I’ve been itching to try some stop motion lately and luckily found a project that seemed suited to the technique. Here is a TVC I created for a women’s health fair event (sidenote: TVC is industry-speak for “television commercial”). The challenge was to visually show a connection between “health, fitness, and fashion.” Shooting stop motion allowed for some creative transitions that helped tie the three themes together. Notice there are no cuts in this spot.

And now some technical details.
We shot this on a blue paper backdrop. It was lit with a couple of kino four-banks from the front. I went with hot lights instead of strobes to eliminate any potential flickering due to variation in strobe output. Don’t get me wrong, I love AlienBees, but they are not as consistent as, say, Profoto. Plus, shooting with constant light meant I could shoot at a higher fps without waiting for strobes to recycle.

The spot was shot on a Canon 5DMkII in stills mode (not video). I cheated the stop motion where ever I could. Cheating meant having the model move in slow motion and varying the shutter interval manually. It probably averaged somewhere around 4 fps. Other setups required the standard (and tedious) method of positioning the frame, snapping a picture…reposition…snap…repeat ad naseum. Text was done in After Effects using a combination of jitter settings in Path Text and Time Posterization.

I’ve mentioned it before and I’ll say it again. Filmmaking is one long string of creative problem solving. A great example of this is the “toiletry mobile” constructed from a mountain bike wheel and fishing line (see picture below). This little gem allowed the toiletries to easily orbit the model’s head. Big thanks to Casey our fearless model, Anna with make up and hair, Amy the apple eater, and Lyn production manager extraordinaire. Also thanks to InHouse Marketing for all their help with production logistics.

Here are a few MadMen inspired shots of my friend Jim. Though I’d never seen Jim smoke a cigar before, this is how I always picture him in my head – a bit of daring, with a dash of dashing. Jim has a long resume that is full of acronyms like CEO and MBA. I don’t know what any of those mean but I do know that Jim is a nice guy and a good friend.

Lyn and I set up a little photoshoot last week to test out the newly arrived backdrop (ordered it here: neutral gray), and the new high-output beauty dish. The lighting setup for these shots was pretty simple: beauty dish boomed over head (with AB1600), and two speedlights in small silver umbrellas as kickers (with the exception of one shot where they didn’t fire).

Now how about that HOBD? If, like me, you’ve been on the fence on whether or not to pick up the new High-Output Beauty Dish from Paul C. Buff, let me save you the worry. Just get it. You will not be disappointed. Now, I’d used the old dish before and liked it. But the HOBD has been completely redesigned for efficiency and I really didn’t know what to expect. The light spread on the HOBD is about 45 degrees (old model dish was 140 degrees). That’s a pretty focused light. In order to get that kind of narrow beam on the older, less efficient dish, you needed to lug along a grid modifier. Let me tell you, it’s a lot easier (and more efficient) to *diffuse* hard light than it is to *focus* soft light. So far, I’m really liking the narrow focus of this dish. I figure if I need a softer look from the HOBD, I’ll just throw the sock on it and approximate the light spread of the old dish. Boom. Done. The HOBD is made of aluminum and is very light weight compared to the older, Webber-BBQ-inspired dish. My only complaint is the way the direct-light blocker mounts. It is not connected to the dish itself but runs through a hole and into the umbrella holder of the Alien Bee. It’s a clunky, and somewhat proprietary way to mount the blocker. I have no idea if the hole on the HOBD will match up on any other monoblocs.

Overall I’m very happy with the dish. Next project is to test its efficiency by doing some daytime shots a 580 EX mounted to the dish.

Had a little free time last week so I pulled together an impromptu shoot with some friends. This was an experiment to test out some lighting setups with on-axis fill.

On-axis light is light that is on the same axis as your camera lens; e.g. your on-camera flash. This kind of light illuminates everything very evenly, creating a flat, and generally unflattering image. It’s akin to xeroxing your subject. The idea here is to create shadow and depth with some off-axis lighting and then let the on-axis ring flash (AB800R) act as a fill and lift those shadows out of the dark. Daniel (pictured) mapped out the the setups on his nifty Strobox iPhone app. Also, the first pic in the gallery below is a 100% crop of the pic above. I put a lot of post work into these photos and don’t want the finer details to get lost to web resolution.

This is true in Photoshop, too. I’m all about the layers. I usually make a new layer for every step in the edit. Healing brush, dodge and burn, sharpening, curves – each major step lives on its own layer. And I always keep the original layer in the stack, too. That way I can go back if I get lost. Plus, if you’re like me, you love soloing layers to see how far a photo has come.

Here are a few test shots with the new AB1600 down by Whiskeytown Lake. Using the PocketWizard Mini and Flex I was able to get a useable strobe sync speed of around 1/640. Strobe was boomed overhead with a small silver umbrella. Looking forward to setting up some more daylight blasting sessions soon.

Lyn got her makeup done did by the lovely Michelle. Going for the Twiggy look here. I’d say it’s pretty close. This was shot with a small camera flash modified with a shoot through umbrella. The umbrella is choked up a bit to create a harder light and thus harder shadows. It’s really amazing how versitle one flash can be.