Sparkler Shot
Photographing using birthday cake sparklers OR any other light such as a torch or even phone.
This is often called Light Painting.
Please be aware that there are safety concerns when photographing with the sparklers themselves. I do not
recommend using sparklers with children at any time.
The general technical instructions for this shot is that you need to have a really long exposure. So the shutter is open for
relatively long amount of time say between 4-8 seconds. This is the amount of time you have to draw or write in the air
what you want to create with the sparklers/light.
As the shutter speed is so low you will need a tripod for this shot. Otherwise you will have camera shake.
It needs to be dark outside.
As the shutter is open for such a long amount of time and hence letting in lots of light you will need to compensate for
this extra light by closing off light from the other sources (ISO and APERTURE). Your aperture number will need to be
high and your ISO number low.
Place your camera on the tripod
Matrix metering, auto focus, auto WB.
Do a test shot with the subject just standing there (not light/torch) and get the settings correct.
Give your subject the torch/light/sparkler and ask them to draw in the air a big circle or heart shape in front of them.
While they are doing this you need to press the shutter down as they begin and count for however many second you
have the shutter set to. For example, I the shutter is 4 second, count out loud 1.2.3.4 and that’s the amount of time the
subject has to take to make the shape.
Check your shot.
If your camera has trouble focusing in the dark you need to shine another light gently on your subject so your camera
has something to focus on – otherwise it is just seeing dark.
Repeat.
It might take a few shots to get it right but its lots of fun trying! Maybe best with older kids.
This shot is a variation of the sparkler shot.
In this shot I used a video light (which is a rectangular flat light).
The camera was on a tripod. My assistant walked along the back of the bridal party, making the wave type movement
with the light. The bridal party were asked to stay really stick – super still. If they didn’t stay still they would end up
blurry as the shutter is open for 6 “ ( that’s 6 whole seconds).
The aperture was 18 and the ISO was 200. As the shutter is staying open for so long (6 seconds) it is letting lots and lots
of light in and so you need to close off the light from the Aperture and the ISO otherwise the shot will be completely
over exposed.
Silhouette
To take a silhouette shot you are effectively making your subject into a shadow type figure.
The background will need to be brighter than the subject.
So you will need to put the bright background behind your subject and shoot into the brightness. If the sun is out you
can use the heads of the people/subject to block the sun coming into the lens.
You need to use SPOT metering so your camera is only using a small part of the image to meter. You need to move your
spot metering sensor so it is not where your subject is in the frame as you need to meter only to the background of the
image.
You then need to meter the background and what this should do if the background is bright enough is make your subject
really dark or into a shadow style silhouette.
You will most probably have to do a few test shots.
Remember you can alter a little bit in Lightroom especially if you are shooting in RAW.
This second shot hasn’t had as much post production as the above shot. The above shot has increased BLACKS on the
sliders in lightroom and increased SHADOWS to make the subjects even darker/blacker. The below shot is more straight
out of the camera. Exposed to the background (or the sky) and because the subject is between the light and the camera
the subject turns into the silhouette. You can see how I have placed the subject directly in front of the sun, this blocks
the sun from coming directly into the camera which makes the camera difficult to focus at times. Also by placing the
subject in front of the sun it gives your camera something to focus on.
Bokeh
Bokeh is the Japanese word for BLUR. It is when you see the beautiful light dancing around on shiny things in the
background (or foreground) of your images which is blurred.
In order to create this effect, you need to drop your APERTURE right down to the lowest it will go. If you have a couple of
lens choose the one that the Aperture number goes down the lowest on.
From here place the subject in the foreground of the image and focus on your subject as your blur out the background.
To create the bokeh the object behind needs to be shiny or illuminous in some way without this it won’t work.
