T&I photos, dare I ask for C&C...

Rocketman766

Ok, here is my first T&I photos from this year. This is something I want to do more of, but have tons to learn before I can even think of being comfortable with it. When taking these photos, I did not move the lights, meter for each individual or anything of the sort, I basically had an hour to shoot 25 kids and then the whole team. I shot with 3 lights, main light left of the camera through a soft box, second light to the right of the camera (45 deg angle) and a 3rd at the edge of the backdrop shooting towards the back of the subject, somewhat of a hair light? Keeping that in mind, how bad did I do? In each shot, I increased the black levels a tad, bumped the WB up a bit (shot at 5600K but when I loaded them into LR3, it said 5450K?) and left the sharpening at the default level. Looking back, the brightness was also upped some. All shots were cropped to the size ordered. Here goes.... I guess the only way to learn is to listen to those who know.....
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reyvee61

I'm not an expert at shooting studio portraits but I think these turned out nicely.
The colors are nice as well as the exposures.
I do know that shooting with a black background is not the easiest thing to do as I've had my share of trail and error since I have not a flash meter yet.

Qarik

can you post larger sizes?

reyvee61

Qarik wrote: »

can you post larger sizes?

Daniel if you click on the images you can view the original files.

reyvee61

Speaking of which, I did view the originals and was wondering if the detail was compromised by compression or processing.
I'm sure the will be fine in print but just curious....

Rocketman766

Thanks Rey. Well, that is something I am learning about as I go forward... compression and compromising. These were originally shot in Raw, compressed quite a bit to post. I was trying to stay within the limits of the forum, maybe went too small? When I sent them to the printer, I exported the files as full size JPEG from LR3. Then sent to the printer (Millers).

reyvee61

Rocketman766 wrote: »

Thanks Rey. Well, that is something I am learning about as I go forward... compression and compromising. These were originally shot in Raw, compressed quite a bit to post. I was trying to stay within the limits of the forum, maybe went too small? When I sent them to the printer, I exported the files as full size JPEG from LR3. Then sent to the printer (Millers).

Well you made me question my own practice of rendering uncompressed files when converting to jpeg from RAW.
Does it really make any difference for general printing purposes?
Maybe it does for poster sized prints?
I could be saving tones of hard drive space by compressing right?

Sorry for off topic but getting back to the portraits, what made you decide on a black background?

Edit:

I also didn't realize that the Mark III was 21 plus Megapixels, wow, those must be huge files!!!

Rocketman766

Well, I decided on the black background at the very last minute. Actually about 4 days before I shot the first group. For one thing, found a deal locally on ebay for the backdrops, second, last year I shot this teams pics (looking back, they were terrible but the parents liked them... not sure why now.) with a grey backdrop and wanted to do something different and better. Also, thought it would make the uniforms look better, give the photos some POP, not sure if I really pulled that part off too well.

The files from the MKIII are only 10 Megapixels... its a 1D MKIII, not a 1Ds.... the Raws from this are only about 9.5 to 10 MB in size.

reyvee61

The black backdrop works in my opinion and thanks for clarifying that on the camera

NeilL

Talking about the composition, I think the guys are surrounded by too much black space, and I think they need to be grounded rather than floating. An idea which comes to mind re the latter is to use a spot light on the floor positioned close. The former point is connected with lighting. I see some quite hard and heavy shadows, so maybe bring the lights in closer and cut the power, and bring the camera in closer too. With a pool of light on the floor to ground them and to give us something to relate them to, and with a less contrasty light on them and with them also being bigger in the frame, I would say the total amount of black would be less and less overpowering. The colours are strong enough they would still pop, and you could easily tweak in post.

Another idea to ground them might be to have them trail a pennant or streamers on the floor.

Neil

Rocketman766

Thanks Neil, I will work on that idea. Sounds good, always looking for improvements. I may (will) be coming back with questions about this when I have a few more minutes....

reyvee61

That is a great suggestion.....
Had not thought of that

Seneca

Def need some backlighting, hairlighting, or some type of other lighting...they look like they are floating. But the images are good nonetheless. Good job.

Rocketman766

Thanks for the input here everyone. I definitely want to put out a better product every time, so I will be using the suggestions here. For the ground lighting, is it as simple as just allowing more light to hit the ground in front/around the subjects? Also, the hair light. These are full length shots where some girls want to sit, others want a standing pose. Is it possible to set up a hairlight or back light that will work for this? I think if I can get in for a whole day of test shooting, maybe I can find something that works. Trial and error.... I have another picture day with this same gym coming up in a month or so, hope to improve on these before then... lucky my daughter loves having her photo taken (top girl above is my daughter....). I will post my future attempts so I can get more feedback and C&C. Thanks again.

NeilL

Rocketman766 wrote: »

Thanks for the input here everyone. I definitely want to put out a better product every time, so I will be using the suggestions here. For the ground lighting, is it as simple as just allowing more light to hit the ground in front/around the subjects? Also, the hair light. These are full length shots where some girls want to sit, others want a standing pose. Is it possible to set up a hairlight or back light that will work for this? I think if I can get in for a whole day of test shooting, maybe I can find something that works. Trial and error.... I have another picture day with this same gym coming up in a month or so, hope to improve on these before then... lucky my daughter loves having her photo taken (top girl above is my daughter....). I will post my future attempts so I can get more feedback and C&C. Thanks again.

For spot on ground I'd try a snooted strobe high up which hits at an angle to create an elliptical pool of light. Position the girl in relation to that, but light her separately. Soften the shadows on the girl, camera in closer and let the girl use a prop such as a pennant or streamers to lengthen the footprint and add to the grounding as mentioned above. Incident metre on the girl and on the spot and adjust balance. Adjust distance of background, or gobo lights, if light spill/reflection is a problem. Use greycard for custom white balance.

Others might have other techniques.

Neil

Seneca

How many lights do you have? If two buy a boom for the hair lighting that should solve the problem for hair . Good luck. Your product is good some tweaks will make it great!