The brief: create an image of an oil based vinaigrette, showing off the unique colour of the natural ‘Borderfields Rapeseed Oil‘ used in the recipe.

There’s two ways to do this. One is to photograph the oil as part of a dish, therefore using the ingredients of the meal to add interest. The problem here is that the image needs to be about the oil, and a viewer would look at the shot of the food and be distracted by it. They wouldn’t really see what we want them to see. The other way to do it is to photograph just the oil, and the best way to do this is present it in a glass bottle.

Photographing glass is always tricky as you have to be very wary of reflections. This means that you need to think hard about how you are going to light the scene, as just blasting it with flash is prone to disaster.

In a studio the best way to do this is with three lights. You’ll have two huge softboxes on either side of the bottle, perhaps a little to the front, and then another light which illuminates the background. You might introduce a fourth light shooting directly down too, and some photographers even cut out a white bottle shaped piece of cardboard to go behind the bottle to lighten up the contents a little.

But I’m not shooting in a studio, I’m shooting on a table in the restaurant of Rockliffe Hall, so I don’t have much space. I have a team of hotel staff working around me setting up for dinner, so I need to try to keep out of the way if I can. I also need to work quite quickly – head chef Kenny Atkinson has more important things to worry about than me messing around with studio lights in his restaurant!

The answer? Natural light plus reflectors. The background light isn’t necessary as I’ll use the view from the window as my background, and by selecting a wide aperture I can knock it completely out of focus. The background I’ve selected also just happens to provide me with a variety of soft, natural colours which works beautifully with the yellow of the oil. It’s already lit by the sun, and its a soft, diffused light as the weather is overcast. Perfect!

So, that’s the background taken care of, now for the reflectors. As its an overcast day the light that is available is lovely, but there’s not that much of it. By placing the bottle as close to the window as is reasonably possible we can maximise the amount of light shining through the oil, and also ensure that as much light as possible hits the silver reflectors I’ve decided to use. I’ve chosen silver as they bounce back more light than a plain white one and also provide a little more contrast.

A large 4ft x 3ft reflector is positioned to the right hand side of the bottle. It’s directly opposite the brightest part of the sky (where the sun is behind the clouds) so in effect it acts as my main light. By moving the reflector around slowly you can see what a startling effect it can have on illuminating the subject. A second smaller silver reflector is placed as close as possible on the opposing side, and this acts as a fill light.

The important part is to get the reflectors as close as possible to the glass. It needs to be as large a light source as possible in order to provide an even reflection down the glass, otherwise we’ll get hotspots.

A meter reading is taken on the oil, and the background is left to look after itself. An aperture of f2.8 was used, this is enough to blur the background but also ensures that I have at least a couple of centimetres of depth of field, just to make sure everything is nice and sharp.

This is the second part of my ‘Going Vintage’ post, where I discussed my thoughts of images with a vintage feel to them.

The idea was to try to recreate that old style of image from a digital workflow, but I left it with this paragraph:

“There’s just one thing that’s not quite right though. To me it’s just a bit too, well, digital. To really do it right, and to really capture the feel of a vintage image we’ve got to shoot it on film.”

A good place to start if you haven’t read part 1 is here. If you have read this part though then here we go!

So then, in order to shoot on film we need to source some basic equipment. A bid on eBay got me a very good condition Nikon F801s film SLR from 1990 for a mere £19.99 – fantastic value as this camera was worth almost a grand in it’s day! Another ten minutes of Google searching later and I had a couple of rolls of AGFA Precisa 35mm transparency film heading my way.

I decided to try a spot of cross processing. This is where a colour transparency film is processed in colour negative chemicals (C41 rather than E6) or vice versa. The result is a high contrast image, usually with increased grain and strange colour shifts. It’s true, you can do all of this in Photoshop these days, but I really believe that film has a unique feel to it. It’s not as sharp as what a good digital SLR camera can produce (at least a 35mm scan isn’t, medium format definitely is), and it requires a little more thought when calculating exposures, but it has lovely tones and graduations between light and shade.

