Ken Knoll Photography

Hey folks,

my friend Xue just uploaded the BTS video of the Friedberg shoot. I’m excited to share this with you! Enjoy!

Behind the scenes: Photoshoot in Germany from Xue Liu on Vimeo.

Hey folks,

I had such a great time shooting with Kevin! He is, hands down, one of the coolest guys I personally know. You know, one of those guys that you immediately feel at ease with. I met him in my gym last year and he became my trainer. Ever since he’s chasing me through the studio, but I just never get to curse him ’cause he’s just too nice a guy! I learned that, among the many other talents he has, he’s also a musician. Of course I had to take some nice pictures of him. Actually, as my facebook friends might have seen, a couple of weeks back I had already helped him out with some shots of his work (see my Commercial gallery – since there’ll be more work following this up this project, I might blog about it soon).

This time, I wanted to do something for my personal portfolio. So I went with something simple and classy. Just one light in most cases so I could focus on the subject and the mood rather than on the complex lighting. I put it to a quite extreme angle so that every slight turn of the head resulted in a different look. Also, I felt that it matched the mood. I played some music and we were having a good time shooting and grooving. What really made the shots for me was the microphone – it’s a Shure 55, a classic model back from the time when Elvis was rockin’. I borrowed it from the super awesome, friendly and competent guys at Musikhaus Crusius in Darmstadt -thanks so much, I really appreciate it!

Sit back and enjoy – do you feel the music?

Here comes a shooting that I have been excited about for months and months! It feels great to finally be able to share the outcome with you! My facebook friends have already gotten a preview ’cause I couldn’t wait again… Speaking of facebook, a second ago I registered a facebook page that you can “like” if you want. I’ll use it to announce news about my photography – so if you want to stay in touch, this might be for you. The link is at the bottom of this post.

The idea for this shooting was simple: Get a decent hotel room and see what I can get out of it in one night. Since the occasion was there, I was able to take some shots in the morning, too. We had such a great time shooting these pictures and building the set! (And yes, we did put everything back in place). So without further ado, here are the shots I took late at night:

The look I had in mind is quite obviously a hommage to many great photographs from around a certain time. I don’t know if I nailed that style, but to me, for a self made do and make-up, it looked really cool and I am very happy with the way the pictures came out. The second picture is actually only lit by the bathroom mirrors and was more of an accident/making of shot – but since it looked so cool I decided to keep it! Don’t we love happy accidents!

The hotel suite we booked was great – huge windows and an enormous bed that I knew I had to take as a backdrop. The sun was pouring in through the window and filled the room with great light – so I thought, why not have some morning fun and jump around on the bed?

For you techies: For the night shots, I used a beauty dish from up close and filled it in with a reflector (first image) and bounced some light into that same reflector (third image). The first morning shot is backlit by the sun and filled in with a gold reflector.

Here is the facebook page link – I am completely new to using facebook pages, so I’m excited to find out how this will work out. If it does, give me some feedback by liking stuff or shooting a a quick comment – I’d appreciate it!

-Ken

Last weekend, I had an amazing shooting with Elena. Unlike my normal routine, in this post I won’t start with a whole lot of words but let the pictures speak for themselves instead. There isn’t much to say about the technique anyways – Softbox and ambient light is what I used for these outdoor shots. But I might mention that I was blessed with a VAL (=voice activated light stand) in this shooting.

Alright, I might lose a few words on these two shots below since this setup was actually the original idea for the whole shooting, while the outdoor pictures were more of a byproduct. In these shots, I moved the softbox in really close from above (thanks to a boom that I recently purchased) and placed a hair light in the back. The background is actually a white wall. Does that seem weird to you? If so, you might want to read Zack Arias’ excellent explanation on the topic of light-and-subject-to-background-distance. My assistant provided us with a little wind made with a reflector – I don’t own a huge fan (only a huge online fan base, scnr). Softbox from above, some wind, and boom went the dynamite! Actually, I started out with another softbox from below which gave an even more even lighting – but it stood in the way when we tried to create wind. And despite these shots being “beauty shots” I liked the fact that this light still has some character – too perfect can be boring.
I would love to get your feedback on these pictures! How do you like them? What do you not like about them? Please shoot me a comment or an email – thanks!

