So here they are, although not in any order in particular, other than chronological.

First up is an image I made in Spinningfields, Manchester that I submitted in the Urban View category of the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011 competition, which was subsequently shortlisted.

The Avenue, Manchester - Shortlisted for Landscape Photographer of the Year 2011

Also in January I made the image below with Charlie in Castlefield with one of my favourite modifiers, the Lastolite Ezybox. Details here

Charlie, Castlefield

Patrick with his guitar on the roof of the Arndale car park before the security guards came along. Blog post here

Patrick with his guitar on the roof of the Arndale Car Park, Manchester

Maltese street scene – First trip to Malta this year. Blog post here.

Typical street scene in Victoria on the Island of Gozo, Malta

Kayleigh, Trafford Park with the moon. Blog post  here

Kayleigh

Second trip to Malta this year. Blog posts here and here

Doorway, Zejtun, Malta

Anna – “Waiting for a bus?” with some very carefully placed SB900s – blog post here

Waiting for a bus?

Lighthouse, Vilamoura, Portgual. Blog post here and on variable neutral density filters here

View of the breakwater at Vilamoura, Portugal with a lighthouse at the end

Manchester Central Library – post here

Manchester Central Library at sunset

Jenson Button in his McLaren Mercedes tears up Deansgate, Manchester. Post here

Jenson Button

The Lake District. Post here

View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning

Derwent Valley. Post here

Tree in the Derwent Valley, High Peaks

And finally a shoot I did with Sophie and Pat in mid December that I haven’t yet blogged about. Post to follow in the New Year.

Pat & Sophie

So in retrospect I’m more than happy with the quality of what I’ve produced this year, though I do feel that I need to up the quantity next year. And in upping the quantity I’m pretty certain that this will also see an improvement in the quality too. I ought to write a post on my plans for 2012 too. For one, it’ll give me something to be held to, and it’ll also help me to thrash out my thoughts and plans for the next year of my business and where I want to take it. So you can look forward to this in the coming weeks.

Finally, for 2012 I’ll be releasing desktop wallpapers for your personal use. You can download January’s here in 3 separate sizes. There’s 2560 x 1440, 1920 x 1200 & 1440 x 900. Simply click the appropriate link and right click to save to your desktop.

NeilAlexander_JanuaryDesktop - 1440x900

As this’ll be my final post for 2011, I’ll sign off by saying that it’s been a fantastic year for me photographically speaking and I hope that 2012 is even better.
Enjoy the celebrations, and I’ll see you on the other side.

Wishing you a prosperous 2012.
Neil

Learn the rules and then learn why and how to break them.

1. Rule of Thirds
   Imagine splitting your frame into 3 equal horizontal strips, and then 3 equal vertical stripes. This will give you the basic layout for the  ”rule of thirds” which basically states that in order to make your frame more appealing to the eye, you should place the focal point, or primary element of your photograph on any of the 4 inner connecting joins.
   

   Salford Quays at sunset

   For one reason or another (too complicated to go into here), this generally makes your image more aesthetically pleasing. However, this is not always true but you need to learn why it works, and when to break the rule. For the image below of the bridge in Salford Quays at sunset, I have purposefully placed the bridge in the lower third of the frame which also gives me more room to show the magical colours in the sky.

2. Balance- this is simply the arrangement of shapes, colours, or areas of light and dark that complement one another and make sure that the photograph does not have an uneven feel to it. For this image below of “Dawn in the Peak District”, I have used the rising sun in the top left to balance the munching sheep in the bottom right. Without the sun in the frame, the image appears lopsided, and bottom heavy.
   

   Dawn in the Peak District

3. Simplicity- Make sure that your frame is free from clutter, and always make sure to check the edges for intruding elements. If you could lose that telephone pole by taking two steps forward, then do it. Telephone poles, random tree branches, power lines are all examples of elements that if included in an image, often provide distraction inevitably detracting from the final quality of the image. These are also all things that can often easily be removed by moving your feet a few paces forwards or backwards. In this image of Sarah below I have gone in close to remove some distracting grafitti on the wall just to the camera left. This image also incorporates elements of point 4 below using the lines of the brickwork to lead the viewer’s eye up to the subject.
   