As mentioned, the film I chose to use was a colour transparency film, so the main thing to remember is that exposure is absolutely critical. If you mess it up there’s no recovery in Photoshop – it’s either on the film or it’s not, it’s as simple as that. Over or under exposure by as little as half a stop can have a huge impact on the final image, and there really is a very narrow margin of error.

Film choice is the biggest single factor in how the final image is going to come out when cross processed. Fuji films tend to produce quite strong green casts, whereas Kodak produces super vivid colours. The film I used was Agfa Precisa which is a classic film for cross processing, but it’s now no longer made in it’s original form. The best stocks were the European made versions, but the current stocks are made in Japan, probably by Fuji, so it tends to take on more of that Fuji feel.

The only way to find out which film works best for you is to try them out! Once you do this you tend to learn how they perform best. Some films work better over exposed by a stop, some better under exposed, some give really punchy colours, others retain skin tones while still giving interesting colours shifts, but you don’t know til you try them!

My conclusion? I really enjoyed shooting on film again. Everything from the sound of the motor drive as the film advanced down to the fact that you can’t see a preview on the back of the camera. You tend to think a lot more, as every shot you take makes the remaining shots on the film more valuable. I was even reminded of the excitement as I managed to squeeze 37 exposures from my 36 exposure film!

The images were very contrasty, as I expected, and quite grainy too – which to be honest is a characteristic of film that I really like. The shadows have a definite green hue to them, especially in images where the exposure was a little on the low side. Exposure is critical – over do it and you blow the highlights, under do it and the shadows turn green and block out. Accuracy is so important.

Overall, I have to say I like it! Whether it does give a vintage feel is debatable, I think that in twenty years time when the film dyes have aged a bit perhaps it will! It does give a unique feel to the images though, and I’ll certainly run a roll of film through alongside my digital kit on subsequent photoshoots. Next time I’ll perhaps try a combination that reproduces skin tones a little more accurately, but it’s not a bad starting point.

Next time I’ll try a different brand of film and see how the results compare, or maybe shoot some classic Kodak Tri-X black and white. There’s a whole new world out there now waiting to be revisited, and it’s one I’m very excited about!

Technical info: images taken on a Nikon F801s camera with a Nikon 85mm lens on Agfa Precisa colour transparency film.

The film was processed in C41 chemicals by Digitalab in Newcastle upon Tyne and scanned to CD.

There’s always been an unique appeal about images from a bygone era. They seem to have a very distinct feel to them, and there’s something about them that evokes an emotional response from the viewer. It’s not just about the subject of the image, it’s about the style of it and the way that it has been lit and processed.

The term ‘vintage’ can mean different things to different people, but to me it just means something from the past. In photographic terms this could take us back to the end of the 19th Century, or to the end of the 1970′s. It’s pretty much what you want it to be!

For me, the ‘vintage’ that I like covers three decades – and these are from the beginning of the 1950′s through to the end of the 1970′s. We’re well and truly in the world of film here, and brands like Kodak were king. So, if we want to shoot in this style what do we do? Where do we begin?

There are a number of factors that make a photograph look ‘vintage”. The first is that these images were printed on papers that over time have begun to decay, and the dyes have broken down. This has resulted in colour shifts and subtle changes in the toning of the print. Another factor is the film stock used, and the developing chemicals chosen to process it. These have been under continuous development and you can often tell which combination has been used, and from which era if you study an image long enough. The last factor is the photographic techniques used at the time. In the second half of the 20th Century photographers began experimenting with processing film in the ‘wrong’ chemicals, and cross processing was born.

And this is what I’m looking to replicate – a gentle cross processed effect reminiscent of the style you would see in the late 1970′s / early 1980′s. So then – how do we do it?

The style I have in mind is lit by natural light – so the studio flash heads for once can remain in their box. All I need to bring with me is a reflector and find a large window. In this instance I’m shooting on digital. To capture a little of the aged ‘washed out’ look I’m going to over expose very slightly, just enough to ensure that the shadows remain reasonably light and don’t block out. I’m being careful though not to blow out the highlights – I actually want the image to lose some of it’s density to give it an almost gently faded look.

