SUN, SUN, SUN!

Maybe it was a little cold, but my Saturday night dusk shooting was freaking amazing. I've known the model for almost three years now, Deima is just incredibly beautiful. As an assistant I had make-up artist Dilan Arslan to support me. She also did a great job!

Let's look at two pictures, the one above, and this one:

Because I shot them with similar settings:

EOS 7D /w 50mm
first picture: f/3.5 - 1/500 - iso 100
second picture: f/4 - 1/500 - iso 100

I faced the sun, the model was facing me. So i had nice flares and light effects. I had my little reflector that made enough light to mirror some of the evening sun back at Deima. I used the SILVER side of the reflector - why, you ask? - well, the evening sun is so reddish-yellowish that using a golden reflector will result in orange-like skin. You need to "blue" or "cold" the light down, best done with a silver reflector (zebra would probably work as well). I did very little photoshop on these ones, just retouched 'em, sharpened 'em, and adjusted the color in the second one (made it blue-er). I left the flares in the first one, just because I like 'em. OK?

But eventually the sun faded away and I had no light anymore, well grab a flash and voila:

Same camera, same lense, same aperture, iso 400. I lowered the exposure time sharply - that means faster. I was working with 1/1000 - 1/2000 of a second. I wanted a darker sky - looks neat, huh? My beloved Aurora Firefly soft box on a boom with a Canon EX 580ii, connected with a cable and set to high-speed - completely e-ttl.
Photoshop? Just some retouch (i know i didn't get rid of the goosebumps - do you know how much f%cking work that is?) , sharpening, and then I added an orange and a red color filter - DONE.

I love the results and it was a lot of fun, thanks to everyone involved!

Peace on the streets SAAAN,

Jo Thomas

www.jothomasphotography.com

www.jothomasphotography.com

 All photographs provided on this page, are protected by copyright law. You are not allowed to either use, sell, claim as your own, publish, or promulgate the photographs in any way without JoThomasPhotography.com's personal handwritten permission. By viewing the pictures you agree to these terms, any violation is liable to prosecution.

One face, one story.

Ladies 'n Gentlemen,
I was thinking about updating you on my whereabouts. Well currently in Germany, will be flying back to the US on the 29th. I'll be shooting a street photography series of cities like Cleveland and Pittsburgh. I am really stoked for that and can't wait to get to work, BUT IN THE MEANTIME...

...I had beautiful model Viviane Stutz in the studio. She is a young upcoming model over here in Germany and WOW, I see why.

Canon EOS 5D Mark III

24-105L @ 75mm

f/11 and 1/160 at iso 100

I was working with a brand new and perfect Canon camera, and two studio flashes. Both equipped with a strip light soft box AND grid. The strip light was about 4 feet tall and one foot wide. Both placed about 3 feet away from her sides. I had my hair light not flash at the model, but flash the background, because I wanted some texture back there. I like grunge backgrounds, even though they are so incredibly mainstream and boring at times. I'm not going to get into the settings of the flashes, just use your own d%mn meter.

Now this photo was a quite a lot of work in Photoshop (CS 5.1 - yea' still haven't updated) I cleared the skin, lightened and sharpened the eyes, reddened the lips, did a boob job, did some shading of her cheeks, then added all the color and sized it down to 500px. Voila, DONE!

But WAIT, this is not ALL. If you order NOW, you will get this awesomeness.

So what did I do here? Take the same setting I wrote about up there, but take away all the soft boxes and flashes. Here I put one flash on a boom like 9 feet across the room with a standard reflector on it powered it up to almost full (in a dark room that is a LOT of light - 400ws). Aiming is everything here, remember the elevator blog post from last year where I talked about the butterfly shadow? Well, this is me revisiting that topic. This is not a portrait light like up in the first picture, this is a fashion lighting. If you have a model with a face and big eyes like that, you hit the m%therf%cking jackpot! It is basically your own sun. Looks sick, huh?

Well that's it for now, its past 2:30 am and I have shootings tomorrow.

Peace on the streets SAAAN,

Jo Thomas

www.jothomasphotography.com

www.jothomasphotography.com

 All photographs provided on this page, are protected by copyright law. You are not allowed to either use, sell, claim as your own, publish, or promulgate the photographs in any way without JoThomasPhotography.com's personal handwritten permission. By viewing the pictures you agree to these terms, any violation is liable to prosecution.

A beautiful portrait!

