Light Hackers Photography - Recent Portraiture Shoot

Just a quick update this time... as we've been very busy with TV shoots and moving projects forward from the back burners... (more to come soon)!!

This is a montage teaser from a recent commissioned stills shoot, shot on location around London.
(containing a mix of final processed images and others straight from the camera).

All portrait sessions have a bespoke video montage made  from the images taken as part of the package!

If you are interested in commissioning your own shoot, please get in touch:

info@lighthackers.com

Bye for now.

Light Hackers Photography - 'Lighting Deconstructed' 3

Shooting with children is something we have done for the past 20 odd years... Sometimes a challenge, yet always rewarding.

We were commissioned to shoot a model portfolio series for a young girl, Hana who was aiming for the catalogue genre.
I mention the genre early on as I find it important to know which type of genre the shoot is being designed for. This is important when designing and choosing locations, and lighting themes as well as wardrobe. You need to marry these elements to suit this type of work. For an actor's portfolio perhaps, you are looking for a more muted background and flatter lighting style to show the actor as the key focus, and not to be up staged or competing with a busy setting. Also for this tighter head shots are required.

Here you see the first in this series of shots, as the lighting set-up for which we are deconstructing, carries through to both shots.

To add an important element of 'fun' in child shoots we went for an activity theme, and brought in a trampoline... focusing on Hana's ability to be staged, yet look natural in her poses.

We also styled the lighting theme to compliment the wardrobe outfits... in this shot we chose the blue gelled background to set off the blue / purple dress.

Light metering on the skin tones, we established a ratio that set the black BG two stops lower, and then dialled in the gelled accent light to suit.

With the gridded source being a flashgun strobe, it does take a few test shots to aim the light and zoom the lens to have it exactly where you need it.

The full lighting plan for this and the second shot is below:

For a more traditional pose after a costume change we had Hana do a series of standing poses. Again the only change in lighting was the angle of the strobes and the back ground gel... to compliment the red ribbon and prints in the dress.

The BTS shot for this series shows the location of the lights and the set-up used... shot while we were testing the lighting.

We chose to shoot in a large open space that offered us not only room for a mobile studio, but which had a classic art deco style of trellis that worked well as a setting for this final shot.

As always we hope you found this write-up useful and inspiring. Please feel free to leave your comments, and if there are any questions, please feel free to ask.

Until next time...

Light Hackers Photography - 'Lighting Deconstructed' 2

For the second lighting breakdown in this series we chose to deconstruct another favourite image, and one we waited to shoot till the end due to the mess this shot produced.

The image we produced, entitled 'Under Her Spell' was from the same portrait series with Deborah as the previous post in this 'Deconstructed' blog.

Greatly inspired by a series of images created by Montreal based photographer Von Wong, we wanted to try what he accomplished with an array of studio strobes, but with just 3 flashguns!!

Here is the image that inspired us:

We were very pleased with our results especially considering this was the very first attempt in shooting with flour, and the lighting design was something we had planned in advance, so it was a case of fine tuning the settings and A LOT of trial shots (9 to be exact) to produce 2 images from the shoot.

Here you can see a behind the scenes shot from the location.

As you can see, we were lucky to make use of a VERY large veranda... actually this was at the mansion house built for Captain Livingstone's return from exploring Africa.
I can't stress enough the mess that flour creates... in Von Wong's work they went so far as to use electric fans to disperse the flour... it took them hours to clean up the mess produced, and they were shooting in a vacant warehouse. We chose to lessen the required cleanup, and still it took ages to vacuum the walls and everything in sight... Be warned, only leave essentials you are using in the vicinity!

In this 'Lighting Diagram' the full lighting arrangement and settings are shown.

The lighting was something we created to work, and it did. The hardest part of this type of photography is that you can't meter the flour in the scene or compose for it exactly. It becomes a trial and error at first till you home in the lighting and the way to disperse the flour at the chosen moment.


We found that a third amount of flour was needed to be thrown in, and added to what Deborah was throwing out.That came from the camera assistant throwing in a handful, using a verbal countdown to be in sync with Deborah's throws. A technique in actually throwing the flour was needed so it spread out correctly... A lot of variables we hadn't considered till on the actual shoot.


We shot 2 further clean plates, just of flour being thrown in front of the lens, to be backup elements in Photoshop... a very necessary move!!!


The final 2 images were graded in Lightroom, and composited in Photoshop.


Here is the second finished image from this series titled 'In The Clouds'

Well that's a wrap for now, but keep checking in for more 'Behind the Scenes' write-ups from us at Light Hackers.

Light Hackers Photography - Post Services

Here at Light Hackers, we are not only commissioned to shoot for our clients, but also provide a 'post treatment to images already shot.

In this head shot we were asked to glamourize the shot provided to us. We ask for the high res file from which to work, and in this case we adjusted the levels, adding a treatment to the skin's texture and a slight glamour style effect found in many print advertisements.

Our photography post services are not strictly confined to portraiture work, but can be applied to both commercial, still life and landscape work too.

Please contact us for more details.

Light Hackers