Matt DeWitt Photography Blog

Man, I gotta stop going so long between posts. I’ve been busy though, so at least that’s something. Busy shooting and editing the shots from this post and busy working on stuff for my business. I won’t bore you with all the business details like fictitious name registration, sales tax licenses, business licenses, checking accounts, etc., but I will talk a little about the recent St. Louis Strobist Meetup I attended towards the end of January.

I blogged about this time last year about attending the meetup up in St. Louis and decided to go again this year. Everyone I met and worked with last time was great, so it was a no brainer to go do it again. We shot in the same warehouse as last year, so I knew going in that I didn’t have a lot to work with, environment wise, so I decided to spice it up this year by bringing a smoke machine and really pushing my lighting skills to the limit and then coming back and pushing my post-processing techniques even further.

So, let’s talk about the image at the top of the post first, since I really like it and apparently lots of other people do (according to Flickr and Facebook). It really is a shining example of great lighting and even better post-processing. I knew I wanted some hard edge/rim light so I used two SB-600’s with Honl Grids on camera left and right to edge and rim Lauren out.  I spent a while adjusting these so they were lighting her where I wanted and once I got those done I brought in an SB-900 front camera right in my Westcott Apollo softbox for the key light.  Once I had everything set up I’d just have Lauren do a few pushups and fire the smoke machine, shoot a few frames, and repeat.  I got several shots from this setup that I liked, but the one above really stood out as being the best of the bunch.

The post-processing was my spin on Scott Kelby’s Extended Definition Processing (see his tutorial on the NAPP website here). I modified it a little to suit my tastes, threw in some skin softening via the Joel Grimes Skin Retouching tutorial, and played with a few layer masks and called it good. I got such good reception from this photo that I’m thinking about doing a tutorial on the whole process in the near future.

While I had that hard/edgy light set up I just raised it up to shoot a couple of quick portraits using it of George, above, and his wife, Christy, below.

I post-processed these shots in a very similar manner to the one at the top of this post of Lauren. It’s definitely a look I dig and I’ll be trying to do more of it in the future.

There was also a couple of bands there for us to shoot, and since I’d never shot a band I had to give it a try. I grabbed these four guys from the band Brown Bottle Fever and shoved them into this tight garage space and went to town lighting them. Lighting four guys evenly in a tight space is no easy feat!

I ended up using four lights for this shot: a gridded SB-600 back left, an SB-900 with the dome diffuser behind the band, another gridded SB-600 camera right, and finally, an SB-800 into a homemade beauty dish for the main light on camera right.  It still didn’t look very good SooC, so I played around with it a bunch in Photoshop and came up with the shot above.  It’s ok. I definitely need more small group practice – I guess I need to find some local bands in need of press kit material.

Lastly I decided to try some tighter beauty style shots with Brandy. For these type of shots I should have shot with a smaller aperture, say f/11-ish, but I decided to be crazy and shoot this one at f/4, just for the fun of it. I miss the detail, but I like the shallow depth of field, so it works out ok. I used the same Joel Grimes skin softening technique mentioned above on this shot. I really like this technique and will be using it for all of my skin softening in the future.

That’s about it for this post. You can see some more shots I did of the meetup on my Flickr by clicking here and you can also see everyone’s shots from the meetup here.  Make sure you check them out as there is a lot of good talent and creativity flowing up in St. Louis. Hopefully I can get another local meetup going in the near future as driving 7 hours in one day isn’t fun, even though I did have lots of fun once I got there.

Stay tuned for more!

A few months back one of my friends that I’ve shot with a lot asked me if I would help her put together a calendar to give to her boyfriend for Christmas. I’ve been wanting to do a project like that for a while, so I happily accepted. It ended up being a lot of work, but it was pretty fun. I wish we could have went outside for more shots, but we did the best we could.

Some of the shots are shots I’ve shown before, but I also want to share a few new ones we took just for the calendar, so here is a preview of the 2010 Kristen Calendar!

