Tuesday, 1 December 2015

Using the studio and lighting set ups - WB 1,3

Health and Saftey in the studio:

“What health and safety law requires

The basis of British health and safety law is the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974.

The Act sets out the general duties, which employers have towards employees and members of the public, and employees have to themselves and to each other.

These duties are qualified in the Act by the principle of ‘so far as is reasonably practicable’. In other words, an employer does not have to take measures to avoid or reduce the risk if they are technically impossible or if the time, trouble or cost of the measures would be grossly disproportionate to the risk.

What the law requires here is what good management and common sense would lead employers to do anyway: that is, to look at what the risks are and take sensible measures to tackle them.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (the Management Regulations) generally make more explicit what employers are required to do to manage health and safety under the Health and Safety at Work Act. Like the Act, they apply to every work activity.

The main requirement on employers is to carry out a risk assessment. Employers with five or more employees need to record the significant findings of the risk assessment.

Risk assessment should be straightforward in a simple workplace such as a typical photographic studio or location. It should only be complicated if it deals with serious hazards such as those in a darkroom using chemicals.”

Risk Assessments

We all know that we need to do some form of risk assessment but what is involved in doing this. Why if we are freelance photographers should we consider doing one. For a start, if you have public liability insurance you can claim to being aware of any issues before they arise and you have some paper work that shows you where aware of any issues if something should happen. Apart from this it is good practice to do a risk assessment as it shows you clients, subjects and co-workers that you do care about providing a positive and safe working environment for everyone. The Health and Safety Executive has the following guide you should download and consider using: “Five steps to risk assessment “ on the HSE website or Five steps to risk assessment.

You can download the form only from here Photographers Risk Assessment

You need to follow these five steps, to not only be aware of risks but, also to do something about them.

Identify hazards.
Decide who might be harmed and how.
Evaluate the risks and decide on precautions.
Record your findings and implement them.
Review your assessment and update if necessary.

Working on Location. The Health and Safety Executive has a useful guide in Buildings used for locations or temporary studios in film and television. That covers things like working in buildings, control measures, fire, responsibilities, hazards, Utilites, Vermin, hazardous materials, rubbish and debris to name a few of the details it goes into.

In the guide it refers to ‘must’ as being a legal obligation and words like ‘do’ should’ as advice on good practice. I would recommend that you download this guide from the link below as it is an in-depth look at things you should consider when working on location.

See link below for a form, that will help in checking the location for any health and safety issues that you may encounter. (which is also in the guide from the listed here). Health and Safety Executive, Buildings used for locations or temporary studios in film and television on the HSE website or Buildings used for locations or temporary studios in film and television or download the modified one that I have created based on the one for television. Here: Location photography Health and Safety

One area that photographers need to consider is the possibility of people tripping or slipping over.

“Slip and Trip Hazards Control measures

In order to effectively control slip and trip risks, employers should:

Identify the hazards – look for slip and trip hazards around the location or photo studio.
Decide who might be harmed and how – look at who comes onto the location or photo studio, and whether they are at risk.
Consider the risks and decide if precautions already being taken are enough, or if more needs to be done.
Record the findings.
Review the assessment regularly and revise it if necessary.

Location or photo studio premises are varied and often complex sites. The measures to control the risks will vary according to the different areas of the location or photo studio and the different activities being undertaken. Each will need to be assessed separately and a range of practical measures adopted to control the risk depending on the assessment. The risk factors to consider include:

Environmental (floor, steps, slopes etc).
Contamination (water, food, litter etc).
Organisational (task, safety culture etc).
Footwear (for example, footwear worn for photographic sessions may not always be in line with sensible shoes for work).
Individual factors (eg information and training,  supervision, pedestrian behaviour etc).”

The points above have been modified for the photographic studio and come from: Health and Safety Executive. Preventing slip and trip incidents in the education sector on the HSE website or Preventing slip and trip incidents in the education sector.

Studio Task

Today we went into the studio to set up lighting for some images ready for us to start using the 5x4 camera. At first we was going for a bright white evenly exposed background, we were using 4 lights 2 at the background one with a beauty dish and another with bowl reflector. The front lights one with a snoot and another with soft box. Background lights want to be f64 and the front lights wanted to be f22 which will be two stops lower than the back.

