STYLEJOCKEY is a post from: blog by eulee

For myself, this blog was started as a kind of social experiment and i must say I am hooked on it. I started in May 2009, after many years of deliberation and fears that I will not get pass my first post. I eventually discovered a love for writing. I can’t say I’m very good at it but at last I don’t dread it. So my first post was on packing for an overseas shoot in a reply to curious questions on what I always bring on my shoot. At that point of time I was already overseas and that was the perfect moment to talk about it. From then my blogging went on to discuss techniques, equipment, workshops, current work, book reviews and now with my new iPhone, a bit on apps and its camera. After the first post, ideas start popping up and since then, I’ve logged 140 posts! I try to go for higher value content and not just one-liners so I think I’ve done decently looking at my workload.

Work-wise in 2009. My core business is still wedding photography. I love this business and being a part of someone’s wedding. My corporate/commercial work, comprising events, product and advertising has been consistently providing the variety I look for. I am also moving into family photography in a bigger way as compared to the previous years. While I’ve been shooting families regularly, it’s only in 2009 when this area has picked up.

2009 is also the year my business moved on from a sole-proprietorship to a Limited Liability Partnership. My business partner is my fiancee Lydia and she’s been great in providing emotional support and a listening ear for me to bounce ideas off. 2010 will be the year that she’ll officially become my life-partner .

Lydia and I at Pont Neuf, Paris

I love to share. I am always excited about helping others discover things about photography and their camera. It was with this intention that I started officially my photography workshop in 2009. I fashioned it after my short stint in the tv series on Channel News Asia called Scene City. In it, guest photographers were brought to different places in Singapore to handle different photographic challenges. So to spice things up, my workshops are completely hands-on and located in different areas in Singapore.

So what’s the most popular post so far? Surprisingly, the highest statistic is about me…hmmm….followed by my post on my workshop. And then about my short article on Canon G11, which was posted immediately after the news was released.

So what’s in store for this blog in 2010? I hope my blog will be a useful resource for anyone interested in photography. I know I should not generalize that much and look for a more niche audience but I hope there’s something here for everyone. I’ll try to write more about techniques, tips and reviews in the hope that you can glean more useful information. I will still post current work to inspire and to sharing something new. Of course I can’t post everything due to some confidentiality issues.

Thanks very much for visiting my blog, dropping a note, commenting, and I sincerely hope that you’ve learned something all this while. That said, please feel free to give me ideas on what to write about too.

Have a great 2010 ahead!

A YEAR IN RETROSPECT is a post from: blog by eulee

Christmas. A time of giving. It goes beyond just giving material things. In Yolo’s gift, there is a book called ‘The Empty Box’. It’s about a box which was abandoned and later found its purpose…of giving and blessing others. It brings to mind also the biblical story of the five loaves and two fishes. Jesus wanted to feed the thousands that gathered to hear him. All there was were just 5 loaves of bread and 2 fishes. But that was enough. He multiplied them and fed the thousands and even had leftovers. All Jesus needed was for someone to offer something and a miracle was thus performed. This Christmas, let us be reminded that even though we think we have little to give, but giving it willingly is enough to bless all around us. You never know who you can touch deeply with even a gift of good works, of friendship, or even a smile.

Besides the book in the Empty Box, there were rolls of beautifully designed wrappers, all illustrated to the main theme. How apt. A book to shares a heartwarming tale of sharing and giving, and wrappers for all the gifts to bless your loved ones.

Merry Christmas everyone. May you never forget the joy of giving.

The Empty Box

The Empty Box Design

The Empty Box Book

The Empty Box Book

Illustration in the book

The wrappers

The wrappers

A CHRISTMAS GIFT FROM YOLO is a post from: blog by eulee

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Protected: WINE CARRIERS is a post from: blog by eulee

After the first shoot of the cups, an additional shoot was required for both the cups and the coffee sachet to be more in focus. Sometimes shooting the same thing twice gives an opportunity to try and explore a new approach. The layout of props was similar to the previous one so changes were made to the lighting setup. I still used the ST-E2, Speedlite 580EX and an umbrella. This time I used a styrofoam board as a reflector.

The time of shoot was in the evening, and there were long shadows and the colour of light was yellowish so I needed to introduce artificial light to get the blue-ish white of a morning light. I could also shoot RAW and change the colour temperature too during processing. Previously I used a shoot-through mode with the umbrella but this time I tried the reflective mode. The umbrella was useful to block the harsh evening light and to introduce soft light. Bringing the whole setup into the studio defeats the purpose of using ambient light to produce the right ambience. The flash was dialed up to +3EV to flood the scene with daylight. To throw a bit of light to the branding, a white styrofoam reflector was used. I chose not to use the silver reflector because I wanted a subtle fill light. The whole idea was to make the picture look as natural as possible. The sachet was highly reflective so I positioned it in front of the cup so that the light from behind was blocked.

