Tools for growing a photography business
Someone on Quora ( one of my favorite places) asks: “How can a novice photographer level up?”
I answered:
You need to be more clear first off. What do you mean ‘level up’? I’ll go with get better at photography and answer from there.
My three points to consider:
I like these lights. They feel well made and rugged. Like me.
And I don’t need to get a mortgage or sell my soul. Hopefully they’ll last too. Like me. (not my hair)
I bought the Goddox AB600BM, which is 100% manual, and softbox, to use on families, weddings and shoots like the one I’m showing you in this post.
It’s an amazing system. All radio signal controlled from the camera. Even though the 600 is not the TTL version, I prefer dialing in my output and figuring out exposure from the camera. It’s a fast, easy and versatile system.
One thing I do wish it had was the ability to switch to optical slave when needed. Why? If the radio thingie quits, I could manually fire these using an old school on camera flash or similar. I acquired a second “back up” transmitter…just in case.
The 200 I purchased back in May. Sorta my foray into this flash system.
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Back in April during the Lighting Mastermind we talked about the Goddox system, specifically the 200. For members HERE
Last week I dug deeper into using the newly acquired 600BM and showed you many examples from real paying gigs using real paying clients….families, executive…mostly families. That replay is HERE
Here’s a summary of the executive shoot. The set up…
The results:
Before shooting I had my assistant, Brent, aka the grunt, check on the reflection while firing the main.
These were shot outside, sorta in open shade. High speed synch with a very wide aperture around 2.8. Using the 85mm 1.8 Batis lens created a smooth and much desired background. Shutter speed? Who knows. It was plenty fast to let me hand hold and I simply “dialed in” the best speed for ambient light exposure. All possible with the high speed synch feature.
I love this system, plain and simple.
A few more from this shoot and a few other family shoots that I dug into during the July Lighting Mastermind presentation.
More to come…stay tuned.
Robert N. Provencher – Your Master Coach Marketer
“If you want to be a profitable and successful photographer, then study profitable and successful photographers.”
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Yours in photography,
Robert Provencher
Frequency separation is a photoshop strategy that seems all the rage. Some embrace it, others can do without.
Many, like myself, found it very complicated at first, however I wanted the “look” and end results it offered. Problem is, it seemed very complicated.
So, I deduced it to a fast, easy, simple and effective solution. Here it is.
I even created a photoshop action which I now use on almost all my sessions and reprints, from families, to executive, fairies, commercial, medieval portraits….you name it. It works!
A video:
The action I mentioned HERE
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Here’s some of the samples where I used this action:
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Some of the best photography lighting is also some of the most basic lighting.
Two lights, one on either side, both with the same, or near same output. Wash the subject with light.
Kinda flat, kinda boring….
We used to call this idiot lighting. Maybe we still do, as offensive as that sounds.
The truth is, there’s a time and place for it. And I use it often enough.
The key is to know when and where. For me, I use it when I need properly exposed images and I have very little time, and the lighting and scene available is tricky. A wedding is a great example. Or, in a small location shooting families at a house.
Likewise, when I’m shooting a large family, I don’t want to fuss, just get the job done, done right, I will use this lighting.
To rely on this lighting and only this lighting is very limiting however. I suppose this is where and when “idiot” applies. Being able to create portraits using a main and good use of shadows is key to being diverse and creative.
Here’s an example I will be showing in an upcoming Lighting Mastermind
(LIGHTING MASTERMIND REPLAYS ARE HERE FOR MEMBERS)….from a fall in-home session:
I will also use this lighting outdoors, during a wedding, especially for the formal portraits with the family.
These shots are there to document the family, and I often have little time.
Same exact lighting as above. We’re in open shade, but there was not enough area to light everyone evenly so I set up my two softboxes.
Sony A7Rii 85MM Batis lens at f4 ISO 100. Weak fill flash on camera to fire the two softboxes.
You can see the two main lights showing up in the specular catch lights.
Knowing when to use this lighting for your photography and best results is key. When I am on location I always bring enough, more than enough gear, to make sure if I need to set up this lighting I can do it. I need to stress the importance of not relying on this lighting exclusively for your photography. You risk creating images that are stale and predictable.
To be fair, there are some photo industries and photography markets where this lighting will work all the time, say for example, sporting tournament and the like or similar higher volume demands.
Yours in lighting,
Rob
A while back I hosted a webinar with John Hartman on his light painting style. Admittedly, one can’t cram too much into a 1.5 hour online webinar.
John puts on a three day workshop to teach this stuff. You can see more info on John’s light painting workshops HERE
That didn’t stop me from giving it a go. I thought about it long and hard, and came up with my own fast and easy light painting hack.
Here it is…..first thing I did was create a custom white balance based on the LED lights I was using. I don’t shoot raw, so, in theory, this should solve the problem.
Here’s the grey card set up I used to create a custom white balance.
I scoped out locations weeks prior to the shoot. I had the car ready to go, a 2006 limited edition Ford Shelby.
I decided on an area that looked industrial. I wanted something “Mad Max” like.
In our city their are mines everywhere. Problem is trespassing. More on that in a minute.
I set up the car before the sun dropped:
Shooting with my Sony A7Rii, 55MM Zeiss lens. Exposures to 30 seconds, ISO 100 F8
The camera is locked down and not to be touched during the shoot. Each exposure is fired by my assistant using the Play Mobile app made for the Sony system.
It works off my Android and does the job just fine, showing us a preview of each exposure should we need to inspect as we go along.
Here’s the area we decided on. Still light in the sky.
I started painting the ground under the car. You can see the sky show up when in fact is was quite dark to the human eye. This didn’t matter for these exposures since I was planning on only using the area under the car.
You can see blurred out parts of my body as I was moving around, “painting” the ground.
After two hours, over 40 exposures, a few mosquitoes and an encounter with the security guard-who told us to get out- this is what I created. Most of the magic happens in photoshop, as I brought in each image and erased only what I needed. I also added color to the light under the car.
It’s not perfect, and I had to sneak in one last 30 second exposure to paint the tires, with the security guard glaring over me (I whispered to my assistant..” quick, fire the camera one last time”..and I gave each tire about 10-15 seconds of light so I had something to work with in that area.) but it worked out nevertheless.
What I discovered was:
Yours in photography,
Robert Provencher
When I show up at the brides home for pre-ceremony photos, I look around for creative lighting and posing options. In this example, you can see the light reflecting in my assistant Danielle’s eyes. I spotted that right away, looked to my right and noticed the source. The same light is, in this shot, bouncing off the closet doors to my left.
The main source of this light. I spotted the bannister to the right as a possible option for some creative angles:
I knew I wanted to try some images here with the bride, and planned on shooting from several angles, since the main floor (upper right) would allow me a great place to shoot from. I love finding cool, unusual angles.
Here’s one angle, at eye level…notice the specular highlights in her eyes:
Another example, (the bride is in the exact same place, and this is one of many poses/ expressions) creative angle from up high, shooting just over the bannister:
The thing is, when shooting at a wedding, there’s isn’t a lot of time so I need to work fast, work with what I got and get maximum results.
Yea, yea, I could bring all sorts of studio lighting, or spend hours planning. I want the bride to enjoy the day, not have to sit for too long, and have fun in front of my camera…..
Yours in photography,
Robert Provencher