Finally, I want to give you guys a chance to glance behind the scenes of that birthday shoot i did for my brother. My goal was to create rather dramatic shots (as opposed to creating perfectly-smooth lit images), so in most shots I opted for my newly built DIY beauty dish. This decision was rather spontaneous, so I actually ended up building the dish the night before and the paint on it was still wet – literally! Basically, the beauty dish is a big salad bowl (you wouldn’t believe how many stores I had screened to find the right shape!) and a flower pot saucer lined with aluminum foil on the inside acting as a reflector. The light it makes is somewhere in between soft and hard – seemed like a a good match for a “manly” shoot.

As you can see, I used the dish on the shots on the bridge from up high and left. Why the oblique angle, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you: a) He’s wearing glasses, so any light source at the standard 45° angle would show up as a reflection on his glasses and b) my goal for this shoot was to try different things and go away from the same old. I thought it looked rather interesting. In fact, it looked a little too interesting (in terms of dramatic), so I decided to fill in some light from below and right with a silver reflector. The reflector is being held by my lovely assistant of the day. This lighting technique is basically what I used on almost all the shots – dish from above, sometimes fill in a little with a reflector. Really easy. And the light was really smooth enough so I didn’t have to touch it up a lot in Photoshop – in fact, I think I never went above 1/4 power which allowed for fast recycle times and still gave me apertures around 4 which was enough (or little enough) depth of field for me. As a matter of fact, being a “strobist” I do take some pride in trying to exposing somewhat correctly – I always try to hit the correct exposure by chimping on the little screen since I don’t want to have to bump up the exposure by 8 stops afterwards in the raw converter.

This shot in the cafe was done in no more than two minutes including set-up. As David Hobby once wrote, pretty soon you get the kinda-scary ability to guesstimate the settings on the camera and the strobe: I ended up at something like f/2.2, iso 400 and a sixtieth of a second. As you might have guessed, little reflector on the side. Oh, and cloudy white balance to warm it up. This is the out of cam exposure (as are all images in this post), so comparing to the processed images below you get the idea what the on-set lighting already gave me without a whole lot of photoshop editing.

In this shot, you can see the spotlight character of the dish and the nice shadow it creates. Without the fill-in reflector it’s definitely a relatively harsh light (since I had to place it at a certain distance to the subject due to the framing), but I like it that way. The exposure on his face is a little too high on the neutral setting, so for the final image (see posts below) I went with two different raw exposures that I merged into one image (which is something that I end up doing quite frequently whenever I want to darken the background).

I hope you enjoyed this short explanation – if you have any questions, shoot me a comment!

Before I hop in the tech stuff I promised in my last posts, I want to share some pictures that I took last weekend testing my new softbox – it’s 28′ by 28′ and I love it. Super smooth, yet directed light thanks to a recessed front.

Unfortunately, due to the spontaneity of the test shoot, I had forgotten to take spare batteries, so I only flashed a couple of frames. I switched to available light (wow, that stuff still works!) and took some more quick portraits. I still only have my trusty 50 on my camera, so like in my last shooting I tried to find alternative perspectives and move around more while shooting. “Do the reshoot now”, as Joe McNally always says.

There is this saying that somewhat goes like the shoemaker’s son always goes barefoot. In my case, since I fortunately don’t have kids yet, that applies to my family: I never had the time to take nice pictures of them. My brother has been asking me to take some pictures of him for way too long – so for his 28th birthday I finally agreed to take some nice portraits of him.

I will save the techie stuff about these pictures for another post so I can focus on the thought process behind the portraits here – so stay tuned for the next post, tech folks!

