Photoshoot in Hyde Park

Jenny Nandwani Nature-58
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So this shot right here is one of my fave's of all the ones ive uploaded so far. I just love the lighting, pose framing, colour! everything about it! Of course now when i look at it I also think of 20 different ways i could have taken the image, different lighting scenarios, different camera angles, etc. and even though this was my first shoot outdoors, in the sun, and was suppossed to be an educational venture into high speed flash photography, I still managed to be reminded of how a simple change of angle or lighting can alter a scene completley despite the model not having moved at all.

Now, as I mentioned earlier shooting in Hyde Park was EXTREMELY experimental for me. I not only had to account for the flash, but in addition i also had to account for the natural light from the sun. In most situation sthe sun would have overpowered my meager flashes (if any of you follow the strobist youll see the lovely setup that Joe Mcnally had for just ONE directional light so as to overpower the sun. Thankfully it was evenign and overcast when i did my shoot, which as like Mcnally says, just makes one very big diffused light! :D. So attempting to use that as my fill in light, i attempted to place my other flashes accordingly to light up the scenes and VOILA!

P.S I also learned another valuable lesson which mcnally emphasizes OVER AND OVER in "the moment it clicks" WEIGH DOWN YOUR STANDS! even the smallest breeze will wreck chaos on your equipment (it was such a teeny weeny breeze taht knocked over my stand and totally killed one of my brollies! :( thankfully it was the cheap one.....i think...)

well hope you enjoyed today's post :) as usual, the rest of my images can be accessed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sbalani/sets/

Experimental

_MG_8199-Edit
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So most of the photos on this shoot ,have been with pretty standard lighting, considering the meter by meter space i had to work with, two canon flashes + pocket wizards and my first time using them together! After playing around with them for a bit, as you may have seen in previous shots, and an outfit change, i decided to play around a bit with the lights, get a bit more moody. I know its often said that in any portrait shoot you should always focus on the eyes, however as you can see here the eyes ar hardly lit at all. I had her overlit (extremely) and opted to not put a reflector or fill flash to kill off the shadows because i wanted to see what it would look like and voila! i got the image you are more or less looking at. Of course after retouching the light a bit and a couple of more shots and photoshop, htis is the final version. however I could have probably put a reflector around there somewehre and bounced some light back into the shadowy areas and still mantained the general mood of the picture.

Well as they say you always keep learning as a photographer, next time i try a similar lighting scenario ill remember to keep that in mind adn see if i cant replicate this mood with a little more light in the shadowy areas, however i find that the lack of light in the eyes gives it the darker tone that I at least seem to be picking up and enjoying in this image

A change of pace

Notre Dame
Originally uploaded by sbalani

So, in the last couple of posts ive mostly put up pictures of my photoshoot with my cousin, so as a change of pace, ive decided to start uploading shots of my trip to paris a few months ago. It was an amazing trip, went crazy with my camera one of the few times where ive actually run short on battery during the day. I had always had a negative impression on Paris, and this trip was deffinetly an eye opener. I'm quite ready to go again. Ive only uploaded this pic for now, but more will be up shortly :)

Roshni Shoot 10

Roshni Shoot 10
Originally uploaded by sbalani

SO this is my first shoot after returning from photoshop world. After having met the man himself (Mcnally) and having finished his book, I eager to play with my new hoardes of equipment, so after finding a model (my cousin) we setup and tried a couple of different shots, and played around with my new pocket wizards and flashguns, i attached a snoot onto one of the flahses in an attempt to get a hairlight, and voila! i had a shaft of light! so after doing some finetuning i got this shot, which somewhat reminds me of the ballerina shot in the book where theres a shaft of light comming down onto her.

P.S the fluffy thing shes leaning on, was what started out as a photoshop mishap, but i liked it and spread it around, its like shes leaning on something smoky, or a cloud, gives it a slightly unreal tone to ti but hey! i like it!

More of Roshni's Photoshoot

Full album can be viewed here

Roshni Photoshoot

I just did a photoshoot of my cousin recently, here are some of the pics ive put up so far





The album can be viewed here
and as usual the rest of my images here