The setup looked like this:

Shooting products with a lifestyle twist: Reloaded is a post from: blog by eulee

Step 1: You can see the white background has a gradient caused by uneven light setup.

Step 2: Use the Lasso tool and select the product. You don’t need to follow the product closely although you can if you want. Right click the mouse and set the radius to anything between 100 and 200. This depends on the resolution of your image. Just try and find out which works best for you. The radius gives a natural gradient to your selection.

Step 3: Right clock your mouse to pull out the menu and select the inverse because that’s the area you want to make completely white.

Step 4: Pull out the curves under Image>Adjustment>Curves menu.

Step 5: Below the graph, you’ll notice 3 eye-droppers. The right-most one makes whatever point in the image you select turn to white. Click that and position the eye-dropper to the darkest part of the white background. You’ll see that the whole background will change to pure white. Try looking out for the darkest area again if your background does not change to pure white. There is a more structured way of finding the white point using the Threshold command but this is the fastest. Just trust your eyes.

And that’s it, quick and dirty. Works for me.

Shooting Products at Home: Getting the white background is a post from: blog by eulee

I was asked to shoot a set of cups yesterday and I decided to do it with a bit of a lifestyle twist. So what is a lifestyle shoot as opposed to the the normal product shoot? It’s hard to define but I take it as shooting a product with a certain styling and props to simulate a real scene. Unlike a product shoot for a catalog which is normally shot on a clean background, the lifestyle shoot shows the product being ‘used’. These shots tend to create interest and draw the viewers. Props are selected for this effect to demonstrate usage but should not get too much attention.

For this simple shoot, the props I introduced were:
1. Table cloth
2. Chocolate cake (I wanted black forest cake for the additional colour but couldn’t get it from the neighborhood bakery)
3. Fork and spoon
4. Serving plate
5. Coffee (with wrapper included – this was required to be a part of the scene too)

I wanted the scene to be bright, like at morning breakfast. So colour was towards blueish. To throw light onto the logo on the cups and the cake in the background, I used a Speedlite mounted on a stand with an umbrella to soften the light. I positioned the light on camera right so that the texture of the cake can be seen, and to emphasise the logo on the cups. I gave a bit more details on the umbrella here. The Speedlite was triggered by a remote transmitter on my camera. I was also careful not to introduce extra shadows especially with different directions. If that happens, you can tell there were two sources of light and that’s definitely not natural. The idea was to make the scene as real as possible, while using lights to create emphasis.

This what the entire setup looked like:

Shooting Products with a Lifestyle twist is a post from: blog by eulee

1. Camera. But of course. For this shoot I used a Canon G9. It has many advanced functions but any camera that is able to do macro and white-balance adjustment is good enough.
2. Lamp. Tungsten lamp, the type you get from Ikea, is fine.
3. Background. For simplicity I used a white cardboard and my favourite black velvet cloth.
4. Table. To place your product.
5. Tracing paper or translucent cloth

Firstly, turn off the flash. You don’t need this since your source of light is from the lamp. Set your camera white-balance to tungsten mode and you’re pretty much set. To get the best result, customize the white balance of the camera by pointing it to a sheet of white paper, lit by the same source of light. Refer to your manual to get this right. This is the best way to get a completely neutral colour but not many cameras have this function. So now that you’re ready, switch the camera to macro mode (denoted by the flower symbol) and fill the frame with as much of the product as possible. Vary the distance to determine the amount of blur on the far end of the product. Generally the closer you are to the product, the more blur the other parts of the product become.

If you are shooting during the day, you want to make sure that there is no other sources of light, eg window, flourescent, etc, on the product. All other sources of light will introduce different colours. For instance, since your camera white balance is set to tungsten mode, any daylight reflected of your product will look blue. For reflective products, best to shoot in total darkness or find ways to cover your shooting area. Black cloth will do fine.

For the lamp, cover the bulb with tracing paper or a translucent piece of cloth to soften the light. Direct light gives hard shadows which you may not want. The issue with softening the light is you may not have enough light so the shutter speed may have to be really low. Using tripod is an option but it’s quite cumbersome. The other alternative is to replace the bulb with a higher wattage one.

If you have two or more lamps, you can get really creative but start with just one and learn to master it. You may use white pieces of paper to reflect light onto any dark areas to brighten the shadows. If your background is white and there is a lot of it in the frame, eg the picture of the necklace above, increase the exposure compensation will make sure the background looks white and the subject is properly exposed. If in doubt, fire a few frames with different exposure compensation settings and chos the one that looks the best. I used +1EV for that shot.

The third image is a top view of the setup with the watch and the cloth set on the table and the Ikea lamp, covered with cloth.

Read more about getting a white background looking white here.

Shooting Products at Home is a post from: blog by eulee