Shot on location in Oxfordshire using a studio head and portable battery pack.

Natural light shot on location. These were from a shoot with Charlotte last month where we shot both in my studio and on location. Thanks to Emma for doing the hair and make-up.

I did a shoot last month with a shop from Oxford called Booty. They have a shop full of beautiful designer clothes in Oxford. I have loads of photos to put up on here as ever but I have several projects on the go at the moment so not much time!

I go to Thailand for a month on the 15th June. Before that I have a website to finish, a major photography project for Oxford univeristy and 2 summer balls to shoot! Not to mention the mountain of photos I have to edit and other smaller shoots. Fun, but busy times! I will try and get some more new pictures up soon!

I recently photographed a set of photos for an Oxford based band Invisible Vegas. I really enjoyed the project because the band gave me quite a free reign on the kind of shots they wanted. I found a great location in Oxfordshire by a river and with an old barn in the grounds. For this shot I used Elinchrom mono-block heads plugged into a portable battery pack. This gave me the freedom to be away from the usual mains power restrictions. I used two flashes to the left and right of the camera and the standard 45 degrees reflectors on the strobes.

Getting the background right meant that the timing of the shot was important as I wanted to capture it at dusk to get a ‘moody’ sky. I used a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second to retain good detail in the clouds and sky. The logs were already there, we just moved them around a little to provide small platforms for each of the band members.

After the outside shoot we moved into the old warehouse to get some closer shots of the band, showing their faces. This shot was lit with three lights, one above the camera through a white umbrella and then two strobes behind and to the side to give rim lights.

This shot was taken with a shoot through umbrella and then a flash behind the band members which creates a back light to the band, and also create the shadow coming out from their feet.

This shot was lit again with two rim lights and one main light above the camera.

Here’s a set-up shot of the band after we had finished the shoot. You can see the two rim lights to the left and right of the picture and the main light high and in the middle but without the umbrella which was attached for the shoot. As we were working inside and had access to the mains power I didn’t have to use a battery pack for these later shots.

Invisible Vegas will next be playing the 02 Academy, Oxford on the 27th May 2009.

I used to do a lot of gig photography, it was always good to go see bands for free and take photos at the same time. I haven’t done so much since moving back to Oxford, but I still do the odd gig. One of the guys I used to ride bikes with is now in a band asked me to do some gig photos of them and some shots of the band.

The venue was the Oxford 02 academy, a venue I have been to a lot before but never to take photos.

The lighting as usual seemed to involve vast amounts of red light and not a lot else… I have tried to show the more interesting, differently lit shots on here, but I have hundreds of pure red shots from the night.

I will be putting up the band group pictures in the week, we had a really cool location to shoot them at so can’t wait to put them up!

It’s always fun to experiment with new ideas and styles. A local Oxford make-up artist and I did a test with a model recently to try out some interesting and different make-up ideas.

To add another element to the shoot I introduced a silk cloth which I asked the model to flick across her face. It’s quite hit and miss but if you carefully time your shots and are patient you can get some really interesting photographs. In this shot you can see that the face is in focus but the silk is not, this keeps the attention on the model.

After doing several shots like this I then dropped the silk from above the model’s head to give a different effect.

Again it is really just repeating the same process with many poses to get photos which work!

The make up being applied by Emma before the shoot

The last make-up look was quite bold so I wanted a strong look from the model to go with it. All these shots were lit with one  Elinchrom 250 mono-block and a shoot through umbrella, a white reflector to the right of the model and  a silver reflector below the models face to acheive a very even, flawless skin tone.

Liam ‘Lima’ Eltham needed some photos to go on his BMX sponsor’s websites; Fox Racing. Thanks to a bit of scouting by me and some of my BMX friends a fantastic location near Oxford was found. A small lake in a nature reserve was used as the location. I choose to do the shoot just before sunset so that the sky, balanced with flash would be a beautiful dark blue colour.

There was a rock in the lake which was just below water level which gives the effect of Liam floating just above the water! I used 3 flashes to light Liam and make him stand out from the background. This image was shot on the Sigma 10-20mm, this allows you to get very close to the subject and get lots of the sky in the shot.

All the pictures are also linked to Flickr, just click on them to visit the Flickr page to post comments on them.

The reflections produced were almost a perfect copy of the scene which really adds interest to the image. The rest of the shoot was shot with a Canon 70-200mm F/2.8

After a while to try some different ideas I got some of my friends to throw rocks into the lake at Liam! Liam is a tough guy and didn’t mind the freezing water, too much… The flash freezes the water droplets perfectly.

The Fox jacket kept Liam warm, but his shoes were pretty soaked by this point!

Setup shots

Lighting diagram

Here’s a set-up shot of the lighting for one of the shots. Each blue circle is where a flash was placed. The Elinchrom skyport radio triggers allow me to be a good distance away fromt the subject, but not worry about trailing wires to fire the flashes.

The lighting diagram shows the set-up for the below shot.

This was the photograph that was picked to be used on the Fox Team page, it can be seen here:

http://www.foxhead.com/us/bmx/team/?id=15056

I used a strong rim light  for this shot to separate Liam from the background. [A rim light is the light that produces the white line along the left side of his body]. The water droplets are frozen by the fast flash duration, as is the motion of his body making Liam appear to float. It was a fun shoot, a big thanks to Liam for being open to trying ideas!

Feel free to ask any more question in the comments section below.

A few weeks ago I had a fun fashion shoot with Caleb in the streets just outside of the centre of Oxford. This shot was lit with one Canon 580ex flash through a shoot through umbrella to the camera left, and then a Vivitar 285 also to the left but further back as a rim light. I used a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second to reduce the background light as much as possible, just leaving the moody lighting setup.

To try and explain this here’s a little lighting diagram:

Caleb bridge photography lighting setup shot

The flash Speedlites were trigger by Elinchrom Skyports, shot on Canon 40D.

I used one Canon 580ex flash through a shoot through umbrella to light this one. I really meant to take some setup shots for this shoot, but I forgot. I really need to remember to do that more often! The flash was to the camera right. Anyway here’s another flash lighting diagram.

Caleb photography lighting setup shot

I used a slightly longer shutter speed of 1/100 of a second this time to allow a little more background ambient light to come through and light the pillars around Caleb, yet retaining the moody feel to the photo.

So this is the first time I have posted lighting diagrams, feel free to leave comments about them.