We started out with a basic headshot and built up the lighting to include key, rim and fill until we ended up with this

I took the iPad with me and we found the ability to see the images on there, transmitted from the camera by the eye-fi card, really useful.  You can read more about this set-up on my earlier blog post here

We then applied the skills learned in the headshot set-up to other settings such as full length and 3/4 shots such as this one.

All our lighting was done with Strobist style kit, using small ebay softboxes, Manfrotto Nano stands, Nikon SB800s and Alien Bees PLM brollies.

One to one training can be tailored to your particular needs so any photographers that are interested in something similar please drop me a line.  The training and studio time is only £45 an hour and you can either supply your own model or I can find one for you with no mark up.

The great part about this is that it can be done at almost no cost, assuming you have some sort of off camera flash.  The Strobist gel pack is about £10 which includes several strengths of CTB as well as a wide gamut of other filters at a size that will fit most flash guns.  If you have studio lights then a sheet of CTB gel will run to less than £5.  I’d suggest getting a quarter CTB that way you can layer the gels if it’s not strong enough.

To get an approximation of what the image will look like in camera I turn the colour temperature up as high as it will go (10,000) but shoot a grey card so that I can set the colour balance correctly later in Capture One when working on the RAW files.  I’ve put a few examples of images using this technique below but you can see others on my Flickr stream here

One of the things I like to do during workshop is show students the images as I take them.  So far this has been achieved by taking a Mac mini and NEC Spectraview screen to the location and shooting tethered with a long USB cable in to Phase One Capture One.  This set-up works great but getting it to and from the location is a pain (literally!) and the USB cable is quite limiting.  I’m considering doing some workshops outside in the near futre and this set-up would be unworkable there and I didn’t fancy forking out for a Macbook Pro just yet.

Enter the iPad.  The iPad is a device that’s simple and intuitive to use, has a great screen and battery life and is therefore, ostensibly, ideal for tethered shooting.  There is a major problem though in that tethering to cameras over USB is not supported even with the camera connection kit (which is great for normal transfer of images off cards by the way).

A new piece of software is available in the app store though called Shuttersnitch which allows you to transfer images to the iPad wirelessly either by using the proprietary wi-fi adapters from the likes of Canon and Nikon or the increasingly popular Eye-fi SD cards.  This is where I hit another ‘gotcha’.  Eye-fi cards are available in SD format only and I shoot with a Nikon D3 which has 2 CF card slots.  I did some research and discovered many tales of woe about users not being able to get the cards to work, especially the new X2 models with Canon cameras although many seemed to struggle with the D3 also.  The cards aren’t very expensive though so I persevered and obtained an SD to CF adapter from ebay which stated it had been tested with the Eye-fi card and a 8GB Pro Eye-Fi card.  I went with the pro version in the end because although RAW and ad-hoc connections are not supported in this setup at the moment they may be in the future.

The lack of support for ad-hoc connections is the next gotcha.  This means you have to connect from the camera to the iPad via a router and is a limitation of the iPad at present.  Fortunately though I have a Three MiFi device which acts as a battery powered router and I decided to put this in my pocket to allow location shooting.

With more than a little pessimism I started to configure the card by connecting the supplied SD card reader containing the card to a spare USB port on my Mac.  I’ll not go through the full set-up process here as it’s covered in detail elsewhere on the web but it’s fair to say it took a reasonable amount of patience with the software, firmware and Adobe Air all demanding updates and the software refused to register my account stating that the password could not be used.  As it turned out the actual issue was with my email address which, to prevent spam, I prefer to use a slightly unusual format for.  It would have been nice for the software to let me know that this was the issue though rather than complain about the password.

I then took the card out of the reader, inserted it in to the adapter and then put the adapter in to the D3.  Before shooting I changed my settings so that the second card slot (where I put the Eye-fi) only received a basic jpeg with the raw being stored on the card in slot 1.  I also changed the settings so the meter didn’t go to sleep and the camera monitor kept on for as long as possible (many of the issues reported online were due to the camera going in to sleep mode).

I then took a photograph.  Much to my surprise it transfered to my Mac first time!  After a couple of more tests I followed the instructions here and sent the upload key to the iPad via email, copied and pasted the code in to the Shuttersnitch settings, opened the application and took a photograph.  Nothing happened.  I quickly realised my mistake, I needed to open a new collection and after I did so I tried again.  Still nothing.  However closing the application and opening it again resolved all connection problems and it’s worked every time since.

One of the frustrations in traditional tethered shooting with Nikon cameras is that you can’t also use the cameras LCD and images are only stored on the connected computer with no option to also store them on the camera.  The eye-fi card overcomes these limitations but in doing so introduces a slight delay in to the process which is the time it takes to download the image to the card, it then initiates a connection to the iPad and sends the file across.   This means there is a slight delay from taking the image before Shuttersnitch starts to download the image.  In testing though, other than the first shot, I found it took about 7 seconds for a basic jpeg if the previous image had been full downloaded.  If I shot a series of images in quick succession they took longer, obviously, but all did get downloaded and each appeared on the iPad as it was received.  Sending RAW files is supported by the card and Shuttersnitch will receive (but not display) raw files.  In my view though this is pretty much a waste of time, at least for my purposes.  The download time is in the region of 30 seconds and, even if I could get the iPad to display the image, I believe it only renders the embedded jpeg.  I will therefore be shooting with just basic jpegs at the moment, but for more critical work jpeg fine only takes 12 seconds or so.

