Whitening Teeth in Capture One
As of version 8 of Capture One, users have been blessed with the ability to control white balance on an adjustment layer. This is useful for a number of reasons, but the biggest win for my workflow is a very simple, and very repeatable way to whiten and brighten teeth in Capture One.
For a change of pace, I recorded a video to demonstrate this technique. Steps are detailed out below.
Step One: Make you desired adjustments to the overall image
Step Two: In the Local Adjustment tool tab, create a new adjustment layer and call it "Teeth"
Step Three: Use the paint brush tool to paint a mask over your subjects teeth
Step Four: Use the local White Balance adjustment tool to reduce the Kelvin temperature of the masked area until you achieve the desired effect. You can also locally adjust exposure and/or brightness to further enhance the teeth.
I find this to be a really effective, easy, and easily repeatable way to enhance tooth that appear too yellow, while keeping your images in Capture One. I used to rely on Photoshop to do any teeth whitening I needed, which meant I made my adjustments in Capture One, then exported to Photoshop for further editing. Now I can keep 99% of my workflow in Capture One, reserving Photoshop for only major editing.
Fake The Setting Sun with Off Camera Flash
My wonderful and beautiful wife Alesia from our maternity shoot for our third child Rockford. The sun had gone down behind some low clouds and foothills when we saw this patch of flowers. To recapture that sunset feel, I faked the setting sun with my LumoPro LP180 and a CTO gel.
I really like having light sources in frame. Or at the very least, shooting light towards my lens. When I’m shooting outside, I pretty much always try to shoot INTO the sun.
I know, it’s a little outside of some peoples understanding of the "rules" of photography.
I’ve tutored new photographers who think I’m crazy when I set up a portrait shooting into the sun. I just love it.
However, on more than one occasion I’ve been shooting away and the sun dips below the horizon. Or it was obscured by some low cloud cover. Or it was 1pm in July. Sometimes the sun isn’t where I need to it to be, in order for it to be visible behind my subject.
So, I fake it. Here are a few examples.
This was shot at approximately 1pm. The sun was obscured by tree canopy and we faked the setting sun with OCF.
This one is a little more subtle, just a very slight lightwash, from just out of frame.
Fake setting sun (the sun had already dipped below the ridge line and some low clouds). Note the placement at the edge of the frame and just above the distance hills.
This set up also included a reflector to bring some light back onto Blanca's face.
This set up is a little more in your face in a sense. This is designed to look like the sun coming through a gap in the tree coverage. The actual sun was higher up in the sky in roughly the same area.
You can achieve this look with a single speed light, a half or full CTO gel (gelled to taste), and a little know-how.
Step One: Understanding
The key thing to remember here is that the strobe is not your main light. This lighting method is the very essence of blending off camera flash with ambient light. In all except for one of the above examples, the ambient light is the main light and the “sun” light is kept relatively low output to blend in with the ambient exposure. Like the secret to a good haircut or a killer smoothie, its all in the blending.
Step Two: Expose Properly
Get your ambient exposure at or a little above where you want it. If you’re working on a close in portrait (chest, head, and shoulders) you can bounce light off a reflector and back into your subjects face. Overexposing the ambient light slightly will go a long way in making your strobe blend with the daylight.
This was the ambient for this shot. You will see we need to expose OVER this to help the strobe blend with the natural light.
This is a great example of the ambient light being too low and making your cone of fake sunlight obvious. Blend Blend Blend!
Step Three: Place and set your light
Get your CTO gelled flash in frame or JUST out of frame and set power output to your desired effect. play around with the blending of it until it looks natural.
We finally hit the goldilocks ratio of ambient and strobe. The result is a totally convincing setting sun.
Step Four: Realize this doesn’t always work
This is a little hard to explain, but there are a few situations where this just wont work. It will look fake and contrived. The most common situation is where there are a lot of objects between your flash and your subject. The cone of light is not sufficient to fake sunlight on all objects in the frame. You want to make sure that any objects aside from your subject are being hit by this fake sunlight also, otherwise it will just look really fake. Observe the image above, where our cone of light is obvious. It is a combination of underexposure of the ambient light, and the viewer seeing too many background elements that SHOULD be affected by the "sun" light, but aren't.
