Just-Clayton
Senior Member
My sassy granddaughter. D610/ sb700 flash on a soft box in command mode. Aperture mode/5.6 iso100.
Post your Portrait shots!
- Thread starter Rick M
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Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
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Floats Like a Butterfly
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Floats Like a Butterfly
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Friday night was typical, headed out for whatever I could find of interest, with a camera in my backpack and ended up in a little bar/cafe/dance club. Being such a social environment, going out to random places usually means meeting strangers who turn out to become friends. That was to be expected and if worked out as predicted. Two girls visiting from Siberia sat near me and interesting conversation, some dancing, some drinking of flaming B-52 toasts. They started selfie-taking and I offered to take a few shots with my D800. Several clubs later and many drinks, laughs and great times we took them to the airport for the flight home at 06:30. The dark-haired girl is 34 and married with 2 kids and her cute friend Julia is a 33 single dentist and fitness enthusiast with a great personality. She has already made plans to return next month for an insider view of the city guided by me. Besides all the museums, ballet, galleries and jazz club I am sure we are going to get a lot more dancing in.
Working for Rotolight is great.
Being one of only two photographers that actually work there means I get to go out and show off the lights to our customers. This ins one from a Workshop in Liverpool UK
This was shot with the Rotolight AEOS off camera left and a NEO 2 off camera right for a kicker light.
Being one of only two photographers that actually work there means I get to go out and show off the lights to our customers. This ins one from a Workshop in Liverpool UK
This was shot with the Rotolight AEOS off camera left and a NEO 2 off camera right for a kicker light.
john*thomas
Senior Member
Another casual shot inside a restaurant of a tourist client I took out to dinner. Camila and her 19 year old daughter (who is a real beauty but too shy to pose for a photo) were visiting from Columbia. This was their last night of a week long first visit to St Petersburg. The restaurant was bright so I use a ND filter to get to use wide aperture, f/1.8 on a Nikkor 85mm. The daughter sitting to the left held a speedlight is a snap on grid to control light spill. Camera a D800 using a Yongnuo YN622n tx controller and YN622n II transceiver. You can get good images with very simple lighting if you control it instead of just accepting what light there is.
Another cafe shot, this one is of one of our tour guides. Svet is a long retired ballerina who has traveled the world when with the St Petersburg Ballet Company(formerly called the Kirov Ballet) one of the most highly regarded and historic ballet groups in the world. She went back to university and received a Masters in European History and has been working for me as a licensed tour guide for years.
She won't tell me her age but from her work and school, she must be 50 and still in great dance shape.
The shot was in a cafe at lunch with clients, using a D800 with 85 1.8 wide open, ISO 160, 1/80sec with a gridded hand held SB900 flash on 1/128 power to the left of the frame. All settings on flash and camera were manual except AF in single spot. I want to do a studio series of her of ballet positions and deep shadows, one strobe with 6 ft strip box maybe this winter and combine them in a single pano frame
She won't tell me her age but from her work and school, she must be 50 and still in great dance shape.
The shot was in a cafe at lunch with clients, using a D800 with 85 1.8 wide open, ISO 160, 1/80sec with a gridded hand held SB900 flash on 1/128 power to the left of the frame. All settings on flash and camera were manual except AF in single spot. I want to do a studio series of her of ballet positions and deep shadows, one strobe with 6 ft strip box maybe this winter and combine them in a single pano frame
Went out last night to a club/restaurant/pub, not usually a hot dance scene but always a social group of people, and took a few candid shots and a few from a couple of girls who asked for photos. The first one was just a quiet sweet looking girl waiting for someone alone at a table. After 40 minutes or so she left, without ordering. She must have been stood up for a date or something
Then two women asked for photos seeing the gripped D800 laying on the bar while I was having a beer waiting for dinner to be served.
Then two more came to ask for photos. After dinner, I wandered off to another club that was more of a dance club and left my camera bag in the cloakroom so I could just dance, walked home at 06:00, tired, and happy after hours continuously on the dance floor.
Then two women asked for photos seeing the gripped D800 laying on the bar while I was having a beer waiting for dinner to be served.
Then two more came to ask for photos. After dinner, I wandered off to another club that was more of a dance club and left my camera bag in the cloakroom so I could just dance, walked home at 06:00, tired, and happy after hours continuously on the dance floor.
mrcoomes59
Senior Member
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I guess I am just lucky but I run into the most interesting people.Here is Daria, a school teacher who is also an artist who I met at a gallery in the afternoon and our conversation was so interesting hours melted away until we decided to continue it over dinner....at 3am! This is a single shot, taken while waiting for our order to be taken, with a single flash held above the camera. with a 24-70 at 44mm f/2.8 Daria still looked fresh and sparkling at 3 am as when we met at 3pm.