February

June

August

November

The rest were either too revealing or not as exciting as these. It took a long time to put this together, even with re-using some shots that we had done in the past. I think we did 3 or 4 separate shoots to get the missing months and then we tried different ideas for each month. Then there was all of the editing and post-production to be done. We spent a lot of time together working on this, so I hope her boyfriend appreciates it.

If you want to know more about how a shot was lit you can click the image to go to it’s Flickr page and read more about it. This is definitely something I’d like to offer to other people, but because of the amount of time and planning involved it wouldn’t be something cheap. If you conservatively plan for an hour per month for shooting, you’re at 12 hours already, plus a few hours for planning, and then probably at least another hour per month for post-production and you’re looking at about a 30 hour project, minimum. At commercial photographer rates you’re looking at about 3-4 days worth of creative fees, which could run anywhere from $500/day to $10,000/day, or if I were to just charge a very nice hourly rate of $20/hour you’re still looking at $600 minimum, or a more realistic hourly rate of $50 or more would push it up to $1,500 or more. I’d settle for a happy medium around $1000, depending on the shoots you would want.

So, it wouldn’t be a cheap project/present, but it would definitely be unique. A one-of-a-kind calendar for that special someone in your life. I’d definitely be willing to do it again, so if you’re interested in getting a calendar made and are willing to put in the time and effort and can afford it, shoot me an email and we can make it happen!

A few weeks ago I attended Don Giannatti’s Lighting Essentials workshop up in St. Louis, Missouri and I wanted to share some images and my thoughts about the workshop with everyone.  This is my first ever, but hopefully not last, photography workshop I’ve attended.  I’ve been to some classes and Strobist meetups and the like, but never a full blown workshop like this, so I wasn’t so sure what to expect.

Before the workshop I spoke with Don many times trying to help him get things setup in St. Louis (even though I’m about 3.5 hours away from St. Louis) so we could have a great workshop.  Don was quick to respond to most of my emails, tweets, etc. which impressed me early on.  It seems like most people that “make it big” these days aren’t too keen on interacting with the little people like me.  So when I meet someone like Don that takes the time to talk to and help out someone like me, that’s a great thing.  I love all of the professionals that give back so much to the community and attending this workshop with Don felt like just that.

My friend and photographer, Jason, drove up to the workshop with me and shortly after checking into our hotel we went and picked up Don from his hotel.  Right from the start I could tell Don had done this a few times and was eager to share his wealth of knowledge with anyone willing to listen.  And willing I was!

We headed to downtown St. Louis for some random shooting and then a dinner meet-and-greet with all of the photographers attending the workshop.  I think there were 6 of us in total, plus Don, so it was a small, intimate learning environment.  After dinner we just sat around and talking photography for a while: the business of photography, bad experiences, good experiences, etc.  Lots of information to absorb and process and the workshop hadn’t even started yet!

The next morning we were up early and ready for the workshop to start around 8:30am at Don’s hotel.  Due to some misunderstandings we didn’t get this cool warehouse location I was hoping for, so we just made due with the hotel for the day.

The morning started out as an intro to the workshop and talking about lighting from different perspectives, a little bit about gear, some technical information with regards to lighting and such.  After that we went right in to shooting some simple, one light portraits in the hotel room with nothing more than a small flash and a few reflectors and the results were impressive.  Since I’ve gotten into the whole off-camera lighting thing I’d pretty much stopped using my reflector all together, but now I think I’m going to start trying to work it in more.

After a few quick demonstrations Don set us loose with the models to shoot around the hotel.  We broke up into 2 groups and headed out, shooting around the hotel, outside, anywhere we could find, really.  Don would come around and ask us why we were doing certain things to help us make sure we understand why we are doing what we are doing, and he would plant the seeds for shot ideas as he went.  For example:

This shot was a combination of Don’s idea and a happy accident.  Don was booming a flash at full power overhead and just out of the frame on camera right but we still weren’t getting enough power (f/20 is hard for small flashes), so we added a second flash at full power, but we aimed it a little low and it missed the umbrella and gave us some hard light from camera left and created a nice look to this picture. Interesting hard/soft combo I’ll have to try to work in some more.

