MDS-Photos
Posts: 329
Darlington, South Carolina, US
I'm planning to do a shoot at night in the town/city. I plan on using the city lights and I will be bringing a few speedlights/umbrellas/silver/white reflector too. I would like to hear any advice or see any examples anyone who had done this type of shoot. Thanks in advance .
Edit: I will also be using a tripod and cable release too for the slow shutter speeds.
Just meter the model with the speedlight for the aperture. Once you get that first blast the long slow shutter speed won't affect her much. Then meter the background for the shutter speed. You might not even get a meaningful meter reading, depending on how long you have to go, but then just do a few test shots to nail the shutter speed....make it as long as you need, as long as the model's nice and dark in the foreground.
Tell the model not to move until the whole exposure is done...cue her (him?). You can get ghosting of the model's outline depending on conditions.
Crewdson does great work, but I doubt anyone here has the budget and time to shoot images like that, there's a serious amount of pre and post work there...
MDS-Photos
Posts: 329
Darlington, South Carolina, US
ACPhotography wrote: Crewdson does great work, but I doubt anyone here has the budget and time to shoot images like that, there's a serious amount of pre and post work there...
I have to agree with you but they are still great. I'm no where near that level with photoshop or photography but I'm hoping 1). To expierment and get a few good images and 2). Learn something new and have fun doing it.
MDS-Photos
Posts: 329
Darlington, South Carolina, US
Creative Concept Studio wrote: Bare SB900 slightly camera left with a bare SB800 far camera left/front held high by a VALS (voice activated light stand)
SB800 in 42 inch white shoot though umbrella slightly camera right and gridded SB900 behind model camera left
Dimitrio
Posts: 998
Nassau, New Providence, Bahamas
with street lights, your speedlights you probably won't need to slow the shutter that much so the tripod may not be needed.
I would suggest using the streetlights to back light and then hit the subject from the front, or sides with the speedlights. Places like the docks, and city scapes make for really good back grounds for night images.
You should do well, it's always exciting to shoot at night.
The image below I took on a new moon far far from city lights. It's a single exposure of 30 seconds and the model is flashed once during the exposure with the flash just out of the frame and then a second flash is made further away to light the general middle ground. The flash is just an old Contax flash that I used to use long ago on my film camera and the camera is an old Sony R1 so nothing fancy is needed. Stars are real though brought out more in PS.
My recommendation is to get as far away from city lights as possible so that you can control the scene.
Karl Johnston
Posts: 7,244
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada
nwstudios wrote: Might want to look at some of Crewdson's stuff
cool, now all the OP needs is a full scale production team and 100k/shoot and he's in business! LOL i love crewsden but DAMN way to set the bar high for the newbie!
MDS-Photos
Posts: 329
Darlington, South Carolina, US
Karl Johnston wrote:
cool, now all the OP needs is a full scale production team and 100k/shoot and he's in business! LOL i love crewsden but DAMN way to set the bar high for the newbie!
LMAO!! Relax Karl. Hell I know there is no way in hell I can get anything close to that. But it did give me a few ideas to try for fun .
Karl Johnston wrote: cool, now all the OP needs is a full scale production team and 100k/shoot and he's in business! LOL i love crewsden but DAMN way to set the bar high for the newbie!
Well, yes and no.
Some of that stuff already happens on a regular street, it's just that they have more control over it with a large budget and crew.
IMO the best way to do something like that and include people is to either drop them in later so a long exposure can be used for the city and short for the people, place the people in shadows so that they can kinda be lit sperately, or, use a really high iso and low power flash to get it all at once.
Really no trick to it, other than practice and see what works for you.
JeremyH
Posts: 121
Brighton, England, United Kingdom
Streetlamp only, no speedlights, no reflectors. Handheld, f/1.8, ISO 800 and 1/80th sec (could easily have gone to ISO 1600 on D7000 with no difficulties). I wanted to see what I could achieve with the minimum possible set-up that would allow me to concentrate on composition and also give us maximum flexibility to shoot and run
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