Themed Photo Challenge #25: Lit by the Photographer

[docchung]

Voting Ref: V41

[IanCD]

Voting Ref: V42

[Dave Humphries]

I am pleased to announce the (very close) results of the Lit by the Photographer themed challenge:

In First Place ......... Terry (Loose Canon) with There's Only One Way to Rock Voting Ref: V20

accumulating 22 points




In second place with 20 points .........

Wheels (redmere) with Spilt or Spilled? Voting Ref: V14




and in third place with 19 points ........

??? (BJB) with Voting Ref: V02



and in fourth place with 18 points ........

Paul (jeeperman) with Silver Dollars...backlit Voting Ref: V24



Highly commended (Others with 10 or more points)

Peter (Ricco) 13 for V08 Wild Horses
Warren (Hazeb1) 10 for V32 Fine Wine

Thank you to all who voted - we can't do it without you.

A very close result of the top four this time, I found it amazingly difficult to vote, my shortlist was 10, then 6, then 5, then 3 and very hard it was to choose betweeen them.

My congratulations to Terry, Wheels, BJB and Paul.

Well done to everyone that entered.

Cheers,

[jeeperman]

Congrats Terry, Wheels and BJB....nicely done each. Also thank you to all those whom veiwed and voted.

[Tamara]

Congratulations guys... Well done !

[Donald]

Congratulations to all the winners, particularly Terry for coming top of the poll again. he has worked wonders with that model who, as we know from his other posts, is a troublesome, truculent, bit-of-waster type character. So, his achievement is all the greater.

[redmere]

Congrats Terry, BJB and Paul, very nice work and lighting techniques, well done.
Nicely done as always CiC, and thanks to all for viewing and voting on this themed challenge.

-wheels

[Loose Canon]

My apologies for a late response. I have been geographically displaced of late and internet access and time is rather limited at the moment!

When I first suggested this particular theme to Dave, it seemed that it might have been a little more than a simple theme. My hope was to see some excellent examples of photographers in one way or another providing or manipulating light for their photographs. As opposed to, say, a landscape that used only ambient. Just as an example.

I agreed that it might get a little complicated trying to make this a theme, but Dave agreed to give it a shot. I must say that I am very glad he did (Thank you, Dave).

My hopes were exceeded. There were some excellent examples posted and all participants rose to the challenge. Exactly what I had expected from this Forum.

It has been a pleasure and a treat to view everybody’s entries and I would like to thank everyone who viewed and voted. I would also like to congratulate all who entered on an outstanding job.

I am not going to tell my model his shot placed highly. Donald put it quite diplomatically. I would have summed him up as a huge PITA only with harsher language! This would only serve to make it worse. If that is even possible!

[Wendy Stanford]

Congratulations to all the winners, great lighting and subjects, well done

[Brownbear]

Congratulations to all the winners! As a learning photographer, if the winners have the time to post an explanation of how they achieved such fabulous lighting, that would be awesome, and most appreciated by me, and perhaps by other learning photographers, too. Thank you.

[IanCD]

Congratulations Terry, Wheels, BJB and Paul
Well done..!

[Loose Canon]

Hi Christina!

My shot was fairly simple, actually.

Shot “in-studio” in my home. Black background. Two Speedlites aimed back toward the camera on light stands approximately 6-8 feet behind the subject. Black cloth wrapped around the stands and the heads of the lights so that only the light lenses were showing to help kill any stray reflections from the stands/lights.

One “floor spot” (actually another Speedlite with a 30* grid) positioned about two feet off the floor and around 2-3 feet in front of the victim (just out of frame) to light the subject. The grid gave me targeted lighting and what I thought was a nice fall-off. Also it helped to keep from lighting the background along with the light being low and pointed upwards.

I stopped down the camera lens to f/22 to get the “starburst” effect from the lights pointing toward the camera. ISO 100 @1/250th sec. shutter. This setting killed all the ambient light for me and is my highest sync speed. I needed to fire the lights fairly hot due to the high aperture. Fired in manual mode though I don’t recall the power settings I ended up with. I do recall that I didn’t fire as much wattage for the rear lights as I did for the key light.

The hardest part was getting the ne’er-do-well in the shot to cooperate with me!

[Donald]

Shot “in-studio” in my home. Black background. Two Speedlites aimed back toward the camera on light stands approximately 6-8 feet behind the subject. Black cloth wrapped around the stands and the heads of the lights so that only the light lenses were showing to help kill any stray reflections from the stands/lights.

One “floor spot” (actually another Speedlite with a 30* grid) positioned about two feet off the floor and around 2-3 feet in front of the victim (just out of frame) to light the subject. The grid gave me targeted lighting and what I thought was a nice fall-off. Also it helped to keep from lighting the background along with the light being low and pointed upwards.

I stopped down the camera lens to f/22 to get the “starburst” effect from the lights pointing toward the camera. ISO 100 @1/250th sec. shutter. This setting killed all the ambient light for me and is my highest sync speed. I needed to fire the lights fairly hot due to the high aperture. Fired in manual mode though I don’t recall the power settings I ended up with. I do recall that I didn’t fire as much wattage for the rear lights as I did for the key light.

And all I generally do is find a field with trees, or walls, or both and press the shutter.

Greatly admire you guys that work in studios. It's the planning and setting up produce such spectacular results that I think is wonderful.