A few years ago, my partner and I went to Japan for a couple of weeks. I shot about 20 rolls of film on my Hasselblad 501cm over the course of the trip which meant I came home with about 250 images. Not a lot for most photographers over days, but in my opinion, just enough.

When I got back I scanned and printed the best of the images and had a little show at a cafe near my house. Most of those prints have been given away to family and friends (my sister for one has a number of them including a shot of fish heads from Tsukiji market in her office at the Smithsonian) but I had been meaning to do something different for a while now. I wanted to create a contact sheet of all of the pictures, have it printed as a poster, and then stick it on the wall for people to peruse when they come to visit.

Today my 30×48″ print arrived from El-Co Color (Love those guys) and it’s on the wall. Pretty neat in my opinion and definitely something different from the handful of small or medium size prints most people would create. Next I’ve got to try it with my Italy pictures.

Conrad sat in for me while I shot her from approximately two feet with:

A Paul Buff Einstein w/
– 7″ reflector
– 32″ shoot-through umbrella
– 32″ silver umbrella
– 22″ beauty dish
– 22″ beauty dish with 30 degree grid
– 22″ beauty dish with sock
– 24×36″ softbox
– 24×36″ softbox with grid

A Lumopro 120 Speedlight w/
– bare
– 32″ shoot-through umbrella
– 32″ silver umbrella
– 16″ softbox

The images were color corrected in Lightroom using the color chart on the wall.

And you know what? At least for the soft sources, they all don’t look THAT different from one another. So maybe I’m wrong. What do you think?

UPDATE:
So I’ve taken a look at them after a short night’s sleep and I wanted to point out a few things. While the light from the umbrellas and softboxes and such look pretty similar from a couple of feet away, you will notice that there is a huge difference in their spill into the rest of the scene. So if you need control over your lighting, some options are definitely better than others.

Also even though I was using strobes that ‘should’ more or less be about daylight balanced, there was a wide variation of white balance settings in post to get them in line with each other. The light from the Einstein for instance had color temp of 6000º, 5950º, 5250º, 5100º, 5500º, and 5000º depending on the modifier being used. The speedlight was even worse, 6600º, 6900º, 7500º. Remember that next time you use a strobe and think you can just set your WB to Daylight or Flash and call it a day. Nope. When in doubt, shoot a grey card at the beginning of your session so that you have a reference in post.

For me, it comes down to convenience to a large extent. If I have to carry my gear to a shoot I want to get the most bang I can get for the size/weight buck. For me lately that has been a couple of 36″ Softlighters from Photek. They fit criss-cross in my Pelican rolling case and can be used as white umbrellas, shoot-through umbrellas, and as designed with the front diffuser. Three tools in one. (Plus they’re cheap!) That said, yesterday I was shooting some corporate headshots and brought along an Alien Bee with a 46″ Softlighter and the light from that much larger source (remember, the area of a circle is π times the radius squared so it’s about 50% more area than the 36″) was lovely. Wrapped around so nice that I didn’t even need a reflector.

In the end though, soft light is soft light. How you make it and how ‘soft’ it is largely academic. If what you’ve got is an umbrella, it’ll be fine. If you’ve got a softbox, use the softbox. Stop worrying about the 5% difference in the quality of light and start worrying about making better photographs. Let me put is this way to wrap up: If you’re pictures aren’t good enough, it’s not the umbrella’s fault.

Go check it out yourself:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/14/bill-wadman_n_4086019.html?utm_hp_ref=arts

Click to Enlarge.

As you can see it ended up a bit differently than I had originally planned (as things like this usually do). First, I gave up on the caving idea, no exciting enough, plus I couldn’t get my hands on the equipment I’d need to make it believable anyhow. That’s when I came up with the idea of them running from the imagined jaws of a cthulhu-like monster from beneath the ground.

The first thing I had to do was move the pipes and gravel pile to a more desolate location, so I co-opted a landscape I took on the salt flats at the bottom of Death Valley at dawn. Much better. Cisco and Eran showed up and we shot about 30 pictures of them if various forms of the pose with Cisco standing on the edge of a table (with my friend Guillaume serving as a counterweight. As you can see I had a soft light from below blasting them to match the light from the pipe, plus one behind to rim light Cisco a little bit. There was also another strobe next to the camera bouncing off the wall to give some overall illumination to the shadows that the other two lights caused.

