Like Martin, Only More Spartan
After seeing the Martin Prihoda Delirium video recently, fellow west-coaster Andrew Jorgensen decided to see if he could get close to the look with a trio of speedlights. Light is light, and if you can find ways to allow for the differences in power levels, you can do many things with your speedlights that the Big Boys do with their Profotos.
Jorgensen shot four guys from "djHere," a San Diego-based promotions company, for an article in Pacific Magazine. The location was Shelter Island, near San Diego.
He used a Nikon D300, with two SB-800's and a an SB-24. He set one of the SB-800's to slave to the others using the SU-4 slave hack.
That's actually not what the SU-4 mode is really for, but it works great. He used a splitter to sync the other two strobes via one Pocket Wizard. I would have probably just PW'd he SB-24 and set both SB-800's to slave to save running a wire. But his way worked fine, too.
Here's the setup. Even more than the idea of translating Profotos down to speedlights, I He came fairly close, but was not able to get his backlights high enough because of the distance involved. No secrets there, you just need taller stands, closer distances (for a better angle) or more voice-activated light stand extenders.
Australian photographer Brendan O'Shea used the same triangle light (all small Sunpaks) to shoot the group, "Modern Legion" in an alleyway. (His was done in late March.)Like Jorgensen, he used a little post work to pop it. Seems to work well for this light. And to O'Shea's credit, he not only was very close to Pihroda's look, but was out there before even seeing that video on the big light technique.
Just two quick examples to show that the idea of looking at the big light stuff and translating down to speedlights can work. You just have to be able to make accommodations for the differences in power.
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Related Links:
:: Andrew Jorgensen's Flickr Page ::
:: Brendan O'Shea's Flickr Page ::
:: Original Martin Pihroda Video ::
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by David, at 12:00 AM.
16 Comments:
Congrats to both of you, the two photos looks just nice. Shame we don't have more details on the set up for the second one, since the lateral space is more constricted.
I have described the light stand as :
Carbon Based, Voice Activated, bipedally mobile, Light stand.
I'm thinking it should be modified to be a Mark I, Carbon Based Voice Activated bipedally mobile fully articulated intelligent trainable Light stand.
Great images. I had not seen the video before, so the part that I found most interesting was the amount of post that must have gone into all three (the ones from the video and the other two from this post). When the video camera watches Martin chimping it is obvious that the images that come out of the camera are not very much like the final product at all. The lighting is cool, but really quite simple. I would love to know the other steps in between the camera and the final product.
Seems to me small speedlights work great (in terms of output) behind and to the sides, as they are usually bare. The angle of reflectance helps as well. Seems a bit more power is needed for the overhead main if it's to be diffused by umbrella, softbox or whatever. I know they're heavier and a bit more expensive but how about a Norman 200B or a Lumeydyne? Haven't felt much love for these lights on strobist.
Hey, great work... but one thing:
I have to complain that there is nothing said about the post production...
The photos out of cam must be great, but nobody says a word about digital imaging...
What is photo and what is photoshop in this case for example?
Does anybody have a kind of tutorial for this look?
That´d be quasi holistic, you know what i mean...
best greetings
I think it is important to note that the horizontal spacing of the subject must be taken into account - this technique works best (IMO) when the two rear lights can see each person/object being photographed.
Otherwise you lose the depth and power of the light...
i agree with all of this. great work. i've tried it myself and have some interesting results. my biggest question is that of the others. what happens after the shoot in photoshop?
Wonderful post. Even for people like me, who usually work with available light, a bounce and maybe a single speedlight, this is inspiring stuff.
I also tried the same trick with a ban promo shoot. But due to rain and therefore not being able to use our main location we had to divert to using plan B, which was indoors and almost no ambient. But this is essentially the same lighting scheme.
http://flickr.com/photos/24740626@N07/2410382559/
I really like the look of these images. Anyone care to guess at what the 3 strobes would be metered at in the original example? I'm never sure about the balance between backlights and main lights. The "Why Do Rim Lights Blow Out?" post a while back seemed to recommend metering rims at -1EV or more. I seem to get good results most of the time metering rims the same as my key, or even half a stop higher.
Any help?
OK: another vote for PS/lightroom discussion: broadening this a bit: Could you perhaps post a post David, telling us what you would use PS type software for normally as part of your work: I appreciate that a Photojournalist is usually constrained massively by professional code of conduct not to produce technicaly doctored photos: but presumably you must do some basic "collar and cuff" work to get a photo ready for publication. What would those steps be; (in order please and why!) I'm presuming for example that you might do an auto "levels" to maximise dynamic range whilst not changing the look of the picture unduly? Would you ever consider a crop after the event if you had second thoughts after you'd left he asignment; or would these stages purely be in camera and never on the computer? Would you (DH) for a professional assignment expect to give your pictures in say RAW format straight from the camera to the client i.e. the Paper; and let their picture editor do anything else? Would you give them a jpeg format for example: and leave any post prodcution work to a photo editor?
I'm the first to vote for 99% of effort to go into getting the image hitting the camera's sensor as you want it, rather than fiddling around afterwards. Not that I'm a photojournalist; just it seems to be a lovely application of the GIGO principle (and to parpahrase the great Tom Lehrer I presume Digital photo workflow is like a sewer.. what you get out of it depends on what you put into it...)
Personally I've spent 18 months thinking hard about composition; lighting etc... thinking "PS that'll come later..." but I guess I'm ready to learn about "what would be benefitial to do to a picture in PS in 3 minutes that would tweak it really usefully: give it some "pop" without going crazy. Is there a blog anywhere similar to strobist for PS... ? Indeed David can you perhaps discuss what is good practise to do standardly once an image is in the computer; but not using the computer as an art/ compositional tool in its own right, i.e. what professional photographers would think of as completely normal and surely everyone knows (er hem some of us don't)?
