South Bank Portrait Shoot - Karolina Szwemin by Neil Alexander
As part of my trip to London the other week I arranged with Karolina to meet on the South Bank in London at 5am. I was very surprised that I was going to get a model to meet me this early and was even more surprised to find that she was actually there before me when I arrived. I’d done a great deal of planning for this weekend’s shoots, and I figured that the corner of the South Bank by the National Theatre would get a little direct sunlight early on after it had risen from behind St. Paul’s cathedral, but would then be filtered a little by the rows of trees down the embankment of the Thames as it rose and moved around, if it appeared at all that is.
I awoke around 4am and peered out the window to see a pretty much cloudless sky, got the hotel to fill a flask full of coffee, and jumped in a cab with all my gear.
I had hoped to shoot on the oversized sofas outside the National but unfortunately there were some lads there who were obviously winding down from their Friday night out. So we proceeded up onto the balcony. I figured there would be no security around this early or if there were they wouldn’t bother us. Unfortunately I was wrong. We’d managed to get a few decent frames in the bag until two security guards asked us to leave as apparently we were on private property. We then moved further down the bank and preceded to shoot quite happily there for a good couple of hours changing outfits, moving around & changing location slightly. Although I expected some interest / harassment from late night revellers, drunks, security guards etc we were surprisingly pretty much uninterrupted.
South Bank Portrait Shoot - Karolina Szwemin by Neil Alexander
All these images were taken with the only two lenses I had taken with me which were the 17-55 F2.8 and the 70 to 200 F2 .8.
For the first half an hour or so I was quite successfully shooting with just one light. I didn’t really need much more than that to match the ambient. Once the sun had risen a little further I then felt I need a little more light to match and overpower the ambient so I mounted another SB 900 on a smaller shoot through umbrella. That was when I started to have intermittent lighting problems. As per my previous post, I made a point of doing all this TTL & I found that every now and then my flashes wouldn’t fire. Try as I may I was unable to locate source of my lighting issues. After a while this began to get really frustrating. I would shoot a half a dozen frames with the flashes firing perfectly, and then nothing. Either one or neither flash would fire. Eventually it became apparent that the problem was one of the hot shoes onto which I had one of the strobes mounted. This hot shoe which sits on top of the umbrella spigot mount was of the type that has a diode on the front in order to trigger older flashes manually. I moved it so that it was half on the hot shoe and half not so that there were no contacts made between the bottom of the flash and the hot shoe then all appeared to work much better. However I was nervous of the flash falling off. And none of the other cold shoes that I had with me appeared to take the SB 900 mounts. I had a vague recollection of having had this problem before, and had applied a little gaffer tape over the connections on the hot shoe to prevent contact between hot shoe and flash, but in my eagerness to keep the traveling load down, had left all of my tape at home.
South Bank Portrait Shoot - Karolina Szwemin by Neil Alexander
Roseanne on Hampstead Heath by Neil Alexander
Last Friday I went down to London for Kelby Training’s “On location lighting workshop” with the legendary National Geographic and Life photographer, Joe McNally. Having been to David Hobby’s fantastic workshop in Leeds, where there were about 30-40 attendees, I was quite shocked to see an auditorium packed with more than 500 eager photographers. It was a somewhat less intimate affair, but equally as entertaining and informative.
I had been planning this weekend for some time, so I booked myself into a hotel and arranged three separate on location model shoots for the 24 hours after the workshop to try and put into practice some of the tips and tricks that I had gleamed.
For the first shoot I had intended on trying to shoot in Regents or Hyde Parks, but after a ridiculous email conversation with the Royal Parks people, I quickly decided to knock that idea on the head. The gist of the final email was “if you are aiming for your images to be published/promoted in the future, then we must treat you as a professional and therefore charge you £400 and insist on £5 million worth of public liability insurance”!
