Benen Huntley Photography

A Family Shoot & Overcoming Unexpected Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Mon, 16 May 2011 16:13:00 +0000

I had the opportunity to shoot a really lovely family on Sunday afternoon. The group consisted of three sisters, their father, and the eldest daughter's partner. I used two speedlights and only one lighting setup for the entire shoot to make things simple and to work efficiently.

The problems I encountered:
Firstly, I thought that there would only be the three sisters, three is easier to manage than five. And easier to light with speedlights too.
Secondly, the room I had to work with was an almost empty bedroom...way too small for comfort!
Thirdly, the youngest sister really did not want to have her photograph taken.

My solutions:

First of all, I decided to use a simple cross-lighting setup for the shoot. The options I chose between were either the setup I used, or two lights from the front, one from either side of the camera. Before the shoot I committed to using the cross lighting setup to give the shots a little more edge and some separation from the black backdrop.
The lighting diagram to the right is roughly how it was set up. Looking at it again now, the bare strobe was rotated more clockwise, pointing towards the left side, rather than at the other light.
The black backdrop was just a large black cloth, pinned up to a wardrobe on one side and a light stand on the other. I really would have liked to increase the distance from the group to the background as the rear light was hitting the cloth and lighting it, which meant that I had to draw the blacks down in Photoshop for each image.
I also would have liked to have more distance between the rear light and the group so that it was pointing more towards me rather than across the frame. This would have given the entire group a bit of an edge on their left sides and also would not have been so harsh on the person closest to it. Also, in some shots, it caused a shadow from one person to fall on to the next.
Lastly, due to the small working distance, I was forced to use my 14-24mm lens for a lot of the shots, which caused their heads to vary in size in the photograph due to their varying distances to the camera.
It would have been nice to stick with just my 50mm lens and move forwards or backwards rather than switching between lenses over and over but you have to work with what you've got!

As a whole, I'm very happy with the results that I ended up with, and I really hope that the family is too. I'm looking forward to getting some feedback from them. We had plans to head to a local reserve and get some outdoor shots, which would have been fantastic but the weather was not in our favour. I ended up snapping off about 75 photos in around 40 minutes after I had the lighting set up and I supplied them with 45.

Thanks for taking the time to read my blog!

Benen

Here are a couple more from the shoot:

Sydney Harbour Bridge & Opera House

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Mon, 02 May 2011 04:05:00 +0000

On our trip to Sydney, I had in mind that I wanted at least one opportunity to get a decent landscape shot to take back home. Every day but one was heavily overcast with little or no visible sunset so I thought my hopes were smashed. Even so, I headed down to the Darling Harbour Wharf to try to get something anyway.

I was hoping to be in position just before sunset but the ferry's were running extremely slow and I timed myself badly and ended up missing the sunset by about ten minutes. It was dismal anyway and my morale was down. I got off at the Luna Park Wharf and walked about 50 meters from it to get to a position where the Harbour Bridge and Opera House were not obstructed by the wharf.

By this time the sun had well and truly set and the scene, to my eyes, was quite dark. I set up my tripod and framed the scene. I took about ten photos with slightly varying compositions and exposure times. This exposure happened to be about two stops above what my camera was reading as correct.

I set my ISO to 100 to get the cleanest image that I could, after all, shutter speed was irrelevant as long as the scene was exposed correctly. I set my aperture to f2.8 to get the fastest shutter speed I could to begin with so that I could work from there. The shutter speed was 8 seconds. I then stopped down my aperture two stops to f5.6 to get a longer shutter speed to get the soft glassy effect on the water, and to get a slightly sharper image.
Since I stopped my lens down two stops, I needed to open up the shutter speed two stops to compensate. One stop would be 16 seconds, two stops was 32 seconds. My camera only times itself up to 30 seconds so I had to set it to bulb and count via a watch. I covered the viewfinder to stop any stray light getting through and pressed the shutter to start the exposure. When the 32 seconds were up, I pressed the shutter again to stop the exposure.
I could probably have just used the camera's timed 30 second exposure as there is very little difference between 30 and 32 seconds. The image would have been fractionally darker (about 6.5 percent) and easily adjusted afterwards. But I like to be as precise as I can.

I hope you like it! Please send in any comments or questions you have, I'd love to hear from you.