I need to elaborate on my brother a bit to give you an idea about the kind of pictures we had in mind. He’s without a doubt the most creative guy I know of – coming up with new ideas is as natural to him as breathing. He’s an entrepreneur – of course. The ideas that rumble through his head are often business related, so he’s constantly starting new businesses. I think, right now he’s working on at least three different startup ideas. On top of that, he’s got a job many people would kill for. Oh, also he’s a great friend and a good listener. Ok now, convey all that in a couple of portraits…

For the first set, I scouted a location that was supposed to reflect the business side. Also, it should be modern, chic and stylish. To be honest, I had never spent as much time on getting a location – including phone calls to the right persons and making friends with the security personal. But I think it was well worth it.

I had written up a small shooting script with the ideas I wanted to realize. So I pretty much knew what I was going to shoot beforehand and I could focus on more important things like my model. We started off with a couple of portraits on a bridge inside an office building. Pictures he could use for his new job (they want pictures of their employees for their magazine) or as editorial material in articles or blogs.

My personal goal for this shooting, however, was not to only do my standard 3/4 headshot routine, but to choose different angles and play around with space, perspective and sight lines. So I got down on the floor (and cleaned up the dirt with my t-shirt) and took some whole-body shots as well. I really loved this bridge and I’m happy with the way he interacts with the location – kind of like: Hey, I’m CEO, but I’m down to earth. Doing business without ties, literally.

After the bridge shots, we went to a small staircase with wonderful glass stairs that were lit up by neon tubes – I’m saving some of those shots (which were among my personal favorites) up so I can illustrate the tech stuff in the next post. The mood in these pictures was the same, some more serious, some friendly shots with a chic background.

More pictures in part 2 of this post.

Ever had that feeling that, if you had said nothing at all, things might have turned out better? Or even, if you had said less, you could have achieved a better outcome? Well, I have. I like to talk, and as they say, talk is fight, right? No. It shouldn’t be, at least from my perspective. The reason is simple. When you talk, you can’t listen at the same time, and without listening, you cannot learn. One of the many goals I have for this year is to learn more – listen more. And for that, I probably need to shut up more. Also, shutting up more makes sure that saying something that, with more consideration would have never been uttered, stays where it should. Obviously, shut up may sound a little harsh, but I think it conveys the idea rather clearly. All powerful mantras are simple, n’est-ce pas?

Well, as a friendly reminder (and, not to forget, for the fun of doing it) I decided to transform these two wise words into a photograph. Featuring myself as the model. Here’s my trial-and-error thought and work process of creating this image: I had a backlit situation in mind, so I set up two lights in the back aiming at the camera. Nice rim on the cheeks, positioning corrected. Got rid of the snoots after some test shots – the flare looks stupid with the snoot and zooming in the heads to 85mm did a good-enough job to control the beam spread. Alright, now, the background should still look dark, I want those two lights come out of dark like car headlights in the night. However, my face needs some light. OK, softbox camera up right to my face. Damn – I don’t have a boom, so the light falls on the background (which is the bamboo room divider in my smallish room). When I take back some of the power, the background stays dark. But my face, too. Idea: Handheld reflector from above – catch some of that background light and direct it to my face. That worked. A little too well, though – the background caught some light again. So far, 12 minutes spent on the shoot – that’s enough. Photoshop will have to fix the rest. And I’ll buy that boom. Soon.

Every once in a while, my colleagues from the company that I currently work for ask me to bring my camera to take some snaps of some event that takes place at our site, mostly speeches, presentations, get-togethers, you get the idea. Even though I am not a big fan of documentary style pictures, I jump on the occasion whenever I can. The downside is, and I guess I am hurting nobody’s feelings here, that these pictures are not really the kind of pictures that I normally like to take. The not-as-beautiful office location is dimly lit, the use of flash mostly not welcome due to the distraction, sometimes even the shutter sound of my 5D is already perceived as a major annoyance. It’s not that everybody’s waiting for the photog to show up and let him do his thing, it’s more like I sneak in, squeeze a few frames until I get annoyed glances and sneak back out five seconds later. And most pictures reflect that. But they document the event for other colleagues. So, whatever, I’m making somebody happy.