Next job is to adjust the colours, and for that we need Photoshop. By gently increasing the red and green channel and reducing the blue channel in the highlights, and doing the opposite in the shadows, we begin to get somewhere close to the colour of an aged image. I then check the contrast, add a little sharpening, and then add a little film grain. Last of all, lets add some dust and scratches just to give it that old ‘found in the loft’ look! There’s no skin softening and no airbrushing – a good makeup application from a professional has already taken care of that, and by using these techniques we would be straying somewhat from the aim of the exercise. So we’ll not use them!

There’s just one thing that’s not quite right though. To me it’s just a bit too, well, digital. To really do it right, and to really capture the feel of a vintage image we’ve got to shoot it on film.

And that’s where part 2 takes over . . . watch this space!

Photoshoot information:

Taken on a Fuji S5 Pro (the best digital camera for a film feel at any price!) with a Nikon 50mm lens. Manual exposure mode, metered with a Sekonic light meter and shot at 1/125 sec at f2, ISO 200 in early evening natural light (5.30pm to be precise).

A soft, natural, professional makeup application was provided by Laura Warren, and the model was Nichola McIntosh. The location was Seaham Hall Hotel in County Durham.

I spent a little time this year on the Outer Hebridean island of North Uist. I’d heard tales of this mystical land of white beaches and turquoise seas and wanted to see this for myself.

It’s a fairly long journey best split over two days, so the travel alone there and back takes four days, but it’s well worth it. It’s a unique landscape – wild, remote, rugged, and stunningly beautiful. In some ways it feels like you are on the edge of the world, and it’s amazing looking out to sea knowing that the next piece of land is Newfoundland in Eastern Canada.

One of the images I’m particularly attached to is the one above. It kind of sums up what I liked about the islands and shows the sand and sea along with a huge sky. It gives an impression of the scale of the beaches you find but also portrays the wild, remote feel associated with this stunning region of the world.

So often we take images on holidays and are disappointed with them. They just don’t quite show what you saw when taking the shot. Maybe there are too many shadows, perhaps the sky just doesn’t have that impact, maybe the field of view that the camera lens gives just hasn’t done it justice. There is something that we can do about this though, it just requires a little thought.

Here’s the original, unprocessed raw file straight off the camera. It’s reasonable I suppose! It’s sharp, the exposure is a decent balance of all the elements in the shot, the higher viewpoint I’ve chosen means that we see more of the beach and dunes than if the shot was taken actually on the shore, so it’s not a bad starting point. If you were there though you would have witnessed a far more dramatic sky, and more vivid colours.

A lot of cameras have a problem, and this is lack of dynamic range. Dynamic range is a measure of how well a camera can record details from shadows through to highlights, and it’s this limitation in equipment which usually results in skies looking washed out, or shadows blocking out (becoming black and having no detail in them).

Luckily for me, the camera I use has an exceptionally wide dynamic range, so I can recover up to four extra stops of highlights and shadow.

The first thing to do is bring down the overall exposure just a little to recover some detail in the sky. I’m not worried about the sand and sea at this stage. In previous sessions I’ve worked a little differently to this. I would mask the image so that I only work on the sky and leave the sand and sea untouched. However, I’m processing a RAW file in Adobe’s excellent Lightroom which works in a completely non destructive way. All of the original image data remains intact regardless of the adjustments I apply to it, so it’s very easy to go back to the sand and sea and perfect that at a later stage, regardless of what happens to it now. For me, the sky is the most important part of this shot, so it’s my first concern.

Once I’ve done this then the next step is to bring some punch back into the image. It’s a little too soft and gentle from how I remember it, so we need to add some life back into that sky. We do this by adding contrast between the individual shades of grey, so that the lighter clouds stand out more from the darker ones. While we’re at it we’ll gently increase the saturation of the sand, and add a tiny bit of blue into the sky to give a feel of a storm brewing!

Now I’m  happy with the sky I can give the sand and sea some attention. Remember that with Lightroom I always have access to the original raw file data – nothing is destroyed by previous adjustments. Using selective dodging and burning techniques allows me to lighten the beach, dunes and sea and add a little contrast without affecting the changes I’ve made to the sky, so I now have the best of both worlds.

