I thought I needed HDR to properly expose the image.  It turned out, single exposure from one of my bracketed frames was nearly perfect.  What a majestic site, don’t you think?

This is my 2nd attempt at capturing sunset over the city of Shinjuku.  The weather was virtually perfect, sky was clear and glowing orange, mount Fuji was clearly visible and gigantic as the result of compression from my teleconverter.  However, I ran out of time – I had a dinner appointment that night; I had to leave by 4:50PM.  15 more minutes the lights would have been perfectly balanced.  May be next year, may be.

We decided to start with a clean natural look with Francesca’s hair tied up.  This way we can showcase the accessories without too much distraction.  But seriously, how could you not be distracted by Francesca?  Ann and her assistant Trang Le quickly went to work.  Watching Ann work is like watching a maestro perform.  Every move is crisp and confident; it must be such a pleasure to be doll’d up by Ann.

Meanwhile, I started to prep the set.   A white seamless paper is used for background.  For lighting, I started with the following:

• PCB Einstein with white beauty dish.  Center, above eye-level.
• PCB Einstein with softbox.  Behind Francesca, pointing down for hair and rim light.

A quick test shot.  Not bad, but rather boring;  too catalog-ish.  

I tried to light the background to pure white, but still not quite exciting.  To add drama, I placed a grid on the beauty dish.  The grid essentially narrowed down the light beam.  It accomplishes two things:

1. It throws less light on the background.
2. The light falls off quicker on Francesca’s face.  Making the cheeks darker, adding dimension to the portrait.

Much better, don’t you think?  But, the background is still kind of plain.  That can be fixed with a simple gridded SB-80DX; throwing a pot behind Francesca creating a gradient effect.  Now we are ready to rock-and-roll.

For the next look, we smoked Francesca’s eye a little; and we let her beautiful her loose.  Absolutely magical.

Setup for next set is pretty much the same except I removed beauty dish’s grid and  pop’d two SB-800s on the background to make sure the white seamless paper is well lit.

I got there early so I can scout the location and frame my shots before sunset.  I stood there waiting for the memorial hall to light up; but it never happened.  The best I could do is bracket the memorial hall right around sunset.  The picture above is a blend of HDR frame with a frame exposed for sky.  The trick was to carefully paint in (unmask) the area that needed more exposure so it looks natural.

After I figured out that they were not going to light up the memorial hall, I rushed back out front to get a shot of the gate at Liberty Square.

Again, same bracketing trip was applied.  I made an HDR image with 5 frame brackets.  Layered it on top of a frame which had the exposure I liked.  Then I carefully unmask the HDR layer to get the exposure of the gate.

The parting shot is a photograph of the National Theater.  By this time, the sun is completely set, so I really needed all 5 brackets to get a good HDR photograph.   But again the process is the same.  I picked a frame which had the exposure I like for the wall at the lower right hand side and the sky.  Then carefully blended in the HDR overlay of the theater.

If you have suggestions of where I should shoot in Taipei, please let me know.

The room was very typical; big window with plenty of natural light.  Big king size bed taking up most of the space in the room.  A desk (which luckily was movable).  And boring wallpaper.  I decided to keep things simple and start with head shots.  I had two options – have Hannah face the window so the background can be dark; or, have Hannah face the room and use the window + curtain to create a bright high-key look.  Oh, and I only had two hours to shoot.  I had a dinner appointment that I couldn’t be late for.

I started with dark background.  I decided to kill the window light by closing the curtain; reason being white balance will be simpler.  It worked great except I was not happy with the result I got from my light modifiers.  eBay softbox was too small and not diffused enough; this creates specular reflections and high lights on subject’s skin.  Silver umbrella was spreading too much light into the background.  I suppose if I had more time, I could have experimented a little.
One reason I didn’t want light spill into the background is that I didn’t want the room features to be recognizable; hotel rooms are not my favorites.  Playing with camera angle helps a little.  The basic setup was:

• SB-800 inside eBay softbox.  Camera left.  CTO gel’d to match room light temperature.
• Bare SB-800 behind Hanna.  Camera right.  Hair light.
• Silver reflector on desk (my posing table).

