I am really happy with them all except the white background – it came folded and it is impossible to get the creases out of it. So my photos using the studio do involve quite a bit of processing to remove the creases. So I think my next purchase should be a paper roll background but that is for another week.
But having said that I am extremely pleased with how great the lighting is with such a relatively cheap set up:
I used the setup to try to take some self-portraits. I used my 17-50 lens at the wide end to try to exaggerate the size of my glasses and was pretty successful. What I was less successful with was lighting my background enough to both blow out the background and remove the creases. So both of these photos have some Photoshop work to create the backgrounds (the model has had no Photoshop work, that would have taken way too long!):
One of those images was going to be the week 11 photo for my 52 challenge but then this morning, Jonny posed for me and obliged with a fab expression. I used the lens at 17mm again and got in really close (as were both lights) to exaggerate the size of Jonny’s eyes. A result I think that works really well!
Today my good friend, and fellow photo-geek, Dave and I pooled our flash resources and set up a temporary studio at his house. The only space he had large enough to accommodate my white background setup was his garden so we set up there. This meant that the studio quite often became more temporary than we would have liked as small breezes caused both the background and the umbrella stand to blow over. But despite this the studio was a great success and the photos we took looked like they were taken in a much more expensive pro studio.
You can see our set-up here:
Unfortunately when I took that photo my 430EX II in the umbrella on the left didn’t fire because it needed new batteries and Dave’s Jessops flash on the ground to the left of the background didn’t either. But hopefully you get the idea of how heath robinson our set up was. Note the bricks and rock at the bottom of the background which were there to try to stop the cloth from blowing around all the time! The other two flashes were my YN 460 on the ground and Dave’s YN 560 on the stand on the right.
Despite it’s rudimentary appearance the studio worked really, really well in our photos, as hopefully you can see from my photos of Dave below:
Dave’s teenage son Nick was lounging about watching TV inside so Dave dragged him outside and he posed for us. He made for a much more photogenic subject than Dave was for me (and especially much more than I was for Dave!).
So I made this high-key portrait of Nick which becomes the week 10 photo of my 52 project and this week’s submission to the View 52 group on flickr:
I really wouldn’t have thought that anything like these photos could have been taken in Dave’s back garden so I am really impressed with what we did with such limited resources!
PS Dave has also submitted a photo of Nick for his week 10 submission and you can see that here.
I saw the light show on Tuesday evening on the way home from my karate lesson and, although it wasn’t the greatest light show, I thought it would look good as a long exposure photo at dusk time. I was busy on Wednesday evening at karate again but free on Thursday so I decided to take the photo then. So on Thursday I headed over to Crookes Valley Park as the Arts Tower is reflected in the lake if you stand at the far end of the Park. I got there at 5.30 to catch the sunset. On previous evenings I had heard that the light show started at about 6PM so I figured I wouldn’t have long to wait.
There was a lovely colour in the sky just after sunset so I took this photo
I then waited for the light show to start. At 6PM there was nothing. Nothing at 6.30PM. And nothing at 7PM either. I thought that perhaps they had decided to start the show later on Thursday than on previous nights but I was confident that it would start by 7.30PM as that was the time I drove past on Tuesday and the show was on then.
7.30PM came and went and still no show. I was starting to get get very annoyed (and not to mention pretty cold too). As there was no show at 8PM and I was really cold by now I decided to cut my losses and head back to my car. It took 15 minutes to walk back and I passed the front of the Arts Tower and there was still no show.
My only other photos this week were at a kobudo course run by my karate club. I can’t share any of those photos as I don’t have permission from all of the parents of the kids on the course.
So I have no choice but to use the photo above as my Week 9 submission to the View 52 group. It is an OK submission but it would look much better I think if the top four floors of the tower were lit up with different coloured lights!
Ever since I made use of the studio in Hillsborough College almost 5 years ago I have wanted a studio setup for myself. And now finally I have. I decided to dip my toe in and buy some budget kit and I am extremely impressed how good it is for the small amount of money I paid.