I could have worked this image in reverse and processed the sand and sea first, and then used dodging and burning techniques on the sky. This would probably have worked, but the sky is the most complex part of the image. Personally I would rather work on that element first and have the relatively easy job of recovering the far simpler sand and sea than the other way around.

These adjustments to contrast have had an effect on the original colour balance, so the last job is to correct this and bring it back to the same colours of the original shot. I’ve also added a gentle vignette to the corners – this is something I usually stay clear of, but in this instance it does help give a 3D feel to the shot. A final contrast tweak and sharpen and we’re there.

And there we have it! There’s a bit of work in there, and the purists may argue that this is simply using software to create an image that never really existed in this form. However, ask yourself what you saw when you took the image, and whether your original photograph is a true representation of that. If the scene has a high dynamic range then it will more than likely need some work so that the final image matches this.

It’s a fact that camera RAW files need some processing. It’s surprising how much data a digital camera will record, but it’s up to us to squeeze everything we can out of it to give an interesting, engaging but still accurate representation of what we saw.

Sometime you have a lot of time to create an image. You arrive early, look around, figure it all out, test lighting, evaluate, modify and then press on with the shoot. On other occasions you don’t have this luxury and you’re up against the clock.

We found ourselves in this situation at a recent food photoshoot where the subject was a souffle. If any of you have tried cooking a souffle before you’ll know it’s quite a delicate procedure. As the souffle cooks it fills with air and rises, and when it’s ready it needs to be served to the diner promptly before it cools and begins to deflate. You’ve only got a couple of minutes before it’s past looking it’s best. Just to add to this pressure we also have a scoop of ice-cream, which will begin to melt as soon as it is placed next to the warm pan.

The souffle is served in a copper pan. This is great as it adds a splash of colour to the image, but its also quite reflective so we need to make sure that our light sources are diffused in order for there to be no flash ‘hotspots’ reflecting off it. There are also a lot of highlights in there. There’s the white of the tablecloth and plate, then the white of the icing sugar coating the top of the souffle. We need to make sure that the exposure is spot on in order to capture this and not just blow these highlights out completely.

So, the usual rules apply. Food generally always looks best when lit from behind, so a flashgun was fired through a shoot-through umbrella from behind the souffle, and as close to it as possible (as a larger light source closer in gives us the softest light). A reflector was placed in front to bounce a little gentle light back in, and there was also a small amount of diffused window light which acted as a fill light, so we set a long enough shutter speed on the camera to take advantage of this.

We bracketed the exposure just to make sure we got it right, this involves shooting at the ‘correct’ exposure, and then over and under exposing in subsequent shots. Some say this isn’t necessary with digital, we’re not convinced – let’s get it absolutely right in camera. Five minutes later it was all over, and as we’re not the kind of people to let good food go to waste there was only one thing left to do!

This image is one of a set taken for the new issue of ‘Relish North East’, a hard back book featuring 72 recipes from 24 carefully chosen top rated restaurants.

We were recently asked to Rudi’s hair salon, just west of Newcastle upon Tyne, to photograph the results of their annual hair styling contest. It’s an informal competition between the stylists of the studio, and used as a team building exercise and also to generate a little PR.

The plan is to arrive there at 6pm, figure the place out, set up a studio somewhere and photograph each of the nine models at around 7pm. All the models will be ready to photograph at exactly the same time, so it’s going to be an intense ten minutes of activity before they await the results of the competition, where one of the stylists will be named as the lucky winner!

Two things instantly spring to mind. Firstly, we’re photographing hair here. It’s very important to take an image that actually shows off the hair! It’s not just a simple portrait, it’s got to show the time, effort and expertise that’s gone into creating the style, whilst still creating a pleasing image.

The second thing is the time constraints. We’ve around one minute per model, so we can’t be messing around with lighting. It’s got to be set up beforehand, and it’s got to work for each model. We don’t have time to move lights around so we need a set up that is flexible enough to work well with different hair styles and different shaped faces.

