Crafty Blogger

I love natural light photography, but the winter months are pretty tough on someone who depends on the sun for portrait photography. Spend a few times trying to shoot portraits on a very dark and foggy day and you, too, will begin to feel the need for a nice studio setup. Since I put my studio together fairly recently, I thought I’d write up a Christmas gift guide for studio photographers. Just keep the fact that many photographers do on location shoots with their studio setups in mind, so portability is pretty important.

1. Reflectors – You know that piece of foamcore from the craft store your loved one has been sticking under your chin? It works just fine, but there is an option that looks a bit more professional. A reflector is a really nice, portable tool that can put highlights in eyes, function as fill lighting, or even become an emergency backdrop for head shots. I have three reflectors and use them constantly. This is one of the more reasonably priced tools for a studio, although I do recommend getting a reflector stand for added functionality and to help you avoid one of the phrases most feared by those who love a photographer, “Here. Hold this.” (The 40×60 inch DMKFoto Studio 5 in 1 Reflector Panel shown does not include the stand pictured. I have two of these and love this size.)

2. Lighting – I have tried a few different types of lighting equipment. My favorite option is AlienBees strobe lights. If I had it to do all over again, I would have skipped my continuous lighting package and speedlites and just gone straight to this awesome gear. You can get a one light Beginner Bee package* that will keep that photographer busy for months. Mastering one light is a great way to understand how lighting affects the way a person looks in a photo. With that said, I do still like my Flashpoint II Continuous lighting kit
when I’m working with babies. It is a soft, gentle light and they aren’t startled by a flash going off.

3. Receiver and transmitter – If your loved one wants strobes, he or she will start longing for a receiver and transmitter by the time the UPS truck backs out of the driveway. Having one less thing tethered to the camera and limiting the photographer’s ability to move around quickly and easily is beyond fabulous. I went with the CyberSync setup that was designed to work with AlienBees, but there is also the more expensive and widely recognized PocketWizard system.

4. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3
– Don’t tell anyone, but if I was stranded on a desert island and had to choose between Lightroom and Photoshop as my companion, I’d totally choose Lightroom. I adore this software. I pull out Photoshop for major editing jobs, to add texture layers, or stuff like that, but the majority of my work is done in Lightroom. Tethered capture is super easy with Lightroom, too. (Umm. Sorry for the techno-speak. Tethered capture is when the photographer presses the button on the camera, the light goes off and your photo appears right on the laptop.)

5. Portable Backdrop Stand – I have a few different permanent options for hanging backdrops in my studio, but I only shoot friends and family there. (That so doesn’t sound right. Photographers sound so angry if you happen upon us having a conversation, overhear us discussing what we did over the weekend and don’t know what we are talking about.) Anyway, for on location shoots, a backdrop stand is downright priceless. When you shoot in front of a backdrop when you are doing an on location shoot, it doesn’t matter what the actual location looks like. A backdrop stand makes it appear that the shoot was done in a professional studio instead of in a less than stellar spot. There are a ton of different options, but this one has pretty consistent ratings and comes with two backdrops so someone can just set it up and start shooting.

* I am not an affiliate of AlienBees – just a true fan. I get no compensation for mentioning or linking to their products. Other links on the page are to products on Amazon and I do have an affiliate relationship with Amazon.

I’ve been taking Christmas photos, but am sworn to secrecy in case someone sees photos before they get cards. Luckily, one of my clients didn’t care what I did with her photos as long as she got some treats out of it, so I can show you hers:

My sweet Sophie. (Her haircut is not the typical Scottish Terrier cut. It is the “Oh, no! How did you get that face full of thistles? I’m going to have to cut them out!” type of haircut…)

I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like doing panoramas. They sounded REALLY complicated. Well, they aren’t. They just require some pre-planning and maybe a hobby like knitting. I kid you not – I literally waited two hours for my computer to render one of these things. But the good news is my computer does, indeed, do the rendering. I press a few buttons and then sit back, drink some tea, drum my fingers, sigh, drink some more tea and then realize I should go shopping or paint a wall. When I come back, there’s a nice panorama there.

To get that big, long image, you need to find a nice scene and take three or more photos that partially overlap. You should try to keep everything as level as possible so you don’t have problems when you have your computer stitch it together, so you may want to try using a tripod. I did for a panorama I shot with my zoom lens. And, you should set your camera on manual and set your shutter speed and aperture so they’re even across the whole panorama. One time, I forgot to do that because I was snapping off photos of the little guys going down the slide between setting up the different scenes. Well, you can totally tell. The first section is way lighter than the rest.

Wanna see one of them? I’m not sure if you can make anything out since it will be so tiny on the blog, but here goes:

So, I hated last week’s assignment to photograph strangers in their environment for a series of environmental portraits. I love the idea and do it all the time with people I know, but it was tough to do with strangers. I think I’m looking at a much lower grade than I usually get, but I did my best and put twice as much time into shooting as I usually do. Since I didn’t ask if they minded me splashing their photos all over the internet, I won’t post them, but you really aren’t missing much!

This week, though, I have to turn in some diptych and triptych photos. Oh, I had so much fun putting these together. I may never stop! I can’t show them to you the way I printed them because I made them as pdfs in Bridge and my blog doesn’t seem to like them or the psd format either.

So, this week, the assignment was self portraits. I think I was drawn to photography because being behind the camera means that noone is taking my photo, so you know I’m just loving this assignment. Ugghh. Anyway, I did get into making the sets up for the different shots. I so need to work on indoor lighting still, but I’m figuring it out a little at a time. I think this is the one I’m turning in.

Still 13 Inside

I had a hat like this I wore when I was about 13 and I felt so cool when I wore it. I found a photo of myself wearing it the other day and thought I’d recreate the look.

I was able to stop by a Civil War reenactment and take a few photos over the weekend. It is an annual event the first weekend of October and has been going on for years, but this is the first time I heard about it. Here are a few of my favorites:

A girl in costume walks into the Confederate encampment

A Union wife enjoys a few minutes of quiet time.

This little girl could have stepped out of the pages from a history book.

I would have loved to make it back for Sunday's battle, but I did get to see one cannon in action.

I was playing around with digital mixed media pieces and trying to learn how to take better photos to get the images I wanted. The more time I spent with my camera, the more I got hooked on photography. So, I have a few pieces in progress as I work on getting just the right shots, but the majority of my stuff right now is photography related. I thought I’d start sharing things here instead of letting my poor little blog stagnate.

I’m taking classes through Cecil College and am lucky enough to have started at the same time as Andy Bloxham, who is teaching the class this year. I am learning a lot and hopefully will be able to get what I see in my head out of the camera and onto the canvases I’m working on sometime soon.

A few weeks before the class, I decided to go Pentax and bought a K10D. The great thing about these cameras is that I can use all my Pentax film camera lenses on them, too. I wrote a few things about my new camera – a Top Five Reasons to Buy a Pentax Digital SLR Camera list and a Loving the Pentax K10D Camera lens.

I also have been taking a bit of my photography experience to Suite 101. I wrote an article on renting photography equipment for small businesses doing a DIY marketing campaign.

Well, enough about where I’ve been and what I’ve been writing. Here are a few of my favorite assignment shots:

These chicks crack me up. This is part of a minimal focus assignment.

The shells are under water and not quite as sharp as I wanted, but I still like this one.

So, what are you up to in your art studio?