Using the light meter we can get an accurate measurement of the amount of light hitting the subject/background . To do this you connect the sync lead up to the light and have it attached to the light meter. Set the light meter up for the right mode for this particular exercise it will be the symbol of the flash with a little c. Set the ISO to 100 and set the shutter speed for the speed you want, you then trigger the flash with it pointing towards the light in front of your subject. This will give you the reading of what your f number will be.

We incurred a problem as the lights wouldn't get up to f64 the highest the back lights went up to was f22, this accident actually worked out ok as the overall image had a beautiful soft balanced contrast. The background went from grey fading into white. Not having the background just as a white or a grey and mixing them up it creates a more atmospheric feel towards the image.

Handheld light meters have three important functions:

They read light being reflected from a subject.
They read the light falling on a scene or subject, that is, the incident light.
They read the light from an electronic flash.

Flash Mode

Most handheld meters also function as a flash meter. This is extremely valuable in the studio and on location when you are using one or more flash units. The meter is able to detect the brief burst of light, and it will give you a perfect exposure. All the insecurity of flash exposure is gone. Notice in the photos below that the lighting on the model’s face is different. In the first shot I used only one light while in the second I used a main and a fill, and yet the meter in flash mode produced perfect results in both types of light. If you want to do multiple pops from strobe units, a flash meter can evaluate the accumulated bursts of light to determine the correct lens aperture.

When you’re using flash mode, you push a button on the meter and then fire your flash within the next 60 seconds. The meter measures the flash, and its LCD tells you what your camera settings should be. It’s that easy. You can take both incident and reflected readings of a flash, but I have always found the incident readings to be flawless and have always used that method.

Flash mode works beautifully on location as well. When I was in Venice, I did a lot of off-camera flash work, such as in the image below, and the balance between the flash and the ambient light was perfect. When I shot famine figures in Dublin, Ireland, the meter was unaffected by the background darkness. It read the flash perfectly in incident mode.

http://www.sekonic.com/whatisyourspecialty/photographer/articles/how-to-use-a-handheld-meter.aspx on 25.11.2015

Lucas Simones - WB 1

Lucas Simões is a Brazilian artist based in São Paulo.

Simões was born in Catanduva in 1980, and moved to São Paulo in 2002, after attending Architecture school. He attended Politecnico di Milano in Italy in 2001. His work has been exhibited in Brazil, Germany, Spain, England,United States, Venezuela and Argentina.

Lucas Simões' work is highly influenced by his architectural and design background. Over the years Simões has experimented working with a wide range of materials: maps, books, photographs, concrete, silicon, wax and paper.

The artist processes the materials in different ways: burning, cutting, layering, reshaping, diluting or distorting them.

Michal Macku - WB 1

GELLAGE

Since the end of 1989, Michal Macku has used his own creative technique which he has named "Gellage" (the ligature of collage and gelatin).

The technique consists of transfer the exposed and fixed photographic emulsion from its original base on paper. This transparent and plastic gelatin substance makes it possible to reshape and reform the original images, changing their relationships and endowing them with new meanings during the transfer. The finished work gives a compact image with a fine surface structure. Created on photographic quality paper, each Gellage is a highly durable print eminently suited for collecting and exhibiting.

The laborious technology, which often includes the use of more than one negative per image, makes it impossible to produce absolutely identical prints: Each Gellage is an original work of art. The artist does make at least 12 signed and numbered prints of each image.

Michal Macku talks about his work: "I use the nude human body (mostly my own) in my pictures. Through the photographic process [of Gellage], this concrete human body is compelled to meet with abstract surroundings and distortions. This connection is most exciting for me and helps me to find new levels of humanness in the resulting work.
I am always seeking new means of expression and, step by step, I am discovering almost unlimited possibilities through my work with loosened gelatin. Photographic pictures mean specific touch with concrete reality for me, one captured level of real time. The technique of Gellage which I am using helps me to take one of these "time sheets" and release a figure, a human body, from it, causing it to depend on time again. Its charm is similar to that of cartoon animation, but it is not a trick. It is very important for me to be aware of the history of a picture and to have a sense of direct contact with its reality. My work places "body pictures" in new situations, new contexts, new realities, causing their "authentic" reality to become relative. I am interested in questions of moral and inner freedom. I do what I feel, and only then do I begin to meditate on what the result is. I am often surprised by the new connections I find in it. Naturally, I start out with a concrete intention, but the result is often very different. And there, I believe, lies a hitch. One creates to communicate what can not be expressed in any other way. Then comes the need to describe, to define."