   Sarah

   

   Kayleigh by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)An example of a very clean and simple frame, also incorporating an element of balance using the moon to provide equilibrium with the model

4. Using lines – Lines can often be used to draw the viewer’s eye into and around the image. These don’t just have to be clear lines like roads or paths, but they can be more abstract such as the line of a subject’s gaze, or the pattern created in a cloudy sky. The more of a path you can create for the eye to follow in an image, the longer you will keep the viewer engaged, and the stronger the image will be. In the image below I have used the windy line of the road to lead the viewer’s eye from bottom right round and up to the tree.
   

   View up The Struggle in the Lake District on an Autumn morning (Click to view larger)

Windsor Castle by Neil Alexander (Click to view larger)Here I have used the path of the staircase bottom left to lead the viewer's eye into the frame

Anna by Neil Alexander (Click to view larger)

My original plan had been to place a light stand either side of the open windows and light Anna in through the open windows with a close crop showing only the edges of the structure. Alas one of the ends has been filled in, presumably to provide a little welcome shelter to any occupants, but foiling my initial plan. Plan B involved simply placing an SB900 in either corner on the floor inside the shelter at the front directed up and back towards the ceiling, but this looked bloody awful. It made Anna look like some horrendous green vampire as it cast a horrible green glow from the ceiling and the bench everywhere. Plan C took a little more effort, but worked a treat. I rigged two SB900s with Pocket Wizard MultiMaxs and bungeed them to the middle rafter on the ceiling either side of Anna.

SB900 and Pocket Wizard bungeed to the rafters

I had to use the Pocket Wizards because with the flash units being hidden up in the rafters, I no longer had line of sight from across the road rendering Nikon’s iTTL useless. The only way to trigger the strobes was using these radio triggers. Unfortunately for my legs though, these lil’ fella’s are certainly not the new all singing all dancing TTL units that Pocket Wizard are currently flogging around. It’s all manual with these babies. Which meant lots of to-ing and fro-ing across the road to get my levels just where I wanted them. The final image was shot at 1/125 sec F2.8 at ISO200 – it was a bright day, but I found that at this point I could avoid blowing out the background around the shelter and still have enough control over the ambient inside to avoid showing the back wall too much. Angling the strobes forwards slightly, so that they were aimed directly at either side of Anna and slightly towards the camera also helped here. Had I placed them on the front most rafter I would have had too much spill onto the background and I feel the direction of the light on the model would have been much less dramatic. I then applied a little dodging and burning in Silver Efex Pro 2 in post.

Lena by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

A couple more images from a recent shoot with Lena in Old Trafford. Another manic week so another brief post…..

Lena by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Both images using natural light only. Have a great weekend
TTFN…..

Charlie by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Inspired by Zack Arias’s amazing 3 day “Foundations of a working photographer” course on Creative Live, I felt inspired to try some fresh head shots and incorporate some of his techniques. Both of these images are shot with 100% ambient light. No artificial light was thrown into the mix whatsoever. The top photograph of the lovely Charlie was shot in her front room. The sun had just appeared after a torrential downpour, and with just a couple of hours until it was due to set, it’s tones were beginning to take on a nice colour. It was quite a strong light, and not particularly flattering, so I threw a white sheet up over the curtain rail in the window which gave me a lovely soft complimentary light with which to shoot. I used a gold reflector camera left just to throw a little light back into the shadows on the right hand side of her face and to pick out her beautiful red hair a little more.

Charlie by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

After that we decided to head over to Walton Hall to try and catch the last light. It was a bit of a mad dash – it was fading fast. I spotted this huge bush with masses of pink flowers. I’d hazard a guess it was a hydrangea, but I’m ignorant as heck when it comes to things that grow in the ground (grass and daffodils are about my limit!). I figured it would make a nice backdrop if I could throw it completely out of focus. The last light was just managing to make it through the trees behind me, so we found a spot where it was unobstructed and their Charlie knelt. It wasn’t quite reaching the flowers and it’s kinda falling off on the bottom of her chin and hair, but I like the way it’s caught her eyes and cheek bones. Once again, all ambient. No energy cells were killed in making these images. Shot with D300 and Nikkor 105mm F2.8 Macro – which is my new favourite portrait lens.

Top image was 1/250 sec at F3 ISO800 and bottom was 1/60 F3 ISO 800. As always comments welcomed. TTFN….