After arriving at the studio we found a plain, light coloured wall which would be perfect for a backdrop. Well, once the settee has been moved out the way and the posters and drawing pins removed anyway! We were a little challenged for space, but there was just enough room to set up a main studio light with an umbrellabox on it. An umbrellabox is a little like a cross between an umbrella and a softbox – very portable but a similar light quality to a softbox. We positioned this box very slightly to the right of us and pointing down to our subject, at an angle of around thirty degrees from the horizontal.

This gives us a good quality light with very gentle shadows on the face, and it also lights the hair up nicely because it’s high enough to pick out detail on the top of the head. We need though to provide some separation from the background and also light the hair a little from the back.  We did this by putting a hotshoe flashgun on a lighting stand and positioning this behind the model. This flashgun points at the wall that we’re using as a background and has two jobs. Firstly it illuminates the wall, and secondly this light bounces off the wall and shines through the edges of the hairstyle. It also applies a little light to the shoulders and outlines the body, giving a much more 3D image. We could have had the flashgun a little higher pointing to the back of the models head, but this technique doesn’t work with all hairstyles, and as we wouldn’t have a lot of time to move lighting around we rejected this idea.

Usually we would use a reflector on the opposite side that the main light is on just to fill in the shadows of the face, but because the main light is so near the camera lens this isn’t necessary in this shoot – which is just as well as we didn’t have a lot of space!

The results are shown below, and we’re very happy with how they came out. We’ve managed to get that ‘studio’ feel to the images within a confined space in a busy salon. The hairstyling is shown off well but we still have a pleasing portrait at the end of it with a nice, simple, gently graded background. Not bad for ten minutes work!

It’s another example of our ‘learn to light anywhere’ way of thinking.

A customer of ours has been thinking of a shot like this for a while. For a few months actually! They have a vision that they keep telling us about. Our customer once again is Seaham Hall, and the image we have to provide is an ‘iconic spa image’. So, no pressure then!

There’s a treatment room at Seaham Hall which has an amazing bath in it, and when used used as part of a treatment the combination of candlelight, temperature and gentle massaging jets of water gives an incredibly relaxing sensation. As well as being an amazing experience, it also looks pretty cool too – so this is going to be the subject of the ‘iconic image’ we’re going to hopefully produce.

The main thing we need to be wary of here is the lighting. The whole point of this room is the atmosphere, so we can’t just blast it with light, no matter how soft. We’ve got to utilise as much of this ambient light as we possibly can. This is going to mean a tripod and a slow shutter speed. We’re still going to need to help it along a little though. The light that is there is lovely, but it’s in the wrong place to light up our lucky model in the bath. All the light comes from the candles at floor level, with a little coloured light from flourescent tubes around the edge of the room.

We need a gentle, directional light to pick out our model in the bath without killing off the rest of the existing ambient light, and this needs to be balanced so its of a similar intensity as the candles. In essence, we are working with three lights here. The main light (for the model), the candle light as a fill light (to light up the sides of the bath) and the purple flourescent tubes by the back wall (as a background light).

So, the main light is a studio flash head with a snoot and honeycomb grid attached so it gives us a concentrated beam of light, yet it still reasonably gentle. We need to adjust the colour temperature of the flash though, as the light emitted by it is balanced for daylight. We add a yellow gel to it so that it  now becomes a similar temperature to the candle light, which is naturally a very warm light. The purple background light is left to it’s own devices – it’s been chosen to look good under candlelight, and as our main light is now also this colour temperature then there’s nothing to worry about.

It’s going to be a long exposure though to capture this ambient light, so the camera gets popped on a tripod, the aperture set to f8 (we want plenty of depth of field) and a shutter speed of 1 second selected. The studio flash head fires at the end of the exposure rather than the beginning – this gives us a much better chance of getting a sharp image if our model moves a little during the exposure, and also looks more natural.

Speaking of models, without question we find that if you need good images with people in then hire a model! Yes, you can use hotel staff, but when there’s lots to think about the last thing you need to worry about is whether your subject has the ability to look natural in front of a camera. We were delighted to secure the services of well known local model Mel Robson – in our experience you just can’t take a bad picture of her!

