Origami

Origami, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Gavin Canning of FoldIT Creations with one of his earrings that he hand-makes from folded fine Japanese paper, at Artisans of the Metropolis.

Cozy

Cozy, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

#Caturday

Basic Television Principles and Servicing

Basic Television Principles and Servicing, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

This posting is a day too late to celebrate International Women's Day
as I'd intended, but it's the thought that counts, anyway. So here's a
woman.

This is one of many great left-over shots from my 2012 studio shoot
that produced the images for my series Postmodern Pinups. I'm going
through my Lr back catalog for stuff I missed and this one popped up.

I had dragged a crate of props along to the shoot, including this book
with a very colourful cover: Basic Television Principles and
Servicing, Fourth Edition, Bernard Grob, (c) 1975. It's from one of my
college courses, and I have no idea why I'm hanging onto it.

I handed it to Dee, the model, and instructed her to pretend to read
it. So she opened it up and immediately began to read aloud to us from
the chapter on Deflection Oscillators. She managed to make the
material sound quite spicy and made it very hard for us to concentrate
on shooting. I think it was the sub-section on Synchronizing the
Multivibrators that did us in.

Model/HS: Dee Steller
MUA/Wardrobe: Chantelle Krupka
Artistic Director/photo/retouch: Bruce Walker

Pentax K20D, DA* 50-135/2.8 @ f/10, 50mm, 1/160th sec, ISO 100
Two Bowens 400 W-S strobes in 3x4 softboxes; Two bare 400 W-S Bowens
strobes on backdrop.
Lr + Ps

Happy Day After International Women's Day!

Kat

Kat, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Jewelry designer Kat Shura of Curious Oddities at Artisans of the Metropolis.

Effective Rim Lighting on a Budget

Outlining (is) the requirement

So recently I got it in mind to do some figure work, against a completely black background. But I also decided to create more shape definition by outlining my model with light. I had been studying Maxim-style glamour shots lately and love the kind of 3D look that they achieve.

I learned that glamour photographers will often use a couple of strip banks, usually gridded, on the left and right of the subject to get that desirable rim light. Unfortunately I also discovered that gridded strip banks are not cheap, even eBay knock-offs. If my budget had allowed, I would have bought a couple of Westcott Apollo strip banks -- they're very nice.

Inexpensive rim light

So I thought about what I could do to get the cost down and still achieve the look I wanted.

Well first of all, I needed a couple of extra light sources. Since I still needed to front-light my subject, that meant I would need a total of three flashes in my setup. I have two very good ones (full-featured Pentax AF540FGZ pTTL flashes) so I just needed one or two simple, dumb flashes.

There are a few decent choices available right now, but the one that seems to be at the sweet spot for capabilities and price is the Neewer TT560. It tilts 90 degrees, swivels 360 degrees, its power adjusts over an 8 stop range, it supports optical slave modes, and best of all it's less than $50. The biggest negative compared to the more expensive and popular Yongnuo's is it has no zoom capability. But I'd be using it as a wide angle source, either inside softboxes and umbrellas, or else bare as my rim light source.

I ordered two from Amazon and received them a few days later.

Getting it in shape

Now I needed to shape this light. One requirement in rim lighting is to get it onto the subject while avoiding getting it onto the background (which I want to keep black) or allowing it to flare into the camera's lens. That's why a gridded strip bank is a good choice: the light is contained and focussed within a narrow side-to-side angle, like 40 degrees, yet applied evenly over the vertical reach of the subject.

But there's another way to do this, and we borrow it from stage lighting: Barn Doors. These are generally steel plates painted flat black which can be adjusted on four sides of a light to contain the output inside a box shape. It's a bit like an adjustable square snoot.

You can purchase fabric snoots from a couple of vendors, eg the Honl line, and I have one, but a snoot contains the light into a small circular shape while I wanted to make it a vertical stripe.

Nobody seems to have barn doors for hotshoe flashes, so I figured that I would go the DIY route and create them from scratch.

Barn doors for a buck

One dollar? Yup: a hunk of black foam core from the nearby dollar store. I was able to cut all four of my barn doors (two for each flash) from one 20"x30" piece.

They are basically eight inches square with a little two-and-a-half by two inch mounting flag or ear on one side. Here are the measurements I used ...

I just used a box cutter and a steel rule to guide my cuts. I did the cutting on a self-healing plastic mat from the artist's supply.

The doors are attached in pairs directly to the flash heads using a couple of rubber bands around the mounting ears and then the flashes themselves are aimed using an umbrella swivel mount on top of the light stands ...

