The doorway: CC please (and tutorial)
InsuredDisaster
Registered Users Posts: 1,132 Major grins
They say those who can't do, teach.:D My favorite shot of the evening, with a how to below if you are interested. It is not perfect but turned out fairly close to what I had in mind, given what went down.
Nikon D700 with 24-70
1/2 second, F5.6 ISO400
While walking earlier, I saw this shaft of light streaming out of a hole in the wall that some workmen had made. Of course, as I was just going out to dinner, I only had a single camera, and no speedlights since my wife had asked me to leave all that crap behind. Even crazier, since I never use my pop-up, I'd taped it down! I knew that what I wanted wasn't going to happen with a crappy pop-up, but I tried anyway, I'm not going to post that since the result can be imagined.
But I was still thinking about what I wanted, and things happen fast in China. So I headed out again this time with all of my tripods and lighting stands, and my 4 speedlights.
I figured the light would have been turned off, and it was, but turns out the workmen were living inside behind a partial wall. I didn't have the guts to knock on the door behind the rat hole to ask them if they would mind some crazy flashes going off but a workman was heading inside.
In my crap Chinese and some miming I tried to explain what I wanted to do. He didn't seem to object so I placed a single speedlight inside the hole and surprise, Nikon's CLS worked perfectly, though my initial guess as to which power (full power) was a bit off. I set the ambient more or less and tested the strobe.
Quickly I dropped the power down a bit to 1/8th power which was more in line with what I saw earlier.
Of course, I figured I'd need a second light.
At this point some workman dressed in nothing but his tighty whities (did I mention it was past 11:30PM at this point?) opened the door to that partial wall nearly knocking my flash over. I caught it and moved it slightly but the next shot it failed to go off. You can see the second light added, set to 1/128th power and zoomed in all the way.
When i got the flashes more or less set, I ended up using a second flash to the camera left which I tested on and off. I would have liked to work a bit more with this, but I wanted to keep my total time down to around 20 minutes. The crowd was also growing now to 4 or 5 guys who were chimping with me after each shot.
I got the above shot then invited the workmen to join me. Most turned down this offer but a couple joined in the fun despite the crowd of now 6 or 7 guys.
In my quick chimp, i felt that the third man was a bit dark so I turned on the camera left flash. I don't like the shadows on the wall though. Since I later just added a bit of fill light in Lightroom, I think I'd rather left the third flash off, or maybe if I'd adjusted the height a bit (not enough stands or time) it would have been better. Oh well.
The workmen were loving the craziness of it but in this shot when the guys saw my pose they lost it and almost fell over laughing.
We tried again.
Granted, the lighting isn't perfect, but I am pretty happy with the results, given the short time to do something I've never done before, and the lack of a light stand for that left flash.
I did some cloning in photoshop and added some fill light in Lightroom. Other than that, not much else was done.
Comments or criticism?
Nikon D700 with 24-70
1/2 second, F5.6 ISO400
While walking earlier, I saw this shaft of light streaming out of a hole in the wall that some workmen had made. Of course, as I was just going out to dinner, I only had a single camera, and no speedlights since my wife had asked me to leave all that crap behind. Even crazier, since I never use my pop-up, I'd taped it down! I knew that what I wanted wasn't going to happen with a crappy pop-up, but I tried anyway, I'm not going to post that since the result can be imagined.
But I was still thinking about what I wanted, and things happen fast in China. So I headed out again this time with all of my tripods and lighting stands, and my 4 speedlights.
I figured the light would have been turned off, and it was, but turns out the workmen were living inside behind a partial wall. I didn't have the guts to knock on the door behind the rat hole to ask them if they would mind some crazy flashes going off but a workman was heading inside.
In my crap Chinese and some miming I tried to explain what I wanted to do. He didn't seem to object so I placed a single speedlight inside the hole and surprise, Nikon's CLS worked perfectly, though my initial guess as to which power (full power) was a bit off. I set the ambient more or less and tested the strobe.
Quickly I dropped the power down a bit to 1/8th power which was more in line with what I saw earlier.
Of course, I figured I'd need a second light.
At this point some workman dressed in nothing but his tighty whities (did I mention it was past 11:30PM at this point?) opened the door to that partial wall nearly knocking my flash over. I caught it and moved it slightly but the next shot it failed to go off. You can see the second light added, set to 1/128th power and zoomed in all the way.
When i got the flashes more or less set, I ended up using a second flash to the camera left which I tested on and off. I would have liked to work a bit more with this, but I wanted to keep my total time down to around 20 minutes. The crowd was also growing now to 4 or 5 guys who were chimping with me after each shot.
I got the above shot then invited the workmen to join me. Most turned down this offer but a couple joined in the fun despite the crowd of now 6 or 7 guys.
In my quick chimp, i felt that the third man was a bit dark so I turned on the camera left flash. I don't like the shadows on the wall though. Since I later just added a bit of fill light in Lightroom, I think I'd rather left the third flash off, or maybe if I'd adjusted the height a bit (not enough stands or time) it would have been better. Oh well.
The workmen were loving the craziness of it but in this shot when the guys saw my pose they lost it and almost fell over laughing.
We tried again.
Granted, the lighting isn't perfect, but I am pretty happy with the results, given the short time to do something I've never done before, and the lack of a light stand for that left flash.
I did some cloning in photoshop and added some fill light in Lightroom. Other than that, not much else was done.
Comments or criticism?
0
Comments
Canon 40D, 28-135mm, 50mm f/1.8, 10-22mm, 70-300, 580 EXII, ST-E2, 500D Diopter
Since I didn't have a lot of time I couldn't do my other ideas. Or perhaps I could have gotten away with staying a bit longer, but the crowd was getting quite large and I'm still a bit surprised that these guys didn't shoe me away. Seriously, I'm trying to imagine my reaction should a crazy Chinese dude show up at my house 11:30 pm and want to set up all this crap.
My other problem with this is that given more time I would have liked to experiment a bit more with strobe placement and power. I didn't have enough fill light on myself (or the other models) which I didn't realize at the time either. Since I brought up the light in post, I also ended up boosting the overal ambient which lessens the doorway light effect.
Finally, looking at the photos I realize that the hole was widened considerably since the first time I saw it. Then it was litterally as if a man with a wheelbarrow had busted out of the wall "cartoon style" I guess the guys figured the time it took to carefully push the barrow through the hole would be better spent making it a bit wider. As I said, things happen fast around here! But this also lessens the effect I was going for.
And yes Mr Steak, My form is pretty bad!
Thanks for looking.
But I will be on the lookout for more doorways in the future and try for something a bit better.
However, if you see anything else that can be improved, especially with the lighting or what you would have done differently, I'm a field of corn here.