-shift lens is its sometimes surprising depth of field effects. Because it essentially changes the plane of focus, you can throw focus in almost any direction. It feels like splashing focus across the frame like paint in diagonal slashes. Check out the focus on this shot of a carnival in Central Park.

Focus is on the Whac-A-Mole tent in the distance, but also on the branch in the top-right corner, which can’t be more than 10 feet from me.

Here are a few more examples of fun focus effects that I created on the weekend.

Good times. What I love about this lens is that it allows me to be very selective about what is highlighted in the photo. The rest of the photo is thrown out of focus in a silky smooth and beautiful way. Due to its hand-made Czech glass, images are sharp in the focus areas, and color transmission is great. I’ll be taking this lens to China with me in October. Stay tuned for more super-rotated images!

Similar Posts

1. Toy car
2. Coney Island in the sun
3. Little New York

This is where gratitude comes in. Sometimes things just don’t work out how you might have expected. Perhaps it’s raining, or you forgot to bring the lens you need, or delays force you to shoot at a time of day that’s not ideal. There are a lot of things that can go “wrong.” Sure we could stew about these so-called problems and work ourselves into a negative, distracted fit. But, is that really going to help you get the shot? Believe me, it won’t! Instead, is it possible for you to find ways to use these mishaps to your advantage? Take a look around for things to be grateful about. Maybe the clouds are creating drama in the sky. Maybe the rain has forced people to bring out their colorful umbrellas. Maybe an “unattractive” foreground object can be used to add interest to your composition?

Being grateful is not about being unrealistically optimistic. It is about being powerful enough to decide for yourself what the outcome will be, no matter what external circumstances arise.

Similar Posts

1. Photography vs. Improv
2. Shoot what you love
3. Spring has sprung

What is the Golden Hour?

Put simply, it’s that time of day when everything just looks great. During the Golden Hour, you can do no wrong with a camera. People, places and things all look beautiful at this time. Waiting until the Golden Hour can make the difference between a bland photo and a spectacular photo.

When does the Golden Hour occur?

The Golden Hour is not necessarily an hour long. It depends on a lot of things, including where in the world you are, and what time of year it is. It usually begins about an hour or two so before sunset, and lasts until the sun meets the horizon. The sky must be clear or mostly clear for you to experience the Golden Hour. If the sky is cloudy or overcast, you won’t see a Golden Hour. Around here (Southern Ontario, Canada), the Golden Hour is longest and most beautiful in the summer months, from about June until September. After that, it becomes shorter and less effective until the winter months, when we hardly get one at all! So, if you’re living in a similar latitude, take as much advantage of the Golden Hour as you can during the summer. If you’re lucky enough to live near the equator, you will get decent Golden Hour light all year round. If you live in the Arctic or Antarctic, well, you’re going to have to find another way to make your photos great.

Why is the Golden Hour such a great time to shoot?

During mid-day, the sun’s rays penetrate the Earth’s atmosphere perpendicularly, and all of the light gets through. The result is a very harsh form of light that casts sharp and unflattering shadows. Think on-camera flash on a massive scale. Yuck. As the sun descends towards the horizon, its light cuts through the atmosphere at a much flatter angle. This makes the atmosphere work like a giant prism that filters out the blue and ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Cameras hate ultra-violet light, which is why we often put UV filters in front of our lenses. And, because blue has been filtered out, the remaining light takes on a warm and orange glow, reminiscent of romance, adventure, and generally exciting times!

How do I best take advantage of the Golden Hour?

If you’re just making snapshots, the Golden Hour is going to do most of the hard work for you. The light is just better at this time of day, so your photos will look better.

If you want to plan your shot a little more, position yourself so that the sun is coming from behind your subject, towards you. This “backlights” your subject and can produce some really nice rim-lighting effects and interesting shadows. Add to this a couple of human factors–your subject will feel more comfortable not squinting into the sun, and also will enjoy the warmth on their back–and you’re already a long way towards creating emotionally charged portraits. You may have to adjust your camera a bit to compensate for all the extra light it sees by looking into the sun. If you’re using your camera in an automatic or semi-automatic (aperture or shutter-priority modes) look for an EV+/- adjustment, and dial it up to +1 or +2 to ensure that you get some detail in the foreground of your image. If you’re shooting manually, you can just decrease your shutter speed by a couple of stops to get the same effect. Pros will quite often use a reflector or a bit of fill light from an off-camera strobe to gently light the front of the subject.

You can also underexpose your Golden Hour shots, to really pull out the colors of the sunset sky and create dramatic silhouettes of your subjects. Use that same EV+/- adjustment to set a -1 or -2 exposure value. Similarly, you can raise your shutter speed by a couple of stops. The bonus of this is that you can freeze whatever action is happening in front of that golden sunset!

The Eiffel Tower photo above was a bit of a cheat. I actually took that one quite early in the morning, at the “other” Golden Hour. It begins just after sunrise, and goes for an hour or so. It’s quite a bit more difficult to use, though, since you have to get up pretty early to catch it. I left my hotel at 5am to get to that spot in time to take that photo. However, it was the only time I could be assured that the world’s most famous tower would be deserted!

I hope that what you’ll take away from this post is that when you shoot is just as important as what you shoot. Getting consistently great photos takes commitment, skill and discipline, but shooting during the Golden Hour can make the process a whole lot easier. Have fun out there, chasing the gold.

Similar Posts

1. Earth Hour photos
2. Yoga on the falls
3. Field fairy shoot

The rules say that the horizon should be near the top of the frame to emphasize the ground, or near the bottom of the frame to emphasize the sky. Standard landscape photography rules that work most of the time. But what if the point of the photo is to emphasize the symmetry between sky and ground?

Rule: broken.

Another example of breaking rules is this one:

The often-quoted “Rule of Thirds” says you should divide your frame into thirds and place your subject at the intersection of those lines. It makes the viewer’s eye travel around the frame and visit all parts of it before eventually landing up on your subject. Putting something dead centre in the middle of the frame “sticks” the eye to that spot. But, sometimes it just makes sense to put something in the middle, especially if you are trying to convey the idea of something’s extraordinary gravitational pull. Rule: broken.

What rules do you like to break?

Similar Posts

1. The Black Fairy in the Swamp