Some of my favorite photos

Kristin

Liz

Ashley

Liz at window

Julia

Spooky Encounter with the Ketchup Ghost of Kincaid’s

I’d heard the stories since I was a young boy, but never believed them.

Until today.

A few hours ago, I was having dinner at Kincaid’s Hamburgers (the Fort Worth – Alliance location). The cheeseburger was delicious. No pickles or onions. I always add lots of ketchup.

Looking back, I think it was the ketchup that attracted her.

About halfway through the meal, I felt the dining area grow cold. The room fell silent and dim.

And there she was, moving from table to table, collecting all the ketchup bottles: the Ketchup Ghost!

I froze, barely breathing. This couldn’t be possible.

The ghost looked just the way she was described in the stories – a young, attractive woman with short, red hair, moving silently among the tables.

The ghost moved closer to my table, eyeing my ketchup.

I could actually hear my heat beating faster.

My cell phone was lying on the table right in front of me. Slowly, I reached for the phone. Would I be able to get a picture of this silent spectre?

As the ghost moved past, I snapped a picture.

The Ketchup Ghost, holding thee, maybe four bottles of ketchup, moves past my table.

I checked my phone to see if I had the shot.

I got it! It’s blurry, but you can definitely see the maniacal expression on her face as she glides past me with all that ketchup.

I looked up from the phone to see where the ghost was going next, but she was gone.

I put the phone down and noticed that all of the ketchup bottles on my table were gone. Vanished.

Calming down, I resigned myself to finishing my burger. I took one bite and dropped it onto the table.

The ketchup on the burger was gone, too!

The faint echoes of ghostly laughter could be heard. Was she laughing at me?

Believe the stories. They’re all true.

More Retro Pinup Shots of Ashley Rachelle

I started processing images of Ashley Rachelle this evening.

I used Photoshop Lightroom 3 (Beta) and didn’t do very much to them.

• A little cropping and straightening.
• +.20 Exposure
• Clarity -25
• Vibrance +36
• Post-Crop Vignetting (Amount -40)

If you haven’t tried Lightroom, I suggest downloading the Beta and giving it a try. Be sure to Copy any images to your Lightroom 3 catalog because I’ve heard Lightroom 3 (Beta) sometimes corrupts the images and you don’t want to ruin your original images. Hey, it’s a Beta.

My monitor isn’t calibrated yet, so if they look terrible or funky, please let me know.

First Retro Pinup Shoot – Ashley Rachelle

Ashley at Rodney's mid-century modern home in Arlington, Texas.

I’ve been trying to organize a retro pinup shoot for some time. The stars finally aligned this week.

In the photo above (converted to .jpg straight from the camera), I lit Ashley Rachelle with a single Canon Speedlite 580 EXII, mounted on a stand, triggered by a PocketWizard.  I put a HonlPhoto 1/4 Speed Grid on the strobe so that the light is directional, hard and falls off from the center. Camera and flash were set to manual.

I have some other pictures from this shoot where I used a shoot-through umbrella. I will post some of those soon.

I worked with Ashley back in December. Really pretty girl, very easy to work with and she wanted to do some retro pinup work.

Ashley with plane

In this photo, Ashley was lit by two Canon strobes with shoot-through umbrellas. I think we used E-TTL that day.

Ashley’s Model Mayhem profile is http://www.modelmayhem.com/1369983.

Tomorrow’s shoot

My Honl Speedstraps and grids arrived today – just in time for tomorrow’s shoot.

I’ve got a model coming over to do some glamour shots. I’m going to experiment with the grids and maybe do some more “spotlight” pictures.

Stay tuned. I’ll try and post a few new pictures on Wednesday or Thursday.

In the meantime, here’s another picture of Ambyr.

Low angle, dramatic shot of Ambyr

Creating a “spotlight” effect with a speedlight

Ambyr is caught in my speedlight spotlight

I haven’t been doing much blogging lately, but I have been doing a lot of shooting.

Earlier this week, I did a shoot with Ambyr.

In the picture above, I was trying to recreate a “spotlight” effect that I learned from Neil van Niekerk.

Last November, Neil presented a one-day lighting workshop in Dallas. I wrote about this here.

One technique that Neil showed us involved using a video light to create a Hollywood-style glamour spotlight effect. We used a small, hand-held Lowel id-light aimed at the model to create this look. After the workshop, I wondered if I could recreate this look with my Canon speedlight (580EX II).

When I was shooting Ambyr, I attached a snoot made from some black foam material to the front of my speedlight . After tweaking the position and aim of the light, I got the look I was after. This is one of my favorite shots.

Another shot of Ambyr in her hallway

This is a bonus shot of Ambyr shot in the same hallway as the previous shot.

This time Ambyr is lit with my speedlight shooting through an umbrella. The hallway was too small for the umbrella, so I collapsed it part-way.

I placed a second speedlight behind Ambyr to light up the hallway. I attached a green gel on one side of the speedlight and a blue gel on the other side. This way I got two colors for the price of one. I thought I was being original, but I later watched a Dean Collins lighting video and learned that he was doing this back in the ’80s.

Some of the blue color spilled on Ambyr’s face, but I still like the effect.

If you’re a photographer in North Texas, Ambyr is a terrific model. Be sure and check out her Model Mayhem portfolio.