Compositing the two together was the hard part, along with the random science photos of tentacles. That stuff took a couple of hours. Cleaning up the masks on each element, playing with curves to try to get the contrast and brightness to match between layers.

I posted a version on facebook and G+ last night at around this point. I knew normally I’d spend another hour or two playing with it to really polish things up, but I was tired so I went to sleep. This morning however I added the final touches. Smoke coming up from the pipes, a minor lens flare or two, a lightning bolt, plus a whole lot more 1 or 2 pixel clean-ups.

Is the end result believable? Well it is a giant underground octopus attacking my friends in the middle of Death Valley so let’s be reasonable about the answer to that question. That said, I think it’s successful and silly, and a lot of fun. It ended up very different than I originally intended, but also much better. Not bad for a weekend project.

The powers that be are doing some construction on a street in my neighborhood. Installing what I can only imagine are new water mains or something. But in the process, they’ve left large, by which I mean four foot diameter, tunnel segments on the street for the weekend. Here’s what they look like:

I know, they don’t look like much, but I think they have potential. At first I thought of just doing a silly portrait of someone inside one of them. Boring.  Then I thought they looked like something out of Super Mario Brothers and considered doing a send-up of that. Not my style and also boring.

In the end I’ve come up with an idea of shooting people on the edge with ropes and hopefully climbing gear about to spelunk down into them. It’ll be all about the lighting. Speedlights down in the tubes lighting the people from below, one or two strobes to edge/backlight the people, and maybe one around camera position to fill from the front. Probably best to try it around dusk Sunday night, or even dawn.

How many people? I could do it with one climber if I have to. Two would be better, that way one person could be halfway in and the other feeding their rope. Ideally it would be three by adding someone down lower feeding the rope to the belayer. Best would be if I could get some fake smoke, but I’m not going to push my luck.

Potential trouble spots are that it will be illegal. I’m sure a bunch of people climbing all over big dangerous construction materials would not be looked kindly upon, and because of that I can’t get a permit.  The good thing is that I plan to shoot quick and be out of there before anyone complains.

Again, if I had my druthers, I’d have big lights and an hour or two to play with lighting before having an hour or two to shoot and try stuff out, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about doing the best with what I can get away with. Maybe we’ll be there 15 minutes.

Another option would be to shoot the pipes and then shoot the people at my place and composite the two together. Could do if I have to, but I’d rather try to get all that work done in camera.

Now I’m just got to find 3 people, an assistant or two, and some climbing gear.
The things I do for my art.

UPDATE 7:29PM Saturday:

Went to shoot some reference shots. I think it might be easier to do as a composite. Will need to replace the background with a prettier street through. Now I need to shoot some people at my place tomorrow.

I figured it was about time I took a picture of it. Click to blow-up.

This Sunday morning in Prospect Park here in Brooklyn, I want to do something similar. Except my version will be much more planned and polished. I’m thinking of adding cracks to the sidewalk, flashes of light, maybe a shockwave. Generally pimping it out as a fun little experiment in compositing.

What I need are people.  At least 12 or so, but the more the merrier. If everyone brings an extra jacket or hat we could probably multiply the group as well.

The plan is to meet this Sunday at 10AM at the bandshell off of Prospect Park West and 9th street. There’s a large expanse of concrete and even an option for me to get up above the action.

We will meet right about here (Google Maps Link)

Should be pretty fast. I think 20 minutes, half hour tops. And you can be part of making some fun art.

Again, the more people who come, the cooler it’ll look, so join us and tell your friends. If you’re thinking of coming, please send me a quick note to bill@billwadman.com so I can get some idea of what number I’ll have to work with.

Who’s with me?!

Thanks to Eran, Evan, Cait, Kalah, Emily, Patrick, and Heather for coming out this morning for a bit of fun. That Ranger Cam I have on loan came in pretty hand this morning.

Click on the images to blow them up bigger on your monitor and see some extra detail.

Click to expand.

For the month of December, prints of each day’s image will be 50%-off for the day they’re posted.
So if you like the image and want a print, BUY RIGHT NOW.