STUDIO KIT- Harder than I thought

EVER WANTED TO BUY STUDIO LIGHTING?

THOUGHT TO YOURSELF, I CAN DO THAT - EASY!

THINK AGAIN!!!

I have just purchased a second hand Bowens Esprit 500 kit, It cost £500 so not back pocket change, it took a while to gather the money together, 

Around a year ago I started watching videos on #YouTube of professionals tutorials on lighting and creative portraits. I WATCHED A LOT! and it was every day. The more I watched the more I thought to myself, I want to do this- This is something I could see myself doing as a side job and with the hopes of making a little bit of money as well. 

I only got this kit yesterday-Friday 19.06.15. It is much harder than I thought, REALLY HARD! somehow I thought I would pick it up straight away and I would be advertising my services on my Facebook page in no time. THINK AGAIN LEWIS. 

I set the kit up in  my living room and sat my son down for a quick test shoot. All photos were blown out. or totally black, After messing with settings and power output on the lights I managed to get a couple of shots I was after....

I have included a mono conversion and colour image.

There far from great, very NOISY for a start and maybe over edited as I couldnt get the LOW KEY look to work as good.

Today I had another half and hour to try ad capture some images.....came up with these

 

BETTER/WORSE???? YOU DECIDE.

I CAN ONLY KEEP TRYING AND HOPEFULLY GET BETTER.

MAKE SURE YOU ARE MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION BEFORE SPENDING A LOT OF MONEY ON KIT. IT IS HARDER THAN IT LOOKS IN THE VIDEOS ECT. 

BELIEVE ME!!!!

KEEP A LOOK OUT FOR MY IMAGES   https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lewis-Brown-Photography/490331894349799?ref=hl

Changing Direction

I have been taking photos for around 4 years now, at the beginning of the year I started to loose interest in photography, I was trying to hard to sell photos and because of the very small amount of sales I was getting I got sick- To the point of hanging my camera up for a short while. 

Over the past few months I decided to pick my camera and concentrate on taking photos and enjoying the fun side of photography, going out exploring new places uploading to social media sites and forgetting about making money. I have found my love for photography again and found new friends to go out and shoot, 

THAT'S WHAT ITS ALL ABOUT ISN'T IT?

I have been out trying different styles of photography including URBEX-which shooting urban places, Minimalism and derelict locations.

1800s Murder house

Abandoned tile factory

Minimalism 

This isn't my favorite subject but I enjoy the company of walking around capturing these different images.

I have always had a great love for Black and White photography and I have decided to concentrate my time on photographing this brilliant subject in a different way. 

I downloaded a plugin for Lightroom call NixCollection which can be found here: https://www.google.com/nikcollection/ 

I use SILVER EFEX PRO 2 to edit my black and white images to give it a moody look, and I have created a new FACEBOOK PAGE: 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lewis-Brown-Moody-BnW/397232876965336?ref=hl

Here are some examples and unseen photos as I haven't uploaded these yet. ENJOY

Spinning with wool

What a great night out I have last night. I was quite surprised to get an invite with some local enthusiasts. Light-painting is something I've always been interested in but never really gone out and done it. I have always been a lone shooter and personally, Light-painting is something that requires a few people. So when I got the invite to go I couldn't decline the offer.

Photography is more fun when you go as group in this case there were 4 of us including myself.

The original plan was to go to the local river and wool spin inside the old concrete boat (visit here to find out more) http://www.sunderlandecho.com/news/local/all-news/concrete-boat-is-part-of-shipbuilding-heritage-1-1153177.

But as the tide wasn't right we had to think of a new location. I knew of a place in Sunderland that would be perfect for this type of photography. There is an old abandoned farm and on the farm is a old barn, I had been up there before to take photos but never to Light-paint or in this case Wool spin.

We arrived just before sunset as it was light enough to check the place out and decide and prepare for what we were about to do!

I was advised to go to the local DIY store to get wire wool. I bought medium grade and it was rubbish. It was a good job that everyone else had fine grade-the fine grade worked really well, it lit up straight away and we were ready to rock and roll.

This was shot by myself and spun by another person, We tried a double wool spin, hence the 2 rings going. [shot at 30"- F8 - iso 250 @ 10mm using the Sigma 10-20]

We started the the night off by lighting up the wool first, we needed a test shot before it got really dark. I shot in bulb mode at F10 iso 200, and these settings worked well for me, so I stuck to them most of the evening.

For the people that have never done this before, just stuff the wool into the whisk, light it and spin it, or create an orb, and even a helicopter, BE CREATIVE

We tried a few other shots with light rather than doing spinning all night, 

Not my best orb, its a bit all over the pace but still, I'm no expert in painting with light. heres the settings I used.

[shot at 28"- F10 - iso 200 @ 18mm using the Sigma 10-20]

If you have never done this type of photography before, I would recommend you to go out and give it a go. It is all trial and error and don't get down hearted if it doesn't work first time. EVERYONE HAS TO START SOMEWHERE! WHY NOT NOW?

Ive uploaded some of my images to my Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/lewisbrownphotography/with/16228550523/ 

Feel free to check them out, Alternatively visit my Facebook page 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lewis-Brown-Photography/490331894349799?ref=hl

Here are a few shot of the night, ENJOY!

From left to right, ME, Darrin Carlisle, Anthony Taylor and Alan P Thompson

My first pictures

My first pictures. I have far too many to put into this post, but ill do my best. 

Like I said in my first blog post I have been taking pictures for a while now. Most of the images I took in my first year I have either misplaces or only have an instagram picture as a lot of my images I took using my Mobile.

All the below images were took using a Samsung mobile at the time. and this is what got me started in the world of photography.


Hope you enjoy looking my very first pictures. No one has ever seen these as I have posted them anywhere. 

The spider above. Not sure what type it is but I set my phone to macro mode and zoomed in as far as I could and got as close as the focus would let me. Personally I think it has came out pretty well.

 This picture is what a friend took using my phone. Nice action shot of my up the bike tracks in Sunderland, UK

My phone also took half decent night shots. This is the night before the Sunderland International Air Show.

Cant beat a hot home-made

pork pie at the Yorkshire show