Fashion for freedom

A few weeks ago my sister-in-law Becki Hodge asked me if I could help her out.  What could I say, particularly once I heard I would need my camera!  Becki is a very caring person who has a great passion for helping people.  During the past year or so she has been involved with the charity Freedom Project Ireland.  On their website they state:

"Our vision is to see men, women, and children freed from human trafficking in Ireland and the UK, living life with hope and abundance."

They are trying to raise awareness to try and put an end to this horrible reality through organising a number of different events from abseils to truck pulling.  This particular event was a fashion show arranged by Becki, where she arranged for local businesses to donate for an auction (including Candytuft Cakes) and supply clothes for the catwalk.  Its so hard to know if events like this will be a success or not.  Speaking to my brother beforehand I think they were expecting just over 100 people, oh how wrong they were.  I think at final count there were around 300 people (about 99% women) packed into the room.  The DJ played, the models strutted their stuff and the woman cheered!

Obviously I was delighted to be able to help out any way I could so when Becki asked me to come along and shoot the show I couldn't say no.  I love photography jobs but I do take each one very seriously.  I try to plan as much as I can and for this job it was no different.  I think about what shots I want to get but also try and look for inspiration from other photographers.

Anyone that knows me will know that I like to work on my own as sometimes when you have help you end up spending as much time trying to explain to your help what they need to do as it would take you to do it yourself.   However I decided for this job it would be best to bring in some help.  Over the past year I have got to know Gary Boal of Boal Photography.  Instantly Gary and I hit it off.  The great thing about Gary is that I know when we work together that I don't need to worry about him.  Once we plan what we are doing on a job we just get on with it.  This fashion show was no different.  We got there early, set up and then just got the job done.

Shooting the show itself was hard work.  I never realised how fast models walk done the catwalk.  I was constantly having to change setting on my camera so as not to either over or under expose the models with the speedlights.  I did have a brilliant night though and got the shots I wanted.  I was so delighted for Becki and her team for the wonderful success they made of the night.  Becki was fantastic and an absolute natural on stage hosting the show.  Roll on the next event!

Our host, the wonderful Becki!

A full house.

 

 

Some of the fantastic entertainment!

Auction time.  Going, going, gone!

The donations for the auction.

Food, glorious food!

FPI Director Gayle Bunting and Becki Hodge

The auction winner Mary Button with her cake from Kathryn of Candytuft Cakes

 

Gary Boal, don't worry he's not as strange as he looks!

The Team!

Simon

Light it up.

Well the speedlight class is now been and gone.  What a brilliant time I had.  I will be honest I was a bit nervous beforehand and particularly due to my friend Laura (the lecturer) also planning to sit in on the class.  There was no set format for the class as it is a rather informal class so I started by looking at basic non-TTL triggers and optical slaves.  I then went onto wireless TTL, looking at both Nikon and Canon systems.

As I am a Nikon user I am obviously very familiar with Nikon CLS (Creative lighting system) but knowing that half the class are Canon users I spent a bit of time trying to familiarize myself with the Canon system.  The two systems are very different and trying not to be bias I feel the Nikon system is much simpler to use.  One other thing I discovered is that none of the Canon speedlights can be used as optical slaves where as the Nikon speedlights can.

The next thing was to have go.  We all got up and started of with the basic non-TTL wireless triggers. The guys picked it up very quickly.  We had a look at several different light modifiers and I also showed them what effect gels have.

I did take time during the class to mention different techniques that due to the student's own camera they could not try out.  However I did try to demonstrate as much as I could as the D300 allowed me to do most things I spoke about.  One area I covered was killing the ambient which led onto high speed sync.  I explained to them how even without a studio you can produce low-key photographs.  During the class we didn't have access to the studio.  The class room had normal florescent lighting and windows.

For this shot I used a snoot to significantly cut down the spill from the speedlight.  I used an SB-910 on the stand with a 1/4 CTO gel with CLS using the popup flash as the commander.  The camera I set at 1/3200th, F5 and ISO 200.  The final shot of the class with this setup was of Laura and I think demonstrated what can be done without a studio using the right settings.

Thanks

Simon

You want me to do what? No problem!

Things in our house are busy at the best of time but with the recent addition of our new baby daughter Arwen it's just a wee bit busier!  Not that I am complaining though as our kids are the best thing ever.  Though my photography is really important to me it does take a bit of a back seat as Candytuft Cakes is our priority at the moment.  Even though Kathryn is on maternity leave there are still wedding shows to do along with the emails and the admin side.  I don't actively look for photography jobs and so just love it when they just appear out of the blue.  Over the past few days I have been offered 3 jobs and I am just off the phone planning a studio shoot for next week.  My mind has been in overdrive. 