Lucky students....lucky me. What I noticed first about her was not her elegant look or intelligent eyes but her spectacular figure. In this case, the light was low so even though my Nikkor lens in not stabilized, I selected a slow 1/13 sec exposure ISO 400, with rear curtain flash triggering to get saturated colors using very low flash power. I suspect you are going to see more of Daria.
Edit to add flash discussion. Often in dark environments to get ambient light contributing to the exposure I will "drag the shutter" with a low-speed exposure that captures the background over 1/2- 1/15 of a second before the flash triggers to expose the subject to a different exposure level. The flash is so short of duration it freezes and motion from hand holding or subject. To get this to work, Nikon has a flash mode where it triggers the flash only right at the very end of open shutter. That is called Rear Curtain. If there is motion in the background, since it is exposing over a longer person, that motion will be in motion or blurred while the subject, being metered by the flash overpowers the blur of the dark exposure of the subject. It is really useful and one of the great features of Balanced Flash (BL mode) if you use Matrix metering and flash. In that mode, the background is metered by the camera for ambient light and the Nikon flash has it own spot metering that exposes for the subject separately from the background. Just make sure the background is showing a couple stops underexposed on the meter when taking the shot so the flash fills the rest of needed light for proper exposure. Nikon flash system is the best in the industry. Try it at your next night event, don't light up the room, use a long exposure to get the room within 1-2 stops of proper exposure(always use full manual exposure when using flash, no auto modes or auto ISO), by just setting the camera's meter to show ambient 1-2 long hash marks to the left of center on the meter indicating under exposure and setting the flash to TTL BL mode.
Lucky students....lucky me. What I noticed first about her was not her elegant look or intelligent eyes but her spectacular figure. In this case, the light was low so even though my Nikkor lens in not stabilized, I selected a slow 1/13 sec exposure ISO 400, with rear curtain flash triggering to get saturated colors using very low flash power. I suspect you are going to see more of Daria.
Edit to add flash discussion. Often in dark environments to get ambient light contributing to the exposure I will "drag the shutter" with a low-speed exposure that captures the background over 1/2- 1/15 of a second before the flash triggers to expose the subject to a different exposure level. The flash is so short of duration it freezes and motion from hand holding or subject. To get this to work, Nikon has a flash mode where it triggers the flash only right at the very end of open shutter. That is called Rear Curtain. If there is motion in the background, since it is exposing over a longer person, that motion will be in motion or blurred while the subject, being metered by the flash overpowers the blur of the dark exposure of the subject. It is really useful and one of the great features of Balanced Flash (BL mode) if you use Matrix metering and flash. In that mode, the background is metered by the camera for ambient light and the Nikon flash has it own spot metering that exposes for the subject separately from the background. Just make sure the background is showing a couple stops underexposed on the meter when taking the shot so the flash fills the rest of needed light for proper exposure. Nikon flash system is the best in the industry. Try it at your next night event, don't light up the room, use a long exposure to get the room within 1-2 stops of proper exposure(always use full manual exposure when using flash, no auto modes or auto ISO), by just setting the camera's meter to show ambient 1-2 long hash marks to the left of center on the meter indicating under exposure and setting the flash to TTL BL mode.
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Daria's girlfriend was not bad either, a waitress in the restaurant Daria suggested. This is Julia, they attended the art academy together. Julia is very athletic and into yoga and tennis and moved away from the arts. I suspect she is more of a party animal but she was really pretty also. The fine arts academy is such a prestigious institution that I was surprised she gave up art. It would be the same as someone going through a top medical school and becoming a mechanic.
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LouCioccio
Senior Member
I posted this image on the D500 section; I was asked to take images of our parishioners for our church directory. I know in past times that they had used a service but this time they wanted to cut out the pressure sales that came along. I am donating time and talent for this. We had single people, married and families. The families I would do the group then break them down from siblings to each individual. At least they'll get something better than the "school shots". I could not be creative as I usually use soft boxes so its with two Umbrellas 600 ws strobes (flat lighting) and of course my Sekonic meter. We were doing this in the sanctuary before mass and after mass. Here is one of a dog. We put the background drape over the stool and somewhat amazed he stayed and tried to jump off.
I used a D500 with a 80mm 1.8D lens.
Lou Cioccio
I used a D500 with a 80mm 1.8D lens.
Lou Cioccio
Good shots of Liz. Say HI from us.
Happy New Year Ivan.