We went on for the rest of the afternoon like this and then headed out to dinner for another night of stories and information.  Lots of good conversation and tidbits of knowledge to pick out throughout the night.  I headed back to the hotel and went through the pictures from the day and then passed out, ready for round 2 the next morning.

Day was the on-location portion of the workshop – I enjoyed this part more than the first day since I like to consider myself a location-based photographer.  We met downtown and talked about shooting in less than ideal conditions and the best places to position the subject for good light.  We walked around as a group and did some location lighting together, just to see the different results of blending ambient with strobe. Then we learned how to “calibrate” our strobes, which is probably one of the biggest things I took away from the workshop.  Most of my lighting was trial and error up until this point, but now I know at what distance my flashes give me f/8 at 1/8 power and how much I lose when using modifiers and so on, so I can be much more accurate with my location lighting.

After that it was off to practice some more.  I got to play with the new Speedlight Pro Kit Beauty Dish, which I loved.  Got some pretty cool shots with it – might have to pick one of those up when they are available here in the States so I don’t have to lug around my DIY flower pot beauty dish.

We shot around in groups again in this area for a while and then we packed up and headed to a more industrial area of St. Louis to finish up the second day.  We did the group thing some more with Don coming around sharing his vast amounts of wisdom with everyone and then he showed me the second thing I really took away from the workshop: using Photoshop to increase the power of your strobes.  It’s a fairly simple concept – I have no idea why I never thought of it before.  Probably my “get it right in the camera” mentality I’ve been using.

Sometimes the shot you want requires your strobes to be in the frame to get the power you need – so shoot two frames, one with and without the lights, then combine them.  Simple as that!  You can read Don’s in-depth guide on this technique over at ProPhotoResource.com.  Here’s the shot I did using this technique:

It’s not my favorite shot, but it’s still pretty cool.  I’ll definitely be trying to work this in more, which means I should probably get a decent tripod.  Good thing Christmas is getting close.

We finished up the second day and talked for a while and then headed our separate ways.  Overall it was a really good experience.  I learned a lot and made some new friends.  We went through so much in those 2 days that it’s hard for me to remember it all.  Good thing Don provides us with workbooks and DVDs to help reinforce the ideas and concepts we learned.  Here are a couple more of my favorite shots from the workshop:

It was a great workshop and definitely worth the price for everything you get.  I’d do it again in a heart beat.

Since I’ve been back I’ve kept in touch with Don and he even did a portfolio review with me over the phone, which I really appreciated since we didn’t get time to do it during the workshop.  It’s good to get a pro’s opinion on your work every now and then and he pointed out some things I need to improve on, which is great since I’m still very early in my (hopefully) career as a photographer.

Don was a great teacher and a great guy in general – hopefully we stay in touch.  I strongly suggest anyone thinking about taking his workshop to take the plunge and do it.  You’ll learn so much and have a great time while doing it.  It’s worth it, trust me.

If you haven’t checked out the rest of my shots from the workshop you can see them on my Flickr page.

This past Saturday (1-31-09) my friends Jason, Eleisha, and myself all drove up to St. Louis for the Strobist meetup that day.  All told we probably spent 7 hours in the car for the drive there and back, but it was worth it.  We met so many nice photographers willing to help – it was nice.  No one was wrapped up in their ego, everyone was just there to shoot and have a good time.

The models were great too.  We had around 9 different models to use throughout the day, all with something different to offer.  It was fun to try all sorts of different light setups under such little pressure.  Most of the models had never modeled before, so it gave everyone an outlet to learn and improve in a casual, no-pressure environment.

Here are a few of my favorites from the shoot:

You can see a few more on my Flickr page as well as everyone else’s at the shoot on the St. Louis Strobist Flickr Group.  This guy Chinga was awesome.  And, he made me really jealous…man I would kill to look like that.