Christmas Glamour Shoot with Erin

Interesting photo shoot last night.

A group of photographers were shooting Erin at Darryl Briggs’ studio. Erin is a wonderful model.

We shot on two different sets: an outdoor winter set and a Christmas set.

This is Erin

I got home really late last night and didn’t have time to “Photoshop” the images. This first picture was not edited. It was cropped.

More Erin

 This picture wasn’t edited either – only cropped.

The lighting setup

Darryl set up two softboxes to the left and right of the model for the key and fill light. If you look closely, you can see two catch lights in Erin’s eyes.

The winter set backdrop was lit by two gelled strobes to help create a winter effect. The Christmas set included a backlight: a strobe with a grid to focus the light.

Both sets were lit for shooting at ISO 100 and f8.0. The shutter speed had little effect on exposure on either set with one exception: the Christmas tree lights were only visible if the shutter speed was set to 1/15 or slower. If this doesn’t make much sense to you, I refer you to the Strobist’s Lighting 101 blog or Neil van Niekerk’s Tangents blog.

I set my camera to ISO 100 and f8.0 with a shutter speed of 1/200 for all of my shots. The camera was set on manual exposure and so were the flashes. I got good, consistent exposures as long as Erin didn’t move closer to or farther from the key and fill lights.

Auto focus adventures

I shot these picutres with an old Canon Digital Rebel XT. In the past, the auto exposure couldn’t decide exactly what to focus on. The camera has 7 focus points and the camera decided which focus point was appropriate for each shot. Whenever I would shoot a model, the camera might focus on her hips, hands, face, the background – I never knew until I reviewed the shots.

Last night, I tried something new. I reviewed the camera user manual and found out how to manually set the focus point. I chose the focus point just to the right of the center focus point. Since I shoot with a vertical (portrait) orientation most of the time, this focus point ends up close to the subject’s eyes when I shoot. I positioned the focus point on Erin’s eyes, locked the focus by pressing the shutter release half-way, composed and shot.

Virtually all of my shots were in perfect focus! This is a HUGE improvement. I no longer have to shoot a large number of “safety” exposures. This saves time and requires a lot less effort for me and the models.

Shooting with other photographers at Darryl’s studio

There were 20 photographers and one model. We took turns shooting Erin.

This may sound like a problem, but it really isn’t. I went first and shot Erin on the winter set. I then got to observe how 19 photographers shoot. I learned a great deal from watching them. Especially this:

The best poses are the result of a specific vision by the photographer who clearly directs the model through those poses.

I gave Erin posing guidelines and she gave me a lot of good poses. But, I noticed some of the other photographers gave more specific instructions to Erin and got even better poses and shots.

Lesson learned.

I’ll post more shots of Erin from this shoot soon. I’m backed up on my Photoshopping, but I’ll get to them ASAP. I promise.

Why am I doing this blog?

At the Hukilau

Welcome to the Atomic Mitch Blog.

Recently, I decided that it was time to improve my skills as a videographer and filmmaker. Maybe if I improve my photography skills, I can make myself a better cinematographer.

Lighting is key, so I thought I would learn all I could about off-camera lighting. I started last summer by checking out the Strobist blog – strobist.blogspot.com. I highly recommend the “Strobist 101″ section.

Next, I joined a Meetup.com group that focuses on off-camera lighting. At these meetings, I finally got a chance to set up some Nikon and Canon strobes on stands with umbrellas and soft-boxes and try out Strobist theory for myself.

The most important lesson for me: the larger the light source in relation to the subject, the softer (more diffused) the light. For years, I’ve been trying to soften lights by using “diffusion” gels and filters on my lights and it never seemed to work. Now I know why.

Next, a friend and fellow photographer asked me if I had seen the planetneil blog – www.planetneil.com/tangents. Neil van Neikerk does a fantastic job explaining how to use flashes off-camera as well as on-camera (with the black foamie thing).

Reading Neil’s blog, I noticed he was coming to Dallas to present a lighting seminar. I went and learned a lot. We shot with the black foamie thing, off-camera strobes with softboxes and with a small, hand-held video light (Lowel id-light)

Picture of Lacey shot at Neil's workshop

The lighting for this picture of Lacey was a single Lowel id-light. 

Simple, but effective.

 

Madellyn with video light

This picture of Madellyn was also shot using a single video light.

I think she looks great.

 

Madellyn

This picture of Madellyn was shot with my on-camera strobe with the black foamie thing. Not bad.

 Then, I met Zuzzie.

Zuzzie!

I shot a lot of pictures of Zuzzie and put them on a new web site, explodingshirts.com.

 

Zuzzie Tree

Without warning, my little project to improve my cinematography skills has turned me into a photography enthusiast. And when I’m not shooting, I’m editing the pictures with Photoshop Lightroom 2.5 until the wee hours.

I’ve got a photo shoot tonight with a model and another shoot Saturday with some models and vintage aircraft and classic cars. I’m staying busy.

 I’ve been thinking about the photography obsession and other stuff lately and decided to create this blog. Here’s what I think it will be about:

• photography – lighting, models, posing, and more.
• Photoshop Lightroom – don’t get me started!
• video – video podcasts and  independent filmmaking.
• whatever else that comes to mind.

I’ll continue to post pictures from my photo shoots and maybe the occassional video, too.

This could be an interesting trip.