Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/125 sec at f/5.6, ISO 100

Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes of a shoot I did last month. Some of the background was moved around after this initial setup shot, but the lighting pretty much stayed the same. I have three lights used here, all Alien Bees triggered with Pocket Wizards, to give the scene a simple, clean look. Here is the lighting equipment used:

- Main light (right): ABR-800: Alien Bees Ringflash (link) with 56″ Moon Unit (link).
- Second light (left): AB-800 (link) with medium octabox (link)
- Background fill: AB-1600 (link) with softbox (link)

Canon 7D, Canon 28mm f/2.8 lens, 1/125 sec at f/4, ISO 100

As a stock photographer who shoots mostly lifestyle and food images, a big part of what I do is I try to light my subjects so that they don’t look like they were lit. Make sense? Well, I basically want there to be no unnatural shadows, crazy lighting, etc. I love to use studio lights but I always want the focus to be on the subject and the activity going on in the scene and be lit as if it were outdoor light, window light or just normal indoor lights. You’d actually be surprised at how much work can go into a shot to achieve this … sometimes it’s really easy, but sometimes it’s also extremely challenging.

When I was visiting family last week my dad was really cool with modeling for me. He used to have to use a CPAP machine to help him breathe at night, but lost a bunch of weight so doesn’t need to use it anymore. But since he still had the machine handy I thought we would do some stock images with him sleeping with the mask on.

Window Light: Canon 7D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens, 1/10 sec at f/2.8, ISO 100

When I first set up the bedroom the light outside was nice and cloudy so it gave a soft, diffused look to the bed. I was happy with this light, but it was way too dark for me to get any real shots (the shutter speed, at 1/10th second, was too slow to hand-hold, and the aperture, f/2.8, gave too little depth-of-field for my tastes). So, I positioned a White Lightening x800 with a 32×40″ foldable softbox just in front of the window (see photo at the top of this posts … this was rental gear from BorrowLenses.com—see yesterday’s post for more info). I used my handy light-meter (yes, I use a light meter), metered to f/4 and then took another test shot:

White Lightening x800 light: Canon 7D, Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens, 1/125 sec at f/4, ISO 100

The image above looked so close to the original that I didn’t even need to make any changes. Both are completely un-edited, btw … they are straight out-of-camera with no adjustments applied. Oftentimes I don’t have a starting point for my images (I have to create the light with nothing to compare it to) but I usually know what “look” I’m going for. These two images were just perfect examples of how studio light can be used to make it look like no studio light was used. :)

Bottom-left image: Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 f/4L IS lens, 1/60 sec at f/4, ISO 100

I have a pretty good relationship with the guys over at Borrowlenses.com (an online camera equipment rental business). I’ve used their services in the past, and every once in a while they offer me a free rental … being a social media geek sure doesn’t suck sometimes. ;)

So, a few weeks ago I got an email from Josh over at BorrowLenses asking if there’s anything I’d like to try out. It was perfect timing! I was planning a short trip out to Nebraska to visit family, and was also planning on doing some stock images with my dad. I was originally just going to take a small speedlite setup and some PocketWizards, but after getting the email from Josh I thought it would be a good time to try out some of their rental lights.

I had a small setup shipped out to Nebraska and had everything I needed to do a few stock shoots. They have a good selection of lights, and I opted to go with equipment I was familiar with … So, I pretty much stuck with Alien Bee/White Lightening branded equipment, since that’s what I use in my studio. Here’s what I rented:

- Alien Bees Ring-flash ABR800
- 30″ Moon Unit
- White Lightening x800
- Foldable soft box (32″x40″)
- Two 13-ft light-stands

I still could have gotten some good images without the extra gear, but using them really helped add light that I wouldn’t have had if I only used one speed-light. Plus, I really wasn’t planning on checking luggage for my flight, so having the gear already at the location made it simple to pack light … (no pun intended). :) The only photo-related things of my own I ended up bringing were my camera/lenses, a light meter and some PocketWizards.

All in all I really like Borrow Lenses, and would recommend them to anyone who is looking at renting photography gear. The process is simple … They ship out the gear, you use it, then you ship it back in the same box and just use the pre-printed FedEx label that came with the shipment. They have a pretty good selection, and using rental gear is also a great way to try out stuff you’re thinking of buying.

In the photo above, the light to the right of the frame (White Lightening x800 with soft-box) is used to fill in the light on the face and brighten it up. The light on the left (ring-light with moon unit) was used to brighten up the background (ambient light wasn’t enough). Some ambient light was helping the image, but the two lights made the colors “pop” more and evened out the light in the scene.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes of a food setup in my studio using studio lights. I’ve done a lot of window-light photography, but wanted to start using lights when photographing food. (This setup is identical to the setup used for a photo of chili I recently posted here on my blog).