So I decided to go for Hampstead Heath instead. I’d done some extensive research online and found that there’s a really cool looking pergola over on the western edge of the park that looked like a real possible for a sunset shoot. It’s raised about 10 feet above the ground and runs in an east/west & north/south direction. We got there eventually about 8pm, but only managed about 15 minutes shooting time before the sun dropped down behind the tree line. We then left here and moved to a little hillock round the corner which still had the descending sun lighting it through the trees. The vibe here wasn’t all that comfortable – there were lots of single blokes milling around looking rather sheepish and it wasn’t until later that I found out that this was the “gay cruising” area of the park!
Roseanne on Hampstead Heath by Neil Alexander
In spite of all that, Roseanne was great, and most definitely game, and I got a few keepers. Somehow I’d managed to heavily underexposed most of the images, and I’m not sure why. I can only think that it can have been for two reasons; just the other day I’d been shooting in bright sunlight so had turned the brightness on the LCD on the back of the camera right up, and for most of the shots of Roseanne, I had positioned her in the sunlight and I’d been in the shade which I guess made the pictures look brighter than they actually were.
As a result of travelling down by train, I came equipped as lightly as possible. So in the way of lighting gear, I just brought 3 strobes, a couple of stands and 2 reversible brollies and decided to leave the kitchen sink behind. I did bring my Pocket Wizards, but inspired by McNally’s amazing use of Nikon’s CLS system, I decided to try and shoot TTL all weekend. The top two images were lit with an SB900 on a shoot thru either side of Roseanne and feathered a little. In fact for the second image, I left 2/3s of the reversible cover on the umbrella camera right to prevent too much fall off onto the background. For the bottom image, I just used one strobe and shoot through camera left to fill in the shadows a little left by the falling sun over my right shoulder.
More to come…..
Roseanne on Hampstead Heath by Neil Alexander
Location:Hampstead Heath, London
Frankie by Neil Alexander
Last week, I hooked up with Frankie for another on-location portrait shoot. I decided on Alderley Edge as a location, specifically Stormy Point, which has a great view as a backdrop. As I knew this was National Trust property, and after the debacle at Lyme Park I decided very early on to clear this with the relevant authorities to save any mither. I contacted the people at the property directly in the first instance, and was referred to the media department at their head office. Having already spoken to them the other week, I had a good idea of the process. I explained in a concise email that this was not to be a commercial shoot, no money would be exchaning hands, but I would be using what they might deem to be “professional equipment”. It was explained to me that this would be fine, and they would waive any charges (how kind of them), but I would need their standard cover of £5 million of public liability insurance. Any attempt to reason with this ridiculous demand was met with silence. Had I been shooting inside one of their mansions, or even in a busy park, then maybe I could have understood that a level of PLI was required, but were to shoot in a completely out of the way area in the middle of the day during the week. The chances of us even coming across another person were slim, never mind the possibility of me accidentally koshing them over the head with a light stand.
As it transpires, I do have PLI but to nothing like that level. Eventually they agreed that on this occassion this level of cover would suffice, and would I please sign their 12 page contract.
Frankie by Neil Alexander
Now normally, I would have paid the location a visit or two beforehand just to work out logistics of transporting and setting up gear, and to give myself a chance to envision how I would like the final images to look. But for one reason and another, this time I didn’t. Which was a mistake. The last time I’d been here must have been around 20 years ago, and my memory has clearly gone a little hazy over the years. I was totally unable to find the spot I was looking for, and after about 45 minutes lugging around camera bag, lighting bag, a portable changing room that I’ve knocked up and light stands, in the blazing sun, I gave up! We turned around and headed back to an embankment that I’d spotted as a plan B on the way down, and decided to set up shop there. We still had a decent backdrop, but being in the middle of a field recently inhabited by cattle meant that we had to pick our spots rather carefully, if you know what I mean. Having said all that, I still managed to get images that I’m pleased with.
Frankie by Neil Alexander
Now, I have made a point of trying to record camera and flash settings, but the more I’m shooting this kind of thing outside, the more I find that recording settings isn’t really practical – the light is generally constantly changing and so therefore are my settings. Though in general these were shot with SB900s and shoot through umbrellas positioned either side of Frankie. This was certainly the case for the top two, though I think for the middle one, I may also have used a ring for a little fill. For the bottom image, I struggled to light the full length of the model appropriately against the fairly bright background. I ended up using both brollies, the ring flash and a bare flash directed straight at her to try and bring out those funky tights she was wearing.