Benen

Think Tank Sling-O-Matic 20 Review

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:57:00 +0000

I recently purchased this shoulder bag as an upgrade to my small LowePro Nova 2 AW to accommodate my expanding kit. In store I checked out the 10, 20 and 30 options of this Think Tank design and opted for the middle size option.

Read on for my review of this interestingly designed bag.

Choosing a gear bag is one of the most difficult tasks for me. When choosing a body, you have a budget that massively narrows down your choices. If you already have a particular brand of lens in your bag, then you are left with only one or two options of camera. Similarly, with lenses, you have a focal length in mind, and then decide how much you want to spend.

Not the same with choosing a bag. There are a ridiculous amount of styles from backpacks, to shoulder bags to hard sided transport options. Firstly I decided on a criteria.

A bag that could accommodate my current kit with a little room for growth.
Something that gave me quick and easy access to my gear.
Something relatively comfortable that I could carry for a decent period of time.
Something high quality.

Ease and speed of access is important to me as I often work shooting events on weekends. The ability to quickly grab a different lens was important to me which pretty much ruled out any backpack options, leaving me with shoulder bags and sling bags. I had a good look at both and found that a shoulder bag would be a bit of a hindrance as they are difficult to keep out of the way, especially when I'm frequently moving.

This left me with shoulder bags. There are a few well known and high quality manufacturers of camera bags currently on the market and available in Australia but I have always had a bit of a thing for Think Tank. I don't know why. From viewing their products over time, they just seem to put so much research into what photographers want in a bag and have so many great offerings.

What drew me to the Sling-O-Matic was the fact that it can be placed on either shoulder, so as one gets a bit sore and tired, it is very easy to swap sides without adjusting any straps. It uses a very simple design that works perfectly well to quickly swap the bag from shoulder to shoulder. The second major plus to this bag is that it swings around onto your chest, remaining upright for super easy, quick and secure access to your gear. There is no worry of any gear falling from the bag as it is stabilised against your body and the zip is on top.

There are full side pouches on both sides to slide in something large and flat (the Sling-O-Matic 30 has a padded laptop pouch,) and there is also a business card holder and all of the zips are very heavy duty which is important to me as they are the most common cause of camera bag failure.

It fits my two flashes, camera body, 50mm, 14-24mm and 70-200mm lenses and extra AA batteries with room to spare. This bag is not perfect though. There are two major gripes I have with this bag.

Firstly, it is just a fraction too short to comfortably fit my camera with 70-200mm attached pointing down into the bag. If placed in the center, it will zip up, if a little tight, but an extra half an inch to an inch of vertical room would have made all the difference to me. Secondly, the buckle that joins the shoulder strap to the bag can get very uncomfortable for me if the bag is worn for an extended period of time. A simple fix for this is to wrap the buckle in something soft. Others may not have the same issue. I may just be unlucky with my personal dimensions.

All in all, I'm very happy with my purchase and would highly recommend this bag to anyone looking for a very well built, thoughtfully designed camera bag to carry a moderate amount of equipment.

Benen

A Couples Shot

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 04:06:00 +0000

I spent the Easter break in Sydney with my folks and wife and am now sadly back at home. We have pretty much no shots of us as a couple taken since our wedding day so we decided to head into Sydney's Hyde Park while we were over there and see if we could get something that we both liked.
I'm fairly happy with the result that we got and the only real part of the image that I don't like is the leaf over Siobhan's feet. It's hard when you are not behind the camera.

The shot was taken quite early in the morning using two lights. The first light is the sun! First of all, I adjusted the settings on my camera to give me a slightly under-exposed background image, about a stop and a half I think. This gives you a darker background than the subject you are lighting and immediately draws focus to them. I did this by putting my camera into manual mode and pointing it roughly to where the shot was going to be taken. The next step is to adjust your shutter speed and aperture until you are happy. I shot this at 1/250th, f2.8, iso400 and I think the flash was at 1/8th power. I then handed my camera over to my Dad to take the shots.

I could have dropped the ISO down two stops to a setting of 100 to get a cleaner image and then adjusted my shutter speed and flash to compensate. This would have given me settings of 1/60th of a second to get the background back to the same exposure but dropping the ISO would also have dropped the power of my flash by two stops so I would have had to adjust it up to 1/2 power to get the exact same image. ISO 400 still gives a very clean image though

It's hard when you're not taking the shots yourself. You are not able to just check the back of the camera after each shot and adjust accordingly but the whole set of images from set-up to pack-up probably took about 15 minutes.