Alex by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

These are a couple of simple portraits I did on Monday. The location was a city centre flat, which had a lot of reflected sunlight coming in through a very large floor to ceiling window. There was no direct sunlight, so the result was a lovely soft and diffused light source. A great start from which to work. We did a few poses with just ambient but I was really looking for something a little more “high key”. The natural light was great on Alex’s face (camera right), but left a bit of a grey-ish background. To counter this I set up the large Ezybox softbox camera left and feathered it, a lot. That is to say that only the very right hand edge of the light was set to fall on Alex and the rest on the wall behind her. This accomplished two things – it gave me a much cleaner background and it produced a little fill on what would have been the darker side of Alex’s face. The processing was just a little Dynamic Skin Softening with Nik’s Colour Efex Pro and a small curves contrast tweek.

Alex by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

For the image above, we moved outside into the grounds of a church opposite which still had lots of lovely pink blossom around, though mostly on the floor. Initially I envisaged shooting full length with Alex’s feet amongst the fallen petals. But by this time, the direct sunlight was harsh and as we were in amongst a bunch of trees, harsh and speckled. Not good. In the end, I decided waist up was the way to go. This way I could keep nearly all of Alex in the shade, and use a simple reflector camera right to throw a little fill back into the shadows and give me some catch lights in her eyes. Job done in a very short space of time – I surprised myself at how quickly I got the lighting down

Teddy bears by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

I’ve been asked a few times lately about high-speed sync – what it is, and how it works so I’m going to have a go at explaining what it is and how it works.

The simple answer to the latter is that I’ve absolutely no idea (it’s far too techy for my meagre brain to understand), but I do know how to get it to work for me.

The theory behind high-speed sync is that most strobes will sync with a camera at a given shutter speed, which is generally around 1/250 second.

If you were to put your camera and flash into full automatic, you will find that in brightly lit situations your camera will set itself to this highest shutter speed and go no further.

What this means, is that often, especially in bright situations you’ll find that you cannot get your shutter speed high enough to expose properly, and avoid blowing out the highlights leaving you with a horribly over-exposed image.

Why would you want to use a flash in this situation you might ask. Well, if you want to create a little drama in your image say, then you’d ideally like to expose the background or sky properly, or even under-expose a little and still have your foreground / subject adequately lit. Without an additional lit source, be it a strobe or a reflection of some kind there is no way that you’d be able to do this. So say that you are shooting a portrait outside in the middle of a typical sunny day, and you want a nice shallow depth of field, then you could be shooting at around 1/4000 sec at F2.8 for example to get the background properly exposed. If you then place a person with their back to the sun, then their face wouldn’t be getting anything like the same levels of light and would appear under-exposed. You’d need somehow to throw a little light back onto the subject. You could use a reflector, but this may not create the look you’re going for, or may not be possible. So your other option is to use a flash, but if the fastest your strobe can sync with your camera is 1/250 sec then you’re screwed.

This is where high speed sync comes in. With Nikon DSLRs it’s as simple as going into your camera’s flash settings and enabling Auto FP mode (Menu > Custom Settings > Bracketing / Flash). This will allow you to fire your strobes at any shutter speed, and instantly solve the problem of the scenario above.

So now let me introduce you to Keith and Helen. My kids two best friends, who has you can see have been well loved. After a conversation with an art-director last week, this image popped into my head so I figured I’d give it a whirl. A little lacking in space, I decided to shoot this on my office sofa. I wanted the only light on the teddies to come from my flash so that I could sculpt it as I saw fit. An initial test found that to kill the ambient light coming through the windows and still keep a little depth of field, I needed a shutter speed of 1000/sec at F5.6. Using Auto FP sync mode, meant that I could fire an SB900 wirelessly using TTL by simply using the pop-up the flash on my camera. And that’s it – I have total control over the light in the photograph.

Teddy bears set up by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

With an SB900 in a 30″ Lastolite Ezybox hotshoe just a few inches above my “subjects” and a silver reflector on the other side just to throw a little of the light back into the shadows on the other side, I had a perfectly lit “portrait”!

For more information on high-speed syncing and off-camera flash, here are my two main go to resources:-

1) Syl Arena’s Speedliting site at http://speedliting.com
2) David Hobby aka The Strobist at http://strobist.blogspot.com

Model, Charlie Yates in Castlefield by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

Quick post this morning… The images contained in this post were shot on location in Castlefield, Manchester late one sunny but very cold afternoon towards the end of January. The original shoot had been planned for two models with a make-up artist, but when first one model cancelled, then the make-up artist cancelled (all for quite legitimate reasons), and then the final model had to cancel it looked like the whole day was going to have to be canned. Fortunately, Charlie stepped into the fray, and we went ahead anyway. It put my improvisation skills to the test, as everything I had pre-visualised had two models in it and revolved around their interaction.

