A PhotoBlog Entry

From The Outer Banks Photo Workshop

Finally, a photoblog post—long overdue, so before I get into the photo mechanics of things, here’s an explanation of the lull. Basically in the past few weeks, I’ve been webmaster, photographer, photo workshop host, programmer, frequent flier mile gatherer, and of course spending some quality time with family and friends—also long overdue.

On the webmaster side of things, I alone built MyPhotoTalent.com, a few other websites, plus, I’ve been working on the revamping of GarageGlamour.com. Though I’m the webmaster of these sites, I’m not a fulltime webmaster much less programmer, so what takes a typical coder 5-minutes can take me hours, thanks to trial and error—heck, just launching a “terminal connection” and doing SSH commands requires research to make sure I use the proper commands like chown –R and not chown _R when changing directory ownership on a server so I can FTP in html updates without them belonging to apache.

Playboy Playmate Holley Dorrough strikes a pose during the Outer Banks, N.C., photography workshop.

Not sure what I’m talking about, don’t sweat it, most photographers aren’t their own webmaster and server administrators that tackle server memory limit issues by redoing their php.ini file via terminal. Thus I laugh when people say, “It must be nice to photograph beautiful models.” IT techie stuff and photography aside, workshop coordination, especially the upcoming “farewell photo workshops” tour, take my time too. Travel also takes a toll like the recent photo workshops in Canada, Seattle, and the Outer Banks—thus the free time is replaced with sleep deprived, aching muscles.

That aside, I wanted to share these photos from my recent Outer Banks, N.C., photography workshop. Hopefully this post and future posts from previous workshops well quell the rumors a few folks (competitors and an ex-helper) have started. Let’s get it straight, Rolando’s workshops rarely get canceled, though a few were rescheduled over the years, I’m proud to say that in the past 12-years, with almost 500 workshops, seminars and lectures, less than one-percent were ever fully cancelled.

This post is a great example. Originally the Outer Banks photography workshop was scheduled for Sept., but thanks to hurricane Earl, we had to reschedule it for early October. Rescheduling or not, what makes our workshops so special is our talented models, as seen in these series of photos of Playboy Playmate Holley Dorrough where I used a mixture of light sources to achieve the look both Holley and I wanted.

I’m a firm believer in taking advantage of the natural light around you, but I’m also a firm believer in supplementing natural light with artificial and reflected light too, basically I like to mix light sources. Here I used the sunlight, a studio light and a California Sunbounce reflector. Basically a combination of natural sunlight that provided side and fill light, a studio strobe that provided the main light for the face and reflected light for fill, also known a “kicker” light technique in the studio and on location.

Most of the shots were taken about two hours before sunset or an hour before the Golden Hour light. The timing was the driving source for this style of lighting. In actuality, because this was a photography workshop, we did our best to give the attendees as much shooting time as possible, hence the mixed-lighting set-up. In this type of lighting scenario, you have to take the “Sunny 16” rule into effect and in this case, during this time of day when the sunlight is less intense, the rule brings us down to an F/8-11 aperture value, hence why her hair is highlighted from the Sun.

Notice too how the direction of the sunlight is from the side, not directly in front or even directly behind. The second obvious choice is to place the model so the Sun lights her from the back, thus creating highlights in the hair and a nice rim light around the body, but in this case, I wanted side lighting. I had Holley pose where the sunlight struck her right side and then had Holley slowly turn her face, without moving the rest of her body, away from the Sun at a point where the sunlight quit spilling on her face (avoided spill light) and nothing more, otherwise the neck would become too twisted. By using the sunlight from the side, I also avoided any direct sunlight lens flare and avoided any focusing struggles, as backlight causes the model to appear as a silhouette thus making focusing more difficult. Though I’ll admit, I had one attendee stand next to my left side to block any sunlight on my camera lens, as even with my lens shade mounted, the attendee guaranteed I’d have no worries of lens flare from the side either.