My favourite kind of studio photo is a high key portrait so I had to try this out straight away. I only had one model to use and unfortunately for anyone viewing this blog, it was me. So I attempted a high-key self-portrait. Not sure if I managed to get the balance right between the two flashes that were positioned left and right of me but I was reasonably pleased with my first attempt:
The next day I had a much better subject to take a portrait of and this time I managed to balance the flashes pretty much perfectly I think:
Having mastered, sort of, two off camera flashes I then decided I wanted to replicate (or rip-off, depending on your point of view) my favourite photo of all time – David Bailey’s iconic 60s portrait of Michael Caine.
I figured out that he must have lit Mr Caine heavily from camera left with one light so I set up the 430II EX pointing at my nose at various power levels and pointed the YN460 at the background in an attempt to blow it out. It took me about 30 minutes to get the setting right which wasn’t that pleasant. This is because as a non-smoker the taste of the unlit cigarette in my mouth was awful, really horrible. But hey, haven’t you got to suffer for your art.
In the end I got me almost perfectly exposed with the right level of shadow on my face but I couldn’t get the background to blow-out without the YN460 being reflected back onto the shadowed side of my face. So I have slightly cheated with this photo by whitening the background in Photoshop. I also cheated in one other aspect – can anyone spot it?
So here is my take on this iconic shot, followed by the Bailey original:
My Bailey-inspired portrait is the week 8 entry to my 52 project and is this weeks entry to the View 52 group.
With all of the excitement of the live TV appearance on Friday I forgot to blog about Jonny’s last recording session. So this is a catch-up blog post.
On Tuesday last week, Jonny had another recording session for Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom. So Jonny and I were in that London and we met up with James for lunch beforehand at the Scandinavian Kitchen. I’d never been there before and I loved the food. They had lots of Danish food that I hadn’t eaten for years and most of it was as good as my mormor (Danish gran) used to make. They did some amazing smørrebrød (open sandwiches) as you can see below:
All three sandwiches were as delicious as they look there. It was a shame that the meatballs were Swedish rather than Danish but that was a minor issue.
The Scandinavian Kitchen itself is a mixture of a cafe, shop and deli and is crammed to the rafters with scandi products – most of which aren’t normally available outside of Denmark (or in Ikea!)
At the recording session itself, Jonny was his usual brilliant self. We were in a different studio from normal and this one allowed me to get a much better photo of Jonny in action without disturbing the directors or sound engineer:
What an amazing day. It is not every day you see your 11 year old son appear on BBC Breakfast driving a car. And it is even less often that you see your son do this SIX times in just over two hours! And yet that is exactly what happened to me today.
Long term blog fans will remember that Jonny had a driving lesson for his 11th birthday back in September. He loved it has been back a few times since. Yesterday he had another lesson and while he was there he was asked if he would like to come back today to be live on BBC Breakfast from 6AM. And of course my son said yes!
There were a couple of hitches to that plan however – he was due to have his friend Zech round for a sleep-over at his Mum’s last night and being on TV would mean a 5AM start for both Jonny and Zech. Jonny was up for it but would Zech be? A difficult choice for an 11 year old to make as Zech would have go get up extremely early for a half-term holiday and watch his friend have fun driving. But showing what a true friend of Jonny’s Zech is he was more than happy to do it.
And it wasn’t only Jonny and Zech who had a 5AM start, this also applied to me and Jonny’s Mum too. It was tough, but a bleary eyed me arrived at 5:55AM to see not only Jonny already in a car with the reporter but Zech in one too. That was fantastic because Zech had never had one of these lessons before but also a challenge for him because he had to learn how to drive in the dark! But thankfully the instructors at Young Driver are superb and pretty soon Zech was driving along as if he’d been doing it for years.