Natalie by Neil Alexander
As my Friday last week was spent dealing with the horror of a financial year end, and fortuitously I had a completely free Saturday, I arranged for another couple of testing shoots. In the morning I shot the delightful Linda on the beach by Hoylake (details in a future post), and in the afternoon I arranged to shoot Natalie (who is also training to be a make-up artist) and her 9 year old cousin in Buile Hall Park in Salford.
A few days prior, Garry, a fellow “tog” from Twitter had commented on my work, and asked if he could join me on a shoot to see if he could get more of a handle on the whole off-camera flash thing. Well I was a little flattered (I’m a lot more comfortable with strobes than I was 12 months ago, but still so much to learn), but also delighted to be able to try and help.
However as the light was constantly changing, and I also had a few more technical issues, I struggled myself to get what I wanted. So I hope that Garry managed to get something out of it.
Natalie and her cousin arrived with stunning ivy themed make-up. I decided fairly quickly that some dramatic lighting was required. For the top shot, I dialed out the ambient almost completely (1/250 at F11). I had one SB900 and a shoot through umbrella to her right, and one smaller one slightly off-centre to her left. I had also placed a snooted strobe behind her head to try and lift her jet black hair from the background a little. It was working well, but she moved around a little and keeping her head between the lens and the snooted strobe was a little tricky. Just by happy accident then that this occurred. I really quite like the way the flare throws a little rainbow into the picture that ends with green on her cheek to match the ivy.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad day’s shooting, and I’ve since ordered a couple of replacement hotshoes from eBay for the princely sum of $10 to prevent any further technical difficulties.
Natalie by Neil Alexander
Model shoot with off camera flash by Neil Alexander
I’m getting more into environmental portrait shooting again lately, and loving every minute of it. After going to Leeds the other week for a workshop with the legendary David Hobby (@strobist), I decided to order myself an Orbis ring flash to play with using this primarily as an on axis fill. I left the workshop positively brimming with ideas and eager to experiment. So I’ve been flogging a few of the model forums of late, and have hooked up with a few willing subjects who are going to test for me over the next few weeks.
These images are from the most recent outing down to the Bollin Valley not far from where I live with the wonderful Steph Owens In total we probably spent about 4 hours at 2 or 3 different locations, and luckily the rain held off until we were packing up and heading back to the car. Competing with the sun however proved to be quite tricky. It was one of those typical British summer days where the sun was out ‘n’ about, but there was also plenty cloud. So no sooner had I got my exposure and flash settings right, then the sun would disappear. Rather than wait patiently, I’d then try to reconfigure for the changed light, get it down, and bam, the sun would come out again. It proved rather challenging all in all, but I learnt a lot.
The top image was shot under a bridge where the river and the footpath go underneath the Motorway. I placed Steph half in the shadows and used an SB900 on a large shoot through umbrella camera left to try to lift the shadows so there wasn’t too much contrast, and then used the Orbis as an on-axis fill just to add a little soft light to fill in the gaps.
Model shoot with off camera flash by Neil Alexander
For the second image, Steph was in the middle of a rather precarious & rickety footbridge over the river. I placed her with her back to the sun, and a large shoot through brolly with an SB pointing straight at her. Nothing very fancy, but it did the job.
For the bottom image, the sun was up high camera right, and there was next to no room for a light stand camera left, so I dug out a reflector and bungeed it to a tree. I had to improvise with a gorilla pod wrapped round the fence next to the tree to keep the reflector at exactly the right angle, and then used the Orbis on camera again to produce that lovely soft fill.
All in all, not a bad afternoon’s work….
