A couple of weeks back I was fortunate to be host to a group of photographers for an evening.. We picked a spot in the Christchurch CBD to set up camp, then went over some of my favourite ways to play with serious depth of field, in-camera multiple exposures, biiiig bokeh and the basics of off-camera flash, along with some aspects of "common sense" that I hold about my camera...
Starting off we created a simple 90 image Bokeh Pano, Bokehrama or as one of the attendees called it a Dougarama... 😉
Shot on a 200mm lens at f2,8 the beautiful blur that is created is something wonderful and far more impressive than just a single frame using a 50mm @1.2 or 35mm @1.4, see below...
Plus the subject, in this case some really good friends of mine, Rychalo & Lauren (Yes, that's Rick from Rick's Ribs!!! Check him out!!!) will be super sharp as they are well zoomed-in single image...
From here we ducked into an alley with some pontoon lights to have a play with making them as Bokehlicious as possible...
Going over some basics of depth of field and lens choice, I went over my understandings of balancing ambient light with off-camera flash...
Eventually moving in for my choice of higher contrast feel, to make my base for building an in-camera multiple exposure...
So 6 layered photos later we've got a much prettier mess of light....
We delved into the basics of speed-light modifiers and ways to light up your life... How a simple change can get you a vastly different result and why you should play and play and play!!
And why stop there?! throw in another light to get a different feel, it's really easy, not at all scary and you will enjoy some variation...
Then onto another spot, literally only 1 meter away and there's a whole other world of possibility, again going over the use of just one light....
And throwing in a second light for added ambience...
Thanks so much to Rychalo & Lauren for coming along to stand in as our epic subjects and also the Canterbury/Westland NZIPP crew for organising and having me along...
If any photographers out there have any questions about something I have mentioned here please be in touch.. Or should you wish to delve even deeper into the subjects I'd be happy to organise a one-on-one or group session to really show how easy all this lighting stuff can be.... :)