It's a wrap

So how did I do? Very well indeed! I got just the look I was after.

Eugenya, my art/life model, held a pose while I adjusted the direction of the two rim lights to just graze her body from about 30 degrees behind on either side. My main light was a third flash inside a Westcott 28" Apollo with 40 degree grid that I boomed above and in front of her, just feathering the light to give her enough illumination and shape definition.

To look at the setup another way: imagine my subject is in the middle of an analog clock. The black backdrop (which are IKEA curtains on my DIY hanger) is at 12 o'clock, and the camera is at 6 o'clock. The main light is at about 5 o'clock, and the two rim lights are at 2 and 10 o'clock.

She also held a long piece of flexible aluminum duct that we wound around her and which caught and reflected the light, contrasting cool metal with warm skin tones.

Here's one of the better images I got from that shoot ...

Nude standing with Aluminum Flex Duct FX0452 

You can see more images in my Spiral Bound set on Flickr, though not if you don't have a Flickr account. You can also find them in my Tumblr feed; scroll down a bit.

Neewer TT560 flash, my review on Amazon

I wrote a short review of the Neewer TT560 flash on Amazon. I bought two of these inexpensive flashes shortly before Christmas and I made good use of them during my most recent studio shoot, primarily for hard rim-light on my subject and prop.

Read the full review here ...

Alt.Portraits of Madame X

Alt.Portraits of Madame X, a set on Flickr.

My creative photography projects got off to a bang in 2014! The first for the new year is inspired by John Singer Sargent's 1884 oil painting, Portrait of Madame X. 2014 is the 130th anniversary of the original.

This project includes 12 images. If you can only see 8 at Flickr, then you need to set your safety level. If you aren't a Flickr user, then you can see the project in its entirety here instead.

Model/makeup/hair: Eugenya MM# 1364518
Photo/retouch: Bruce Walker MM# 1440574
Special thanks to Gabrielle at The Trap Door for loaning me a key prop.

Spiral Bound

Spiral Bound, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

From my first creative shoot for 2014. With art model Eugenya.

Plenty of DIY gear employed in this themed series: my IKEA hack backdrop support with $30 IKEA black curtains; foam-core barn-doors employed with Neewer $50 flashes for rim-light.

More shots (NSFW) on my Tumblr: http://off-axis.brucemwalker.com/

Icy bokeh

Icy bokeh, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Another shot from #icestorm2013 -- taken the day after when the sun was shining down on a tree in my backyard and making it explode with brilliant points of light.

Iced Purple Sandcherry

Iced Purple Sandcherry, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

#icestorm2013

Decorating

Decorating, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

On a cold, sunny day in November

On a cold, sunny day in November, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

From a creative shoot with photographer-turned-alt-model Atalanta Fugiens. She wanted to add some lingerie and nude work to her modelling portfolio and I was ready to try nudes for the first time, so we got together on a cold, sunny day in November ...


Model/makeup/hair: Atalanta Fugiens MM# 3197882
Photo/retouch: Bruce Walker MM# 1440574

Lady of the Lake

Lady of the Lake, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Model: Sophie Cugliari
Lighting assistants: Megan Cugliari and Olivia Bowe

This was taken fully 45 minutes after sunset, looking out onto Lake Ontario from east of Port Credit. Just proves that it's worth waiting for those deep colours.

Lighting: 30" umbrella softbox with Pentax AF540FGZ flash, on monopod right. Bare Pentax AF540FGZ flash, handheld left.

Steampunk Warrior

Steampunk Warrior, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

From a creative shoot with photographer-turned-model Atalanta Fugiens. She approached me to get some experience on the other side of the lens to help with her own photography. I borrowed an idle exercise space, enlisted Yurie Oka, a talented MUA and hair stylist, and out came the corsets.

Model: Atalanta Fugiens MM# 3197882 Atalanta Fugiens Tumblr
MUA/hair: Yurie Oka MM# 2347096
Photo/retouch: Bruce Walker MM# 1440574

Elegance

Elegance, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

From a creative shoot with photographer-turned-model Atalanta Fugiens. She approached me to get some experience on the other side of the lens to help with her own photography. I borrowed an idle exercise space, enlisted a talented MUA and hair stylist, Yurie Oka, and out came the corsets.

Model: Atalanta Fugiens MM# 3197882
MUA/hair: Yurie Oka MM# 2347096
Photo: Bruce Walker MM# 1440574

Therapy Ball

Therapy Ball, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

From a creative shoot with photographer-turned-model Atalanta Fugiens. She approached me to get some experience on the other side of the lens to help with her own photography. I borrowed an idle exercise space, enlisted a talented MUA and hair stylist, Yurie Oka, and out came the corsets.