Overal I’m very pleased with the set-up.  It’s very unintuitive compared to pretty much everything else about the iPad.  It’s more like going back to Windows XP (or even Linux) in some ways as you have to bring several things together to get it to work but work it does!  Please put any questions in the comment section and I’ll try my best to answer them.

Technically shooting black against black can be a little tricky so I used plenty of rim lighting to separate her from the background by varying degrees.  In the first shot this was done very subtly to try and emphasise the cat like pose and the other images gradually separate her further from the background. Rim lighting is one of the techniques I teach on my strobist lighting workshop, click the menu above to read more about these workshops. Hope you like the images and please feel free to leave comments below.

Who am I trying to appeal to? Essentially anyone who wants unique images in the areas I specialise in.  I teach other photographers how to light creatively and that’s one of the qualities I bring to a shoot.  I’ve also a track record of providing dancers, singers and actors with images that really stand out from the norm as well as the required industry headshots.  Very few of the people in my portfolio would describe themselves as professional models, most come from a dance or theatre background and many have no inclination to model professionally at all.

Clients then are likely to be finishing theatre school / dance training, wanting a boost to their professional portfolio or recording a significant moment in their lives.  Two of the best shoots I’ve done recently were with guys who had got themselves in to great shape and wanted some images to record that fact, one for a job application and the other simply because they could.

Who isn’t likely to want me to photograph them? I make no secret of the fact I’ve no interest in wedding photography, there are people far better qualified who will do it better than I.  For a generic family photograph a high street photographer is generally a better option.  Most importantly though, I’m not seeking out the bargain basement end of the market either.  I know some photographers will, for a pittance, give you a CD of all images from the shoot for you to do with what you will.  As the saying goes though ‘buy cheap, pay twice’.  My photography is about giving you something that most other photographers can’t, be it lighting, creativity, image quality or simply a unique space to shoot in (the studio I use is an old warehouse of some 4000 sq ft).  Having said that I understand that in the current climate not everyone has the resources to devote to a shoot of their own, in the next post therefore I’m launching a summer offer to give you a significant discount if you bring along a friend.

In conclusion then I hope you, as potential clients, see from my portfolio whether I can help you get the imagery you want.  You certainly don’t need to have aspirations toward the world of modelling, simply a desire to have a record of something unique.  Please get in touch if you think I can help.

As noted in the article the backbone of the modelling industry are commercial models and this is the area of work most models are likely to be suited to.

Most work for models comes via agencies but with so many out there it is difficult to know where to start when looking for representation so here are some local ones that are land based (as opposed to only on the internet) and have real clients.

PHA model and casting agency

Boss Real (see also the main Boss agency linked from there)

Industry people (see also the casting agency linked from there)

Nemesis

I’m sure there are more but these are certainly the main ones close to me. In most cases if you’re stopped in the street or the agency is only web based you wont be dealing with one of the top agencies.

Hope you found this short article helpful and please tag / link / share it if you did.

I held my first lighting workshop on the 28th February in Islington Mill. Despite the cold weather myself and 5 other photographers had a great time working with Emma and trying out some of my lighting ideas. The above is a sample of one of the shots I took while setting up the lighting. I’ll try and add some links to the other photographers work also and as a start here’s a link to Mark Byrne’s blog with some images he managed to get from the day. Great effort Mark!

I’m planning on holding a second workshop on the 28th March following the same format and again using Emma as the model. There are 6 places available. Any photographers who would like to take part please drop me a message and your place is confirmed on payment of the £40 deposit (which is returnable up to 7 days prior to the workshop). Total cost is only £90 including a light luncheon. My previous post here outlines what will be covered during the day.

Well in April of last year Ilona went in to a unit to help her overcome her illness and recently she was finally able to resume a ‘normal’ life. You can follow her thoughts on the excellent blog here

Eating disorders are often misunderstood in relation to modelling and even with my ‘insider information’ I only have one persons version of how it affects them. Suffice it to say I felt a shoot today would be a positive event and it marked just over 3 years since we last worked together.

We didn’t exactly strike lucky with the weather. I was promised (by the BBC no less) a sunny afternoon. Nothing of the sort materialised, in fact it was so dark that if it hadn’t been for a torch I would have struggled to focus. Snow and cold temperatures prevailed.

The first picture reflects the fact that, starting tomorrow, is Eating Disorders Awareness Week. The remainder are what we were able to capture in an hour or so. I hope you like them but whether you do or not please visit these links to get an insight in to the work of B-EAT and also to consider sponsoring Ilona as she runs another Manchester 10k, this time for the charity MIND.

This would be a small workshop of between 4 and 6 photographers primarily experimenting with lighting around 3 main themes.

Firstly headshots, for this we will be looking to use lighting to create a natural look. You’ll need a reasonably long lens or (if you shoot Nikon) you can use mine. This is the kind of thing we’ll be doing.

Secondly we’ll be creating effects with lighting despite the weather! In the example below it was a cold, dull day with barely any daylight.

Finally we’ll use the water set and create images like this

The shoot will last about a day and refreshments will be provided. The location will be my studio building..

A £40 deposit secures you place, total price £90. Please drop me a message if you’re interested

Update – Following the success of the first workshop I’m running a further workshop on the 28th March!

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