Conceiving, planning and executing the Olympus BIG Shoot experience every month is a real honour and privilege. It is fab to meet up with so many like minded photo enthusiasts and share some quality photography “edutainment”. I love the fact that I get to share my industry knowledge and “pay a little back” the the superb profession thats given me so much.
My favourite part about every BIG Shoot events is that they are camera agnostic! What does that mean exactly??? Its really easy – it means you are welcome to attend even if you are NOT an Olympus user… Olympus what to share the fun of a BIG Shoot event no matter what camera you use, its all about making photography better.
At every event we have a wide selection of Olympus bodies, lenses and accessories, there are no sales people there, so its the perfect opportunity to test the kit, or that lens you’ve heard about, in a real world shoot scenario without any pressure or hurry what so ever! Happy with your own kit, no problem, shoot with your own kit but the option is always there should you wish to try. All we ask is you bring an SD card so you can take your images home.
The next BIG Shoot experience starts on the 29th of January and is in a very special location… the home of the calendar king, situated on the Wirral, Merseyside – don’t tell him, but Mel Grundy is somewhat of a hero of mine!
For those that can’t make the experience – heads up, Februarys is in the North east, I thought I’d share a “How was it done” from a previous event.
This image was shot on the Olympus EM-1 with the 40-150 f2.8 pro zoom at 1/80th of a second at f3.2 at a focal length of 50mm. The lighting was as simple as can be.
I positioned my subject in her fab yummy gummy hand made latex so I could make use of the natural direction of the sunlight as my accent or separation light.
I then positioned to camera left a barefaced speed light, you’ll see from the graphic that it was positioned behind her slightly and skimmed back to create shape and form in her face. I used a barn door from my portaflex kit to control the spread of light. When I train people I’ve observed that many forget that what you don’t light is as important as what you do!
So as I said the lighting is quite simple, its the creativity inherent in the camera that makes this picture, not so much “post processing” but “pre processing” as I like to refer to it. Don’t get me wrong, Adobe have nothing to worry about… but, and its a BIG but, the visual feedback on your creative decisions to me is priceless. Even if you don’t get the image 100% in camera its a great tool to get you to where you want to go, a visual road sign if you like.
Plus, every now and then, just like this image, you get it in camera. The look I was after was very simply achieved by overlaying two art filters in camera. I took a vintage art filter an blended it with the diorama filter and voila we get what we see here.
I think its such a creative tool and worth far more than its weight in gold. The EM-1 inspires me and goads me into being more creative the big thing is its size, weight and performance makes me want to work more with it and enables me to do so… blimey its a win / win all round.
Don’t believe me, come see for yourself and join me on a BIG shoot experience.
till next time
D
created with the BIG dog, studio maker app:
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