Model: Atalanta Fugiens MM# 3197882
MUA/hair: Yurie Oka MM# 2347096
Photo: Bruce Walker MM# 1440574

Gabrielle Neveu

Gabrielle Neveu, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Gabbi is the owner of The Trap Door in The Junction, Toronto. She sells clothing and accessories "for the artistic professional".

I shot this portrait with one light, a 30" octa umbrella softbox with a Pentax flash, left.

Will work for a brush

Will work for a brush, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Gandalf the Russian Blue

He's helping me test my DIY backdrop support, an under $10 IKEA hack you can read about here ...

Lighting: Pentax AF540FGZ flash in Westcott Medium 28" softbox, right.
Bare Pentax AF540FGZ flash hair/kicker clamped to background stand, left.

DIY backdrop support for under $10

If you need a way to hang a photographic studio backdrop, don't have an official backdrop support system but do have a couple of lightweight lighting stands spare, here's a way you can do it for under ten bucks. This will handle a roll of seamless (five feet or nine) or a sheet of muslin like I'm using.

And see the last section for an even less expensive ($5), though less portable, option.

What you need

Head over to your nearest IKEA and pick up,

• two Betydlig curtain rod hangers
• one Hugad black curtain rod, 210-385 cm (six to twelve feet)

From a hardware store you will need,

• two 1/4-20 nuts
• two 1/4" flat washers

You'll also need a small rat-tail steel file, and a way to clamp the curtain rod hangers. I recommend a bench vise. (You won't be able to just hold them in your hands while you file, unless you have a grip of steel.)

The mod

Using the file, you must file a one quarter inch "keyhole" into the slot in one side of both the Betydlig curtain rod hangers, to fit them over the one quarter inch threaded bolt on top of the light stands. I recommend doing this to the shorter slot closest to the corner, which you can see to the right, with the curtain rod support in place. Expect to spend about 5 minutes filing each hole -- it's kinda tedious.

By the way, the 1/4" bolt (stud) on the top your light stands may be hidden inside a black plastic knob that you unscrew to reveal.

Assembly

After you have enlarged the holes at the end of the existing slots and verified that they fit over the light stand studs, assemble the Betydlig curtain rod hangers as you see in the picture above. Be sure to stick the thinnest rubber grip (included with the hangers) into the curved hanger bracket.

Using the 1/4" nuts and washers, attach the brackets on top of two light stands, as shown to the right. If you substitute wing-nuts for the hex nuts you'll be able to add and remove this from your stands more easily by hand.

In use

Set your light stands with shiny new backdrop hangers an appropriate distance apart, eg 6 feet for 5-foot seamless or 10 feet for 9-foot seamless. Raise both stands to about head height. Thread the roll or muslin through the curtain rod and extend the rod a little longer than the distance between the stands. Lift it up and settle it into the hangers.

Now you can lift first one side, then the other up to the ceiling or the maximum height of your stands. You might need an assistant to help you in raising a heavy roll of seamless.

You should use the tallest stands you have available to avoid having the top of the backdrop be visible in your shots, especially full-length standing shots. 8-foot would be great.

Be careful to make the stands as stable as possible. Orient their legs so the longest one is under the weight of the backdrop material and pointing forward into the room. This will avoid the stands falling when you roll out the seamless or tug on fabric. You may want to sandbag the stands for additional stability.

Results

Now shoot away. You should end up with something like this nice picture of Gandalf, my Russian Blue.

Hint

You can still use the stands for holding some lights by clamping grip gear to the vertical posts. For instance in my cat portrait I attached a bare flash as a kicker/hair-light using a Lowel Tota-Clamp and an umbrella mount on the left backdrop stand.

Even cheaper: under $5

Thanks to a suggestion I received from Lumigraphics on Model Mayhem, you can do it for under $5 with a piece of ten foot EMT thin wall conduit and two HDX 2-inch clamps from Home Depot. Sit the clamps on top of the stands pointing up and drop the conduit into their jaws. This isn't portable, but it's sure cheap.

Industrial Design

Vanessa Furtado, a photo by Bruce M Walker on Flickr.

Also Vanessa Furtado - Events Coordinator, Metropolis Factory

Lighting: Pentax AF540FGZ flash in 30" octa umbrella softbox, right.
Bare Pentax AF540FGZ flash behind chair, pointing straight up.

Pentax K20D, DA* 16-50/2.8 @ 50mm/f:6.3, 1/15th sec, ISO 200, handheld.