100mm

f/3.2

1/1250

iso 400

Here is to all them haters thinking it's impossible to take amazing portraits with horrible weather conditions. Today was crappy weather, the sky was one giant softbox. Low hanging clouds, slight drizzle here and there. To the eye it looks like it is really dark, but even through thick clouds a lot of light passes through. I simply had my beautiful model Sazan face me, leaning against a wall. My beloved octabox with my flash set to auto was right above her. And I got this:

Now add a little sharpness and blue, clean up some of the skin and you got the beautiful portrait shot from above. Here is another one:

It is so simple... Peace out, Jo Thomas.

www.jothomasphotography.com

 All photographs provided on this page, are protected by copyright law. You are not allowed to either use, sell, claim as your own, publish, or promulgate the photographs in any way without JoThomasPhotography.com's personal handwritten permission. By viewing the pictures you agree to these terms, any violation is liable to prosecution.

What you can do with PictureStyles (nightly fashion shooting)!

 f/3.2 - 1/5s - iso 400 - 100mm - flash in octabox

 Peace out fellow photographers and models,
Yesterday night a model (John), his buddy (Daniel) and me decided to take some cool
fashion shots outside. We had a variety of clothes and a time window of a good two hours.
As I really don't have too much time at the moment, I tried to take pictures that would
look good without any post processing other than the resizing and sharpening. ALL of the
pictures in this post do not have anything done to them other than the great resize and sharpening
photoshop action of Philip Perold, great landscape photographer based in southern Africa.
 All the "color editing" you are trying to spot was done in the camera (Canon EOS 7D) with
PictureStyles. It is one of the simplest PictureStyles available, and you can enter it really quickly,
here the data:

Style: Standard
Sharpness: +7
Contrast: all the way to +
Saturation: all the way to -

 I played around with the color, to make some images look more bluey and others more yellowy.
Pictures were taken with the macro 100mm IS lense, which is Canon's sharpest lense at the moment,
and the standard 50mm 1,4. In some pictures I used a flash set to auto in a small octabox (see
reflections in eyes/shades), in others just streetlamps.

Take a look at the photos and enjoy.
Peace out,
Jo Thomas 
www.jothomasphotography.com

f/3.2 - 1/5s - iso 200 - 50mm - flash in octabox

 f/1.4 - 1/40s - iso 500 - 50mm - giant soft light source in the back

 f/2 - 1/80s - iso 1000 - 50mm - giant soft light source to the model's right

 f/1.4 - 1/50 - iso 1600 - 50mm - streetlamp from above

f/2 - 1/100s - iso 500 - 50mm - facing giant soft lightsource

 

this picture was optimized for printing, blacks might seem extrem when using Apple.

f/3.2 - 1/5s - iso 500 - 50mm - flash in octabox

those pictures are examples of post processing:

 

USE MANUAL EXPOSURE MODES, NOT EVEN THE ISO SHOULD BE SET TO AUTO
ALL PICTURES ARE COPYRIGHTED
www.jothomasphotography.com
 All photographs provided on this page, are protected by copyright law. You are not allowed to either use, sell, claim as your own, publish, or promulgate the photographs in any way without JoThomasPhotography.com's personal handwritten permission. By viewing the pictures you agree to these terms, any violation is liable to prosecution.

Highkey Portraits - Elevator

Beautiful model Kony joined me in an
experimental shoot today. Because I had
no idea where to find some shiny metal
like backgrounds me, the model and my
assistant team drove to a shopping mall
to take some cool photos in an elevator.
I didn't want to shoot normal fashion
photos today, I wanted to do something
different. So three 'key' ideas came
into my head. Color key, low key and
high key. I personally hate color key
and I have no idea why people like it
that much. Low key, though interesting
is really to boring for a location like
that. So all that was left was high key.
I know some of the trolls in the web will
be all like "wahh, why did you overexpose
that picture so much", "she has a beautiful
face don't throw that much light on it" -
you know what? I don't care, so shut up.
Let's as always start of with the final
picture, post processing really wasn't too
much. A little contrast, pushed the blacks
sized an sharpened it. That's all.






So what happened here? First of all I'll
start with the camera (EOS 7D) settings.
A 50mm lense set to f/4 for best sharpness
and still some blur in the background.
1/200 fastest exposure time possible. Yeah,
some people don't get that, but even high
key is shot with short exposure times, you
push the picture with higher flash outputs
and not brighten the whole thing up.
iso125, I was going to use 100, but then
realized that the extra 25 gave me some
more light on her skin.
But the most important items today were
the flashguns. I used 3. My master flash
unit in my great octabox connected with
a 5 yard e-ttl cable. The octabox is very
important in this setting, check the reflection
in the models eyes in the portrait above,
nicely round you will never achieve that
reflection with a square softbox! One YN-460 II
was right behind/under her set to 1/32 to
throw some light onto her arms (from downside)
and also to illuminate the background.
One YN-460 II was in front of her (also on
the ground) to give me some detail in her black
top (1/16).
But what makes this picture highkey now?
Well, the master unit was auto e-ttl, but you
can adjust the output power with something
called flash exposure compensation. And I
simply told my flash to add 2 stops of light.
So FEV+2. Why not one? Because then it wouldn't
be enough light to have her skin all white. Why
not three? Because I wanted to have some detail
in her hair and eyes left.
Let's take a look at the setup photo.



Very important in this shot are assistants.
First of all I needed one to keep the elevator
door from closing (the guy with the cool hat).
And then one to hold the boomstick with the light
exactly in the right spot, because the shadow of
the nose needs to be very very precisely. A
'butterfly-shadow' was desired (shadow right
under her nose) and one can only achieve that,
when having the octabox directly above the model
in perfect symmetry. Take a look at the shot
down here (somewhere) the shadow under her nose
is very even.

The light from the octabox is enough to illuminate
the background, and because thats all silver, the
whole elevator works like an extremely huge reflector.

Thanks to my team, we got some very cool pictures,
if there are any question feel free to contact me.
Thanks for reading,
Jo Thomas
www.jothomasphotography.com

Freeeeezing!

So it was really cold today, but a
good friend of mine, photographer Rainer
Moster, assistant Tim Hotfilter, our
model Jules and her boyfriend decided
to get out in the wild and take some
pictures together.
Today's theme was very simple, a rather
classy outfit an abandoned harbor basin
an overload of flashlights and uncommon
shooting angles.
Let's as always start out with the final
picture (this time out of cam - sized and
sharpened).



As you can see I was shooting down at
my model from some feed above. To blur
out the background I used the rather uncommon
aperture of f/2.5.
My model was wearing a black blazer and
a black blouse, as every photographer knows
not a very good idea when you're light-skinned.
To illuminate the clothes and the models skin
correctly I was in need of 4 flashguns.
Take a look at the setup picture (somewhere
down there).
My master flashunit was in my octabox, connected
with a 5 yard e-ttl cable to my EOS 7D.
3 slave flashes (Yongnuo YN-460 II) were also
used. One was in the cabin of the old wheel
loader right behind her (1/16). One used for the
hairlight and illumination of her left sleeve (1/8).
One to light up the background and the floor as well
as throw some light on her blouse (1/16). All
listed from left to right in the picture.



I climbed up an old oiltank and as I said was
shooting down at here (50mm). I set my ISO to 400 to
save some flash power and I used 1/160 as an exposure
time to freeze all motion. And exclude every
surrounding light (not that there was any).






 Alright, I just wanted to share that with you guys,
maybe it's inspiring for some of you.

Thanks for reading,
Jo Thomas
www.jothomasphotography.com

In The Subway - a 5 minute fashion setup

A couple of nights ago I walked through an underpass
and happened to have all my equipment and a model
with me (yeah, that happens). As the surroundings
really inspired me I immediately wanted to take
a shot of my buddy standing in that subway. I had
a black and white photo in mind, mostly dark with
some highlights of the graffiti around us.
Let's start with the final picture.

Now to the equipment:
EOS 7D and the well known 50mm f/1.4, 3 flashes
(Nissin Di866 and two Yongnuo YN-460 II), the
Ezybox small softbox and a 5 yard e-ttl cable,
also a silver reflector a couple of stands and
assistants.

Let's take a look at the setup, as you can see
the main light (Ezybox) was setup to the right
of the models face, him facing towards it (set
to Auto - thank you e-ttl). To the left one
YN-460 II firing on 1/32 to illuminate his
left and back. I also had an assistant holding
a reflector to his 'left-front' to not have any
harsh shadows of the two strobes. All the reflector
does really, is to bounce some light back onto
the model for an even lighting.

Until now you might ask yourself why I bothered
shooting this picture in a real cold subway in
January, I could've gotten the same result doing
it in my studio which is nicely warm and also
has a black background. Well this is the time
for the third speedlight to enter the shooting,
I placed it about 10 yards behind the model, facing
a subway wall and firing on 1/16 of its power.
Without that flash the wall would be completely
black but using it you really get a nice effect
in the background.

In the setup photo you also realize that I placed
the model under a broken light of the underpass.
I did that simply to eliminate any unwanted light
on my subject (not that with my camera settings
(posted below) any of that light would have hit
the sensor, but I wanted to make sure).

f/4
1/200
iso 100

Let's explain the camera settings for a moment.
1/200 because it's the perfect shutter time using
flashguns (no HSS) and fast enough to freeze all
the movement from me shaking because of the freezing
temperatures. f/4 because the 50mm is perfectly
sharp at f/4 and it nicely blurs out the graffiti
in the back. Not enough to not figure out what
it is back there and not so little that my model
would stand out less.

I guess everything is said, if you have questions
please comment and stay tuned for more.

Thank You,
Jo Thomas
www.jothomasphotography.com