Let There Be Light !

Those who know me can tell that I do not own a studio or any other "pro" equipment. All I have is my camera and 2 flashes. Luckily, getting a good result, which is a good photo, does not always mean that one should own a studio (or rent one). What I mean is, the thing that I love in photography is that you do not always need to buy or build a complicated setup, but you can do it at your home, sometimes on your own bed, right after the idea came up to your mind.

And this is exactly what I did this time.

In this post I would like to talk about the following photo:



The idea came up while reading a book in my room. I used this bulb, and unintentionally I took a glimpse at it, and then saw the light and the reflection on it. It made me wonder how I can make a photo from this, the bulb and the reflection that showed nicely its contour.

Using the correct exposure, I can catch the light of the filament, but then the reflection will not be seen since it is not strong enough. When you expose on the filament, almost everything except it will be dark, because it is an extremely strong light and nothing in the area can match it. Yet, catching only the filament is not such a big deal - I wanted to catch in addition to it some light on the glass enclosure that will emphasize its outline, so I understood I need some other strong-light-source that will simulate the reflection: my SB600 flash.


However, trying to use the flash alone will result in a "hard" light that will not look good on the glass enclosure of the bulb, and what I wanted to get is a soft and easy light to show only the outline. The problem is that the flash is very small and fires a high contrast light, and we need some light source to be much bigger than the bulb. To solve this, I have used White Foam Core. The flash fires on the white board, that reflects the light on the bulb, so from the bulb's point of view, the thing that lights it is much bigger, hence softer, than the direct flash. This way we end up with a good exposure on the filament, against a dark background, and a nice contour of the enclosure of the bulb.

In the following photo, you can see the setup... on my bed, everything is improvised on the moment.

When Basketball Meets Art

This time, the post is related to the photos in my gallery "When Basketball meets Art".
For example, have a look at this shot:

Even though there are no real secrets or real innovation in the way i did it, i would like to share the process.

First of all, I must thank all the amazing girls that took their part in the shootings. This photo is part of a series that you can see  in the link above; in this particular case - Avigiel Cohen and Liron Cohen: THANKS! :-) These 2 girls are GREAT israeli basketball players.
Liron, in my opinion, is the best Israeli-women-basketball player ever. Last year she played for Wisla Krakow and lead her team all the way through the 2010 Women-Euroleague Final Four! This year she plays in Famila Wuber Schio, Italy.
Avigiel - she is the best promise of the women-basketball in Israel. Nowadays she plays in UC Berkeley, USA.

I love taking photos of basketball. Not only I think this is an amazing game, I also find it extremely photogenic. After shooting Maccabi Tel Aviv games in the Euroleague for over 2 years, I decided to take photography of basketball down a more artistic path. I thought of dark photos, hardly lit, lots of drama in it, but full of action.

So what do you need in order to make this kind of photo?

Court

First of all, you need a court. Even though the basket itself is not showing in the photo, the marks on the floor give one a hint that all of this happens on a basketball court.

Light

Photography is catching light, and this case is not different. We need a main light source, but because I want the photos to be a bit dark, unlike a "standard" basketball photo, we place the main flash on the side, 45º or more. The second light source is needed only to distinguish the elements (girls and ball) from the dark background, so we place it as a back-light, a bit behind our girls. When this done, the exposure will result in a dark background, since nothing lights it up, and the girls will be lit dramatically, from their side and back.

Posing

Even though it looks like an action shot, do not get mislead: this is completely not spontaneous. We thought of some action poses, choose one, and did it again and again till all elements worked together: light, pose and focus.

a short YouTube video that i took during the shootings can explain a lot of these:

Argentina/Chile 2010

Saucony Commercial

In this post, I would like to share with you how I did this photo:

I bought my new beautiful Saucony running shoes (in the duty-free, on my way to Rhodes!). BTW: i could not find these shoes on Amazon with that color... only with the standard (white-red-blue). And yes, I LOVE yellow... even my crocks are yellow: 

anyways, I love these shoes, and I think they are gorgeous, so I wanted to make a great photo for them, to look like a commercial or something. Because these running shoes made for road (and not track, for example) I wanted to give an urban background. for this, I planned to get a good urban shot, and then to take a photo of the shoes and using Photoshop place them on that background.

So, the first step is to get the background.
Azriely Center, located in Tel Aviv, Israel. 3 huge buildings with a unique pattern make this campus to an extremely photogenic site.  It was being photographed from every possible angle. Even myself took some photos of these skyscrapers...
In this case, for this use, i took a photo of this center from another huge building in the area; this way the buildings are seen, and underneath them the road with all lights from the cars:

Well, that was not that easy to get.... climbing over 46 floors in a being-built skyscraper is not THAT easy, and might not be legal in some cases, but it's definitely worth it.

 (me, taking the photo... thanks to Sivan Lahav!)

After I've got the background, I had to take the shot of the shoes.
It was important to take them on a white background, since i planned to cut them and place them on the urban-background. I placed the beautiful white-map that Mom's bought me in case i will have guests at home, and using only one flash, on top of my camera, bounced to the ceiling was enough for this case. Hereby the result:

 when i got this result, it was pretty easy to "cut" the shoes and isolate them from the white background. Note that i say "pretty easy", and not "easy", because there are some areas that the shoe is almost white (see top area) or on the bottom, when there is a little shadow. Tip: Use Magnetic Lasso Tool for selecting the shoes.

The last part was to place the layer of the shoes over the urban background. Quickly, i have figured out that in order to highlight the color of the shoes, their yellowness, it will be the best to desaturate the background. And even after that, it was hard to place the shoes over the background - I could not find the right place to they will be composed in a way I will be satisfied.

Searching for the right composition, i noticed that if i flip horizontally the background, the shoes will fit exactly in a way that will make me happy! All was left to do is to add Saucony's logo, to make it look professional, just like a commercial.

This is it!!

Hope you enjoyed. Don't hesitate to post here you questions/comments.
Ohad Redlich