Here’s the equipment used in this setup:

- ABR-800: Alien Bees Ringflash (link) with 56″ Moon Unit (link).
- AB-800 (link) with  softbox (link)
- Reflector

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4L IS lens, 1/125 sec at ƒ/5.6, ISO 100

I just finished up a photo shoot with “Heavy Metal Heidi” … she hosts monthly heavy metal nights at a local club and needed an image for a promotional posters. We changed things around a bunch and got a lot of really fun shots. This was one that I wanted to do … probably won’t make the poster but it is a pretty cool shot. Playing with lights = fun. :)

Click here to see a behind-the-scenes diagram of this shot. I’ll post more shots over the next week along with more BTS images.

Jeremy Hall put together this awesome video on our recent “Studio Lighting Photowalk”. It’s one of the largest Photowalking Utah events of the year and he really did a good job of portraying the spirit of our photography community.

Thanks to everyone who helped out and participated … the event was an overall success and I was glad I could be a part of it. The photography community here is why I am making Utah my new home and it’s the people at events like the one in the video that makes me realize I made the right choice. :)

Last week I went to a local medical facility with Rich Legg to photograph portraits of health professionals. The setup was fairly simple – we had two lights, each with softboxes, on either side at approximately a 45-degree angle. The images were for their profiles on the medical facility’s website, but instead of shooting traditional head-shots of we went with more of a “stocky, lifestyle” setup and one of the other staff members was kind enough to pose as the patient.

I’m very happy with the final products and look forward to returning in a few weeks with Rich to do some more photography. (BTW … thanks, Rich, for the behind-the-scenes photo!)

I’ve had this photo idea in my head for a few weeks now, and last night I decided to put it all together and photograph it. It took longer than a “normal” food shoot, since I was using a strobe as my light instead of natural window-light, but the part that took the longest was trying to arrange all of the lights in the background (my “bokeh” lights) so they fit well into the background.

The neatest thing about this is that it turned out exactly as I pre-visualized, which is always a treat. :)

The equipment used was an Alien Bee B1600 at the lowest power setting for the main light with a medium-size octabox, reflector on the left clamped to a tripod (gold-ish side facing the subject), a Canon 7D with a 70-200 f/4L IS (zoomed in to 200mm for all images), exposure set at 1/250th second at ƒ/5.6. I found the bokeh-lights at Hobby Lobby and strung them across a boom-stand. The background is a pop-up black/white reversible backdrop … I don’t use it too often but it worked perfectly for this setup.

Canon 7D, Canon 70-200 ƒ/4L IS, 1/250th sec at ƒ/5.6

Image courtesy Rich Legg

This past weekend I had the opportunity to help out the local community by being involved with “Help-Portrait“, a world-wide photography event where photographers and volunteers got together to provide portraits to families and individuals that are in need. Several of the families that came to the YWCA in Salt Lake City had never had a family portrait taken … it was so wonderful to see their faces after receiving their printed photograph for the first time.

I’m really encouraged after doing this event, and also seeing other photographers organizing similar events in the area (here is a video about a local photographer, Dale Welcome, who put together a portrait event last month). It’s such a wonderful feeling that I can use my gifts of photography to help others, even if it’s just to put a smile on their face.

A big thanks to Mavourneen Strozewski for organizing this event, and also to the other local photographers who took part in this and other Help-Portraits in the area. It was an awesome experience and I was so glad to be a part of it. :)

When you are photographing food you need to make the image look so good you want to eat it. Having a plate of food in front of you is different … it can look sloppy and have no color, but our other senses kick in, such as smell and taste, so it looks appetizing at the time. However, with photography we lose most of those senses and can only rely on our sense of sight, so what the food looks like is extremely important.

This is where styling your food comes into play. The first photo only has pasta in the dish … well, that’s all you see, right? What you don’t see is that hidden below all those carefully placed mounds of linguine is a half-dome of styrofoam. The bulk of the styrofoam gives height to a bowl of pasta that would normally be flattened and caving in. After placing the styrofoam I took five strands of linguine and wrapped them around my fingers, then placed them down carefully so that none of the ends of the pasta strands were showing. I continued until the pasta was covering the styrofoam and looked balanced.

Next I took a pan of pearl onions and tomatoes that had been lightly sauteed and added each element to the dish separately. I used the live-view feature on my camera to help see the bowl of food as it will look when I take the photo – I found this feature to be very useful, btw. The last element I placed was the basil, and I tried to find the best looking leaves in the bunch.

I also added a few items that would typically be in a dining scene – the water glass and fork. The ice in the glass is actually fake – I got the ones in this scene from eBay, but you can find them all over the place (here’s a link to some simple acrylic ice cubes I found on Amazon.com). The ice and splashes you see on high-end commercial photographs are most likely custom-made acrylic – they are quite pricey but worth if if you have the budget. When you are adding these additional elements you want to remember to keep it simple and relevant to the scene, and if you want to add color then remember to either repeat your colors or keep them  complementary to your food dish.