CARBON PRINTS

Since 2000 Macku uses also other historical photographic techniques in combination with the technique GELLAGE. After experiments with heliogravure, platinum and kallitype he mastered technique of carbon printing. He was provided for working with original negatives of a real master of this technique and one of the legend of Czech photography - worldwide well known photographer Frantisek Drtikol.

The carbon prints are sized approx. 35x30 cm (14x12''), on a top quality graphic watermark paper, stamped and signed and the edition of each motif is limited to 24 numbered copies.

About the CARBON technique
Text from book called: The Book of Carbon and Carbro: Contemporary Procedures for Monochrome Pigment Printmaking. For more information contact author: Sandy King

In versatility and range of possibilities, carbon is a superb process. It is capable of presenting images with a wide range of image characteristics, of virtually any color or tone, and on a wide variety of surfaces. During the entire period of its history when it co-existed with other commercial processes in the second half of 19th century, carbon was considered the aristocrat of printing processes. Carbon prints were more costly than those produced by other processes, about twice as expensive as platinum and three to five times as much as silver. On the other hand, the technique is very difficult to work. But once mastered, carbon process offers a range of possibilities not available with any other photographic system, and difficult to, if not impossible, to duplicate.

The carbon process, like all pigment processes depends upon the fact that colloids (gelatin, gum, albumen, casein etc.), when applied to a suitable support, sensitized with a dichromate salt and activated by exposure to light change their physical characteristics in proportion to the intensity of the chemical or light. The process, called tanning or hardening, makes the colloid insoluble in hot water.

Carbon prints can be made to look virtually indistinguishable from silver prints. Because of their discernible relief, carbon images often have greater apparent sharpness than of silver prints. The archival qualities of carbon prints are superior to those derived from silver salt papers. The stability of carbon is limited only by the gelatin carrier and its paper base, making it the most stable of all photographic processes.

Commercial Carbon Printing: Please contact Michal Macku for more information about commercial carbon printing for museums, collectors, photographers and artists He uses to work with both vintage and contemporary negatives. There is also available retouching and renovation broken glass negatives and vintage prints.

Jan Saudek - WB 2,7

Jan Saudek is a photographer born in Prague his mostly known for his nude sexual imagery. But what is fascinating about these particular is the fact that he takes these images with a pinhole camera and then colours the print. The detail in his images are outstanding and to colour every inch of the image to give it its own uniqueness is something quite remarkable. He bases his images around the relationships between man and woman and parent and child. But you mainly see sexual relationships throughout his images with some them bordering on pornography with the erotic poses and positions. He also brings into his images beautiful and perfect crossed with old and decay, in most of his images there's the crumbling wall behind the subjects which appears in most of his images. The images may shock a lot of observers because of the extremely fleshy, erotic sexual scenes in the images. I like the style in which Saudek produces these images I don't particularly like some of the subject poses in particular images, but the process and lengths he goes to to create these pieces of work is mind blowing. The colours he uses for the subjects are vibrant and eye catching where as the background are washed out dull colours this is so the subject and message shout louder to you and immerse you into the meaning behind his work.

Zeb Andrews - Modern day pinhole photographer.

http://zebandrewsphotography.com/
20.12.15

Poplar farm along I-84 in Oregon, 30 seconds

Those of you who know me, know that I enjoy my pinhole camera. I rarely go out on any photographic excursion without it in fact. So, I figured I would spend a few minutes tonight introducing it to those of you who are not familiar with it.

The camera I use is made by in Hong Kong. They make beautiful, wooden cameras that operate as wonderfully as they are beautiful. My specific camera is the Zero 6×9 multi-format, though I only ever shoot it in 6×9.

There are three main reasons I enjoy my pinhole so much: it is slow, it is simple and it is durable. I am often amused at the irony that my love of nature and my love of photography have combined to get me out to more places than I would have otherwise, but that pressing desire to photograph those places sometimes causes me to rush and scramble so much for the next shot as to actually distract me from enjoying the scenery right in front of me. The aperture on my pinhole is a “blazing” f250. That means even on fairly bright days I am going to have exposures ranging from 15 to 60 seconds in length. It is not uncommon for me to expect to wait out a five or eight minute exposure either. What I have found this does is that it slows me down. I tend to find myself relaxing a bit more, looking around, studying and planning, but also just simply enjoying. The required wait on the camera pays off in a more relaxed approach to the landscape around me.