Next I opened the curtain to see how it looked like with ambient only.

Not bad.  But I felt the lighting was too flat.  Plus for some reason, I had a hard time focusing; perhaps I should have bumped up my ISO more.  So I decided to add my lights to create better contrast.

Ah.. much better.  Now Hannah’s face got dimensions.  Same setup as before, except speed light power has to be balanced with ambient.

For the next set, we moved Hannah to the other side of my impromptu posing table.  Took some time to adjust speed light power so that it is some what balanced with the background.

I really love Hannah’s pose on this shot; really elegant.  Actually, I messed up the exposure really badly on the above picture.  Speed light power was way over-exposed.  Thank God for raw files; I was able to bring down the exposure by 2 stops.  Setup is the same as before, except ke light is moved to the right.  Hair light moved to the left.

That’s it for now.  More to come later.

It was my first trip to Shanghai.  I packed my best lenses, lighting gears, trigger cables… Dragged the heavy luggage across three different countries.  But guess what?  Forgot to pack my tripod.  Argh!

To add insult to injury, the view from my hotel was spectacular!  Perfect angle!  I ended up setting my camera on a chair, pressed against the windows.  Not perfect, but better than not shooting.  You can see flares from dirty spots on the windows.  The distortion on the side is annoying; the white spot on upper left is actually a full moon!

But it’s not all loss.  Next time, I know I need to get up to the jacuzzi terrace so I can shoot without window.  And remember to bring my tripod!

• It gets cold in Santa Cruz.  Even when the sun is out.  In August!
• Be prepared to get wet if you want to capture interesting shots.
• Your lens gets dirty (salt spray) even you can’t feel the mist.
• Your tripod will get sand in the legs.  Be prepared to wash them.
• Sky is boring unless there are clouds.  Keep as little of it as possible.
• You need a decent graduated neutral density filter.  Get the 4×6 so you have room to move the edge to the top or bottom of your frame (see previous bullet).
• There is a difference between landscape and seascape when it comes to graduated neutral density filters: a) soft edge works well for landscape, b) hard edge works better for seascape since there is usually a very clear horizon and when the sun sets, it gets very bright right at the horizon.
• Experiment with the timing of the wave when doing long exposure.  Shots taken while waves crash in vs. while waves recede have very different look.
• Composition is everything.  Having a leading line definitely helps.
• You CAN shoot into the sun, see picture below; provided that you have the correct graduated ND filter.  This is something I avoided at all cost in the past.

The location of these pictures is what locals call Hole-in-the-Wall beach.  Because, you literally need to walk through a hole in the wall (cliff) to get to the beach.  I need to find time to go back there when there are killer clouds.  The hole should also a great location for portraits.  I need to figure out how to convince Ann to let me do her swim wear catalog.

I did have to post-process the picture to bring out the contrast and details.  For the above picture, I didn’t have the hard edge GND filter.  So I processed the raw file in two exposures – one for the ocean and the rock, then the 2nd about -1.5 stops for the sky.  I then overlay the sky on top of the normal exposure using mask.

Next, we worked on some experiments with window lights.  I had some difficulty with the fill-light.  First I tried using the silver umbrella and SB-800; but it did not come out natural.  It turned out the best shot (to me) was all natural light.  The key to this shot was exposure.  Metering was a little tricky because of the flood of light pouring through the window.  Next time around, I would just use manual metering and make sure the subject’s skin is exposed correctly to bring out good contrast.

Post-processing again was mainly focused on getting the exposure correct on Wen’s skin; then adjusting the contrast to make sure there is not too much flare.  I ran the picture through Nik’s high-key filter and lowered the color temperature to give it a cooler tone.

