Project 52 - Week 02 - "Sin"

Having realised that Kent's blog has changed the setup this year to be a little more relaxed and they wont be posting a weekly theme, and me having absolutely no imagination what-so-ever, i have found another project 52 so that i can follow the themes on there (see www.talkphotography.co.uk).

I will still be keeping involved in Kent's blog as i think its a fantastic set-up, i just need that little bit of inspiration of what too shoot, and seeing as Kent's is going to be your favourite recent photo, i am still in keeping with his "rules".



So for my first week on the new P52 (second week of my P52) the theme is "Sin" the idea being is to interpret the theme however you see fit and create a photograph based on that theme. I chose to take this down the route of drinking and football, so roped in my Grandad as my (lets call it willing) subject, put a beer in his hand (Ok this made him a little more willing) and convieniently he was already watching football when i walked in so that helped a little :D.

Now just came the trouble of deciding how to light the scene, during the day our living room is nice and bright with a large window and near constant sun all day, but come night it gets pretty dark, so i knew that relying on ambient light was going to be useless (even with the ISO capabilities on the 5D) and most likely boring, so that obviously meant flash. Now unfortunately i dont have a wireless trigger for my flashgun yet so i had too leave it on camera (boring and flat), so i knew i had to bounce the flash, easy enough in most situations, but some kind thinking person decided that pure white would be a good colour for all the living room walls, Grrrrr, the flash is bouncing everywhere and glaring like crazy off the TV.

So i start wandering around the house aimlessly looking for something i could position to bounce the flash off of, thankfully i found a small whiteboard, so propped that up on the couch and against the wall and aimed the flashgun at it, better but there was still too much light hitting the tv screen, so out came the trusty credit card (dont you just love these things) Blue tacked to the side of my flashgun it made a fantastic Go-bo for the light, another quick test shot and the light looked much better and much more natural, the tv wasn't being lit by the gun so had no glare, but the whole scene was under-exposing.

Now i know after reading the Strobist blog, that i needed at least a 1/30th shutter speed to get a full pass on the tv and avoid the band appearing across the screen, so i dialled in 1/30th and took another test shot, the scene was lit a little better, still too dark but my main concern was the depth of field was too shallow and the tv was too out of focus too make out it was a football match on, so i dialled in F/8 on the camera and upped the flash a little, another test shot showed me that Grandad was being lit nicely and the depth of field was good but the ambiant and tv was still too dark, so i upped the ISO to 1600 which of course amplified the intensity of the flash so chimped that down and settled on 1/16th power and zoomed out to 20mm. This gave me nice ambient exposure and a nice soft light on my subject with little noise due to the crisp light from the flash.

Next came positioning Grandad how i liked him, "look this way a little, label facing me, put the remote out slightly, etc etc" and composing the shot, once i was happy with my position i took a shot which i was more than happy with, i liked the lighting, the composition and the depth of field. Left grandad nice and happy with his cold one and went too view the photo on the big screen :)

So here is my photo, Straight out of camera except a very slight levels tweak and a touch of sharpening, absolutely no noise reduction was done (pretty impressive for ISO 1600)

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Exif: 1/30th F/8 ISO 1600 50mm









And heres the set-up

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In the actual photo the couch was pulled forward a little more than this too allow me room behind to compose with the 50mm, flash mounted on camera (Canon 600EX-RT) was bounced off the whiteboard on the right at 1/16th power 20mm throw, grandad was sat approx where the dogs head is and as you can see lovely white walls the bounce the flash all over.... For context im sat just to the left of the tv in this shot looking back at where i was crouched.

Thanks for looking and i hope you enjoyed,
Please leave a comment, all critism or positive comments are welcome, i dont bite and the critism helps me improve :)

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Danny :)