The bath in question runs on a cycle. From starting up it takes around ten minutes to fill, the jets then commence and run for around 15 mins. They then stop, the customer gets out, the bath then drains, and it even cleans itself! It’s a bit like a glorified car wash really! This means that there isn’t a lot of time to mess around once the bath starts, and we can only shoot when the jets are active as we want to show blurred moving water in the final shot.

After we’re all done and dusted there’s just a little bit of image processing to take care of. The original RAW file was pretty close to what we wanted, but we need to adjust the contrast levels (this is because of the Fuji camera’s huge dynamic range), add a little saturation and darken a few shadows in the edges of the room. We recovered the purple highlights on the wall from the flourescents, and also decided to airbrush in the rose petals from a different image because we preferred the shape of them compared to the final image we selected. Finally, we removed the harsh shadow behind the models arm.

Below is the original RAW file straight off the camera next to the final image so you can compare the two. You can click any image in this blog for an enlarged view.

It’s been a pleasantly different way to work! It’s not often that you use candles as your fill light, fluorescents as your background light and studio flash as your main light – that’s three different light sources, three different intensities and three different colour temperatures! But it’s different – and we’re always up for a challenge!

Of all the elements to consider when taking a photograph, the one that’s often the most overlooked is shadows and highlights.

Often this is because it’s something that the camera can’t control for you. Modern autofocus is incredibly accurate so it’s rare that an image is blurred, and advanced multi-zone metering systems cover almost every lighting scenario you can imagine. However, the key to creating a great portrait is controlling where you put the light and where the shadows fall, and this is something that your camera cannot do for you.

Shadows are incredibly important in portraiture as without them your image appears flat. Shadows show form and shape, highlight features, smooth out imperfections and give a real 3D feel to your image – and Photoshop isn’t required, you can get it all right in camera, just the way it should be. The image above is a good example of this, so let’s look at how it was put together.

The first thing to consider is your light source, and where you put it. You need to get the light source off the camera, ideally to one side and a little higher than the level of the lens. Next the light source needs to be softened, as direct flash is far too harsh.

We’re aiming for the softest possible light in order to give us smooth, gentle transitions from light to shade. In order to achieve this we need to enlarge the light source and place it as close to the models head as we can. As we’ve said many times before in this blog, a large light source close up gives the softest light, whereas a point source far away (like direct sun) gives the harshest.

We shot this image with a large softbox to the left of the model angled at 45 degrees both horizontally and vertically. We arranged the pose so that this light illuminated the far side of her face, and we were very carfeul to make sure that the position of this light was able to produce catchlights in both eyes, not just the one nearest the light. The softbox also gives us great directional control of the light, so we can keep light spill on the background down to a minimum. We gently filled in some of the shadows on the right hand side with a white reflector, and using a light meter set the appropriate exposure.

The lighting effect you see in this image is known as Rembrandt lighting (no prizes for guessing why) and is characterised by a gentle triangle of light under the eye on the shadow side of the image. It’s quite easy to do with minimal equipment, and is a good example of how the simple things often work best.

Often as photographers we push ourselves too hard and ultimately end up complicating our images, so it’s a good thing to strip it back sometimes and re-assess exactly why you want to take the image. Often we don’t need a flashy studio with thousands of pounds worth of kit, and our model doesn’t need hundreds of pounds worth of outfits and lingerie!

A portrait like this one is ultimately about beauty, and over complicating it with too much light, props and post processing simply isn’t the right thing to do.

To demonstrate this here is the RAW file straight off the camera with no processing, no skin softeners, no colour tweaks, airbrushing or exposure changes. The warmth in the image was provided by an orange gel on the flash head.

If we were to produce this as a final image then we would possibly increase the saturation slightly, but by thinking about our lighting at the time of taking the image we find that there is very little left to do to it. We decided that black and white would be nice, so a quick conversion in Lightroom then a gentle crop and we’re sorted.

We’ve been to Eslington Villa before to photograph dishes on their menu for a press article. You can read about that post by clicking here.

We were asked back this month to photograph one of the beautiful rooms that they use to cater for weddings and private functions. As usual in this blog you can click on any of the images for an enlarged view. The final result is on the left, and here’s how we got it.

