Don't worry daddy, I have the instructions.....
Last year I did a quick shoot for a calendar for a local yoga studio (full disclosure, it just happens to be the studio my wife teaches at). It was a spur of the moment plan, we kept it simple, and it came out good. This year, we planned a little earlier for a little more formal shoot. Last year, although the shots were fine, the designer decided the studio background was too plain to use for every month so she cut the yogis out and put them on different backgrounds for different months. This year, to make her life easier, we decided to shoot blowout white, which is something I knew how to do in theory, but have never had an occasion to try in practice, but I love a challenge so I said, "sure, I can do that." Continuing that spirit, this will be a new frontier for me in blog posts, I am going to try and actually diagram my set up for you and talk you through the process so maybe you can learn from my mistakes and my successes. All the images in this post will be straight out of camera shots, I will link to the final result at the end, but you get to see the process here.
Like this... see...
Ok. Guess first thing I will do is list the gear I used:
Back drop: Ravelli backdrop kit, obviously the white muslin. This is a decent kit, I have had it for three years, but I only use it occasionally. One of the stands has a busted lock knob, so when I have to go full height I need to lock it off with a super clamp.
Lighting- to light the backdrop I used two Phottix Mitros Plus speedlights with barn door attachments.
Lights were all controlled by my Phottix Odin system.
Shots were done with my Nikon D800 and 24-70/f2.8.
That's the gear, so while my models got ready...
don't mind me, just checking my twitter feed... it's cool....
I came up with this setup:
Two Mitros lights with barn doors illuminated the backdrop, if you can't tell from from the diagram, they were focused across each other, so light on camera left hit the camera right side of the backdrop and vice versa. Barn doors were used to keep the background lights from washing out the model since I didn't have a lot of depth to work with before I ran out of backdrop. I only had two more speedlights, and I wanted nice even light on the models, so I put them both in the giant soft box, dead center and pretty much sat/layed on the floor underneath the softbox to shoot. I did climb up on a ladder to shoot down for a few of the final shots but I didn't change anything on the setup other than my position. Thankfully, I had a good model to test light levels with.
The backdrop wasn't ironed at all, it was completely wrinkled, can you see the difference between where the lights were hitting and where they weren't? Setting wise, I wanted to keep at base ISO of 100, for best image quality on the D800, wound up with the backdrop lights firing at full power and the main light at around 1/2 -2/3 power, 1/200 shutter speed at f/4. Of course, once I got all the lights set and ready, turned out half the models had to leave early so we needed to shoot a couple of group shots first, so I just carried the soft box into the other room and used it. The group shots were difficult to set up, luckily, everyone helped....
Then it was back to the main room and time to get serious. Luckily, in addition to the models we had a killer assist team to help get everyone into good positions.
Now just try not to land on your face when I let go.....
 Don't make me kick harder... I'll do it.... |
 |
No, that's my boob, not my banda.....
Just breath and relax.....
seriously, relax or I will pull your hair out.....
Thanks to all the technical advisors and pose adjusters who helped out the already amazing yoga models, we got some awesome shots throughout the day.
yeah. straight out of camera, some models make it easy
and my wife, did I mention she is a beautiful and badass yogi? even thought this is her, "this is hard, how long do you need to click a damn button..... you will pay for this...." face.
We even decided there was time at the end to get some family yoga shots in, both of our kids wanted to help. Our daughter, as it turns out, is a great coach....
breathe through your nose mommy... right here....
Help, I think we broke mommy.....
No, she's ok, if I push here her smile pops up...
Our son decided to come in for the finale to show off his matching headstand with mommy...
All in all it was a great day. Lots of awesome shots and some fun family time worked in as well. Over all the blowout white worked. If I would have had more lighting gear, or if I had been willing to up my ISO, I would have been able to blow out the rest of the wall that my backdrop didn't cover, but except for some of the wider stretches (like the hanumanasana with the really looooooong yogi model) I was able to crop down in post so it didn't matter. In a perfect world I would have had time to pick up a while plexi board to put under the mat, which would have blown out and been flat, but it was pretty easy to brush the wrinkles out of the floor in the foreground in post. Overall it was pretty successful and I was very happy with the results, and the models and studio seem to like them as well.
You can see the final images on my web site here, and let me know what you think. Anyway, having a cyst removed from my right wrist in two days, and I am right handed, so not sure when I will get a camera back in my hand or be able to type easily again, it's at least a two week recovery period, so hope you will miss me while I am gone :)
