Update

There was million thing happening in my photography work, so much I don't have too much time to write much more of my thoughts and tricks. I'm meanwhile I've become part of a quite big photographic group in my city, made lot of different photosessions, learned tons of new stuff and there is already much of a thing that I would share with you, yet writing it down takes so much time (especially adding proper photos to visualise things argh). For my current work you can check out those links:

https://500px.com/pawel_paoro_witkowski

or just go onto my facebook account:

https://www.facebook.com/PawelWitkowskiPhotography/?ref=aymt_homepage_panel

That nowadays makes more sense to use as a communication channel than a blog.

Cheers,

Photosession with Agnieszka

For this session I had a pleasure to work with Agnieszka Tokarz. She is a great model and just looks great on photos. Definitelly it was not the last time I worked with her. For this session we decided to have four different clothes setup, and later on choose the best one. In the end I realised that all of them were great, so the results were much better than I even expected. I also decide to start shooting around 1hour before golden hour. This way I get some time to warm up and some time to shoot best colors during the day.

During the session I was heavily using reflector on a stand to light up models face and when the light conditions started to getting worse I also add external flash triggered remotely to be bounced from reflector. It's my first approach to bounce light that way instead to directly flash on model and effects were much better that I expect. For a big reflector (2mx1m) this kind of light diffusion adds lot of soft light that I usually need more that hard light.

During the session I also had some time to try abit with a Canon 100mm 2.8. Results were as good (or even better) as I expected from this lens for a portrait photography, and I'm currently collecting money to buy one to my own collection.

I get back with more than 200 photos and started with very difficult and long way of selecting best candidates to work with. This is the most tedious part as you need usually few passes trough to select roughly 30-50 good candidates so it means more than 400 photos being watched carefully for: a) composition, b) distractions, c) sharpness.

Postprocess starts to kinda work better and better for me with every session. I start to have my own workflow that produces results I'm satisied with, without spending 8h on every photo. Currently I do love adding some light accent to a subject using curves with radial layer attached to it. Additionally I do alot of partial color correction on models body as colors does not go so good naturally out of the camera. I also super-satified of a DxO processing engine and I'm currently using it as a main tool to render RAWs to work with them in Photoshop.

Still alot to learn, but with every session I feel a good progress is being done. Feel free to ask for anything in comments. (click on photo for large version).

2 sec triggering... Tips & Tricks

Well probably most of you have standart 10 sec trigger built in your camera. This makes sense when you want to make a photo of yourself standing with family, etc. However you might also notice strange 2 sec trigger mode. When is it usefull? Well... If you try to do more shoots in bad light conditions you starting to notice that any camera movement leads to nasty blurry image (of course not only camera movement, but lets focus on that part). Best thing you could do in that situation is to use a tripod. However you might still be affected of a slight camera movement during pressing a trigger. Go check this on your camera, and see how stable it is when you press shutter trigger. This effect is still visible on tripod (unless you have super steady hands). In that situations 2 sec trigger mode is best what you can get. Its enough time to stabilize camera and to get almost perfect shot. It's also usefull even without tripod to add little stabilization from your hands.

If the stability gain this way is not enough for you, there is still a small advantage you could get from, so called, Mirror Lock-Up. This option in some cameras makes sure that a mirror movement will be stopped before getting shoot. It's just a mechanical part that when moving might shake camera a little. However this way you will not gain as much you could expect (still if a sharpness is a key, you might consider have this turned on).

Only problem with those techniques is that you make a photo slighty later than you want. In some situations you might lose whole mood of a scene, so please use this tip with caution.

White card usage

My last session gave me some new tips that I want to share. Some time ago I was explaining how to use grey card during photosessions. I said back then that one shoot with grey card is enough for unchanging light condition. Unfortunately light condition means also that whenever you change light setup positioning (even same lights) - it might in fact change color ballance. If get yourself into situation like that (for example in studio), whenever you change light settings just remember to shoot also a grey card. Its one more photo that might save you'r butt later on.

Just attaching one shoot from mentioned photosession. On a left I used grey card values from beginning of a session, on the right side I manually update it (cause I haven't got new grey card settings for new light setup). This clearly shows how much yellow value was added by a bit outdated grey card settings.

Postprocess and ... monitor

Well I didn't know for quite log time how important is to postprocess your photos on good display until I switched from better one to worst possible. From that moment any photo I tried to edit look tragically bad. I'm talking about most common TN displays that are usually added to cheaper laptops (if you don't care too much about display quality).

This is how page with one color might look on TN display

If you have a TN display and are in doubts too - please check this page. I though that "wide angle view" is not so important, but even if I look straight at screen - I have different color at top than on bottom. I could not find a place where color look equally right on screen! Not talking about contrast, or color coverage...

Right now i'm a happy customer of a Dell U2410 monitor and results already are so much better that... I can't describe it - if you still trying any post-process on TN display... invest into some better monitor as soon as possible. It makes huge difference, believe me. I also hear this tip quite often from other photographers, so I guess it's not about my personal feeling.

What Photographer need to know as a stylist?

Well In my opinion a person that want's to make great photos with models needs to know not only how to handle photo accessories, but also know a little about makeup, modeling itself, styling etc.

Today I wanted to focus a little on a styling. In my opinion you should know as much as possible - but of course you can't be a stylist. But some usefull information how to mix things and hide some imperfections will definitely help you and your model decide how to dress correctly for a photosession. It will also help you start to see things that you might not see before - but others probably will. I will give you one link to give some ideas:

http://www.wikihow.com/Dress-for-Your-Body-Type

Please feel free to look for more interesting tips! If you find any good link worth share, please do!

Next - it's quite often usefull to have something in mind. If you lack of ideas, I think a pinterest is a quite nice tool to help you find out something. Again please share with me anything you use to make you inspired!

http://pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=style
http://pinterest.com/desre_nikolich/personal-stylist-ideas/
http://pinterest.com/onabags/style-ladies/
http://pinterest.com/TrendyBeauty/wwwtrendywomentv/

http://pinterest.com/oliviahsloan1/