Happy valentines day fellow photographers
Feb, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
I set up this shot in a spare room of my home. I just used a coffee table, a bed sheet as a backdrop, some old negative that I shaped into a love heart and in the background is the first camera I ever owned, a Konica wide 28 film camera.Time
n/aLighting
I tried taking the shot a number off ways. First using natural light, then using the built in flash on the camera and I also tried off camera flash. None of these methods were giving me the look I wanted so I left the project for a week or so. I then happened to attend a class on light painting in my local camera club and decided to give that a go. I reconstructed my set and put a black out blind on the only window in the room. I set my camera on a tripod and using a canon 50mm lens set at F1.8 I manually focused on the negative in the shot. I set my ISO to 100 and my shutter speed to 5 sec. I then turned out the lights in the room so the set was in complete darkness and pressed the shutter button to take the shot. As the exposure was happening and used a LED light covered with some tissue paper to paint the scene in light. The tissue paper was to give a softer light effect. I must have took about 60 shots before I got one that I was happy with.Equipment
The equipment used to take this shot was a Canon 70D with a EF50 F1.8 STM lens mounted on a Trident 30NS tripod and a Novo CBH-40 Ball Head . Plus a cheap LED flash light bought in pound shop.Inspiration
The camera club Im a member of has monthly photography competitions in which they set a theme for each competition. The theme for the month of February was "LOVE". I wanted to come up with a photo that was going to be different from all the other entries so I started thinking about all the things I loved. My wife, my kids and my extended family. These types of photos were not going to be different enough to stand out so I decided to take a shot to tell the story about my love of photography and this is how I came up with the final image. And yes, I did win the monthly competition in my camera club with this image which made the process even more worthwhile.Editing
The shot was a single RAW shot which I imported into lightroom. There is only very basic post-processing done on the photo, highlights, shadows, whites & blacks with a small bit of sharpening and a touch of dodging and burning.In my camera bag
I no longer have my 70D as I have now moved to Full frame and I have also changed system. So at present in my bag is a SONY A7iii, a sigma MC-11 adaptor, a Sigma 18-35 F1.8 ART, a Canon 17-40 F4 L, a Canon EF50mm F1.8 and a Samyang 14mm for astro photography. I also have a Trident 30NS tripod with a Novo CBH-40 Ball Head attached, a L bracket by Smallrig and a NISI V5 pro filter holder with a selection of ND grad's.Feedback
Try and think outside the box with your photography. If a photo is just not working for you, go back and try again using different techniques. You don't always have to have the most expensive camera, gadgets or accessories to get a good shot. Im sure a point and shot camera would have worked fine taking this photo. Use Viewbug to get inspiration from you fellow photographers to come up with unique ideas of your own and most off all enjoy the process from start to finish to produce a beautiful photo. I look forward to seeing all you photos in the future. Happy shooting.
