brooks short

Peter, it wasn't a camera store, it was a commercial photo studio called Photo Features, Ltd, located at the corner of Elgin and Gladstone in Ottawa.

Shot in the studio with electronic flash

4x5 T-Max 100

Studio shot with continuous lights

Studio shot with flash

Mike,

 

Thanks. I used an 85mm shift/tilt Nikkor lens for this shot . The lens has manual apertures so that information is not recorded in the EXIF. The f/stop was f/5.6.

Studio shot with continuous light.

Studio shot using continuous light.

Studio shot using continuous light.

Studio shot using strobe.

Shot in the studio using electronic flash through glass blocks.

I've been a commercial advertising photographer for the past 20 years. I'd say that this photo is cleanly executed with a fairly strong graphic presentation and simple, if fairly common, diffused lighting. I'm sure the client was pleased with the result.

 

This type of look ie: gelled blue background and close, diffused lighting with transparent specular highlights, was very popular in the late eighties and early nineties and is still somewhat popular today. But I've seen dozens if not more similar shots in various source books such as the recently demised "Black Book" in the past, using this type of lighting (which I like, by the way) and strong saturated primary colors in the background.

 

That said, and given this particular genre of commercial "look", I'm left with the impression that this image could have been worked harder and longer and made more striking by taking the composition and lighting a step farther.

 

For example, the blue glow background seems a little too broad and flat for my taste. Even with the need for copy space I think the blue glow could be more progressive in tonal range. A brighter, tighter blue/white higlight near the clarinet fading to a much darker blue, almost black at the top of the image would be stronger and create more depth in the image.

 

A bit more of the clarinet would be helpful as well. I'd like to see more detail with a crop that extends farther to the bottom, showing more features and shapes of the instrument. I understand the desire to hide the identify of the clarinet but perhaps too much is hidden. Even the client might like an image which was just a little more obvious. Perhaps a fill card underneath the clarinet would also add some interesting specular reflections to the underside of the details of the instrument.

 

This is a pretty good shot and as I've said I imagine the client was pleased but I think a little more effort and time on the setup and lighting would produce a much tighter and more dramatic illustration.

 

Still, it's a good, competent job.

Thanks,

 

The diffusion comes from Photoshop. A layer with some gaussian blur brushed through a sharp layer.

Single strobe through glass blocks with overhead fill card

For a Blind Photographer, you are quite observant ! That is indeed a rather clumsy burn on the background.

John,

 

If you run into Rita, say hi for me. I haven't seen her in 25 years. Take a photo for me too. Thanks !

Ben,

 

I'm just having a little fun with you. This is a strange approach to photgraphing hand tools. Not that there's anything wrong with that. #8^) Many years ago there was a photographer, I think his name was Bronstein, who had a page in The Black Book. His motto was "We can make anything look good" And he could. He had a beautifully lit scene with romantic light and generous layers of diffusion of a polyester Leisure Suit lying on a rumpled bed. It was stunning and quite silly, all at the same time.

 

This shot is of hand tools that belonged to my father-in-law who had recently passed away. Hw loved his tools so it's really sort of a tribute to him. This was photographed as a test using the Kodak ProBack Plus digital back. I was curious as to how the digital capture handled

diffusion.

 

Split diffusion is a lighting technique using strobes where a diffusion filter is held over the lens when one flash fires and removed when other flashes fire, using an open shutter. The result is sharp and diffused areas of focus in the photo.

 

It's hard to see in this low-res j-peg but the tones and interplay of sharp and diffused focus are really quite interesting.

 

I like it but then I'm a sucker for this type of thing. Don't hate these tools just because they're beautiful ! #8^)

 

 

 

 

Ben,

It's not soft-focus, it's a split-diffusion. Marlene Dietrich was my first choice but she's still dead !

Bruce,

 

I misspoke. it was a 500C Hasselblad and the shot was really done in 1972. Rita and I were coworkers in a commercial studio and we were fooling around (in a photographic way)in the studio on our lunch break. Styling was Rita's everyday outfit.

Photographed in 1972 in Ottawa, Canada. Single flash umbrella and

fill card on 120 Plus-X

Single light through glass blocks with a gold fill reflector

I LIKE it ! Beautiful composition. I am a sucker for wide-angle lenses and fog, though. You really ought to be doing this kind of work in a larger format, like 4x5. I'm sure this is a good print but bigger sometimes is better.

Beautiful composition, lovely tones in the sky. The forground could use a little seperation in the dark tones. I imagine a real print would look much better than a scanned low-res image. If this was shot with a view camera, I'd like to see vertical lines on the buildings in the background instead of the distortion there now.

This is a sweet shot. The perfect detail of a childs hand is astounding. As for the photography: I would like to see a little more side lighting, and a little more contrast or at least more white in the highlights.

This shot was for a client who sells pre-sectioned citrus sections

for restaurants. They wanted a high-end gourmet food look. Did they

get it?