Ken Knoll Photography

I had the privilege to do a shoot with the awesome Kam last weekend. Another low-gear shot, I only occasionally threw in my pop-up reflector. I loved the light on those outdoor shots. Amazing. Too bad we only had a small window to seize it, but there might be a round two some day soon.

It’s the first weekend in a long while that is completely free of any obligations and todos – I handed in a major paper at my university and my upcoming final thesis is not going to start before september. What a great feeling! I was planning on doing some location scouting in the region. I heard that there is a real sand dune in the middle of a small town nearby (I honestly don’t have the slightest clue as to why or how it ever got there), so I was going to check it out. And, while I’m there, do some nice, quick and easy portraits.

Not alotta gear, just my small diy softbox with a half cut of cto to add some spice to the nice available light. The dune itself turned out to be smaller than I expected, and well, with less sand. Well, restrictions are often a good thing, ’cause they force you to be creative and work with what’s there. Speaking of which, I had the 50mm walk-zoom lens on the camera, which I almost use exclusively on my camera since I can’t afford any other lens right now – another layer of creativity jogging restriction.

So I worked with some perspectives that I don’t normally use that often (model sitting, me standing) to try out something new, we had a little fun with throwing sand and freezing it mid-air (which is surprisingly easy) and walked around on the dune to find new perspectives and backgrounds. One thing that I’m really excited about is that David Hobby, who said that you start to get the kinda-scary ability to guess exposure and power levels pretty close to the optimum, is absolutely right: It normally takes me about one to three test-images until I’m perfectly happy with the light – no flash meter, no scientific method needed.

It really is that easy: Measure the environment, decide at which level relative to your light it should be, guess the power level on the flash (depending on distance, light color, light shaper) and pop some test frames. And once you’re good to go, you can just fire away – or switch roles and let the photographer be the model.

I said that before – it’s just great to have great friends. ‘Cause those great friends are cool with coming with you and have a great time doing some sunset backlit shots somewhere in the fields around Darmstadt. I’ve had this kind of look going through my head all day and it felt great to turn it into a reality (that kind of reality that ends with .CR2, that is). I wish I could do this kind of thing way more often. Trying different lighting situations, angles, techniques… this is, to my mind, what you need to do to become a good photographer.

These pictures were all natural light, I just brought my little gold reflector with me to bounce some of the sunlight back into the face.

Saturday night, around sunset time, I felt the itch to play with some strobes. I quickly grabbed my gear and my model for the night and set off to the nearby university. Has lots of big old buildings, and for some reasons, I felt like shooting brick walls (instead of the usual running against them). Also, I was going for something more experimental, stuff you don’t do to somebody who has to be looking fabulous on the picture. So instead of the usual flattering, soft light, I did the opposite: Cardboard-snooted hard light.

I started with two strobes: Main light gelled with CTO on camera right, another light with CTB fired against the background. The setup took me about 2 minutes, and another 3 or 4 shots to get the balancing right. I decided to use just a teeny bit of that quickly dropping ambient light, so I dragged the shutter just a little. I actually had to power down the strobe on the right to 1/32, the background strobe ended up around 1/8th. When shooting with hard light, there are a few things you need to consider. One thing is to have a model that can take the hard light. Honestly, it’s just not a flattering light. Luckily, to quote Joe McNally, there are some people that still look great when you throw a car headlight at them. The other thing is to have them look into the light source: Easy-peasy trick to erase unwanted nose shadows.

As the sun was completely gone, I wanted to finish with something simple. My camera had a hard time focusing, so I set the focus on manual. For this shot, I just shot through a white brolly and used some of the reflection on the steel wall as a little separating light (look on her hair to see what I mean).

Finally, to achieve that kinda edgy look I was going for, I cross-processed some of the pictures. The important thing for me is to know how to get the lighting right (know the rules) and still do all the mistakes – intentionally. Joe McNally says, to make something look interesting – don’t light all of it. And I guess, he’s right. Doesn’t have to be all bright and shiny. Histogram? Not today, my friend!

Here’s a little birthday gift that I came up with a few days ago – for understandable reasons, I couldn’t share it with the world until yesterday, but now it can go public safely. As you know, I am sort of in the process of diving into the whole “Strobist” movement. This came in quite handy when I spontaneously decided to get my girlfriend, who has just moved into her own appartment, a nice cocktail recipe book so she can mix some nice drinks for me for her friends. But a normal book from the shelf wouldn’t be nearly as cool, I thought – why not have some friends and her family pose with some nice drinks to come up with a personal recipe book? Well, one of the many merits of having great friends is that you can call them and talk them into doing all kinds of funny and weird photo projects. They were all quite excited about the idea, so I had them come to a nice bar, whose owner was kind enough to let me set up my equipment. The rest was easy: We had an amazing time enjoying yummy cocktails and snapping some pics for the album. The setup was quite basic, I had one umbrella with a CTO gel as a main light, used some of the ambient as fill, and added a snooted flash on the drinks to make ‘em pop. I was looking for a nice, warm, summerly theme. As it went a little too chilly outside, we moved inside and used the stylish bar as backdrop. Finally, I added the recipes, and with a little help from my designer friend Valentina, we created a cool layout for the whole book.

I had the whole thing printed, and it turned out really nice – and my girlfriend just loved it! Don’t you just love these little weekend projects? Oh, and before I forget: The Caipirinha shot (which is the cover shot for the book) was a little evening project from another day: I placed the drink on a glass, lit it from below and from above through a sheet of paper (cheapest softbox there is!) and threw a flash with a CTB gel against the white wall. Easy as pie, but it looks professional, doesn’t it?

I’m not big at planning photos, I normally shoot as I go. This one’s an exception from that rule. I saw that field the day before around sunset time and I was amazed by the grains’ beards which seemed to glow as the sunlight backlit them. That instantly made me think of the scene in the great movie “Gladiator”, when the hero Maximus arrives at his home in Spain and touches the grain, “Elysium” playing in the background… I later found out that “Elysium” refers to the place where heroes go, which makes a lot of sense when you think of “Freude sch?ner G?tterfunke, Tochter aus Elysium….”

So the very next day (Harvesting had already begun, it was late July) I had Ira pose for me in that field. And just as the sun hit the trees, I got the right composition. One of my all-time-favorites, because it just fills my heart with warmth when I think back of that day. If it’s one of the best shots I have ever made? I couldn’t say, because there is always room for improvement. But sometimes, atmosphere just overpowers technical flaws like that lense flare. When I ever get back to that field, I’ll make a nude version of that shot, I promise!