The Ducks Photo Blog

Its not some evil Star Wars hocus pokus. Its a lesser known method for dramatically lighting glass and liquids.

Have you ever tried to photograph something thats made of glass? If you have you’ll know the problems with reflections, it usually results in your mugshot in one of the reflections possibly grining, or the window with the nuber 7 bus driving by. Not wholly professional and certainly it wont be of a standard that a client is willing to pay for.

Your solution therefore is the dark field method, before I get flamed by those in the know, yes there is an opposite technique called, yes you’ve guessed it Light Field Photography. I’ll save that for another time.

This is an example that I took using the technique, what I aim to do is give you, dear reader enough knowledge for you to give it a go yourself should you wish.

Firstly and most surprisingly theres no direct light and only one strobe used here, you could use a second snooted strobe camera left or right to pick out any detail if you so felt like it.

So heres the set up and its really simple

The glass subject sat on something black I used foam core with glass ontop for that shiney look. A further piece of foamcore just big enough to fill the frame.

The strobe is set below the table pointing directly at a white wall immediately behind all this. The room needs to be very dark to eliminate and reflections. In a small room you will have problems with reflections from the walls etc.

My product studio is small so to get round this I used my reflective umbrellas black side out to both left and right nice and close in any other black ‘flag type’ props will do the job.

That is all there is to it, give it a go. Experiment I flagged out the left side for the Grolsch bottle and slightly angled the strobe towards the right to give more illumination.

I would be interested in hearing how any of you get on.

I started the month with somewhat of a challange 3 month old twins! quite a challange but Little Tommy and Lilly were easy on me and seemed contented to lie back gargle a little and take it all in their stride.

Towards the end of the month I embarked on a portrait road trip to Devon. Mostly high key family portraits in peoples homes.

I’m experimenting with props at the moment. Balloons and the cheap kids bubble machine seem to be the favorites. (I cant believe that I have to bribe/pay my 4 year old daughter to let me use it! perhaps I ought to invest in a more professional one!) 

With summer here I am also doing quite a few lifestyle shoots ourdoors which is great fun while in Devon I had a great shoot with the Randall family at the pictoresque Killerton chapel it seems to have everything from huge oak trees to exotic palms and perfectly manicured paths. A completely new location to me but certainly one I’ll return to if I am able to.

With some experimental studio work slotting in and around my other commitmants, trying to make water drops convey a mood or expression heres a setup shot and a couple of the final images.

They are straight out of camera with no post editing on them at all. If I get enough requests I’ll write a ‘how to’ so if your interested on how to get these kind of results drop me a line.

The month rounded itself off with an ad shoot on the gigantic cruise ship Eurodam (which I was told isn’t even their biggest vessel!) which is part of the Holland America Line. I was lucky enough to have an access all areas pass which took me quite literally from top (bridge) to bottom (engine room) and everything inbetween. I had no idea how much of a vessel like that is ‘off limits’ or hidden from the general passengers.

Until next time dear reader.

Hello everyone its been a majorly busy month for the Duck. Most noticably spending a week in limbo thanks to a distant volcano and some ash! 

I have been spending a fair amount of time scouting locationjs for a couple of ongoing projects. I found a very exciting location right on my doorstep, All Saints Church, Waldershare. Its looked after by The Churches Conservation Trust, and its a real little gem dating back to Norman times. It definately somewhere I plan to shoot in the future with lights and models in tow. 

A little HDR of the main alter at All Saints

We eventually managed to to to Spain albeit nearly a week later (good job I work for myself and could simple move everything along. I did feel sorry for people who simply cannot move a week away at a moments notice) 

For a long time now I have been meaning to try my hand at startrails. There aren’t any of my clients who would pay me to practice the technique so I decided it was to be on of the weeks in my Project 52. To cut a long story short I didn’t take a tripod with me (my 20 year long serving tripod decided to quite simply fall to pieces) .  So a bit of head scratching  and many cerveza later I had managed to cobble together a rest made from pillows and towels. I wont go into the actual technique I used here but it involved over 100 exposures of 30 seconds each with an over all exposure time of a little over an hour. I then used a nice little piece of free software called startrails (www.startrails.de ) to stack the images the best result is week 34. However another shot I took gave me this. 

Now then, can any of you clever people out there help explain something to me? You will notice what looks like two fireworks in the bottom right of the image these are from two seperate consecutive exposures, theres no camera movement and there were no fireworks being let off on the evening I took them. So what are they? if they are shooting stars whats the likelyhood of two almost ontop of each other less than a minute apart? I look forward to peoples thoughts. 

Finally its always nice to be published, especially when its unexpected! 

Published in Spirit and Destiny

Used on guardian.co.uk

So until next time, there will be plenty for me to tell you about next time. Hopefully a top secret high profile shoot will have happened and I can leak a bit about that and whatever occours with whats already booked in.

Its been a busy month, particualry over the easter weekend when I was covering the Magical Faerie Festival in Canterbury. 

Things started with a Ball on The Friday Evening with live bands the headline act being  Inkubus Sukkubus (who were pretty amazing incedently).

I can honestly say I have never changed the flash settings as much on a shoot as I did that night! available light was pretty much none existant so I mixed things up between high ISO and very narrow low power flash settings (thank god for custom settings!) 

I wasn’t just covering the event I was also running a portrait booth to say I was running around like the perverbial fly was an understatement! the Lasolite Hilite was fantastic and I would really urge anyone that shoots portraits out of studio its well worth every penny. 

Saturday was the day of the parade through the centre of Canterbury and the start of the festival for real. The Pentangle Drummers from Eastbourne were excellant. I kept on hearing the beats for hours afterwards!! 

Various acts performed over the weekend including:

Touch The Earth, Kim Thompsett, Priscilla Hernandez, Feorin , Tim Wheater, Soul Path and Elfin Spiral.

I was constantly being challenged by the available light at the venue. I decided that a high ISO and none flash approach was best. I’m pleased with the results. It is however probably time to think about upgrading to a 5D or similar which would solve the noise issue. 

Well done to Matthew for organising a fantastic event. There are many more pictures from the weekend here feel free to take a look.

I’m now preparing for a trip to Spain where I hope to take some more images for my long planned book about El Torcal in Andelucia, Spain some images from a previous trip here but more of that next time.

Another action packed week for me first of all shooting some shots for a local driving school (www.ianthomasdriving.com) for his new website. It was freezing but it was worth it as I got some great images and the sky was cobolt. Never has Dover seafront and more precisely Marine Parade looked so inviting!

I also shot some product shots for a client (www.regalcandles.co.uk) I’m very pleased with the outcome it didn’t take long to setup but the final shots show off the products very well.

Firstly welcome to the new blog, this is definitely a reinvention! (I’m actually quite liking it, but don’t tell anyone that!)

A truly unbelievable week firstly I realised that I have reached a milestone in my ‘Project 52′  I’m half way in!!

Secondly I had a great shoot with Leanne it was the second shoot from a planned series of about 6 or so.

She’s into the 50′s and I must say she has the look dialled! I must also say that Jodie did a great job on the make-up. There will be many more shots in the coming weeks.

I then got caught in the whirlwind that is Nadine. Within a few minutes of meeting it was like we had been collegues for years, talking about concepts and ideas there are  some great future opportunities, but more of that another time.

I then had the privilage of covering the launch of a rather unusual new company Florence & Florence

Let see what the next week holds. To be honest for the first time in a while I’m looking forward to it.