Toronto Portrait Photographer: Post Processing or Bringing Images to Life

It's been awhile since the last time I posted here, so I figured a comprehensive post was in order to make up for the last few months I've been absent from this blog. A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of photographing John Shillingberg and Yun He Lee of the Toronto Music Academy of Canada. Like any other portrait photographer out there, most of the time I don't know what to expect in terms of lighting, space and any other variables that make our job so exciting :-)

For this particular shot, the room was big enough to fit two pianos, but the ceiling was fairly low and I just couldn't raise my umbrella high enough to the where I needed it to be. The other challenge was getting enough light to cover both subjects, since I had to place the umbrella out of the frame and even at +2.0 EV this is what I was getting:

Now, you might say: "That's not so bad!" Well, this is the RAW file after tweaking the shadows in the lower portion of the frame. The setup for this shot was very simple, one (1) SB-900 with a translucent umbrella to camera right, just slightly out of frame and one (1) SB-800 fitted with a 1/4 HONL Speed Grid to create a concentrated spotlight behind the subjects. Now, this is the first version of the file that I presented to the client, a BW conversion using Nik Software's Silver Efex Pro with high contrast to add a bit of drama:

I thought the picture frames behind the subjects added to the composition of the image, but the client felt otherwise and asked me to remove the images. Initially, I thought it was going to be easy but I had completely forgotten that I had used the HONL Speed Grid for this shot, which created different gradations of light throughout the back wall. Needless to say, cloning out the frames (specially the one on the right) was an exercise in patience and precision. For the final image, the client also requested to have the background darkened a bit more. In this case, I think the client was dead on. Once again, I used Nik Software's filters, but this time I applied the Pro Contrast and Midnight filters from the Color Efex Pro 3.0 arsenal to further shape the light to my liking and Viveza 2 to darken the background. Removing the picture frames from the image was done in Photoshop CS 4 using good old cloning.

The same lighting setup was applied to the following image:

In this case, I boosted the contrast using Color Efex Pro 3.0 Pro Contrast filter and then applied selective lighting using the Midnight filter. The result was the following cropped image:

Once again, the client wanted the picture frames removed from the image and the background darkened a bit more, for which I used Viveza 2 and Photoshop CS 4 once more:

I must say, I'm very pleased with the final results and so was the client. However, as you have seen in this blog post, getting from capture to final image is not always a smooth process and most of the time it takes lots of patience and hard work.

Toronto Wedding and Portrait Photographer: Nikon SB-900 with 1/8 HONL Speed Grid

As promised, here are some of the shots taken with the HONL 1/8 Speed Grid, attached to an SB-900. The speed grid serves no other purpose than to concentrate the beam of light to create more dramatic lighting, as opposed to spilling light everywhere. In these photos, the speedlight was aimed at the model's face, the ambient light was reduced and the flash was set to TTL with a flash exposure comp of -0.7. The SB-900 was triggered using an SB-800 on camera.

Toronto Portrait Photographer: Alien Bees B1600 with Beauty Dish

The shots in this post were taken at High Park in Toronto. I was commissioned for a portrait session about a month ago, and decided to follow the old adage: "Better bring it and not need it than need it and not have it" regarding equipment. Bringing a Kata bag with two strobes, a Vagabond II battery and several stands, along with a foldable octabox and beauty dish requires a certain level of fitness to carry around a park, one that I certainly didn't have. I'm so glad I dragged that stuff around through, because the results were quite pleasing. The following shots were done using a B1600 attached to a 22" beauty dish with a difusser sock over it. The strobe was triggered using Pocket Wizards, and the power was set at 1/8 power for most of them. In my next post I'll put some pictures up of the shots that were done using an SB-900 with a HONL speed grid, which are ideal for creating dramatic lighting.

ASID CEU Toronto - Chris Hodges on dealing with facility manager clients and green building.

The last event of the Tayco sponsored educational series for 2009 took place at The Gladstone hotel this past Tuesday (December 1, 2009). Chris Hodges presented on evolution of the role of the Facility Manager, and how important it is to understand the needs and objectives of these key decision makers when presenting a project. Here are a few shots from the evening at The Gladstone Hotel.

Chris Hodges addressing the audience




Very trendy ornaments made out of recycled paper, magazines and posters


The audience


Signing certificates for attendees

The Cinematico Project Slideshow - Dramatic Lighting

This is a self-initiated project, which I started to fine-tune my skills in dramatic lighting, the set will undoubtedly continue to grow.

Toronto Portrait Photographer - Headshots and Portrait Session with David S.

This photoshoot was arranged by fellow photographer and friend Jared Wielfaert and he was kind enough to let Shelley and I tag along to help and do some shooting of our own. The model's name Dave and you can find him at Model Mayhem. He was extremely professional and very easy to work with.


One SB-800 camera right (65 degree) at 1/32 power on shoot through umbrella.


One SB-800 camera right (65 degree) at 1/32 power on shoot through umbrella.


AB1600 at 1/2 power on a medium octabox.


SB-800 on shoot-thru umbrella at cam left, 1/32 power.


SB-800 on reflective umbrella with 1/4 CTO gel, high above subject at cam left. WB set to Tungsten

The Beauty of Available Light

While I'm a big fan of the Strobist movement, sometimes the best light is the one that is available, whether it's beautiful sun light or the light coming from a lamp on the ceiling of a greasy spoon diner.

In the following two shots the different sources of light (big windows at the front end of the restaurant and plenty of artificial light inside)in this diner provided for some very interesting colors, which were further enhanced with Nik Color Efex Pro Film Effects.





Then there's always the beautiful light produced by the last rays of the sun before the sunset

Warmer Weather, Sick Again

Well, today is well above the freezing mark and I'm spending it inside my apartment as I've come down sick with a cold again. That can only mean one thing, either go through old shots or do self-portraits. Well, let's just say that I look just like a feel, which is not a good thing. I found a couple of old shots that never made it to Flickr because they needed some post processing added:

On this one I had to clone out a good chunk of a translucent umbrella that was showing up on the left upper corner of the frame:


This one needed a bit more colour and contrast added to it:


I also added more colour and created a blurred background for this one: