Yellow daisy shot using a Orbis Ring Flash in the background and a Lumiquest Softbox III as main light







Today I had to take some studio shots and at the end of the session I stole one of my wife's flowers and had some fun. While taking some pictures of it with the Orbis Ring Flash I had the idea of using that very light modifier as a background, centering the flower in the black hole that is commonly used to stick the lens.

The how-to... Lumiquest Softbox III
on camera left, Orbis Ring Flash
as background



I adjusted the camera on the tripod to have the flower exactly in the middle of the black hole and did few test shots. The ide was cool but I needed an extra light to bring up the flower a bit. All that backlight couldn't do it by itself.

So I added an extra SB800 with a Lumiquest Softbox III and..voilá

Front cover shot for the magazines: Voyages de Pêche, Mundo Pesca and Pesca&Barcos. Sb800 through Orbisflash

This image has already become the front cover for three different magazines: Pesca&Barcos in Spain, Mundo Pesca in Portugal and Voyages de Pêche in France. Is a shot that I love, perfect timing around sunset, great smile and amazing Sea Bass. I lit it with the SB800 through the Orbis Ring Flash, a wonderful combo for my fishing portraits

Slow shutter speed maybe... ?

No way, it wasn’t necessary at all. Usually to get an image like this you need to put your camera on a tripod and go for the slowest shutter speed you need in order to achieve the effect you need. In this case the wind was so strong that I managed to shot hand held with the Nikkor 70-200VR at… 1/2000sec

This is just weeds, ready to dry and fall under the winter freeze. I could barely stand and my Nikon was shaking like a leaf, this is why I wanted to use such high shutter speed, but is not the only reason. I also wanted to have quite a narrow depth of field using a very wide aperture, I shot at f2.8 and that gave the extra boost to the shutter.

The whole idea was to make an image with not many defined shapes, where personal interpretation could play an important role. In Lightroom the main job was to put the white balance at 10750kto add warmth, play with the blacks, whites, and contrast, boost the saturation and most of all bring the clarity down to -100. A bit of vignetting added the final touch.

The result, a very high….slow shutter speed image

Three from Rome

I have been few days in Italy visiting the family and enjoying my vacations; needless to say I had an amazing time. Few days in Rome and few others in Tuscany allowed me to grab quite a few Gigabytes of images with my D90.  For these two weeks I borrowed a Nikkor 24-70 f2.8 that I have used a lot. Is not a lens designed for an APS sensor but I must say that was tough for me to unscrew it from the camera. What a superb piece of engineering! What a sharpness! It has been an unfortunate move to carry it with me, now I brutally raised my quality demand, and in addiction to that I also put my eye on the 70-200 f2.8VR to replace the already sold 18-200VR.  I’m longing for a fast bankruptcy because they would both work well with a FX body…..

Anyway, back to Rome for the moment. I took my wife for some brief sightseeing visits and collected most of the shots during a late afternoon one that eventually stretched into the night. Being together with someone who wants to see things and walk around at a different pace than yours is not the best option to do the things properly but she’s patient and I had my share of time. As a matter of fact I also carried my tripod, which is not known for being a tool that fastens things up.

The Gianicolo is one of those spots you must visit. Is one of the roman hills and the view you get from there is quite staggering. Rome spreads in front of your eyes like a renaissance painting, the old mixes with the new and the churches’ domes scratch the polluted sky. The sky was dark but the sun was finding its way through the clouds giving me the chance to grab at least a dramatic light. For this image I did a bit of work in Lightroom, transforming it in a duotone and pumping up the contrast. For the original shot I used a ND Grad filter but I enhanced a bit more the sky with an additional grad filter in post.

Then it got dark and it was that magical hour when the tungsten lit buildings create that amazing contrast against the dark blue sky. I love this time of the day, even an average image collects few extra points, and most of them are quite elegant to say at least. Doesn’­­t last for too long though, so you have to work pretty fast to seize the moment. In this case I had a problem with quite a bulky and dark object in the foreground, name it statue: Marco Aurelio’s. I took a first shot, and it was quite poor. With a 30 seconds exposure I had the sky well exposed as well as part of the building, but the statue was pitch dark and the lights burned out. So I took a different approach; slowed the exposure to 20 seconds and pulled the SB800 out of the waist jacket. I don’t know how many times I have used the speedlight so far to dramatically change the result of an image, being this animated or not, this for sure has been one of those. With the camera on the tripod, during the whole length of the exposure I painted the statue with the flash and pulled out most of the details not long before hidden in dark shadows.

When the sky turned black I was still around Piazza Venezia trying to figure out how to make a decent image with so many people around, work in progress, cars and bad lights. Finally I decided to go for the Chiesa del Santissimo Nome di Maria, in front of the Foro Traiano including the famed Colonna Traiana. There’s nothing really special in this image, but I had a ball working on the HSL in Lightroom retouching saturation, luminance and hue in most of the colors.

Obviously there’s much more photos in the laptop’s hard disk but either I had not much time to edit them, or they were not worth it. Soon more stuff about Rome though, maybe some museum….

Is the Euro still floating ?

A concept more than a photo. 5 cents floating on a thin layer of water poured on a black vinyl background. A side light provided by an SB800 through a Lastolite EzyBox to enhance the texture of the coin yet not reflect on the background, trying to keep it as black as possible.

Is our currency still floating? The Dollar is coming back strong and we are loosing power with the major international currencies. Maybe is good for the Euro zone export economy, but sure is not for those who import a lot of goods from non Euro countries.

Orbisflash for still life

For this test we found quite an unusual subject for the Orbisflash, a still life. I’m pretty sure that this ring flash was not designed for anything like that, but we had fun for half an hour trying different angles, and finally comparing it with a Lumiquest Softbox III, a Lumiquest Snoot and finally a bare SB800.

In this first image we have the Orbisflash on axis with the lens. That is, the lens goes through the hole :-) . The light gently wraps the whole subject

Now we moved the Orbisflash from the lens to camera left. The light is still nice and wrapping, we have more shadows and probably a more interesting picture

The Orbisflash is on top of the subject. This is the option I like the least, the light is a bit dull and there’s quite a loss of contrast and details.

Here we have the Lumiquest Softbox III right on top of the lens, trying to mimic the direction of light of the Orbisflash. The result is quite similar to that of image one, thus the light is not as wrapping and creates more edges

Lumiquest Softbox III on camera left. Compared to the second image we have more contrast here, darker shadows and stronger highlights. Is more contrasty

Softbox III on top of our garlic. The result is not too different from the one we made with the Orbisflash with the same settings.

Here we go for a very hard and narrow beam of light. The Lumiquest Snoot creates some kind of bad chiaroscuro, with very harsh and unflattering shadows.

Another hard light configuration. The SB800 is now bare, and the light again very unflattering. Lots of unpleasant contrast, same as in the previous example, yet we have a wider beam of light and it spreads more around the subject.

Orbisflash for macro work

I’m slowly getting familiar with the Orbisflash and this time I gave it a try with a macro subject. Working with the 60mm Micro Nikkor stuck at a mere 10cm from the lure, I did some fun testing

For works of this kind there is no other option but to place the camera on a tripod. Otherwise we would have the Orbis on the left hand and the camera in the other with both hands shaking and major focusing problems. Still, a sharp focus with a macro lens so close to the subject is extremely complicated. If you pay attention, even at f16 the depth of field is so limited that the metallic paint is not as focused as the eye, and I think the difference in depth between the two certainly cannot be spotted without a magnifying glass.

The Orbisflash, as many ring flash used in fashion photography, it gets reflected in a very unique way in the subject’s pupil. It is true that in the human eye is quite pleasing, very cool I’d say, I wanted to see if it would work as well on a plastic one, and to be very honest I believe it does. From the first to the second picture you can see we have slightly moved the Orbisflash from the lens axis to an off-camera position, and the reflection moved as well.

The light that provides such peculiar flash will sure have critics and devotee; I personally find it very cool. It wraps the subject in a very uniform shadowless way, yet not flat or dull, and delivers enough contrast to the image.

When I received it from the shop I thought it was a darn bulky monster, but now, after very little use I handle it with the same ease I handle my SB800 alone, and I am finding many and different applications for it.

Lastolite Umbrella Box 40"

Lately I have red many good things about the Umbrellas with Diffusers so I decided to treat me to a brand new 40” Lastolite Umbrella Box. I had the choice for a larger one but I knew I couldn’t use it with small speed lights so I had to quit on the megalomaniac idea.

Kirk Tuck, in his latest book mentions a lot the Photek Umbrellas with diffusers, he suggest they can deliver a light almost as soft as a very expensive Octabank and uses a lot the 60” with Alien Bees or Profoto 600W lights. This is where I got the inspiration for my purchase and decided to give it a try the minimalistic way.

It would not be fair to say that I run a very extensive test, in fact I didn’t. Just put together a background, two stands and the D90 on a tripod to take some shots at my new baby reel, a Team Daiwa Bradia 2000, a tiny little jewel. I left the diffuser dome in the SB800 and had to pump it to ¼ power in manual and 200 ISO to achieve this f11 at 1/200 seconds. The Lastolite Umbrella Box was positioned right on top of the reel. The second light is an SB800 with diffuser dome on through a LumiQuest Softbox III, a small yet powerful light diffuser. This was feathered a bit towards the background and flagged with a small gobo to avoid light spill on the reel. The power of this light was set at 1/32. Both flashes have been triggered with Nikon CLS in separate groups

For the sake of it also have a look at how the light works with different modifiers. For the following images we got rid of the second light and just used the SB800 on top of the reel, see the difference:

SB800 with diffuser dome only

SB800 through LumiQuest Softbox III

SB800 through Lastolite Umbrella Box

The Dark Session

The use of artificial light is, as the followers of this blog know, very high on my list. I got absolutely hooked by the use of strobes, speed lights and studio light, especially after becoming a follower of the Strobist community myself.

The problem is to find models, I mean, patient people who don’t mind being around with an obsessed guy who take strange pictures of them. Randomly, a member of the family gets involved in the task. Poor soul, he knows when we start but never knows when it all finish. This time it was my nephew’s time. 18 years old, rock music lover and with a light beard showing in his chin, perfectly matched with a dark hooded sweater.

We did the session inside a house in construction. We started close to sunset and finished when it was dark and I had to work my way through things with a portable lamp. Three lights: two Metz and one Nikon SB800. Elinchrom Skyport triggers. Manfrotto Nano Stands, translucent umbrella and a Honlphoto grid. These are my tools, together with the Nikon D90 and the 18-200VR lens.

We worked around different kind of situations, mostly based around the idea of the dark warrior or something alike. One light was taking care of the background, both from a bare Metz 48 or through a translucent umbrella. The kicker light, that for me somehow is the main light, or at least the one that takes care of giving the image “that feeling”, is on camera left coming from a SB800 gelled blue or red with a Honlphoto grid. On camera right we have a Metz 58 through a translucent umbrella.

The result is mixed. There’s so much to learn about lights and their fine tuning that I can’t expect major improvement overnight, yet a couple of these images make me happy and proud. The most disappointing is probably the third one, where the light coming from the umbrella is too strong and kills a bit of the atmosphere.

If you need any info about the setup don’t hesitate to contact me.

The Black Pharaoh

Have you ever met a Black Pharaoh? Neither do I but I’m sure I met a descendant of the inhabitants of the Kingdome of “Kush” as the Egyptian called.

The Nubians where established in the northern part of Sudan and southern part of Egypt and their history reverts as far as 2000 B.C. First conquered by the Egyptians for their mines of Gold, the Ivory, cattle and Slaves, they got their freedom back around 700 B.C, not only chasing the Egyptians away but also gradually conquering the south of the country, founding the dynasty of the Black Pharaohs that will later unify and rule the whole of Egypt.

Well, I met my new my friend Negrashy, a true Nubian, on my latest trip. We were floating on some sort of fishing boat, scouting a new area in the south, and he was the man in control of the local burocracy and logistic. Is a great guy and we had a jolly good time together, but the real reason why is here in my blog, friendship apart, is because an early morning I took a nice picture of him.

Nikon Flash SB800 shot through a Honlphoto Grid. Nikon D90 with the Tokina 11-16, not the most flattering lens for a portrait, yet quite successful here, with this “tight” close up, as tight as a such wide angle allows.

Are Sea Bass aggressive or what?

Check this out guys, a good fishing week-end, lots of strikes and many missed fish. Good fun, the best you can get in a Mediterranean summer day. Light tackle all the way, like the good ol’ times.

We used walking the dogs and soft plastics rigged weedless and without any kind of weight: Super Flukes, Houdini Shads, Slug-go, and alike. First shooting with my new combo and the photos are mostly crap. I have to get used to it and work my way with the new flash too, is just a simple matter of time.

Look at this little European Sea Bass what kind of lure tried to inhale. And haven’t I been so lazy I would have had some other images of mini predators taking WTD as big as them, but the fish were biting and I was more into the fisherman rather than the photographer mood.

Life goes on....

Yesterday, when I received the sad new from Nikon and Sigma service that my gear was not worth fixing, I decided to go to my favourite shop in Madrid and buy myself a new combo.

The final choice was for the D90, not a pro outfit (and pro I ain't) and not too expensive in case it falls again into the water. I was unsure about the lens but the Tokina 11-16 f2.8 was very high on the list. Here it is now, in front of me, already matched with the camera and ready to go fishing tomorrow, and hopefully taking some decent shot

I'll post soon some images taken with my new outfit