Step Five: Remove light stands in post (if necessary)
Whenever possible I hide light stands or use a LumoPro studio clamp to reduce the amount of post processing I have to deal with. In general however, it's not terribly difficult to remove a light stand in Photoshop.
Do You Make Lighting Diagrams? You Should.
I am not going to pretend like I am in-tune enough with the physics of light to draw up lighting diagrams BEFORE a shoot. However, with almost every single image I create I draw a lighting diagram, usually after the fact. It's one of the most important things you can do as a photographer who works with off camera flash.
The process of lighting a shoot is fluid for me. It generally begins with a concept and a rough idea of how it will be lit. This is almost always just a jumping off point. The quality of light may not be how I imagined it, or there might be other factors influencing the light in a way that I didn't think of. So I adapt to the result that I am getting and make adjustments until I get what I want.
Once I have an image that works with what my initial vision was, I take a few minutes to sketch a light diagram.
A page out of one of my books of lighting diagrams and notes from projects past.
I consider this a very important part of my process. It helps me analyze what worked, and frankly helps me remember how a shoot progressed. I often include notes about how the shoot went, where my light power levels were, what the sun position was (even if it didn't figure into my image). I also sometimes include stuff that should be included in the EXIF data, such as lens, camera body, etc. I do this because sometimes meta data gets stripped, or other bad things can happen and it takes only a second to write it down.
I think most importantly I do it because I like having a visual record of my work (aside from the actual images) that has some technical behind the scenes information, and also I find it therapeutic to write them in a notebook. Like with a pen. Low-tech to be sure, but oh so satisfying.
This is a practice that I recommend to any photographers, amateur or otherwise, who aren't in the habit of doing it. My notebook of choice is the Field Notes Brand 48 page Graph Paper Memo Book. I don't try to hide that I am obsessed with this brand. Mainly because they're wonderful, but also because they are small, so they fit in any bag. They are durable, and I adore the design sensibility and philosophy behind the brand.
Field Notes. The best memo books around.
So do you make lighting diagrams? If you don't, I think you should. It will help your creativity, critical thinking and possibly be a source of inspiration for future work.
Relevant Links
Field Notes Brand - The best memo books around
Strobox - A really interesting online diagram/photo sharing tool for photographers
Also read This Article on taking notes
Losing My Reflection - Shooting Sunglasses for Minimal Post Processing
Carefully setting up your set can save you a lot of time and trouble in post when shooting and editing sunglasses.
Shooting sunglasses can be tricky. You want to see a good representation of the shape and style, but most lenses on sunglasses are curved and have a tendency to reflect everything in front of them. Editing out reflections in lenses may seem pretty straight forward, but the subtle gradient of many lenses can make it tougher than you might think. This set up will give you virtually no reflections and a great looking shot of your sunglasses, right in camera.
Behold, the boat
Note the light placement. I used a beauty dish here for ease of set transition, but two softboxes would work well. You are essentially bouncing light back onto the glasses from the front and back sweep. If you are getting milky looking frames, add a flag to keep some of the softbox rom spilling directly onto the glasses.
This is the set up used by the company I shoot for full time. One of the benefits of working in a production studio is that you get to work with other photographers and share ideas on how to tackle certain issues. The sunglass boat is one such instance.
The idea here is to build yourself a "boat" out of white seamless paper, with only one hole big enough to fit the lens. This way, everything around your sunglasses is white and will reflect as seamless white in your lenses.
Carefully cut a hole in the paper to allow just the lens through. This will keep your reflections to a minimum.
This set up will eliminate reflections for quite a few styles of sunglasses. Aviators and similar styles may reflect the lens itself, but that is far more manageable in post than most other reflections.
Note the use of white gaffer tape to tape the seams. This prevents the small paper overlaps from reflecting in the lens
This set up has the added versatility of being able to shoot straight on and at an angle, or back shot in one set with out needing to move fill cards or fancy footwork.