In the end, we ended up with a great shot of us both in a beautiful location to go with the rest of the photos we took over our Easter break.

Thanks for reading!

Benen

Ben Brown

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 16:11:00 +0000

Everyone interested in photography has their own list of artists that they look up to or admire and UK based Ben Brown is one of mine. Ben is young, very talented and has his own unique style that defines his work. He specialises in on location portraiture and seems to have an endless supply of amazing shoot locations (which makes me hate him at the same time!)

I've followed his work for quite a while now on flickr and have also started reading his new blog. I've started gathering a collection of my favourite blogs and adding them to my iPhone rss reader for a great supply of photography goodness that I can read, learn from and steal ideas from whenever I have spare time.

The vast majority of Ben's Flickr work is shot with only his camera, speedlites and the occasional light modifier. This is one thing that really grabbed me as it is no different from the equipment I use. It gives me something to strive for but something that is within my reach if I apply myself and remain persistent. Having goals and a specific vision of what you want is a million times better than just wanting to get better, with no real direction. Last year he started a 365 day project where he took at least one frame every single day. Something I would really love to do myself, what a fantastic way to get as familiar and comfortable with your gear as possible. Added to that, self portraits filled out the majority of that project which proves that there really is no excuse for not being able to do something like this.

Ben is pretty much where I would one day like to be. Working as a photographer is a bit of a dream job for us isn't it? What could be a better job than doing what you love so much?

I really urge any readers to check out his work, and don't just flick through his pictures and say, they're cool... Have a good look at them over a period of time. I found that I used to just flick over an image that I saw anywhere and then spent a lot of time reading about it. In particular, on strobist.blogspot.com. Now, I always study an image first, try to figure out how it was lit myself, study the composition. What makes it a good image? Then I will read on and see what I can learn. I think that surrounding yourself with an abundance of great work, showing your brain what looks good, over and over again, starts to train it to automatically know how to create your own amazing images. One day...

Ben Brown's Website

Ben Brown's Flickr page

Ben Brown's Blog

Graffiti Background

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:31:00 +0000

There is a really cool looking brick wall of graffiti not far from our house that we discovered quite a few months ago. We have had our eye on it ever since and planned to get up early on a Sunday morning at around sunrise when the streets are nice and quiet. So, this morning, we crawled out of bed at 6am and headed there to see what we could do with it! Since we discovered the wall, the artwork has changed a few times and at present, the entire wall is one big mural. As you can see from the included setup shot, there is a creepy looking character in the middle but some great colourful art that works nicely as a background to the right and at the bottom centre.

My biggest issue with portraiture at the moment is posing the subject. I realised I have been limiting myself to mostly to head and shoulders or tighter crops because I have absolutely no idea what to do with arms and legs! I hunted around for a while for a decent book on posing but no-one seemed to be able to recommend anything decent. The best recommendation I received was to grab a few magazines and start ripping out things you like. Keep them in a folder and replace them as you find better ones. So that's exactly what I did. I finally started paying attention to what looked good and why and also what I liked and didn't like. Some poses I have come across even in high quality magazines look awkward and uncomfortable but there are some great ones to be found.
Admittedly, my wife turned out to be quite the little poser all on her own but I felt that I was able to suggest ideas and alter the poses that she pulled out so that they looked more pleasing from behind the camera. This is obviously something that is going to take a great massive amount of practice, not just a few attempts but I've made a start.

Some poses we thought would look good looked terrible, terribly awful or terribly cheesy, take your pick. But some just looked cool. It's a great credit to me that we are so comfortable together though, as I think it would be a lot more difficult with a stranger, but that's something I'm going to have to work on. Getting comfortable with the subject and getting them comfortable with you and the camera.

The lighting setup here involved two lights. Both on light stands (actually one was on my tripod as I need another bracket to mount my second strobe onto a stand.) To camera left, there is an SB900 fired through a shoot through umbrella, and to camera right there is a bare SB800 fired back towards her and spread across the wall.
The basic setup was the same for all of the shots that I took, I just varied the lighting distance for some of the different poses.
For the first shot up top, the umbrella is in nice and close, about a meter (3-4 feet) from Siobhan. The closer that you can get it in the softer the light will look. The bare flash was also moved in closer.
In the second shot, the umbrella is positioned about 2 metres (6 or 7 feet) away from her, slightly higher than her head and angled down at her face. This distance allowed the light to cover a good amount of her body but it is still relatively soft as you can see from the shots. The bare flash at camera right is at about head height, zoomed to 105mm for the tightest beam it could achieve.
Thinking back, I could have swapped the two flashes over and use the SB900 as the bare flash as it is capable of producing a much narrower beam but I am very happy with the results I achieved regardless.