It was quite a dull overcast day when we arrived, and there wasn’t much natural light around. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though – it kind of gives you a blank canvas to start with. If there had been direct sunlight streaming in through the windows it would have been far more difficult to control lighting levels and contrast.

As we’ve said many times, you can’t just arrive and expect the ambient light to be in the right place. You’ve got to be able to add light (and take light away) as required, and this means bringing lighting equipment with us.

The room we are photographing is quite a large one, so we brought mains powered studio flash units with plenty of power. Additionally, there’s a smaller bar area through an alcove that we need to think about, and we need to balance the lighting between these two rooms with the ambient light.

The angle of view we’ve chosen for this shot includes a table set for a wedding in the foreground, and additional table behind this, and then in the background we have the bar.

Let’s start with the bar area. A battery powered hotshoe flashgun was placed in a corner, firing into an umbrella via a radio remote. The power was dialled down to be approximately the same as the ambient light coming through the small window adjacent to it, the idea being not to overpower the ambient light, rather add to it and spread it around the room. You can see the effect of this in the image on the right before we set up any lighting in the main room.

Now that we have the bar area lit correctly lets have a think about the main room. We set up a flash head with a large shoot through umbrella behind and to the right of the camera and in the same position as a large window just behind us.

We angled it slightly upwards in order to also take advantage of the ceiling as a large reflector. This in effect gives us a large light source, and the larger the light source the softer the light. The output of this flash is balanced to match the output of the flash in the bar area, and the two of these are balanced with the ambient light, which is a mixture of daylight and tungsten light. Note that in this image it looks dark outside, but this is just because we’ve exposed for the flash heads so you can see the technique applied.

We now need to fill in the shadows a little in the left hand side of the image. A second flash head was set up on the other side of the room, and this was also fired through a shoot through umbrella pointed into the ceiling. The power output is half of the main light as we want to gently fill shadows, not whitewash the scene! We also point this light slightly away from the area we want to illuminate – we want to gently ‘feather’ the area with light.

The image above right shows the scene standing from the bar area looking back to where the image was taken from.

It’s quite a delicate calculation as there’s an awful lot of white in the scene – such as tablecloths and napkins. If we apply too much power then we’ll just blow these highlights out completely.

So, couldn’t we have just popped the camera on a tripod and just used available light with a long exposure? Well, we could, but then we wouldn’t have the control needed to balance the light between the two different rooms.

The end result compliments the exisiting light without overpowering it. There is still detail in the shadows and highlights, but it’s a vibrant, punchy image.

A digital workflow is without doubt a good thing. It’s fast and flexible and opens up far more opportunities to the photographer than working in film can.

A single digital file can be processed in many more ways than a roll of film stock. There’s a variety of software packages available for processing digital images. These vary hugely in price and quality, and so are available to most photographers in one form or another.

The daddy of them all is Photoshop, but there are also packages such as the excellent Lightroom and Apple’s Aperture on the market. Alongside these applications are a variety of plug-ins available which offer a very user friendly way to stylise images in a pre-defined way.

For example, you may be looking for a 1960′s black and white, or perhaps a trendy cross processed effect. How about an antique sepia, or maybe a polaroid? They are all there, and with the right software can be applied with a single click of the mouse. This is a great time saver, and offers the less experienced digital user a large range of output styles that they otherwise may not be able to achieve.

However, as usual there is a problem. By using these plugins there is the risk of losing your individuality. You no longer take full control of your images, but the software applies a pre-programmed set of actions written by somebody else. As a result, images from different photographers all begin to look rather similar.

I’ve seen most of these plugins before, I’ve used a couple of them in the past but am now beginning to move away from them. I’ve found that often when looking at other photographer’s work I’ve been able to pick out which combination of plug-ins and software has been used, and I don’t want this to be the case with my work. I don’t want it to look like everyone elses, I want my own style to come through – not that of a software company in California.

It’s important to think about your photographs and what you intend to do with them before you shoot them. This is much more prefereable than taking images and then deciding which plugin to apply to them, and letting the software make the decisions for you. I prefer to visualise the entire image and then set up lighting and exposure accordingly.

