Charles NJC's photostream

I owe thanks to my Sister on this one, as a vet student she was able to help me get my hands on genuine dog bones!!

This was for a college project... it was a studio brief, looking at the platiana of use in objects (Objects that show signs of a life, and of use)... I figured what shows life more than death. The tiny scratches on the joints are the wear of a life time... it seems that dogs (and thus humans - as we actually share very similar bone structure - apparently) are more resilient than imagined.

These bones are dead, from a body too weak to continue using them... and yet there pristine, almost unscratched, a lifetime of use bears almost no physical marks it seems. Still it's the little scratch around joints that make this interesting, especially when viewed full size, or as a print: The detail is astonishing.

I wanted all the interest here to come from the bones, rather than the composition, or lighting, or any other photographic techniques, so I went with a very "plain" shot, trying to mimic the still life work found in Albert Watson's book "Cyclops"

Strobist Info

Shot in the studio, so not true strobist... but I though you might still be interested to know the lighting details. I arranged the bones on glass, above the background, allowing me to light the subject and background seapreatly, on their own plains.

1st and 2nd lights
Two bare lighting heads, on floor stands lighting the background (A white piece of card) They were on opposite sides of the card, and I crossed the light-beams over in a X, similar to how backgrounds are often lit in Studio Portraits.

Exposure unrecorded... but I underexposed the lighting here, so that the background would go grey instead of white. Obviously the two lights were set to the same exposure value.

3rd Light
This one was lighting the bones.... it should be pretty clear where it was from looking at the shot, but I'll tell you anyway: Top right corner of the image, flash head snooted, and kept level with subject.

The long gaps between uploads have continued it seems!

Shot this on Thursdays night, it's for a college brief. The brief is titled "Britain Today" we're free to inturprit that however we want, I'm trying to create set up shots that show the "Broken Britain" that the tabloids talk about. Not the nicest view of the country, and not one that I nessiserially agree with, but it gives good photo opportunities.

With this shot I've attempted to set up a back alley knifing, the kind of thing you read about in the mail and the mirror, with young girls begin stabbed by hoodies, over their phones, or Ipods.

I wanted the scene to look like a still from a movie (Hence the aspect Ratio) and I wanted it to have a little more mystery to it than most photographs (Movie still generally tell you a lot less that photographs - due to the fact than there's lots of them), so I tried not to make anything too implicit: is the shadowed figure holding a knife, and is simply a trick of the light? The fear on the girls face goes some way towards answering this, and yet, we can't be sure.

I was stopped by the police once again with this shot hanging around in a dodgy alley (there were needles in the alley next to this one! Yikes) with lights always seems to being them out. Still, for once they were really friendly.

Sadly flickr has ruined this shot, the colours are all messed up, and the black point seems to have been changed... sigh. If you could view it full size, these problems would probably be rectified: I'll go pro again soon, I promise. In the meantime, does anyone know how to stop flickr messing with colours etc? I converted it to sRgb prior to upload, and it looked fine in P/S Have just viewed it full size and it looks okay, so it's clearly just a sizeing issue. I'll go pro when I have the cash so you guys can see it : )

Expect more from this set soon.... maybe. I'll certainly try to get them up here.

Strobist Info
100% of the light here is artificial (The scene was full on black with out flash!) Colour's were enhanced in Photoshop, and noise was reduced.

1st Light
A homemade softbox (Ice cream tub, tin foil, and some white fabric!), to the right of the model, the strobe was gelled orange, to create the colour effect. Light was ever so slightly behind the model, so that the shadow on the left of her face could be created. Exposure unrecorded.

2nd Light
Bare strobe, gelled with 5 green gels to light the back wall. By placing myself in front of it (Thanks remote shutter release) I could create the shadow on the back wall. The strobe was placed way down the right of the alley, and was placed close to the ground. Exposure unrecorded.

This was part of a college brief on Glass, shot from an advertising point of view. Pretty simple really, and not much meaning or depth to it, but it's simple and effective from a purely aesthetic perspective, so I guess it achieved it's aim. There's no real "wow" about it, but it works, and it looks nice in print (Glossy paper ftw!)

The reflection is real by the way, not fake as most people seem to think.... the way it fades off is fake (Layer mask with a gradient) but the reflection itself was made for real in the studio. By placing glass and white card under the subject.

What I think alot of people probably don't realize with these type of shots, is what a huge issue dust creates, I must have cleaned that bottle 20 times by the end of the shoot, and I still had to spend nearly half an hour cleaning it further in photoshop!

You really want to view this big to get much of an effect from it: It may be a generic product shot, but viewed big, the quality of the glass really stands out and it looks pretty sweet.

Lighting Info

Product back-lit by big soft-box (there's no background, the soft-box creates the white backdrop) 3 reflectors used to eliminate reflections from chrome top, two curved one's either side, and a long thin one directly above the lens. Product on placed glass, and under the glass white card, in order to create reflection.

This was a picture I shot right at the start of my Musician set, I needed some material to show potential subjects, so I shot myself to have something to get started with. There was a lack of other beautiful rock star types, and I needed something to feed my narcissism with, so why not?

We got stopped by the police on this one, and had to explain what we were doing, 2 people hanging out under the subway setting up lots of stands and firing lights off, must have looked pretty dodgy!

This was my very first time doing "the strobist thing", and I think it went pretty damn well. Info below:

Strobist Info
Most of the light falling on Subject is artificial, probably around 15% of subject exposure was ambient. Background was lightened significantly in Ps, 1 stop more of ambient would probably have helped.

1st Light
Tupperware strobe placed around 9 foot behind subject and 6 feet above ground, and aimded down. Used to create the rim lighting, and a bit of a spotlight effect (This was enhanced in Ps) Exposure unrecorded

2nd Light
Tupperware strobe placed around 6 feet back from subject on the left hand side, just to add a little fill in, and stop the subject from being a silhouette, without overpowering the effect from the 1st light. Exposure unrecorded, but much weaker than 1st strobe.

Hum, this one looks a little flat now it's in the browser, and the pure white of the back wall looks fake, as does the way it merges with the wall and floor (This is strange, as it's one of the few parts of the shot to have not had the P/S treatment) Looks great big though, and has printed nicely.

This was another image for my Local musician set, the Tuba player is Matt Ireland, the Drum major at Kings CCF now I believe. He's pretty talented on the thing, and is a good poser - happy to put up with my less than perfect directing skills.

The image was shot in a underpass in Chester (We had to wait for some Chavs to leave first) and we had a few weird looks from people walking past, but it went pretty well.

Matt - if your seeing this, email me... I need to arrange to get you a print of this, and I lost your email address.

Strobist Info
All light you see on subject is Ambient, but walls lit by strobes. Theres a lot of P/S work in here, so the lighting is pretty different to the original frame, but I think it all pulled together.

1st Light
Bare strobe fired at the wall behind subject, to bleach it to the pure white that we see: it reflected off on the the right hand wall, to create some of the lighting on it. Exposure Unrecorded

2nd Light:
Home made grid spot, which was raking the side wall, to bring out the texture. Exposure Unrecorded