I have been in love with metal and glass backgrounds for years. Office buildings often have some cool metal entries or pillars. When I opened my InStudio Photographics last year I wanted to get some metal backgrounds into my camera room. So off to Metal Mart I went, I got a couple of nice things but the one I want to blog about to day is just a very reasonable 4 x 8 foot metal sheet, think it was around $30? I like to use it bent as you can see in the overviews. You can also make it like a U, etc, etc. The lighting in this sample is interesting enough. For fill I send a strobe into my neutral grey ceiling to create a light similar to a cloudy day. The nice thing is it doesn't reflect in the metal since it comes from straight above but it does give nice light in the hair and shade areas. For a main light I used a metal halide lamp 5500K.  It's coming in close and low to not cause disturbing reflections in the background. It is just barely stronger than the fill from the ceiling. Hope you all are having a great week end.

PS. New classes added, including a 3 day Wedding School 

Lighting that ROCKS! How you can set yourself apart by lighting well. This is part of my newest lighting program first presented Monday this week for The Dutch Institute of Professional Photography in Utrech, The Netherlands. In this image you can see how I use as many as 3 back lights on Jamie. The middle ones main purpose is to do the hair and edge her. The two on the sides are also hitting her face and shoulders and earrings in a strong way. For my main light I use a small reflector with a grid straight on to just hit the very middle of her face. It is hand held by my assistant since it needs to be SO VERY EXACT and any little movement in Jamie and it will need readjustment. Fill light is a silver umbrella. You can see it all in the overview image (The overview is shot on a black background a few minutes before we changed background and outfit for todays main image.) This "Lighting that Rocks" section also goes into my Photographing People Part 2 class from now on. Elinchrom is my main supplier of strobes. 

Here is another image from my shoot for a company publishing personal books. I wanted to use the nice natural light coming through the window. The problem was it wasn't giving me enough punch, so I added 1 Cameron Digital Imager Metal Hilide 800 lamp with an 18x18 inch softbox. It has a 5200K bulb in it so it worked great mixed in with the daylight (The final image is edited warm for a cozy feeling) The beauty of a lamp like this which is a continues light is "that what you see is what you get" which is missing with flash photography. I use this lamp sometimes also just to make the window light broader, to wrap around a person. I got this lamp from a Canadian company called Booth Photographic Ltd. here is a link to the lamp and company. Camera: Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III with a 70-200mm f 2.8. Shot at 400 ISO, f.5.0 and 1/125 sec at 110mm.

PS. New dates for local Photographing People Classes posted.

I'm just back from 2 weeks in Europe meeting some great Photographers and new friends, Great as in Great Britain :-) Today's blog is from my Workshop at the Fresh Academy in London, England June 2nd. I got what I wanted bright midday sun! When you can be in cities or anywhere with buildings it is my favorite time of day for people photography. Of course I loved the never ending sunsets I had in Norway, but I love a challenge. People always told me how midday sun is the worst, so long ago I took the challenge to be good at it. Especially because I often HAD TO photograph then, Weddings etc. NOON is not necessarily at 12 o'clock like most people seem to think. This day the sun was at it's highest at 12:59. I strongly recommend the iPhone application Darkness to keep track of sun positions etc. (Thanks Mike Jeide) This picture was taken at 12:12. It is a great time to shoot on one side of the street where you will find a little shade, on the other side the sun will be bouncing across to you. I like to keep the subject close to the sun where it is also a lot of good light coming right from inside the sun area. Try to watch a face as a person walk from shade towards sun and see how it change when they get close to the edge. Also added a little Photoflex Softgold reflector. The warm little touch + the cold blue background help adding depth and dimension. The Image is ran in Linge's PS Workflow Actions, ColorPerfect + auto contrast on face to give it an extra punch. Thanks to all you wonderful people attending this workshop, look forward to more English Breakfast soon?