However, after the last event I felt like making myself happy as well. So I came back to my desk with just my camera and two bare speedlights and I felt like composing some pictures just for myself and the fun of it. Since my co-workers weren’t gonna move away from their computers I had all the freedom I needed to prop whatever piece of equipment around them. Since I didnt have stands or light modifiers I looked around for alternatives. What’s a good softbox for the key light? Bingo, bounce some light against the flip chart. Hair light? Put the other bare speedlight on the book shelf. Flare? Admittedly, I got lucky here. The sun was setting right at this time and cast a wonderful color into the office room. Popped two, three test frames to balance against the sunlight and, to quote David Hobby again, Robert was my father’s brother. Lucky for me, my co-workers were playing along nicely (even though it must have felt weird to have that flip chart stand 1ft away from their nose….). Oh, how I love this kind of distraction.

Last week, I had the opportunity to help out a friend who works at the university. One of the institute’s more prestigious projects, the so-called quadrocopter (like a helicopter, only with four instead of one rotor), needed to be photographed for the all-new website. Should this be any interesting to me? You betcha! Trying to make the nerd stuff look interesting for generations of students to come sounds like a great challenge.

And in fact, the quadrocopter itself doesn’t look all that spectacular. The guys at the institute could probably spend an hour elaborating on the inner values of that mean machine (that I refer to as the robocopter when the professor’s not around), but from the outside, it’s not all that impressive. It’s maybe 40 to 50cm in diameter, has those big soft balls at the four ends so that can land safely and a lot of electronics in the middle.

So my friend and I thought “why go the easy way if we can make this thing look like an UFO?”. Add some drama! With fog, landing lights, and everything, this thing has to look huge! So the way to go was clear and we set up a plan for the shoot. The perspective was more or less given, since we wanted the quadrocopter to look big and impressive (thus use a wide angle from below) and use the whole image in a rather long heading image (so the perspective had to be from the side rather than from straight above or below). To create that UFO look and feel, we decided to add dramatic shadows by setting the robocopter up in a very dark improvised studio and light with very tight spotlights. To make some highlights in the area around the robo visible, we decided to add some fog – the part that makes this shot work.

How do you create fog? Well, I asked an old friend of mine, who’s in the sound & light biz – these guys must know. I quickly understood that a hazer (i.e., a fog machine) would be the wrong choice, ’cause we had the whole thing set up in a small room and didnt’t want to die early from smoke poisoning, plus, we didn’t need to have fog everywhere, but just in the right place. Dry ice was the way to go. Throw pellets into warm water, it gives you 30 seconds of great, dense fog that you can play with. Fortunately, we managed to buy dry ice in a city nearby. The fog it creates is heavier than air, so it stays on the set if you block all the exits.

Speaking of, the setup for the whole thing was a little more complex than the stuff that I normally do. First, we darkened the room with large dark curtains which I still have from my Photo Booth Series. Then we set up two tables as our playing ground, framed them with cardboard on all sides to block the fog. Since we were going for very defined dark and light areas, we didn’t want to have any light bouncing around, so we put black fabric on the table and the sides. Also, since we were going to shoot upwards, we put more black fabric up against the wall on one side of the table.

The robo itself was rigged easier than we thought: Actually, we wanted to rig all four sides to stands – however, After I attached the first of the four sides to the stand we thought that it did look cool enough to do the job. The opposite side simply lasted on the table. We set a heater right next to the robo to warm up the water for the dry ice and we were ready to shoot.

As you might know, being a photographer on a budget means that I do not possess a gazillion flashes. Thus, we took one flash, put a super tight cereal box snoot on it and took about 300 single pictures, each highlighting a certain area. The fog starts to create a pretty dense carpet if you don’t do something about it, so we just whirled and blew the fog until it started to look interesting. In the end, we selected the exposures we liked best and stacked them into one big file to mask them out. Piece of cake, but still a lot work (and quite hard to keep track of which layer shows which part of the image). A lot of work for one single picture, but a great experience and great fun, too.