One of the things that I enjoy is making the most out of a location, very often you can find a surprisingly different array of backgrounds in a relatively small space. Last week I spent a few hours with Becky at her house with the idea of working the stairs and landing and coming up with several different looks. I decided I would shoot all the sets with a single Arri lamp, the 650 watt fresnel. We did stray from the stairs on the last set as I wanted to capture a few boudoir images and they were better suited to the bedroom.

The beauty with the Arri is the way you can control the quality of the light by focussing the lens, the other great thing for me is using the difference in the colour temperature of the light compared to daylight in a creative way.

I asked Becky to find a romantic evening dress to use on the stairs and she appeared in a stunning pale blue pleated evening gown. The first set was shot with the Arri on the landing angled down on Becky who was standing on a half landing. The mixture of tungsten light from the Arri and the daylight that was backlighting her gives an interesting effect, it reminds me of early colour cinema. I could have gelled the Arri to match the daylight but that wasn’t the effect I wanted. I can’t remember if I shot it on auto white balance or tungsten but as I was shooting in RAW it didn’t matter too much as I wanted to tweak the colour balance in Lightroom later. It is shot on my Nikon D3 with the 85mm f1.8 at f2.0, this lens is one of my favourites for portraits.

The next shot of Becky in the window is lit in a similar way to the first but as there is far more ambient light the whole image has taken on a more dramatic blue cast.

Next I turned 180 degrees and shot back on the stairs. I felt these would look good in black and white as it gave a slightly more classic Hollywood feel that suited the dress. Lighting was still from the Arri, this time I tweaked the focus to emphasise the shadow a little.

A quick change into something completely different, Latex. We went back next to the window for this one. A slightly different approach in post processing and putting a light rug on the floor has changed the atmosphere from the previous shots with the blue gown.

Finally we shot some boudoir in the bedroom, the key light once again was the Arri from camera right and the fill from left was daylight from a window. The different colour temperatures is again quite noticeable here and gives and interesting effect. This was shot with the Nikon D3 and a 50mm f1.4 lens at f1.7. ISO was 1100 which gave a shutter speed of 1/2000th.

The post processing on all these images was done in Photoshop CS5, I use several different plugins including Portraiture by Imagenomic and a few actions that help with dodging and burning and sharpening. The toning I have adapted from some techniques taught me by a US photographer, if you are interested in how this is done they are part of my Cinematic Lighting Styles workshop which I run at Village Studios, Bexley.

Hi all, I am back with Jon and Lisa for another fantastic weekend of workshops on the 25th and 26th of February 2012.

We have now split the “off camera flash” course into 2 and renamed it Speedlights 1 and Speedlights 2. This is because there is so much you can do with small camera strobes that I was struggling to fit it all into one workshop. So on February 25th we will be running Speedlights 1 and our model is the fantastic Kate Errington.

Kate Errington

On Sunday 26th it’s Studio 1 with another sensational model Fiona York. Studio 1 is probably the most popular workshop that we run and serves as a fantastic introduction to working with people in a studio.

Fiona York

As always we will be gathering in the Coach and Horses on the Saturday evening for a bit of a natter and a few drinks.

You can book on-line now HERE

This is what a previous student said about the workshops:

I’m writing to give some feedback on the Studio Flash workshop I attended earlier in the year.

I thought the class was very well structured and kept at a good pace. My group was made up of a mixture of experience and ability but we were all familiar with our camera’s, which was great, as we were able to make good use of the time and I do think this course is better aimed at people past the beginner stage.

It helped me gain a knowledge of what was achievable, how to achieve it and most invaluable, what sort of gear I needed, as my first purchases.

Since then, I’ve brought myself some flash guns, brolly’s and reflectors and with the notes I made during the workshop, I’ve surprised myself with the  great results I’ve managed to get on my own, at home.

It was ‘exactly’ what I needed to get me started.

Thanks once again

After seeing the forecast for the weekend I thought it would be a good idea to squeeze in a snow shoot. After a quick phone call to my friend and model, Becky, we kept our fingers crossed that Sunday would still have snow and as a bonus some sunshine.

