Jim and Sarah

Jim and Sarah
Originally uploaded by Andy XR

The Coffee Shot - In the Bag!

We've nailed the coffee shot!

Tim turned up at the Red Roaster roastery in Kemptown, Brighton and with the help of my wife, Lauren, and good friend Joe (he's one of the best jugglers I've ever seen, by the way) we moved 70kg coffee sacks, erected a backdrop and got my lights into position.

I followed a very rigid lighting structure:

1. got my key light dialled in first - I wanted the sacks to look well defined but not too bright. The brolly worked fine as I put it in there quite close. Set it to 1/32 power on wide beam
2. I then placed Tim in the frame to make sure he was also exposed fine. He was (I asked him to wear a white shirt because I knew I'd be using a black backdrop)
3. I then placed two more flashes either side of him - these were going to pick out the beans hitting his hands. I used our homemade grid snoots. I had them aimed a little in front of his hands so that the lighting of the beans would be subtle

I then got on the floor with a fairly wide angle lens (somewhere between 24mm and 20mm) as I wanted to give the sense of Tim knowing his stuff, looking down into the camera.

Joe and Lauren then filled several jugs of stale roasted coffee beans and poured away from out of shot. We did about 10 tries and we managed to get the bean flow just right. As you can see in the picture, the beans were caught by the flashes beautifully.

We then did a close up of Tim examining a bean - I wanted a second picture just in case.

All in all it was an awesome little shoot - delivered in less than an hour from turning up to sweeping away LOTS of stray beans.

If you have confidence in the look you're after, and really want your shot to work, just take control of the shoot and stay calm. I'd had this picture in my mind for a few months, and when I saw it on my LCD I knew I'd got it. Happy boy!

Until the next one..

Andy

Death to Dell

Death to Dell
Originally uploaded by Andy XR

With the very willing help of Louis, I destroyed my ageing Dell laptop at the weekend.
I setup my Canon on a tripod, on rapid fire mode. Louis dropped the Dell from a first floor bedroom window. It took two attempts to do any real damage; this was the second attempt.

I now want a camera with a higher framerate!!!

The Coffee Guy

We're embarking on a new journey - photojournalism.

It's something I've wanted to do for a good 12 months now. Why? I want to stretch our photography, push our creative skills and, hopefully one day, get published. It's not for the money, but for kudos and experience and respect.

The project is about talking to Brighton-based businesses and establishments to find out how they're doing in the current economic downturn. Three interviews have taken place so far, but as this is to be a photo-story, I really need to get some interesting shots done.

Well, my patience has paid off. Shoot numero uno takes place next week! The subject is Tim Hume, owner a well-known coffee house called The Red Roaster in the Kemptown district of Brighton.

The Red Roaster is a cool coffee house. Tim ensures that his employees are well trained and they all seem to really enjoy working there.

They roast their own beans in a roastery not far from the coffee house. It's there that we're doingt the shoot. It has a wicked red roasting oven (what other colour could it be?) and the floor is loaded with coffee bean sacks from all over the planet - each with distinctive stencilling. I'm going to have Tim sat on the sacks and my two assistants will be pouring coffee beans into his hands from out-of-shot.

That's the theory, anyway.

It's a tight spot, so I may be resorting to wide-angle. Now, I love my wide angle (a Sigma 12-24mm aspherical - it's insanely wide) but you run the risk of introducing some serious distortion. I need to use it with caution. However, if I can squeeze a little more space out of the place, I'll use my 30mm prime (F1.4).

I'm going to use two Canon Speedlites with snoots to pick out the beans hitting his hands, and a third Speedlite in a brolly to light Tim.

Pics when I'm done....

Ta ta!

I Shot the Heads

I finally did the Crunch headshots. I went for a blown out white background as this makes it easier for the web designers to cut out the pictures for web use.
The setup was straightforward:
2 x Canon 550EX speedlites set to about 1/16 aimed at a white wall
Canon 430EX through a brolly to camera left, high up to light each subject

The shots were of the three main honchos that run Crunch and the partner companies. One guy particularly didn't like having his picture taken, but I guess that's always gonna happen. He was co-operative tho, so that's good.
In hindsight, I realised I made a tiny mistake. You should normally get the background blown out first by setting the power on the strobes and the exposure on the camera and then only tweak the key light power to get the right exposure on the subject. What did I go and do? I got the background blown out OK, but then adjusted the aperture on camera to get the subject lit OK. Doh! This resulted in the background not being so blown out so I had to tweak that in post.
Ho hum, lesson learned.
The dapper chap in question is Darren Fell, founder of Crunch and nice guy to boot.

Onwards and upwards!

Attempt # 2

Whoo! I'm finally going to get the corporate headshots done, this coming Friday. About bloody time too.

Headshots Postponed...so it's an Office Instead

Aww, my little corporate headshots project was postponed at the last minute. It'll happen soon and when it does, I'll put up the results.
I did, however, execute the other part of the assignment which was to get a picture of the accountants' offices in Brighton: Blenheim House. I wanted it to be lit evenly; I knew it faced east, so I got up early and as expected, the front of the office was lit up nicely by the morning sun.
I used my trusty Sigma 12-24mm aspherical wide angle for this in order to give the building a bit of distortion, which kinda makes it look bigger than it really is.

The guy walking in front of it was purely intentional.....