Having only the one model, obviously made things a little easier for me from a lighting point of view. So early on I made the decision to try and stick with just one light if I could. And on this light I decided to use the Lastolite Ezybox Hotshoe collapsible soft box. Got to say that I really am a big fan of these things; for the amount of space that they take up when collapsed and for how lightweight they are, the soft light that they create is brilliant. They’re quick to put up and even quicker to take down and fold away. To my eye, they’re just as good as a studio quality softbox for a fraction of the cost and impracticality. I only have the 54cmx54cm and I really must make an effort to try and track down one of the larger ones. Both of these images were taken shooting into the sun on top of the site of the old Roman fort with an SB900 in an Ezybox roughly 180º from the sun to provide a fill.

There are a few fly away hairs that I need to brush out, but apart from that I’m very pleased with this – they’re pretty much exactly as I had pre-visualised.

Model, Charlie Yates in Castlefield by Neil Alexander (Click for larger)

]]> http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2011/02/04/why-i-love-my-lastolite-ezybox/feed/ 0 http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/07/27/shooting-on-hampstead-heath/ http://blog.neilalexanderphotography.com/2010/07/27/shooting-on-hampstead-heath/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:24:22 +0000 Neil http://manctog.com/?p=5453

Roseanne on Hampstead Heath by Neil Alexander

Last Friday I went down to London for Kelby Training’s “On location lighting workshop” with the legendary National Geographic and Life photographer, Joe McNally. Having been to David Hobby’s fantastic workshop in Leeds, where there were about 30-40 attendees, I was quite shocked to see an auditorium packed with more than 500 eager photographers. It was a somewhat less intimate affair, but equally as entertaining and informative.

I had been planning this weekend for some time, so I booked myself into a hotel and arranged three separate on location model shoots for the 24 hours after the workshop to try and put into practice some of the tips and tricks that I had gleamed.
For the first shoot I had intended on trying to shoot in Regents or Hyde Parks, but after a ridiculous email conversation with the Royal Parks people, I quickly decided to knock that idea on the head. The gist of the final email was “if you are aiming for your images to be published/promoted in the future, then we must treat you as a professional and therefore charge you £400 and insist on £5 million worth of public liability insurance”!
So I decided to go for Hampstead Heath instead. I’d done some extensive research online and found that there’s a really cool looking pergola over on the western edge of the park that looked like a real possible for a sunset shoot. It’s raised about 10 feet above the ground and runs in an east/west & north/south direction. We got there eventually about 8pm, but only managed about 15 minutes shooting time before the sun dropped down behind the tree line. We then left here and moved to a little hillock round the corner which still had the descending sun lighting it through the trees. The vibe here wasn’t all that comfortable – there were lots of single blokes milling around looking rather sheepish and it wasn’t until later that I found out that this was the “gay cruising” area of the park!

Roseanne on Hampstead Heath by Neil Alexander

In spite of all that, Roseanne was great, and most definitely game, and I got a few keepers. Somehow I’d managed to heavily underexposed most of the images, and I’m not sure why. I can only think that it can have been for two reasons; just the other day I’d been shooting in bright sunlight so had turned the brightness on the LCD on the back of the camera right up, and for most of the shots of Roseanne, I had positioned her in the sunlight and I’d been in the shade which I guess made the pictures look brighter than they actually were.

As a result of travelling down by train, I came equipped as lightly as possible. So in the way of lighting gear, I just brought 3 strobes, a couple of stands and 2 reversible brollies and decided to leave the kitchen sink behind. I did bring my Pocket Wizards, but inspired by McNally’s amazing use of Nikon’s CLS system, I decided to try and shoot TTL all weekend. The top two images were lit with an SB900 on a shoot thru either side of Roseanne and feathered a little. In fact for the second image, I left 2/3s of the reversible cover on the umbrella camera right to prevent too much fall off onto the background. For the bottom image, I just used one strobe and shoot through camera left to fill in the shadows a little left by the falling sun over my right shoulder.
More to come…..

Roseanne on Hampstead Heath by Neil Alexander

Location:Hampstead Heath, London