In the process of tidying recently, I found a roll of expired Fuji Reala 120 film (expired 2005). Reala has been discontinued for a while, so I couldn’t help but want to shoot with it. There’s a roll of Kodak Portra 160VC in my rarely used Holga, so it was to the Mamiya 645J I went. If you’re not familiar with the 645J, it’s one of many medium format cameras that use a cartridge for the film loading, rather than a dedicated film back. Of course that means I could never use a digital back with it, but it would take a lot of film and scanning to get to the price of a digital back for me!

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I had a shoot in the house last week with Alex from Catwalk. Alex is always fun to work with, and this shoot was no exception. While not in the shots here, it gave me a chance to mess with my new camera bracket in portrait mode for Terry Richardson style shots (as in normal shots, not what he might get up to with first time models), which she quite liked.. Good fun.

I’ve been in agony for quite a few hours. Not the excruciating pain you’d have from shattered bones, but the walk like I’ve been on a horse, 5/10 dull pain, that makes live miserable. I had a cyst removed, suffice to say it wasn’t from anywhere visible and I’m not exactly comfortable. So I’ve been restricted to lying or sitting down, without any stirring. It’s killing really me as I’ve all of these plans to make and work on. Still I’ve not been idle. I’m working on the images I shot with the inimitable Anita DeBauch.

Space Age

Flock

I’ve also been working on images I shot with Alex Popovici from Catwalk. Good fun working with Alex.

I’ve just fixed a bug and added a new feature to make LRB Portfolio 2.61, so that’ll be online soon.

I’m also working on a new gallery for Lightroom, which I hope to have out shortly, once I knock out a manual for it.

Photo work is otherwise at a standstill, because I’m not allowed drive for a few weeks. I’ll be in Dungarvan next week, but I’ll be the passenger!I’m looking at getting a new office/small studio to work from, and I’ll be creating new flyers for the various offers I’ve on. Email and ask if you’re interested in Headshots/Fashion Portfolios, Band Promo etc. Remember I also do 1:1 training in Lightroom and Photoshop.

With the beautiful weather today, Nicola called over to let me do some fun test shots with the Elinchrom Maxispot. It’s a large, efficient reflector that allows me to overcome the Sun, to give a day for night look using my Elinchrom Ranger Quadras.

After a quick test on the green, I noticed something rather unusual down by the train tracks: a burnt out car. We used this as a background before moving down to the tracks. My aim here wasn’t producing portfolio images, but rather getting used to new equipment. It would be a sad and sorry state of affairs to be working and not be familiar with ones tools. As I’ve recently invested in new modifiers (some of which I’ve already posted about), testing is an absolute necessity.

Here the Maxispot is lighting both Nic and the car. Given that the Quadra is only 400 w/s and it’s not at full power here, it’s doing a fantastic job with coverage from about 8-10 feet away. The Sun is coming from camera left, behind Nic. You can see this acting as the hair light in this shot.

We moved onto the railway gates from there. Again the Sun is from the rear, this time the right. While reflectors are a hard light source, I think this has a softer transition, with reasonable fill in.

The final setup with this light was at the bikeshed. Being in shade I was able to drop both the aperture on the camera, and the power from the pack, almost to lowest power in fact.

I did do one other test that day, but it wasn’t Quadra based, it was with the ‘O-Flash’, a modifier in the Ray-Flash vein. It doesn’t have a full circle, to allow ETTL to work. I test this, but to be honest, I prefer working it in Manual mode and working with a fixed distance. I have to say that, while ringflash is not a flattering light, I really missed the top shadow from this more than anything else.

I don’t shoot this as an award winner, it’s really just taken to examine the shadow pattern. The left and right shadows are immediately visible, but there’s none on top, which is a little disappointing. But as this device is only €30, it’s hard to complain. It’s reasonable sturdy bar the clear plastic front, which is a little flimsy. I’d like to try this with 2 rear grids and see how it does.

Considering we shot for only a little over an hour and got 4 locations (even though I’ve only shown 3 here), it was still a productive shoot from a test point of view. I’ve a much better understanding of these tools, and have utter confidence using them again in the future in a commercial situation.

Some recent shots of Alex with the Elinchrom Ranger Quadras

These 2 were shot using a tilt shift lens:

I’m delighted to have gotten another Gold in the Contemporary Portraiture section of the May SWPP Competition. While judging sometimes can seem hit and miss, this month the standard is high and I feel very lucky to get Gold. That said, personally, I would not like to be judging the sheer quantity of images that go into this competition.

Click here to see the announcement.

The shot is of Jaime O’Connell, a contestant in ‘The Model Agent’ and the shoot was for local designer Sarah O’Neil. Jaime is off to London shortly for agency interviews. I wish her good luck.

Processed mostly in Lightroom with a mix of cooling White Balance and my normal Cross Process settings, I finished the skin on this in Photoshop. Yes, it is a very deliberately stylised image.

This was a very windy day, so the 80X120 softbox got packed away and I brought out my 70cm Maxisoft Beautydish. It was on a Dlite 4 at half power (5.0), which was powered by a Tronix Explorer. The sun is lighting the back and shoulder.

This actually gives me great confidence that the Ranger Quadra system I have on order will do well outdoors against the sun.

Here’s a quick headshot of Hannah I did a little while ago.
For those interested, it’s a butterfly light setup, sometimes referred to as a half clamshell. Elinchrom 70cm Maxisoft Beauty dish as key from above, with silver reflector (from a triflector set) below. A clamshell uses 2 lights, hence why a single light and reflector is a ‘half’ clamshell.

Today has been the last straw with constant email issues. I’ve had nothing but issues with outgoing email for ages, down to the point where I was using only one outgoing server. And when my automatic credit card payment didn’t go through on my main account, I lost even that.
Still this has prompted a session of getting everything set up again and I think I’ve finally got all my email addresses working again (bar one).

Why more than one? Well besides using an throwaway address for online things that might attract spam, I like to keep my online presence a little partmentalised. My Lightroom blog has an address, as does this blog. My audio related work has an address for suppliers and clients. It’s just the easiest way to deal with different slices of my pie. I also still have my old email addresses from when I was first on the net. I still get family email on these addresses, despite telling them I don’t use it anymore!

I guess some of this stems from my pre world wide web college days, where I had 2 or 3 address for college and a home address from my ISP. I even remember logging in via Telnet via a 2400 baud modem to check my accounts and read usenet groups via nn. Now that’s a scary thought!

I shot a model portfolio for Rose recently. Here’s 2 of my favourites from the shoot.

Well it’s been an interesting few days. Both Matt Kloskowski and John Nack gave me a mention on their blogs, bringing extras visitors my way. Thanks lads!
I did sort out my teething issues relating to how Mac zips up files and got a Mac zipper that’s PC compatible (BetterZip). I’ve also knocked up a new version of the HSW website in a gallery, which is way more customisable. I’ll publish that over at Lightroom-Blog and E-Junkie.com soon.

I’m also continuing with the large batch of general presets, including cross processing and special fx looks.

Photowise, I had a shoot cancelled this evening, rescheduled for Sat. I also had a shoot with Nicola on Monday, more glamour oriented than the stuff I normally shoot. It was great fun in fairness!

I’ve sent RSAG photos into Red Track Music to go with a review from Yvonne from An Taobh Tuathail’s Live radio broadcast in the Roisin Dubh last Friday. I’ll post a link if and when it goes up.

Anyway, I found the gap and squeezed something into the blog.