I’ve been thinking about different photographic avenues, to expand my creativity and to inspire myself and decided the other morning to photograph my breakfast I had a soft boiled egg, cooked about 3 and half minutes and some pumpkin seed toast, buttered – yummy!

It was an interesting task as I had to make the food look good and I also wanted to eat it! After finishing my breakfast, which was a little cold, but still awesome and looking at the images, I think I should have dusted off the old reflector and filled in the shadows, but a small tweak in lightroom with the fill light fixed that!

This was shot with:

• Minolta Dynax 7D
• Lens: 25-105mm
• ISO: 100
• Aperture: 4.5
• Shutter: 1/45

I am always eager to find out whether the posts are helping you or not and the only way to find that out is when you tell me. So, please comment below, tweet this or share it on facebook or your favorite site. This will help me plan for future posts. Thank you for your help in advance.  :)

I’m always looking for ways of making studio equipment or trying cut costs. It can be fun putting together your own lighting set ups or just trialling new methods.

I’ve composed a list of different articles that can help you out

Original image found on:http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruimleal/1270930400/

• http://www.diyphotography.net/diy-homemade-speedlite-snoot
• http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/2007/08/diy-black-straws-snoot-grid-colored.html
• http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/2007/08/diy-snoots-with-color-part-2.html
• http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/2007/08/diy-snoots-with-color-part-1.html
• http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/2007/06/diy-black-straws-snoot-grid-part-1.html
• http://lightingmods.blogspot.com/2007/06/diy-black-straws-snoot-grid-part-2.html
• http://www.diyphotography.net/stuidio-lighting-the-ghetto-studio
• http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent
• http://www.diyphotography.net/the-party-bouncer-is-back-in-business
• http://www.shuttertalk.com/articles/diylighting

If you find any more articles, feel free to post them in the comments or email me and I’ll add to this list

Last week I worked with Tiffany again, a model that I have worked with for about two years now. She is an absolute pleasure to work with and I always get amazing images with her

These images have been minimally photoshopped as the lighting and exposure was perfect in camera.

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure with shooting with the gorgeous Emily from Model Mayhem. It was a gangster styled shoot and also another chance for me to practise new lighting set ups. She was truly a wonderful inspiration to work with!

I’ve received a lot of requests from people asking about my work flow and how to achieve the same results. I’m going to show you how to recreate this image:

The hard work was done with my lighting set up in order to get the right shadows and highlights. The lighting set up that I used is called butterfly lighting, where the soft box is in front of the model, pointing down at a 45⁰ angle approximately a foot to two feet above the camera. I also had a hair light with barn doors on a boom directly above the models head, so that her hair wouldn’t disappear into the background and to give highlights across the shoulders.

You can also add a reflector at the front to bounce the light and fill in the shadows under the nose and chin if you wish.

This is a beautiful and flattering light, which enhances the right features and smoothes out others. Also depending on how the model poses, you can achieve different effects with the same set up.

1. As you can see the image on the left is a perfect example of butterfly lighting and how beautifully it can light the subject, when they are facing straight on the camera.
2. In the centre image that we’re working on, you can see that the lighting still flatters when the model turns her face to the side.
3. In the image on the right, the same lighting was still used, but the model leaned forward creating a harsher effect that is still striking never the less.

All three of these photos were edited in the same way.

This is the image as shot in camera:

You can see that because we got the lighting right in the studio and the exposure correct, the raw image doesn’t need a lot of work, ie playing with adding in shadows, highlights or fixing spots that are too dark or overexposed etc.

The next step is to do a quick correction, where under eye circles are minimised and blemishes retouched. The model is a bit rosy as it was hot the day this image was taken, so I’ve gone through and evened out her skin tone and then did an overall skin softening.

So the layers that have been created so far:

• Skin retouch with the clone tool set at 50% opacity
• Color fill layer, set to blend mode hue and 50% opacity with a mask for the skin only to reduce redness.
• Skin smoothing layer that softens the skin.

All of these layers are in a group labelled skin retouch.

I applied a channel mixer adjustment layer to convert the image to black and white.

I then created a composite  layer of all retouched layers, excluding the channel mixer layer, placed on the top of the layer stack and changed the blend mode to overlay. This increased the contrast and saturation of image in a controllable way.

Final step here is to fill in the colour of her lips as they seem to fade away into the background. I did this with another colour fill layer, with the blend mode set to soft light.

So the layers that you will end up with are the following:

• Skin retouch with the clone tool set at 50% opacity
• Colour fill layer, set to blend mode hue and 50% opacity with a mask for the skin only to reduce redness.
• Skin smoothing layer that softens the skin.

All of these layers are in a group labelled skin retouch.

• Channel mixer layer
• Composite layer of all the retouched layers with blend mode set to overlay
• Colour fill layer, set to blend mode softlight with a mask for the lips only.

So there it is, from start to finish. You can add in a few extra steps, such as a curves adjustment layer underneath the overlay layer to bring out the shadows a bit more, or you can run a high pass to sharpen the image up or just selective sections of it, such as her hair and necklace with a mask, the possibilities are only limited by how you envision the final product.

Happy Shooting!

A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure with shooting with the gorgeous Georgia-Leigh from Model Mayhem. It was a rock and roll styled shoot and also another chance for me to practise new lighting set ups. It was an incredibly fun challenge to get the images as close to perfect in camera, with only minimal photoshopping afterwards.

Stayed tuned for a lighting break down of this shoot

A week ago I had the pleasure of shooting with Naomi. It was her first time in front of the camera and she did brilliantly

Happy New Year!!

Yesterday I did a shoot with my friend testing new lighting set ups. I have posted the new images in my portfolio.