Becky lives around 30 minutes drive from me, it involves a road which runs across the top of the Wolds. At home on Sunday morning it was thick fog but Becky assured me the sun was shining at her house where we were planning to shoot. So after a foggy drive along the Wolds I dropped down into lovely sunshine glistening on the even layer of snow that covered the fields next to the road.

On nearly all the shoots I do with Becky she is responsible for the styling and her make-up. I said I thought something a bit fashion would be good and as it turned out she came up with three very different looks which we shot in about 2 hours.

The first was this set, strong sunlight was filled with some flash from an SB900 fired through a brolly via Nikon CLS system.

Andrew Appleton Photography

Second set was a lovely vintage wedding dress. This was shot with just a touch of fill flash on camera, I wanted to get the strong backlight to shine through the dress showing some of the detail in it. I have processed this set in several different ways as you will see in the slideshow at the end of the post.

Andrew Appleton Photography

Finally and in complete contrast we shot some red latex. It was absolutely freezing for this type of shoot so I had to work fast. The sun had started to drop so the lighting was becoming quite directional which I thought suited the outfit by creating strong high lights on the surface. These were mainly just ambient light although I popped a touch of fill from the on camera Nissin Di866 to create a few extra high lights on the latex.

Andrew Appleton Photography

Back in November I had to take my wife to a conference in York so I thought I would spend my time taking a few photos around the city. I’m not really one for urban landscapes so I thought I would try to get some nice editorial style images of a girl doing a bit of shopping. I had originally envisaged an overcast Winter’s day with the warm glow of shop lights in the back ground. As it happened the weather was bright sunshine and it was the day of the Civil Servants strike so the whole of York was full of school children on a day’s holiday and local government workers marching and handing out leaflets.

But, back to the beginning. Before the day I had to find a suitable subject to photograph, ideally I wanted someone local to the area who might know the best places to shoot. A couple of castings calls on Purestorm and Model Mayhem and I got applications from about 6 suitable models. Sarah seemed to be exactly what I was looking for, great looks and she lived in York. After an exchange of emails and a quick telephone call everything was organised, Sarah works in the beauty department of a department store and was going to have her make-up professionally done prior to the shoot and as an added bonus she would bring a friend to help carry stuff and hold lights and reflectors.

We started about mid-day on the city wall and although the shots came out OK it was very bright and contrasty. On to the old shopping area and around the cathedral we got some better lighting and a bit more atmosphere. After a quick lunch (the girls insisted on McDonalds!) we headed for the river. On the way through a lovely park Sarah got accosted by three squirrels! They were incredibly tame and I managed to grab a few shots of them.

Andrew Appleton Photography - Sarah in York

Andrew Appleton Photography - Sarah in York

Andrew Appleton Photography - Sarah in York

After the park we took some shots by the river which I was rather pleased with then as a complete contrast went to the railway station. It was a great day and Sarah was lovely to work with, this was only her second shoot and I have just found out that she is in the running for Miss Harrogate so I wish lots of luck with that.

The March play is Leonard H Caddy’s Jekyll and Hyde, directed by Brian Cliffe. I have shot promotional material for Brian before, a few years ago he directed Amadeus and managed to arrange Gainsborough Old Hall as the location. The hall is a preserved medieval manor house with many later features so provided an ideal backdrop for Amadeus.

Andrew Appleton Photography

For Jekyll and Hyde, Brian and his wife Christine came up with the Museum of Lincolnshire Life, situated in Lincoln, with room sets that pains takingly reproduced different periods in minute detail.

We shot in the dispensary, a Victorian kitchen and a parlour. With eight actors, the director and his production team plus me and my assistant Vicki it was quite an entourage to troop around the museum from one location to another. As it was January it was reasonably quiet but the museum staff allowed us to shoot after the public had left which was extremely helpful, location work with a big cast is hard enough without having to deal with interested on lookers.

