As you may or may not know, my wife and I now have our second daughter.  Which means what we want takes a back seat.  So when my wife got a chance to get her hair done, I was really stoked to see the outcome.  So much so I begged her to let me take a quick shot.

My wife normally sports a blonde hair color or dark brown.  So this new hair color was really spicey and I loved seeing it.  Especially after being worn down from caring for a newborn and a 3 year old, it was great seeing how much a new hair style could do for someone.  She took a photo of herself with her iPhone, but it was in the car and just didn’t do the new color justice.  Plus, it didn’t have enough attitude.

So I quickly broke out the ring flash and took this:

Not too shabby, considering this was taken quickly in our home.  But I wanted to fix it up a tad and since I cannot keep my paws out of Photoshop, here is what we ended up with:

Right off the bat you notice the pattern background and vignette.  Some people hate the vignette but I like to use it some times to help darken the edges and draw the eyes more toward the center.  While I normally try not to center anything, it seemed to work here.  Plus, we werent setting up a shoot either.  This was really quick and fun.  Lastly, I darkened the sunglasses a bit to hide her eyes more.  I thought about Photoshopping out the ring over her right eye but opted to leave it in to save some time.

Oblivion | 52.3

Falling from grace cause I’ve been away too long
Leaving you behind with my lonesome song
Now I’m lost in oblivion

This shot was relatively simple to setup.  The biggest part of this image was not setting up and taking the image, but the post-processing once the image was taken.  Though the processing somewhat obliterates the lighting used, a single ABR800 was shot into a 56″ Moon Unit directly toward me.  Behind me was a Calumet Genesis 400 shot bare to blow the wall out from the “peach” color to white.  Here is a setup shot:

Strobist
A single Alien Bee Ring Flash was shot (at 1/4 power) toward me into a 56″ Moon Unit.  A Calumet Genesis 400 (at full power) was shot bare into the wall.

Shooting with the D700 is a little different in that I don’t have a handy little remote as I did for the D80.  Wanting to take the shot quickly and not wanting to enlist any help from my wife, who was wondering why I wanted to take such a shot in the first place, I scribbled on a Post-It note and stuck that on the wall.  This would give the camera something to focus on when I hit the button.  With the timer set, that gave me enough time to step into frame for the shot.

Camera settings
D700 | f/22 | 1/250s | ISO 100

Post-processing here was several steps and involved textures by Ghostbones, Skeletal Mess, and one from my own “Meat Stick” set. The cord wrapped around my mouth is a long sync cord.  The plastic was saved from my latest dry cleaning pickup and pulled over my head.

In April I purchased a ABR800, 56” Moon Unit, and the carrying case. My only complaint with all of this is the color selection, or lack of, for the carrying case. Pink was all I had to pick from. But hey, this is an Alien Bee, right? It needs to stand out and be different, so I figured I could live with it.

About 2 weeks ago, one of the zippers on the case began to have problems. When I zipped the case closed, rather than actually closing the zipper threads it would leave them open. I moved that zipper head all the way to the end of the case and just used the other zipper head. Until that messed up as well, leaving me with no way to close the case and carry it from shoot to shoot.

Now I need to contact customer service. Ugh. I absolutely hate getting to that point. Customer service can be so poor that it makes you feel as if you are in a car, facing a cliff. Driving forward is the equivalent of speaking to customer service when all you really want to do is turn around. Not with Paul C. Buff. Customer service is actually alive and doing quite well.

I contacted them, told them my story, and asked if the case was still covered under warranty. I actually was expecting to hear a reply back, a few days later, short and rude stating that the case was not covered and that I needed to purchase a new one. I expected that or to be instructed to return ship the current case, wait for an evaluation, and then have another shipped to me. Neither was the case.

Rather than having to wait a day or two, I heard back within an hour. Very politely Kimberly informed me the case was covered and asked to provide a shipping address for them to send out a new one. Later that day, I received an auto-generated email saying that the item had already been shipped. Within hours, my little problem was resolved and as of right now, I am officially sold on these products, with the reinforcement of stellar customer service: timely, polite, and appropriate.

As a side note, I wrote this blog out earlier with the intention of posting it later this evening.  After checking the tracking on the package, I see it was delivered to my box this afternoon, already before I could post about how great they are.  Now that my friends, is service.

Recently some of the South Atlanta Flickr folks gathered for a model shoot out.  With many photographers comes many talents, specialties, ideas, and equipment.  Through these meet-ups and shoot outs, I have met many people and try to take away elements here and there to build it into what I would like to do personally.  This past shoot really opened my eyes to lighting.  Not just lighting in general, but creatively using light to totally change the environment you are working in.  All of that was made possible by Matthew Miller.A tireless worker, Matthew knows what he is doing and seems to approach each take as if it is a puzzle to solve.  He works and works, changing lighting positions, settings, etc, to bring the solution to the forefront resulting in an amazing image.

What do I mean, exactly?

Here is a behind the scene shot from the location.

We were outside, using a ’56 Belair (thank you Jay & Allison), and you can see what natural light was available.  However, Matthew’s ability to creatively approach the situation with his lighting abilities, completely changed the shot for everyone.  Using an array of Alien Bee lighting products, flash head units, and a Vagabond, Matthew was able to alter the environment and drastically enhance the mood of the shot.

Granted, I processed the shot a bit in Photoshop (using Nik Color Efex 3.0), but the overall environment was totally changed just by the lighting. You can see from the first photo that Canon flash units were used along with an Alien Bee light, shot through an umbrella, powered by a Vagabond.  Another flash unit was placed in the back seat of the car facing up to light the interior of the car.

Another great example, and probably my favorite use of the lighting that day, was again from Matthew. Check this shot out and while you can see some subtle post-process, the knock-out punch is delivered by the lighting.

Mary was positioned, reaching for the gun, make-up running with a frightened expression on her face.  We were shooting inside of an old strip mall where the roof had caved in not too long ago which provides an excellent place to shoot with texture and grit.  So was the shadow on the wall done in post?  Absolutely not.  Matthew positioned Mary’s fiancé to Mary’s right and an Alien Bee light behind him.  (Here is a behind the scenes shot.) When the lights fired, the creepy shadow was cast on the wall, offering only a glimpse of the pending doom, which is far more frightening than actually seeing it.

It is amazing the control over a shoot you can have when you control the lights.