Clearly for this style of picture the post production is tipping into the realms of art composition in itself: I'd love to know about that too; but clearly there is a distinction to be made, and it would be nice to know what is on both sides of the border line, but still close to it. My guess is that the post production is fairly straightforward or else it would have been mentioned first off...
Whilst searching the web about PS techniques I find myself left stone cold by most of it; as it is all about using the software as a compostional tool in its own right: intersting/ clever and creative.. just not the bag I'm into. I'm interested in lighting and photography. :)
Jonathan Histed
@ Marcio.
If you follow the flickr link you will see a comment that a Sunpak on the RHS was photoshopped out in post.
From what I can gather this is a blog where the author is kind enough to share a great deal of what he knows about lighting techniques, equipment, shooting on location, and detailed breakdowns/tutorials which helps people improve on their lighting skills, whether they are a pro or a hobbyist.
Personally I think we should all be grateful that the author spends as much time as he does passing on information in such great detail at no cost to us.
This blog is, and always has been about lighting, lets keep it that way, there's always room to go off on a slight tangent, but if you want in depth photoshop or lightroom advice, then there are plenty of other forums/blogs out there to learn from, www.lightroomforums.net is a good place to start.
Hello David,
Thanks for the link.
I got quite a shock this morning when I checked my inbox. A few people have expressed interest in the post production, although it never works for me if the lighting's not a particular way. The front light is a shoot through umbrella high enough to light everyone in the group. The backlighting is two more strobes, usually just outside the frame. Once again I go to considerable effort to make sure everyone is lit. This involves juggling positions and placement of subjects before I can take any shots at all. If even one person in the group is unlit, it's not going to work. In the shot above, there was simply no way to light everyone and have the strobes out of shot due to the narrowness of the alley, so I decided I would hide the right hand strobe in a doorway as best I could, and erase it later if it was too obtrusive. This lane was a through road in the city with traffic, so experimentation wasn't much of an option.
As for post, in this case everything was done in Photoshop, but it was nearly there out of the camera.
Here's what I did with this shot: Cloned out everything that didn't help the shot (cigarette butts, onlookers in the background if there were any, lighting equipment) then I cranked up the Radius on the Unsharp Mask, but kept the amount fairly low. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Really depends on the lighting. Duplicated that layer, desaturated that new layer and changed the mode to overlay. Changed the opacity until it looked OK. Then I burnt in some highlights on her hair and pants to make them appear shinier. And that's it. Ten minutes tops. I agree wholeheartedly with those who suggested a less Photoshopped look. I actually prefer the unretouched version (I'll put it up on flick as soon as I can) but when the average consumer can come up with some pretty great photos, I find I have to go a few steps further to give them a reason to hire me. Even if it means crossing the 'good taste' line.
I have no doubt shots like these will become this decade's version of mullets and platform shoes, but for now, and for a really good laugh in thirty years time, they're a lot of fun.
Hello all,
First off thanks for all the nice comments I really appreciate it. It was a very nice surprise to have so much great feedback from this photo.
Well I tried to post a comment once to talk a bit about my post production, but somehow it never made it up. So I will try again.
As mentioned on my flickr page, there is very very little photoshop work done on this photo. I removed several cig butts with the cloning tool and that is it. The color and everything else is done in Lightroom. More and more these days I am doing most of my post work in lightroom. The ability to save presets and quickly run a photo through several options quickly (by mousing over presets in the develop module and watching the preview image in the top left corner) is an incredible resource.
As far as what I actually did to this image... good question. Most of my processing effects come from simply playing with sliders until i get something I like. I have messed with them enough to know which controls do what, but there is no particular method to how I go about it. I usually start by adjusting the exposure to a place that I like, often bringing up the fill light and down the recovery, which helps to give the image a bit wider dynamic range, or I guess a more evenly dispersed dynamic range. Often after that I will adjust colors in the camera control section to bring the color to levels that I like. This is all to bring the photo to a "normal" look. Once i have it there I can begin to get "arty" with it. At this point i will play with vibrance, saturation, clarity, vignetting,, individual color saturation, and sometimes split toning. Again, I cant tell you exactly what I did to this one because its always different. I suppose I could list off the values from the sliders, but it would do you no good, as this processing effect looks good on this image, but on another it might look terrible.
Once quick note about one of the important adjustments in this, and many of my photos. I use the Clarity adjustment quite a bit. I believe it increases "localized contrast", which is what Brenden does in photoshop with the "unsharp mask" filter.
The biggest thing is to experiment, and then experiment some more. When putting together these images I started by wanting a cold "metalic" look like those in Martin's shots, so I got something I liked by adjusting individual color saturations and what not. You can see some of these shots on my flickr page. Then I took this shot into photoshop to remove the cig butts, and when I finished there I thought i was done with the image. But when it was back in Lightroom I decided I wanted a bit more "pop" to the photo so I decided to bring some color back in. I think I got the warm tones to come back by adjusting the color temp. I enjoyed what it did for the photo and so did the client.
Anyway, I realize that is not very specific help on my post, but the main thing I want to stress is to experiment... lots. When I get something I like I save it as a preset, and the one thing I notice is that sometimes a preset looks great for a particular image, and terrible on the next. It has much to do with the lighting, as has been mentioned, but also the subject matter, etc.
Finally, if anyone wants to check out more of my work I just posted a makeshift portfolio on my site at www.jorgensenphotography.com .
Feel free to contact me with any specific questions. Thanks again for all the positive feedback!
-Andrew Jorgensen
photos look amazing! great work!
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