Salmon Street Springs, 8 seconds

Finally, I can rarely have a discussion about pinhole without mentioning how durable this camera is. My camera has been dropped into the ocean…twice. It fell off my tripod and got swept over the Eagle Falls at Lake Tahoe. It jumped off my lap and out of a parked car in NW Portland once, shattering itself on the sidewalk. It was probably tired of being dropped in the ocean. But for all those adventures, it still works. The images it makes look as good as the day I bought it. The second time it fell in the ocean, it took about three minutes for me to find it in the surf. When I did, it was buried under wet sand, with only the leg of my tripod to indicate where it was. I opened the camera, dumped out the salt water and sand, then ran it under the faucet in a nearby restroom to rinse it out. I dried it with paper towels and had it reloaded within 15 minutes. I cannot say this would have been possible with any of my other cameras. As long as I can keep the box light tight, and as long as I do not damage the pinhole itself, this camera will last a lifetime or more.

Of course, it does not look nowhere near as nice as it used to. But it has plenty of character, and stories.

Pinhole Photographer - Noriko Ohba

I was born in Hiroshima, Japan and now am living in Osaka with my husband.
I think I found a way to express myself by starting taking photos.
Since I met a pinhole photos, my life is getting fun and interesting.
I'm very courious person and once I start doing something interesting I always spend a lot of time and focus on it.

The light through a pinhole which is printed on a film expresses a temperature, humidity, scent, people's talking, my mind, thoughts and wishes...
It is a wonderful (amazing) expression that everything is coming together in one photograph.
This is why I love a pinhole photograph so much.

Noriko Ohba

http://www.tea-room.net/profolio/index.php#
20.12.15

Wednesday, 11 November 2015

Applied Photographic Techniques - Studio - WB 1

Rembrandt Lighting

Rembrandt lighting (also called 45-degree lighting) is a lighting technique that is used in studio portrait photography. It can be achieved using one light and a reflector, or two lights, and is popular because it is capable of producing images which appear both natural and compelling with a minimum of equipment. Rembrandt lighting is characterised by an illuminated triangle under the eye of the subject on the less illuminated side of the face. It is named for the Dutch painter Rembrandt who used this type of lighting. The key in Rembrandt lighting is creating the triangle or diamond shape of light underneath the eye. One side of the face is lit well from the main light source while the other side of the face uses the interaction of shadows and light, also known as chiaroscuro (an Italian word that’s literal translation is light-dark) to create this geometric form on the face. The triangle should be no longer than the nose and no wider than the eye. This technique may be achieved subtly or very dramatically by altering the distance between subject and lights and relative strengths of main and fill lights.

tabithamannstudio.blogspot.com www.webcoursesbangkok.com

Rembrandt lighting can be created using natural light source too, Positioning your model in a direction towards to window light/ sun light will create the illuminated triangle on the cheek.

Examples of lighting set ups:

theboudoirplace.wordpress.com

digital-photography-school.com

samanthawild15.blogspot.com

Rim Lighting

A rim light is positioned behind the subject and facing toward the camera. It illuminates the edges of the subject to give a glow and to separate them from the background. With the glow around the head you get a halo effect. The rim light is slightly higher than the other lights but you must make sure that the subject is blocking the light from the view of the camera all you need is glow around the back.

Examples of lighting set ups:

Using one light: www.sylights.com

Using 2 lights: photography.tutsplus.com

Using 3 lights: www.davidjameswilliams.com

Images of rim lighting technique:

Using rim lighting makes the subjects stand out and looks really effective. I personally like rim lighting for the effect it gives, I can try using this style of lighting in my own portraits.

www.silverashphotography.co.uk www.lightstalking.com www.perspectives.co.nz

Clamshell Lighting

Clamshell lighting is used in fashion and beauty photography mostly as this type of lighting

creates a flattering and glowing effect. The photographer would use 2 lights source from the

front to illuminate the model/subject. This will minimize shadows and give that radiant glow

effect. You can see this lighting style used by beauty and fashion campaigns,

a way of identifying the technique is you can see the the 2 catch lights in the models eyes

this identify's clamshell lighting. You can also achieve this lighting by using one light and a

reflector to get the same effect.

Examples of lighting set ups

www.lighting-essentials.com

http://www.edverosky.net/blog/clamshell-lighting/

http://digital-photography-school.com/the-killer-clamshell-a-two-light-setup-guide/

digital-photography-school.com

Back lighting

In lighting design, back lighting is the process of illuminating the subject from the back. In other words, the lighting instrument and the viewer face each other, with the subject in between. This creates a glowing effect on the edges of the subject, while other areas are darker. The backlight can be a natural or artificial source of light. When artificial, the back light is usually placed directly behind the subject in a 4 point lighting set up. A back light, which lights foreground elements from the rear, is not to be confused with a background light, which lights background elements (such as scenery).

