Tina and Jesse Graduate Cal Poly Pomona

Tina and Jesse both had a long journey to get to the final stages of their undergraduate degree. Like many of us before them, the struggle to get to the end is terrifying cause we have thought about quitting so many times.... but something kept us going.

Taking the weight off your shoulders knowing that you did all you could to push through to the end... well unless you are going back to school for a masters/PHD/doctorate, etc. Well then the struggle is just starting, so it seems. 

Talking with them reminded me of my struggles at UCI but it has been 14 years since I have graduated. Blink of an eye...

They wanted some portraits but they also wanted to play with their cosplay toys so Jesse brought out his homemade Captain America shield and Tina brought out her lightsaber. 

We had a good time shooting at the Cal Poly Japanese Garden and in front of the CLA building. 

I wish both of you all the success in the near future!

Impromptu boxing shoot with Arri Fresnel Lights

So last week, I got some Arri Fresnel lights in... 750's and 300's... these lights let off some beautiful light and is used commonly by videographers. However I was intrigued to use them for photography because some years ago at a wedding reception, a videographer left it running during the whole reception and it produced such great colors. 

Just to test the power of the 750's, I plugged it and shot it towards the opposite wall. Super bright but more than I needed so I changed it out for the 300's. The 300's were perfect for bringing in some of the ambient light we had. I needed a test model so I told Leonard to stand in front of the light. I tried a few different positions with the light beaming as a rim light and a kicker light for flare. Below is a gallery of the various angles and such. 

The very last shot in the gallery we used a reflector to bounce some light back on to the right of his face. You can see there is a huge difference from the previous photo right? There is no right or wrong. If you wanted to go with a darker/mysterious shot, then the one on the left would have been ideal otherwise the last shot produces some good detail with the fill light. 

Leonard had his Canon 5d Mark III already out with the new Sigma 24-35mm 2.0 Art series attached to it. It was a great time to put the lens to the test. From what I can tell, when it hits its the focus, the lens is pretty sharp at 2.0 but my keeper rate was not high. I will have to spend some more time with it to see if it was just too dark to focus properly. 

I ended up directing Leonard and he was playing the role pretty well so I told him to take his shirt off and pose like a Street Fighter. He was a bit self conscious since his hair wasn't done and he felt like he needed to do some push ups to tense up his chest and arms... lol. However I think all of it ended up working since this shot is more raw and grungy versus the other final shot below. We had a Lastolite difflector to the right of his face to bounce that light and pick up that beautiful fill. 

Since I was already feeling where the shoot was going, I had Leonard setup both the 750 and 300 in a larger space. Then we had him oil his arms and chest with Pro's vegan coconut oil... lol. He smelled like a Hawaiian dessert... must be nice. We then proceeded to wrap up his hands and wrist with black elastic. 

I am usually an anal bastard when it comes to backgrounds. Although I was a fan of how the previous shot came out, there were lots of distracting elements apart of the background. For this one, I wanted to use the lines of the garage to give it a symmetric texture. 

I ended up placing the light in the final shot... to some its a bit distracting but I wanted to spice it up just a bit. Perhaps the flares were too much but I'm just having fun for now. 

Let me know which one you liked better. The first or the second portrait.

I hope you guys liked this one and learned something.

Til the next one,
Andrew Manley

Playing with the White Lightning X1600 and photographing Calvin the Cowboy

So the other day, I found some old gear and brought it out to do some test shots. Since my boy was around, he was the perfect test subject to test some different lighting setups. Went with a simple White Lightning X1600 with a PCB Large Octobox. 

It's been awhile since I shot strobes outside and I wanted to try a few with the sun as a rim and kicker light. I didn't have my trusty Sekonic L358 light meter on me so I had to eye ball the exposure and the light separation from the strobe to the sun. I set the ISO to 200, shutter speed to 1/200th, f/8 and shot the strobe at full power. I did have a 82mm Marumi Circular Polarizer on the Canon 24-70mm 2.8 Mark II I was using. Typically polarizers stop down the exposure about 3 stops. I will explain my setup below. 

Started off by setting the strobe just left of camera and the sun was behind and high over my son's right shoulder. I didn't want to overpower the sun too much.... If anything, I was going for ambient to be half stop under the strobe. 

The light had a hardware malfunction as the clamping mechanism broke off so the light kept drooping downward. Good thing my model is only 3 feet tall... lol

The shot on the left is a BTS photo of me directing Cal to commit to the shot. I need a nice stern face and that is what he gave me. You can see examples by scrolling down. The other two shots I did with the sun actually behind my left shoulder. You can see in the portrait of him looking straight into the camera that he has apart of his cheek overexposed by direct light. Although this was not an ideal setup for me, I am glad I was able to give it a try. I think it created more shadows by shooting with the sun that high up

This is one of the first shots that I took and I could barely tell if the shot was good or not cause the 1Ds Mark II has such a tiny screen and it has a terrible viewing angle but I like how the light looks in conjunction with the ambient light. 

Since this is just for practice, I used a few different editing methods. If it were client work, I would have made all the edits consistent with each other so there would of been a nice flow from image to image. All of these had the sun directly over Cal's right shoulder. When I was outside, I wasn't really feeling the shots but when I got to the computer, they turned out pretty good. 

It was burning hot and I wanted the angle of the sun to be lower than it was earlier in the day. So we let 2 hours burn by and got the sun directly behind Calvin. Of the 4 images, can you tell which three were shot with a strobe and which one was ambient only? Go ahead, take a gander 

If you guessed the top right, you are right. You can tell that the light on his face is flat (no contrast) and doesn't have a gradient of light running left to right. The light was on the left side of the frame at full power. It was about 1.5 stops brighter than the ambient so that is why the background is darker than the one without the strobe. 

Although most portrait photographers don't like to shoot mid day cause it creates the harshest shadows, I think shooting high noon adds a certain character and mood that you don't see in late afternoon shots. 

I hope to utilize a few strobes on an outdoor shoot with a Fiat 500e electric sometime in the next few weeks. Should be a good one. 

Thanks for checking out the blog and make sure to read a few of the other posts I have.

Andrew Manley

Wedding: Maryanne + Manny

Location: Lytle Creek - Green Mountain Ranch