In addition to the sidelight technique, I used my Canon 85mm F/1.2L USM lens, which allowed me to get close enough to Holley for the bust-up crop, thus making the background go slightly out of focus as this type of lens has a shallow depth of field. This lens is also know for not adding “weight” to your subject from lens perspective, hence it’s one of my favorite lenses when photographing women.

Notice in this lighting set-up photo from the Outer Banks photography workshop how I combined three forms of light quality--reflected, sunlight, and artificial.

Back to the lighting, if you notice, in the lighting set-up photo, I’m using a California Sunbounce Pro fitted with a Zebra fabric. I prefer the Zebra fabric as it’s composed of silver and gold stripes, not solid silver, not solid gold. While both the solid types of fabrics would work just fine in this scenario, I prefer the combination of the two reflective colors as the silver will add some contrast punch while the gold will add a slight warmth to the overall image. The key is that I used the “Pro” version of the California Sunbounce products, as it’s 4-foot by 6-foot in dimension, so for any standing shots, the reflector would provide six-feet of light up close—reflectors work like any light modifier, the larger, the softer, the smaller the harsher. With this larger size, I’m guaranteed softer, reflected light as I’m able to place the California Sunbounce reflector close to the model keeping it’s size large in relation to the distance from the subject.

If I’d used a smaller reflector, I’d have to back up the reflector, thus the reflected light would provide a harsher light in order to give the same six-foot height of light. Reflector height is important and many photographers get stuck on small, round, 36-inch reflectors and fail to realize, that they have to back up to get the same “size” of light height, thus the reflector is smaller relative to the subject’s height and the light quality is harsher. I cannot stress how important light quality is, whether it’s from a softbox, beauty dish or reflector. Photographers often forget that a reflector is a light modifier too, and the fundamental photography rule of a light modifier’s size in relation to light quality for the subject applies to reflectors too.

Another point to think about in this lighting set-up, because we are dealing with the Sunny 16 rule, we have to adjust for the rule as the Sun is starting to go down and is losing its intensity. This is also why I photographed Holley closer to the Golden Hour, not at 12-noon. If I had no choice but to photograph Holley in the middle of the day, then I’d use an 8-foot by 8-foot, or larger, California Sunbounce scrim above her to remove the hard overhead light, then fill her face and body in with reflected light and perhaps even studio strobe as my aperture value is now at least at F/16 to balance the background. By waiting for the less intense sunlight, I’m able to keep my aperture value lower while still utilizing reflected light, and this also helped the battery-powered inverter provided by one of the workshop attendees to power the Hensel Integra Pro 500 studio light, last longer. Since I didn’t need to run it at full power, the battery draw is less intense, allowing for a longer lasting battery and faster recycle times.

Notice in this photo how Playboy Playmate Holley Dorrough is illuminated with the light from the Golden Hour only. I normally start with a combination of lighting, mixing reflected, natural and artificial lighting first, then move into the natural light provided from the Golden Hour.

Well I hope you liked this photoblog post. While I still have a lot of webmaster, programmer, and photography workshop duties to do this year, I’ll be working on some blog posts as much as I find some free time—it’s time to catch-up on LensDiaries.com, MyPhotoTalent.com, GarageGlamour.com, FarewellPhotoWorkshops.com, QuoteTheQuotes.com, and the list goes on—why so many websites? It’s what I love, to spread the gospel of photography and information, especially as I start to reduce photography workshops. Less travel means I can do more photography, focus on more photoblog posts and photography books, hence you’ll find more of me here and all the websites as time goes by.

Also, don’t forget to send me those photos for critiques, we’ve got some audiovisual photo critiques to catch-up on and soon you’ll see a lot more of them! All I ask is for you to do your part by simply using the facebook “like” and tweeting these posts to help ensure I’m able to bring you more online. Thanks and don’t forget our military, their families and all those that help ensure our freedoms. Rg.

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