In the context of lighting design, The back light is sometimes called hair or shoulder light, because when lighting an actor or an actress, backlighting makes the edges the subject's hair glow if the hair is fuzzy. This can create an angelic halo type effect around the head. Filmmakers sometimes use this to show that the actor is good or pure. Television productions often use this effect in soap operas, where it has become something of a cliché of the genre. It is also sometimes called the kicker or rim light.

Backlighting helps separate subject and background. Live theatre lighting designs often use backlighting to give a more three-dimensional appearance to actors or set elements, when front lighting alone would give a flat, two-dimensional look. In chiaroscuro effects in painting, such as the candlelit paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby (illustration, left), backlighting helps separate subjects in the foreground and emphasizes depth.

In photography, a back light (often the sun) that is about sixteen times more intense than the key light produces a silhouette. A fill flash used with a backlit subject yields more even lighting.

The vertical angle of the back light can change the effect. A low angle can make the light hit the camera lens, causing lens flare. A high angle can make the subject's nose extend out from the mostly vertical shadow of the head, producing a potentially unwanted highlight in the middle of the face.

http://www.studiolighting.net/back-lighting-studio-lighting-setup/

www.dramabydesign.com www.prophotonut.com

Monday, 2 November 2015

Advanced Pinhole Camera - WB 2,7

Making a Pin Hole Camera With A Lens:

I am looking at creating an advanced pinhole camera which includes a lens added on to the box. I'll be using a magnifying glass as my lens, with a piece of metal which will have a precision cut pin hole. This will be where the light enters to travel through the box to hit the light sensitive paper. The cut will be a 2mm hole this is easier number to work with in working out the calculations for the f stop number so for example 240mm divided by 2mm (hole size) = aperture of F120. Another important area to get right before making the box is to figure out the focal length with the magnifying glass this will determine what size box you are going to need. As there needs to be enough depth for the image to be in focus what ever that works out to be. My magnifying as a focal length of 24 so I need to ensure my box is long at least that deep in order for me to produce a focused image.
To work out the exposure values I'm going to make an exposure wheel which will then give me all the information I need once I know my f number and focal length.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=pinhole+camera+exposure+value&espv=2&biw=1040&bih=758&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAmoVChMIxK2DrM_xyAIVhi4aCh0Q7wr_#imgrc=aXdvyhFfpDWy1M%3A

Materials needed for making your camera:

Box (Depends on my lens focal point to determine the size)
Black gaffer tape
Thin piece of metal with a pinhole cut out (2mm hole)
Scissors
Screw lidded top to cover the pinhole
Black paint
Magnifying glass
Super glue
Paint brush
Drill piece

Making my camera:

On constructing my camera I first used black gaffa tape to light proof the outside of the box and the lid. I then used black matt paint to paint the inside of the box. On the lid of the box I cut out a square hole this is where the aluminium plate will sit with the 2mm hole drilled out. With the plate stuck down and taped round (not taping over the hole) I super glued the magnifying glass down over the plate to create the lens. After that set I then glued and fixed down the screw lid this will act as my shutter, I made sure to gaffa tape the lid and screw part to make sure no light leaks through. I then fixed inside the box a black cardboard sheet which curves round with it curving will add some nice depths to the images once I start taking photos.

My finished advanced pinhole camera.

Basic Pin Hole Cameras - WB 2,7

How to create a basic pin hole camera

To create a basic pin hole camera is easy you can use pretty anything which acts as a chamber to capture the image. The object needs to be light proof and which isn't reflective inside. Easiest thing to use is a box, you need to cut a hole in one side of the box and with a tin or aluminum piece of metal pierce it with pin this will act as your aperture to allow the light to pass in. You will need to get either black tape or a piece of blue tak to cover the hole before your ready to expose and after you have exposed. In the opposite side of the chamber you will need to gain access to load some light sensitive paper remember this will have to be done in the dark with no light source around as this would effect the light sensitive paper and it would be no good. AS long as you make sure your box is completely light poof with either black tape and black matt paint you are ready to go and experiment with your box pin hole camera. You can experiment with different exposure times and so forth to create different images with different effects.

Examples of basic cameras: