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!

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.....

Headshots for Crunch

I started work recently for a company called Crunch Accounting, based in Hove. It's a funky little company and I'm finally back into Java programming again after a 10 month break (not self-imposed, may I add).

Anyway, they caught wind of the fact that I'm a photographer and they want me to do some headshots of the three main honchos. It'll be for their website. I've also gotta shoot the outside of one of their buildings in Brighton, as well a small pic of the highly reflective, mirror-like name plaque outside their Hove office (in a rather nice old Dubarry Perfumery building). Err...that's gonna be interesting as I'll need to have it reflect something other than the rather unsightly railings! I'm thinking of holding up a white sheet or card, and bouncing a gelled flash at it. Remember, always light something that the reflective surface will reflect.

The headshot shoot is tomorrow, Friday and guess what? It's an 8am start!! Which means I have to get there for 7.30 to setup. It'll be a simple affair: two Speedlites aimed at a white wall to blow it out, and third Speedlite in a shoot-thru brolly up high and to the side to act as key. Bish bosh off we go.

I'll post the results.

Ta ta.

Shooting the Shooter

I saw a great photo at the National Portrait Gallery in London a few weeks ago; it showed a woman posing, but she wasn't posing for the camera. Instead she seemed to be posing for someone else, off the side of the picture. It got me thinking..

I came up with a simple idea. I wanted to show the shooter taking a picture of a model. But I wanted it to look like it was properly happening, and not too staged.

Now, Lauren and I work together lots. But we don't have the luxury of having a 3rd shooter who can take pictures of us. It was self-portrait time. And throw into the mix the fact that I wanted to show the shooter's flash going off (illuminating the model) as well as throw some light onto the shooter.. gulp.

I started off by creating a lighting diagram courtesy of Fred Miranda. I'm really enjoying working this way. I sketch out my idea first - so I can picture it properly and give Lauren an idea of what I'm thinking. Then I formalise it in a lighting diagram.





I use Canon's wireless trigger system based around their STE2 transmitter. This was mounted on the main camera (the one that took the shot). I think put a 550EX above camera right shooting into a snoot to put some isolation into the shooter's face. The shooter (me) obviously has to be seen to be holding a camera. So I borrowed Lauren's 350D (time for an upgrade me thinks) and put a 430EX in slave mode on it.

I hooked up my Canon 30D to Lightroom via the Canon EOS Utility software's remote control feature and set it up to take 5 shots every 10 seconds.

Lauren threw some poses, I threw in some corny "c'mon on love, that's right, gorgeous" comments as I pretended to snap away, while the 430EX on my dummy camera popped in time with the 550EX illuminating me.





Sorted!