Model shoot with off camera flash by Neil Alexander
As part of the A-level I’ve been embarked on, I’ve been working on a project based around the theme “Boundaries”. In light of the recent goings on with completely innocent photographers being tarnished with the “terrorist brush” (see numerous articles on the BJP for example – here, here or here), I chose to focus on the suspicious nature of people, and how often their snapshot vision of a scene is interpreted in a completely incorrect manner. So I decided that to try and highlight this flaw, I was going to shoot a series of potential crimes in progress, in various locations, with different models and lighting. I garnered a rather alarming looking list of possible offences, and tried to construct scenes in my head and then on paper for how I would like the result to look. These images are the final selection that I have submitted as part of my coursework.
105A Assault without Injury by Neil Alexander
56 Arson by Neil Alexander
28 Burglary in a dwelling by Neil Alexander
37.2 Aggravated Vehicle Taking by Neil Alexander
92B Possession of controlled drugs by Neil Alexander
19A Rape of a female by Neil Alexander
Up until now, pretty much everything I’ve done with off-camera flash has been done in full manual mode on the flashes and on the camera using Pocket Wizard Multimaxs. The reasoning behind this is that I wanted to fully grasp the concept of off-camera lighting and how ratios between the flashes and the ambient can affect the overall lighting of a given scene, and to at least begin to try to understand this behemoth of a topic before venturing into semi-automatic use using Nikon’s CLS system. So the other night I decided to try and give Nikon’s TTL flash system a whirl.
Actually getting the damn flashes to fire was quite a bit tricker than I’d anticipated. I knew that I had to switch the SU4 mode off, but I still couldn’t get both SB900s to fire. So I eventually reset both strobes, changed the channel on the D300 and TaDa!
So my two lucky subjects for this shoot, were two Brahma beer bottles that I’d had chilling in the freezer for the last couple of hours. I was particularly parched and this pair looked rather tasty – so I had to work quickly before my subjects vanished. Firstly I set the camera up on a tripod and composed my frame. I then dialed in an exposure that would completely eliminate all the ambient light (1/60 at F8 ISO200 if memory serves). I then set up a shoot through umbrella up to camera left pointing down onto the bottles, aimed slightly in front of them. As the edge of the umbrella was probably about 2 to 3 feet away from the bottles (I couldn’t get it any closer because of the edge of the table), I had to dial this one up to +3 stops.
This gave me a nice soft light cast over both bottles. I then felt that I needed a little kicker light off to the other side. So I attached my longest grid to another SB900, dialed this down to -1 stop and directed it at the necks of the bottles producing the little highlight that you see down the necks of the bottles.
All in all, quite an interesting experiment and the Nikon CLS system is definitely very easy to use, though I am glad that I invested all that time over the last few months in full manual as it made deciding on my exposures and flash levels much easier. And more importantly it meant that I could pop the top of one of those bottles much quicker than if I’d been using the Wizards and doing!!
After I’d finished at the previous shoot, and warmed up a little, I decided to try and find somewhere on the other side of the runways that would have the setting sun in the background. I found a couple of possibles, one in particular that stood out.
So I headed back there about an hour before sunset, only to be confronted by another blanket of fog as the sun descended. I had hoped for some streaks of light from the landing planes in this, but alas there were 2 unsuccessful attempts at landing, and then it all went very quiet at this end. There was plenty activity up the other end with planes taking off, but down here it was eerily quiet.
I tried shooting with one light, camera right directed through the frame, with the subject about a metre or 2 back from the gate, and a much wider field of view. However when the fog descended, the water particles in it seemed to cause the light to reflect my strobe, and I could see visible lines of flash across the image. Add to that, the gate post that each gate was attached to was painted in fluorescent orange paint and catching any part of these with a strobe in the fog just looked horrid. So I decided to replicate a car’s headlights. I initially thought why fart about setting up lights when I can just use the car lights themselves – no point re-inventing the wheel eh? Alas, that would have been just too easy – the car lights were way too bright and lit up the scene to the point of ridiculous. So it was 2 SB900s about 1 1/2 metres apart gridded, zoomed to 200mm, and directed straight at the gate from about 1/2 metre off the ground.
Again, I like the image, but it doesn’t have the ambiguity I’m looking for – it’s so dark, it just looks downright weird. I need to print it large, and canvas opinion.
Next I think I need to try this with a proper model! And a much better looking one….