I am going to to be writing in detail the full concept and technical details of the shoot, including lighting and post processing in the future for a new book. In the mean time I would like to say a huge thanks to the Lincolnshire Life Museum staff for all their help and to Bryan and Christine for making my life easy and not only coming up with the concept but arranging such a great location. I must also thank (sorry for the Oscar style speach!) my fantastic assitant Vicki who made sure we left with all the kit we came with, juggled light stand and modyfiers and calmed a rather nervous member of the museum staff each time a rather fragile glass ornament wobbled!

I’ll leave you with a couple of images which should be in the local press in the next few weeks.

Andrew Appleton Photography

Andrew Appleton Photography

With today’s hi ISO cameras and vibration control lenses you can reduce camera shake by maintaining a relatively fast shutter speed. A good rule of thumb for hand holding is to take the focal length of your lens and place a one over it, for example a 200mm lens becomes 1/200 and this is roughly the slowest shutter speed you can hand hold without getting blur. Obviously vibration control can add a few stops to this.

In many situations it is impossible to find something to lean on, or to put up a tripod, if you need to use and even slower shutter speed than the above quick calculation gives you. Here is a tip that is used by many working pros to reduce camera shake in those situations. Set your camera to fire in continuous mode and instead of taking single shots make 3 or more exposures, the first and last are more susceptible to blur as you are pressing and then releasing the shutter button respectively, but, between those you are likely to find at least one sharp image. This is not going to work with flash unless you have a very fast re-cycle time, plus if you are using flash it is unlikely you are going to be suffering from camera movement as the flash speed will freeze the image.

This is really useful in situation like weddings where use of flash is restricted and you are working at slow shutter speeds, hand-held with a reasonable long lens.

Another thing I find helpful is to hold my breath while pressing the shutter.

The workshop is Studio 3, check the training menu for full details of the content and on-line booking form. Only £99 per person for a full day’s workshop including a light lunch. We have a maximum of 6 students so you will get plenty of shooting time.

Our model for the workshop is Cassie Jade

Working with gels

Ringflash

2 Fashion set-ups

Andrew Appleton Photography

I thought I would share how I shoot these productions, I’ve probably shot about 100 shows now including drama, musicals and dance shows. The main thing to remember is you can’t use flash, the theatres don’t like it and it tends to kill the atmosphere created by the stage lights.

I always shoot with two cameras, one with a 35mm f1.8 to get the full width of the stage in and the second with an 80-200 f2.8 zoom mounted on a monopod. Depending on the theatre and the type of production I may wander about or find a seat fairly central to the stage and about 8 rows back, if I can I’ll put the 35mm on a tripod but that is not always possible.

I have both cameras on aperture priority and vary between spot and 3d matrix metering, I also constantly adjust the exposure compensation. You tend to get used to certain lighting scenarios, for example if someone is in a follow spot on a dark stage 3d matrix will invariable over expose as it tries to average out the dark and light areas in the scene. For scenes like this I use spot metering on the subject’s face.

When I started shooting in the theatre a few years back my old Minolta 7d would only shoot at a max of 800 ISO without getting horrendous noise, these days I regularly shoot at 3200ISO on my Nikon D7000 and it is quite acceptable. I use the auto ISO function with a maximum ISO of 3200 and shutter speed of 1/125.

I used to worry about white balance, these days I just leave it on auto and the camera does an acceptable job of rendering the lighting pretty much as I remember it.

Finally, I now shoot JPEG as I find the camera does a very good job of pulling up the shadows if you use the dynamic range function plus I can turn the images round much faster, they are often needed the same night by the press.

I’ll post a few examples from tonight’s show tomorrow and maybe you’ll get inspired to approach a few theatres and try it out.

UPDATE: Some examples from the show

Louth Playgoers production of Babes in the wood

Louth Playgoers production of Babes in the wood

Louth Playgoers production of Babes in the wood

Louth Playgoers production of Babes in the wood

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

If you are shooting classic formal shots then it is a good idea to get some safe shots in the can (well the digital version of the can!) before trying any dynamic angles. Here are the 3 guides, and remember these are guides not rules.

1. Full length, camera should be at the subject’s waist level

2. 7/8 shots, normally from the calf up, camera should be level with the subject’s chest

3. Headshot, camera should be level with the subject’s eyes

As I said these are only guides, not rules.