The idea for the above came from Paula Anddrade of Brazil.  She did a series of silhouettes which were very inspiring.  I just wanted to figure out how she did it.  The exposure technique may come in handy someday.

By the way, Wen goes by ONLYWEN on Flickr.  Check out her work; she rocks!

A couple years back, I wrote about photographing the Nemuro wine bottle; which turned out to be a lot of fun because I was able to do it with only 2 lights.  I received the 2009 vintage a few days ago.   My first reaction after seeing the bottle was: “*%^$*!, black label on black bottle…”

Problem – dark objects are hard to lit; basically you don’t light it, you let it reflect what’s around it.  I can solve the problem for the bottle itself by by placing flat glowing surfaces next to it (such as a reflector card).  But black label it tricky to me: if I were to throw light on it, there will be too much specular reflection.  The label will turn grey from the reflections (which is less interesting, at least to me); and it will be hard to read the label’s texts.  Argh!!!

Anyway, first I got to reproduce the same setup as I did last time.  Here is how it came out.

Not bad, but as I predicted; the label just doesn’t stand out.  And look at all the reflections from the walls behind and around me!  Argh!!!   I can’t paint the wall black?!  I can’t get rid of the walls!!!  Or can I?

It turned out I can.  I just have to make sure the light from behind the black board doesn’t spread out too wide (add a reflector); and block the reflections from above the bottle (dark foam board held by light stand with boom arm).

Much better.  But where is the label?  Actually, this is great.  Darkness I can fix; but too much light or reflection is hard for me to remove.  OK, let me throw some light on it.

Gosh… exactly as I thought.  The dark foil turned grey; and lots of reflections on the label.  Let me try narrowing down the light pattern with a grid.  The light is now coming slightly from the right, and slightly angled down.

Much better, the reflections are mostly gone; but the light spot will have to be adjusted.  Next throw in the background light with Rosco’s lavender filter.  Now I got get the final image at the top of the post.

I love how the “根室” characters virtually glows out of the dark label.

Well… am I done?  Should I just stop at the exact same image as before?  Why?  Let’s try difference composition.  How about a glass?

Cool, much better product shot.  Let me throw in the 2008 older vintage for a family reunion.

Now this was actually a lot harder than it seems.  First, there was the black label to deal with; so I have to use a gridded light.  Then, the 2008 label was a light color label; if I don’t have any light on, then it will be faded.  If I put too much light on it, it will be too bright, which takes away the focus from 2009.  So I have to use a even tighter grid (yes, another light), and feather the light across the label.  I feathered it down so the light does not splash over the black label; this gives it a “down light” effect.

Next, group picture!!!

I chose to light only one bottle to make it more interesting.   Next, add the graduate from class of 2008 just for fun.

Notice how the 2008 is completely lit with the side reflector boards only.  Actually, I like it better this way because it shows the curvature of the bottle on the label with the shadow down the middle.

Done?  Well… there is one more thing I wanted to try.  See, I am a sucker for bokeh (暈け).   Not only I want to focus the light on only one bottle, I also want the other bottles to be out of focus.  This is actually a lot harder to do when it comes to flash photography.  I could open up the aperture, but the ambient light will start to affect the shot because the shutter speed is limited to 1/250 max.  One way to solve this is to add a ND filter.  This will cut down the light (and exposure) so I can open up the aperture without changing shutter speed.  Out comes my 3-stop ND filter.

Everything should work, right?  Well, not quite! The ND filter cut down so much ambient light, that the camera can’t auto-focus any more.  So, un-screw the filter, focus, disable auto-focus, then put the ND filter back on.  Voila!

Love it!  Now there is no doubt who is the star of the show.

Here is my favorite.  A tighter composition.

And finally, the setup picture from my iPhone.

So much fun, so little time.  By the time I was done, it was almost 3AM.  Foolish, but worth it.