If you are using a zoom lens, the lens will create different sizes/effects of bokeh at different lens lengths so I would
recommend trying a few different focal (lens) lengths. I know for example, with my 70-200 lens when I use it closer to
the 200mm mark it will create more of a bokeh feel. Also the further way the shiny item is the more blur/bokeh is likely
to be created.
Have fun !
This first shot the fairy lights were between myself and the subject.
Settings were aperture 2.8 Shutter 1/125 ISO 800. I was also using off camera flash here.
The next image was taken all with natural window light.
The sparkles on the top of the shoe creating the bokeh. Camera is focusing on the ring and with the low aperture and
use of macro lens here, even though the show sparkles are not too far away they are creating a gorgeous bokeh.
The below shot you have sparkles in both the foreground and the background. Both areas are dresses hanging from a
portable clothes hanger and the subject is sitting quite low to the ground. You can see that there is more bokeh in the
background due to the dynamics of the lens. Settings were f2.8 1/300 ISO 800 - all natural light .
Sunset
Many of you have asked me about shooting at sunset. It is a magical time to photograph.
The best best time is about 1 hour before the sun goes down. This is one of the times when it is ideal to have full sun (as
per top shot below) or dappled cloud (as per second shot below).
The tricky part of shooting at sunset is that you have to not make your subjects into a silhouette as per the silhouette
shots above.
So you want the sky to be detailed and see the gorgeous sunset so to achieve that you need to expose to the sky BUT
then you also need your subject to be seen also (and not turn into the sillouette).
How you do this is you use a reflector between you and the subject. The reflector will bounce light straight from the
gorgeous sky/sunset straight back onto your subject and lighten them – which is what you need in order to get detail in
subject AND the sky.
If you expose to the subject your sky will be really bright.
If you expose to the sky then your subject silhouettes.
So the reflector is the way to go.
You could also use a technique called fill in flash which will also brighten your subject and keep the sunset the
background in detail. This is a bit tricky so won’t go into detail about it here.
Also just to add another component remember that now you are shooting in RAW and editing in Light room you can
now lift the shadows which will brighten your subject also.
Another post production little trick is that you can use the DODGE tool in Photoshop to brighten the subject a little. This
is what I have done in this particular shot.
Flash
This is another HUGE topic to cover and we could spend days working through it but here are a few tips that I use when
using flash.
Firstly, I would say mostly I would say I use natural light where ever possible. But there are situations then defiantly
require additional light source and one way to do this is to use the flash.
The two types of flash I use (although there are heaps more) are on camera flash, which is the flash that pops up from
your actual camera and I also use an external flash which is an independent flash unit that you can put on top of your
camera OR you can use it with a remote and hold it away from your camera and it will flash in sync with when you take
your image.
There are several different ways you can use flash. These are the ones I use the most when photographing people.
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On camera flash
Bouncing on camera flash off the wall or ceiling
Off camera flash
For me I mostly use the external flash- so the one that comes separate to the camera and attaches to the ‘hot shoe’ on
top of the camera. You can set it to sync with your camera and it has a heap of its own technical settings (just when you
thought you were getting the hang of it!). The top part of the flash actually swivels so you can face it to your subject or
in various directions. This first shot is taken with this external flash pointing towards the subject. You could easily take
this shot with the flash that is ‘in’ your camera if you don’t have the external flash kind of flash.
This shot is the is taken using the external flash with a remote. So the flash that can attach to the top of your camera is
connected to a remote which is now connected to the top of your camera. When your shutter goes off so does your
flash. Works a bit like the sun in a sunset shot.
This last shot is taken with flash on camera AND a video light pointing at the subject. When using the flash at night your
camera will not be able to find anything to focus on if the subject is completely dark and that’s why if you light the
subject just a little (even use the torch from your phone) your camera will then be able to focus on the subject).
Just a note on RED EYE with flash. Basically the further away the flash is from the camera lens the less likely you are to
get red eye in your photos, hence why the external flash is good also.
There is one of the tools in lightroom that will help you remove red eye if it does appear.
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