Much to my surprise the show, which started at 6AM pretty much led with Jonny driving straightaway and at 6:01AM he was off. As you can see from this poor phone recording from my sky+ box Jonny was amazing and drove the car off like a seasoned pro:
After that excitement was over with, Nick, the reporter, came over to me and Anna and said he wanted to interview one us in the next link at 6:20. Anna definitely didn’t want to do it and as I had vaguely agreed the night before that I would do it if needed I found myself saying yes to Nick. He took me and Jonny through a quick rehearsal and then we were on. Jonny was a star again, me less so. Watch out for Nick getting my name wrong (I did think about saying “just coming” to him but I guessed not many people would get the joke):
Like the star he is, Jonny was back on at 6:45AM and was amazing yet again. He was even beginning to amaze the main presenters on the show too:
Next up, Nick decided to let Zech have a go so he did the 7AM link while Jonny did the driving in the background role Zech had performed so brilliantly so far.
At 7:20 Jonny was back on and so was I but this time I didn’t get to be interviewed which is just as well – Jonny was the star and he didn’t need his old Dad getting in on the action. This link was also the first to feature Quentin Wilson, the ex-Top Gear presenter, who had some very nice things to say about Jonny (and was a jolly decent bloke off camera too):
Quentin was only too pleased to pose for a shot with Jonny and he even suggested, like the old pro that his, to move by the cars for a better shot – thanks Quentin, you were right, it did work better!
I was incredibly impressed with the BBC operation, especially Nick, the reporter. He was much more than a reporter – he planned all of the shots, organised everyone in the shot and all while presenting and communicating to the studio. Very impressive so I think I can forgive him getting my name wrong and also calling Jonny Zech a couple of times!
The satellite truck was also very impressive. We could look at the footage once they had finished filming and you can see us reviewing Jonny driving here:
Jonny was on again at 7:45 and again drove away with no problems (are you detecting how much they repeat the same stuff but in slightly different ways on this programme yet?!):
Nearly on the home straight now. Zech was meant to do another link at 8AM but there was a problem so one of Jonny’s previous ones had to be used instead. So that just left the finale, the 8:20 link. For this one, there is an actually official BBC / Young Drivers Youtube video so you don’t have to put up with my rubbish mobile phone version. But Jonny doesn't feature until 2:20 so make sure you fast forward to then to see him being called Zech but doing his by now polished setting off routine:
As if all this wasn’t exciting enough, BBC Radio Sheffield also turned up and interviewed Jonny and Quentin live on their breakfast show! Jonny came across extremely well in the interview and didn’t sound like a boy who has been brought up by a diet of Messrs Clarkson, Hammond and May and Gran Turismo – he even mentioned road safety and driving slowly rather than rushing and not getting there alive!
You can listen to his interview here for the next 7 days – his interview starts at 1 hour 37 mins and 30 seconds in.
Nick did mention that he wanted to interview Jonny on five live and so he took Anna’s number but didn’t call in the end. But it didn’t really matter as I think starring on two BBC outlets is more than enough for one day – three would just be greedy (although I must admit I would have loved Jonny to be have been interviewed by the peerless and wonderful Peter Allen but perhaps next time).
Phew. So yes, an amazing day. And one that will live long in our memories. Jonny has yet again made me an extremely proud father and I look forward to joining him in the next amazing adventure he stumbles into!
Today Jonny and I spent most of the day with Emma and Alice in Berkhamsted. It was a lovely day and I attempted to take the *perfect* portrait of little Alice.
Each of the following was either taken at f/2.2 or f/1.4 with the focus point in one of her eyes.
While she was eating Jonny decided to make a movie of her and I couldn’t resist making this shot:
Those were all nice, but none of them were *perfect*. Then I took this one where her smile, eyes, the lighting and background were all perfect. So this becomes my photo of the week and my week 7 submission.to the View 52 Group.
I realise that it is early in the week to choose my photo of the week but I thought I would get it out of the way early. I have some more camera gear on its way to me – a second speedlight flash, a wireless radio flash trigger set and a portable studio background set – so this takes the pressure off me to try to get a good shot with my new toys later in the week. But look out for some photos taken using (and also of) these toys later in the week.
