Staying sane in the 3rd lockdown has been hard. Children have been off school for almost a year. Exams have been cancelled twice. And we have been told numerous times not to go out, stay in if you must but go out when you can’t, which is never. Confused? Ain’t we all!

So this time around parents, like myself were getting better at doing the quality time thing with the kids. Things that they enjoy, that you can do in your own home! What was my thing…? Getting them to do self portraits!! God did we laugh!!
If you have been following my Self Portrait journey on my insta, then you know how much fun I’ve been having, so it was only right to include my three daughter’s but let them take the reigns.
I set up a tethering system with Capture One and used one Godox V1 speed light with a modifier. I gave them the Sony RMT-PTBT remote to control the shutter from in front the camera if they wanted. Showed them how to change the aperture and the set the rest to auto! Oh man did they have a ball. If I didn’t have them cooking dinner that night, we all would have gone hungry!

So the set up was easy, as I have a few backdrops which I buy from Ebay, I let them choose which one they liked but you can shoot wherever with or without a backdrop. Even a white bed sheet could work! I set up the camera in front with a single speed-light also in front higher up and tilted down as per the diagram below. If you want to reduce shadows, then try to move your subject further away from the backdrop, but remember this is all about having fun!

My+girls+ake+better+pictures+than+me.jpg

My girls were having so much that they went and called on the rest of my house. My wife and my son joined us all in front of the camera whilst the girls took turns with the remote! Needless to say that most of the images are no way usable but that is not really the point here. There is minimal learning but a great way to do family bonding and to get your kids off of mobile devices for a bit!

Alternatively, why not embrace the use of their phones and get your kids to do a photo scavenger hunt! You can find ideas here.

Short blog today but useful nonetheless! Until the next time! If you can’t beat it, cheat it!

Single speed-light headshot...On the cheap! →

Rahsaan Jas February 14, 2021

I promised some goods, well here they are. If you have ever wanted to take great headshots on a budget, then step into my office. I am going to show you how to achieve great looking shots with one speed-light (flash).

Before we start, here are a few speed-lights that I use.

Godox V1 (avg £229) This is my main light that I use.

At a glance, all of these lights could seem expensive but if you compare these to native flashes, you are saving hundreds of ££s.

The Godox V1 is a 1/4 of the Profoto A1 price which is around £949. YIKES!

With these speedlights, I will use a modifier to soften the light and also get it an even spread across the subject. Modifiers I recommend are:

Neweer 16'“ mini portable soft-box (avg £15)

Neweer 80x80cm (avg £35) and S Bracket (avg £25)

So now that the gear talk is out of the way, let’s talk about how we achieve the look.

Fortunately I use a 85mm F1.4 lens that gives me the ultimate blur (bokeh) background but if you are using a kit lens, then my tip for you would be to open your aperture to the lowest F stop number and then move your subject as far away from the background as possible whilst still thinking about your focal length/distance. If you are unsure on how depth of field works (DOF) then I suggest you have a look at my PDF found here.

Once you have sorted the positioning of your subject, turn your attention to the position of your light. Typically, wherever you position your light, you want your subject to be the same side and in front of it. Have the light slightly above the subject and tilted down to a 45° angle onto the subject.

As your camera is pointing straight on, be sure to set your focus, then compose your shot with your subject on either the left or right side of your shot so you are framing them in one third of your viewfinder.

Now you have the shot set up, it’s time to work on lighting your subject. This could be done through TTL mode on your flash or you can set your exposure for the subject without the flash by doing a few test shots. Keep in mind that you will be lighting the subject, so you want them to be underexposed when doing these test shots. Once you are happy, go ahead and turn on your flash. Try out different power settings, move the light around. Doing this will help you see what the light does at different settings and angles.

Once you have found that sweet spot, only change (if need be) your ISO in order to take in or lose the ambient light that you might have.

To give you an idea, the shot below was taken with the following settings:

ISO 100

1/80

F1.4

Flash power was 1/32 with the Mini Portable soft-box.

And there you have it. This post is not designed to show you the ins and outs with settings etc, its just to show you whats achievable with a cheaper light set up!

So remember if you can’t beat, cheat it!

Until next time!!

Who cares about me....No one!

Rahsaan Jas February 7, 2021

Welcome to my first blog post that was going to be about how I got into photography. The truth is, no one cares about me or that! FACTS! The reason why you are here is to learn about photography and gear. Right?

Well I’m going to tell you how I got into this business that everyone believes is so easy and that all pro photographers are overpriced!

Imagine you have a family and you want to capture their innocence as young children. You have two choices, pay for a photographer or enter a competition to win a family shoot. I shout, “I’m not paying that much for a photographer to take smudges of my kids!!” So I entered the comp and won! A week later a photographer comes around to my house early one sunny Sunday morning. He’s an older guy, funny looking, balding grey hair and glasses. Not that has anything to do with his capabilities to take a good shot but it gives you a good picture of why my kids after 10 minutes of standing and posing for this chap, they got bored and started crying! Fast forward two weeks, the same funny looking photographer comes to my house to share with me the images of my most prized possessions, my daughters (at that time!). I took one look at the image and could tell straight away that he had stitched the photo together. Taken the head off one shot and placed it on another. Along with his poor editing skills he was also doing the hard sell to me and my daughters mum. He claimed that the image, ONE image, in a frame of our choice would cost £600! £600 I shouted. He said “yeah, thats the cost of my time, the edit and the frame!” I nearly swore! But before any expletives left my mouth, I was reminded that we had no decent photo’s of the girls and that this is worth it. To my shock, my card was in my hand and ready to pay the funny looking photographer £600 for one image of MY babies! He quickly got his card machine out, rang it up and ran out of the door faster then Just Eat can deliver my fried chicken wings. I was upset. I just paid £600 and had nothing right there to show for it. No Playstation, Nintendo or beat up car in my drive. Nothing! I felt I had just been done. And in the grand scheme of things, I had. So the following morning I called the photographer back and asked for my money back. Why did I do that? Because I had studied photography and believed that I could take a better photo than he could, mainly because they were my kids but also because my ego was talking to me rather loudly in my ear.

This is where my journey began. I took the shot of my kids and then went on to take shots of all of my aunts or uncles who had kids too, using my Canon 1100D and Neweer continuous lighting!

Fast forward many years, and here we are now! One thing I have learnt mostly, is that you could have all the gear in the world, that does not make you a great photographer. Truth is, some of the best photographers in the world have very little gear and very rarely change their format unless forced to. This leads to why I am doing this Cheat Sheet Tog Blog. So upcoming photographers (Togs) can learn how to capture great images with little gear or for the most part, cheaper then what we are made to believe we need in our bag.

Photography is expensive. Gear is expensive. Knowledge is expensive. None of that matters. Why? Because it’s all about having “the eye” to take a good shot! The gear is only there to enhance your idea/concept and bring it to life.

Throughout the next few weeks, I will be showing you how to capture stunning portraits using either one flash light or natural light. I will show you set ups, light placements, camera settings and of course the cheaper gear you can use! So make sure to subscribe to my newsletter.

Next week, the one light headshot. Until then, if you can’t beat it, cheat it!!

PS Grab a copy of my beginners photography PDF here so you are up to speed with settings etc.