The first two jobs are to do with a charity and I will have blog entries to follow but I am very excited about these.  The third job just came to me this afternoon.  A friend who teaches portraits within photography has asked me to come along and take her class one week to teach on speedlights.  Admittedly she called me a nerd at the same time as asking me.  To be honest I was really flattered by being asked.  My friend has been into photography for years and has a degree and a masters in photography so o be asked my her is a great honor.

I love having projects to plan and dream about.  I know that over the next few weeks leading up to the class I will be constantly thinking about it, thinking of how I can pass on my passion for speedlights and what will be the best things to teach.

I'm away now to dream some more.

Simon

Learn through doing.

I guess I'm like many people in that I love reading and learning new things.  I think as we get older we and get deep into the world of work we start to realise how good our years of learning at school, college and university actually were.  We miss learning.  We miss discovering new things.  If we are fortunate we get to learn new things in our day to day jobs or we take up hobbies.  I am fortunate enough to learn a lot in my job but I also have a number of hobbies, photography being one of my main hobbies.

Over the past couple of years I have developed a ravenous hunger for all things photography and lately in particular lighting and specifically speedlghts.  Nowadays the wealth of information available on everything is vast with thanks to the digital revolution and I guess mostly the internet.  Through the internet I have discovered people like Zak Arias, Jared Polin (Fro Knows Photo), Joey L and David Hobby (Strobist).  These guys have freely posted endless amounts of information on the internet in both written and video media.  Another person and one of my favorites is Joe McNally.  He is a freelance photographer who does a lot of work for National Geographic and Nikon.  I mentioned in a previous entry about a Nikon video I had been watching, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting and Joe features heavily in it.  The video looks at Nikon's wireless lighting system.  This is one area where these guys have a lot in common.  I have read and watched a lot of what they have on offer but I know that to truly learn you must practice.  With my students I could tell them how to do something until I was blue in the face but until they actually get hands on there is little chance of them actually being able to do it.

Recently I have been visualising setting up big shoots with lots of lights, where I can use specific lights to highlight features and people and bring in colours using gels and light modifiers.  Practice makes perfect as they say so I started to think about my workshop at work and how I could photograph some of the equipment using the opportunity to use the wireless system, gels and light modifiers.

The above is a Bridgeport CNC milling machine.  Firstly I placed a speedlight in the background with a red gel on it.  I then fitted a snoot to a second speedlight and directed the light from it onto the tool.  I set the shutter speed to 1/250 to kill the ambient and closed down the aperture to F14 which gives the nice star-burst effect on the gelled speedlight.

I finally added a third speedlight with a blue gel to add some colour to the body of the machine.

I was really rather pleased with the outcome, being able to try out several different techniques I have been watching and reading about from the guys I previously mentioned.

One thing I did learn at my cost, don't place gels directly onto the lens of the speedlight as my red gel now has a large whole in it!

Thanks

Simon

Nikon CLS

Anyone familiar with Nikon camera systems will probably also know of its Creative Lighting System (CLS).  This is a fantastic system.  In simple terms its a wireless lighting system.  The camera takes a light reading (metering) through the lens (ittl) and then sends information to the wireless portable speedlights.  This information sets the output of the speedlights giving a perfectly lit photo.  In theory anyway.  I have recently been playing about with this as my D300 acts as a commander unit and I have an SB-910 and SB-900 flash units.  I recently watched Nikon's DVD, A Hands-on Guide to Creative Lighting.

 In this they introduce and demonstrate their CLS and all the compadable units and then join the fantastic Joe McNally on a number of location shots where he explains what he is doing throughout.  A number of the examples are included in his equally fantastic book, The Hot Shoe Diaries.  The DVD is brilliant.  It is both helpful and imformative.  I have recently been talking to my good friend Gary Boal about setting up a big shot using lots of speedlights and this DVD has done nothing but inspire me even more.

Watch this space!

Toni and Rob

Well my last wedding of the year.  I had a great day and even managed to shoot is a couple of different locations.  The low light did challenge me a bit but again Nikon CLS came to the rescue.  It really is a brilliant system.  The main issues I had was with being outside I had to ensure I had direct line of site.  Other problem was the wind.  Thankfully the bride's brother/driver was with us and helps holding my light stands or I would have had my umbrella and SB-910 going for a swim in Belfast Lough!