Video how to use BlogME

Posted by kevin focht on Dec 21, 2011 in How to's and manuals, Retouching | 0 comments

Wanna see more go to the BlogME page

Kick aXtion Palette in action

Posted by kevin focht on Dec 17, 2011 in How to's and manuals, Retouching | 0 comments

Using studio strobes outside

Posted by kevin focht on Dec 14, 2011 in How to's and manuals, Lighting | 0 comments

Hey everyone. How’s your holiday shopping going? This is a busy time of year with all the shopping and busy work at the studio. Making sure all of your orders are in on time. Even with all the busy work, you still need time to practice and shoot.

I just got a couple of strip light soft boxes the other day, and was shooting some nudes with them in studio which turned out amazing. Later that day, the sky was looking kind of cool and I grabbed Chris Hurtt my studio mate, and went outside with my Bowens moonlights and their battery pack with the strip lights to just play. I wanted to see what would happen with these strip lights outside and how well I could balance the background to the foreground.

The first thing you need to know is what the sync speed is for you camera. We can’t use any high speed sync because these are studio strobes. The D3 syncs at 1-250th of a second, so we know that the shutter speed is going to be 1/250th. From here we need to get out base exposure from the background.

My exposure for this shot is f16. Remember we already know what our shutter speed is 1/250.

So now I just need to set up my stones and get the correct exposure for our subject Chris.

So I set up my strobes to get a meter reading of F16.

So now we have an exposure of f16 on both at 1/250 of a second. What do we do if we want the background lighter?

At this point we know if we open up the lens to F11 the overall shot will be lighter and we would have to reset the power on the stones to get the correct exposure. That would be a lot of work, or more work than is need.

Why not just use a slower shutter speed! This is shot with the same settings as the other one, except we changed our shutter speed to 1/125th of a second. That makes the background a stop brighter, but Chris is still the same because he is being lit by the strobe and the power output and the F-stop didn’t change.

So now we use a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second and get the background another stop brighter. It really is that simple.

I can’t wait to go out and use this type of lighting on some sport models. Now i’m not saying Chris isn’t a sporty sort of guy, but just not the type I want to shoot

Get out there and try something new. We did this and it was close to freezing outside, so you can get out there too!

Kevin

Always Keep Practicing!

Posted by kevin focht on Dec 2, 2011 in How to's and manuals | 0 comments

I tell students and other photographers all the time, that the easiest ways to get better is to practice. That means shooting whenever and however you can.

One of the things when you have been shooting as long as I have ( am I really that old?), is to push yourself to practice. I get in a rut like everyone else. It seems these days, we spend so much time in front of the computer, that we forget to go out and shoot for the joy of it.

Two days ago, I heard on the weather that we were going to have a weeks stretch of 50 degree sunny weather. This is Oregon, and that doesn’t happen very often. So I called the local modeling agency and set up a bathing suit shoot at the beach. I wanted to test out my new Bowens lighting and battery system. What better way to do it, than a model at the beach. I booked the model, packed my gear, and drove the 2 hours to the beach.

We got there, and the weather was amazing. The model didn’t get too cold, and I shot about an hour, and then got in the car and drove the 2 hours back. Am I crazy for driving the 4 hours round trip, for a one hour shoot? Maybe, but I got some amazing shots, got out of the studio and I also got to practice.

Sometimes it takes a little “crazy” to practice, but then again I have been called worse a lot more!

Here is the shot of the day!

Video Quick Tip – Retouch Palette

Posted by kevin focht on Nov 25, 2011 in How to's and manuals, Retouching, Video Quick Tips | 0 comments

How to load the Free Pricing Calculator

Posted by kevin focht on Nov 23, 2011 in How to's and manuals | 0 comments

I have gotten a couple of people on pc wanting to know how to load the pricing calculator.

The first thing you need is Adobe Air, as it is an Air app. This was the easiest way to make it work on both pc and mac.

You can download if for free here http://get.adobe.com/air/

Once you have Air loaded, just click on the pricing calculator installer and you are good to go!

Kevin