For example, I may visualise a black and white shot so I’ll quite literally imagine that I’m shooting with black and white film, and I’ll arrange my lighting accordingly. When I go into the digital darkroom I’ll apply the same principles as if I was developing prints in a conventional darkroom. There’ll be dodging and burning going on, maybe a bit of push processing, in fact a whole range of techniques. I’ll take care of each step of the processing myself though, I don’t want to leave it all up to automated software. I would rather spend more time on each image and just get it right.

Everybody has their own idea of what makes a good image, but in my opinion there are a few techniques that must be used with care, otherwise your image is in danger of looking cliched. I’ve listed them below and I’ve included some examples where I’ve used these techniques succesfully – you can click on them for a larger view. Note that there are always exceptions to the rule, the comments below are a general opinion.

• Vignettes
  This is where the corners of the image are darkened, and the idea is to draw the attention to the main subject of the photograph. Done subtley it can look great, but if applied in the wrong situation can ruin an image. A good example of when not to use one is on an image with grey sky in the corners. Vignettes are usually applied most succesfully in studio portraiture, where the background lighting is arranged in such a way that immediately behind the subject’s head is light, but the light drops off in the corners. Applying this digitally in post production must be done with care though.

  Generally speaking, I think that if you can see there is definitely a vignette in the image then it’s probably too strong. The image on the right has a very gentle vignette, and this works because it follow the shape of the subject and looks natural.

• Cross Processing
  This is an old technique where film stock was processed in the ‘wrong’ chemicals, giving wacky colour shifts and changes in contrast. It’s extremely popular in fashion photography, and done well can look amazing. There’s a danger though of taking it too far, and having colour shifts which change the subjects skin tone from a lovely natural colour to yellow or even green.

  Each image needs to be taken on it’s own merits when cross processing, so applying a pre-configured plugin is never really satisfactory. This shot has had a little cross processing treatment, but I’ve been careful to make sure that the skin remains skin coloured and the lovely blonde hair remains blonde rather than a hue of light green.

• Selective Color
  This is usually a black and white image where the colour element is painted back in. The cliched example of this is the bride in black and white with her flowers in colour. This technique has been abused terribly over the last decade, and is generally a huge post production ‘faux pas’.

  As with all techniques though, there are exceptions and there are examples of this being done extremely well. We’ve used it a couple of times, the image on the right is a rare example of it being successful but generally we steer clear of it.

• Skin Softening
  This is where the skin is blurred slightly but the rest of the image stays sharp. This is generally a good thing, as if applied gently it gives a lovely, soft tone and removes bumps and imperfections. Beware though of taking this too far and ending up with a model who looks plastic. There’s still got be texture left in the skin or it just doesn’t look right. I’ve written a blog post already on airbrushing image, click here to read it.

• Iris Enhancement
  Whitening the eyes of your subject has been around for decades. Always be subtle when doing this, if you go over the top your subject can look very scary! I don’t particularly like this effect so don’t use it. You can show the natural beauty in the eyes by simply lighting correctly.

• Random Photoshop Filters
  This is where filters are used just because they are there! Things like swirls, motion blurs, lens zooms and that kind of thing all have their place, but shouldn’t be used to try and rescue a mediocre image and make it useable. Again, not my scene.

For me, I’m moving away from these presets and am now keeping it all much more personal, and much more my own style. I want to control my images myself, not have a software package do it for me. It’s true that plugins are good time savers, but I’m not interested in that. All I’m interested in is the final image, and I won’t compromise on quality.

To produce top quality images photographers must now be as proficient in their digital darkrooms as they were in their traditional darkrooms in previous years. This involves learning a new range of techniques to ‘hand print’ images, rather than taking your ‘film’ to the ‘minilab’ for them to develop for you!

The image at the top of this page uses some of the techniques covered in this post but in a rather subtle way. There’s a little skin softening applied, but not too much – you can still see texture and tone and the smooth finish is more to do with good makeup application than digital processing.

There isn’t a digital vignette as the directional lighting applied was controlled to darken the top corners but not the bottom ones. There’s a small amount of blue added to the shadows, and the warmth in the models skin has been applied using a light orange gel on the studio flash when the image was taken.