In Photoshop, I did quite a bit more work than in the previous post. I used the dodge tool to bring up her face just a tad and her jeans and boots to a level that I was happy with. I also added a vignette to my four favourite shots from the series to center the viewers attention as the background, although cool, is extremely busy.

Thanks for reading my blog and I really hope you enjoyed it!
I am very much looking forward to hearing some feedback.

Until next time,

Benen

My Wife

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 12:14:00 +0000

I thought I'd start out with a portrait of my wife that I took two days ago. She's so patient with me and always willing to take an active part in my photography, including coming up with new ideas and giving honest good feedback. I also thought this would be a good start as it is a very simple one light shot. I've included a setup shot below to make it clear how the picture was captured and I will try to do this in as many posts as I can.

The lighting is a Nikon SB800 flash fired through a white umbrella. I used a light stand positioned at the bottom corner of the bed. With a boom attached to the top, I was able to position the flash slightly to the left and just out of the top of the frame, pointing down at her face. If you do not have a stand with a boom you could just as easily have a friend hold the flash and umbrella in the correct position. This can also be easier as it is very quick to have them adjust the lighting but you must work quickly as it can get very tiring to hold!
The white sheet underneath her did a great job of bouncing light back up at her face and filling in all of the shadows. I took the shot with my 50mm lens at 1/250th, f5.6. Without the white sheet, another reflective source or a fill light would have been needed to stop the shadow areas from going completely black.
My biggest problem with this shot was the space that I was constricted in. Getting Siobhan in the frame, along with the headboard with such little working room meant that I had to be quite careful, It's also very important to keep any lines in a background straight (see the vertical line at the left of the headboard.) There is another beam that goes across the top but it would have been impossible to include both the horizontal and vertical lines without one of them being crooked because of the close working quarters. So it was important to me to keep at least one of them out of every photograph I took, as well as making sure that the included one was straight. I'm always very fussy with lines, if they're not straight then the photo just looks a little odd to me, I always notice it immediately.
You really don't need to have a lot of equipment to get good quality photographs or to get creative. A simple reflective surface like a large piece of white cardboard or in this case, the sheet, effectively gives you two light sources to work with with very little or no extra expense. A collapsible reflector is a fantastic tool to have around as they have multiple reflective surfaces to choose from and pack down nice and small but that is something for a different post.

There is very little Photoshop work done in this photograph. Her feet came out a little yellow which I immediately found distracting so I toned that down a little. I also used the burn tool at a very low exposure to darken the jumper down and I took a bit of colour out of her jeans as they drew attention to the back of the frame more than I liked, I want people to immediately focus on her face and then take in the rest.

Here is another shot from the series. This is a very simple lighting setup that yields a very nice result for what it is. It really shows how effective it is to get your flash off of the top of your camera!

If anyone has any questions or comments at all please leave them below. I'd love to hear from you!

Welcome!

noreply@blogger.com (Benen) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:14:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog! I decided to start this blog to document and share some of my photography work. It is my hope that this blog will be a tool that will help me progress as a photographer by discussion with the photographic community and if I can help any readers learn something new in the process then fantastic!

My passion in photography is flash portraiture using hotshoe flashes, but I have a great love of all photography. There is something truly special about capturing a single moment in time that can portray some of the personality and character of the subject.

My darling wife and primary model for practice was kind enough to allow me to upgrade my camera kit recently. I am a Nikon shooter and I just replaced my trusty D70s with a D7000. I currently use 3 lenses that I have collected over the past 5 years: a 14-24mm f2.8, a 50mm f1.8 and am in love with my latest lens, a 70-200 f2.8 vr2. Not quite ideal for every situation but more than adequate for my needs. On top of this of course, I have a couple of Nikon flashes and a couple of light stands and light modifiers.

Throughout the blog I plan to share my work along with explanations on how I achieved the shot and also tutorials, reviews of my favourite gear, things I've learnt and anything on the web that I think is worth sharing.

I hope you enjoy what I have to share and urge everyone to join in any discussion, share knowledge and ask questions!

Benen