and a sample finished pic:

During trips abroad, however, like the one I had in Singapore last weekend, baggage weight is critical plus I can’t collapse my beauty dish, so my next preference is my portable softbox. In this particular case, I decided to bring along my smallest & lightest softbox shown below:

And a sample finished photo:

During my workshops, I explain my preferences for such gear instead of the more popular shoot through umbrellas . . .

Breaking The Rules in Basic Photography
Course Outline
1. Creative Exposures – Toning Techniques
2. Focus & Aperture – What Your Eye is Missing
3. Motion & Shutter – Some New Styles for your Folio
4. Compositions – When Limiting Yourself is Being More Creative
5. Lighting & Angles – The Bottomline for your Clients
Course Fee: P5,000
Course Schedule: 7:00-9:30pm (M-F)
Maximum number of Students for Optimal Learning: Five (5)
Date: May 17-21
Venue: My home studio
19 Kalayaan St., Kawilihan Village, Pasig

Directions:

- From Shaw Blvd/Edsa crossing going to Pasig Blvd/C5, turn left after Seaoil, around 2kms or 10 mins from Shangri-la Mall

- From C5 going to Shaw Blvd, turn right on top of C5 flyover going to Pasig, take a U-turn once under, go straight to Pasig Blvd and turn right after Shell

Kawilihan Village is between Seaoil and Shell on the same side, and opposite Petron/ Capitol 8 on the other side.

Email: shootme@renegaviola.com for reservation

Last night, I was configuring my 2 beauty dishes (the big and the smaller one) to be attached on a single stand as a portable clamshell lighting setup for a fashion pictorial today.

Here are two photos of the portable clamshell setup I did last night:

. . . and here are two behind-the-scenes shots of the fashion pictorial I did this afternoon leading up to the fashion competition dubbed “Project Runway” in St. Benilde tonight . . .

More pics to follow in my Facebook (the shots will also be featured in two dailies soon). Many thanks to John Guarnes! :)

Below are some raw unedited shots made by Ervin & Railey, Photo City photographers during their quick strobist workshop as well as a group shot from the doctor’s convention where I discussed Fashion & Travel photography :)

Once again, many thanks to:
Nan and Cathay teammates,
Oliver, Nikko & Sir Henry Domingo – owner of Photo City
Ervin, Railey and teammates
Doc Val, Giselle, David and the other doctors and med reps in the convention!

Here is the setup for my future reference (as well as for my readers), again you can either use studio lights or strobists as the case may be.

And the sample pics (electoral layout & background color change done by candidate).

I guess we both forgot our initial correspondence way back Sep 2008 when he allowed me to use strobistphilippines.com.  So much so that I immediately bought a new domain and proceeded w/ migrating the contents to this new site.

Alas, my migration was done in haste and I am now missing some entries w/c I need to rebuild.  Probably also a good time to ‘broaden’ the scope of my alternative lighting to include some creative studio lighting I use aside from the off-cam (strobist) technique and gears that I am using.

Stay tuned for a cleaner new site this New Year 2010!

——-

January 04, 2010

All contents are now back in place.

More importantly all is clear w/ David Hobby for me to retain strobistphilippines.com, however, I need to ‘rebrand’ my workshops from ‘Strobist Philippines Workshops’ into something else like ‘Alternative Lighting Workshops’.

Again just to make it clear that this site as well as the workshops herein are not under license or affiliated w/ David Hobby.

Lastly, still convincing David to fly over here :)

———-

Strobist Studio for Rent

By popular demand, my studio is for rent. Space is 16ft x 16ft. Rental is inclusive of strobist modifiers that photographers may want to try out. Pocket wizards, 2 Vivitar 285HV flashes, stands and other studio equipment (backdrops, posing chairs, etc.) will also be provided. Charge is (now only) P350/hr. This is the first studio in Manila offering strobist gears for rent. Standard studio lights also available.

Photographers to bring their own cameras and flash.

Click here to view the studio (sans strobes).

My setup is somewhat similar to the clamshell umbrella lighting setup made by Master David, but instead of using umbrellas, I wanted to have more controlled lighting and the effect produced by a beauty dish.

The 18″ dish on top is my main light while the smaller one is the fill. Even from a distance the smaller dish w/ uncorrected leak lights is quite strong as compared to the dome covered main light, and you can see the sweet spot & leak lights from this wide angle shot coming from the smaller dish.

Basically, the beauty dish is positioned directly on top and at the center to produce the butterfly lighting effect. One can also reposition the dish for rembrandt or split or even for rim (another discussion).

Here is a closer shot of the model w/o the lighting setup seen. Look at her arms and notice the wrap around shadow similar to ring lights, the shadow above from the dish below, the shadow below from the dish above :)

And finally, here is another head shot of our beautiful model Jewel, you can also see the same lighting setup by viewing the catchlights in her eyes.

That’s it for this beauty dish series. Personally, there are still some sight calibration and modification I want to do but at this point my DIY beauty dish is already a “beauty” :)

Btw, for future workshops, I will try to get an aspiring model for aspiring strobists.

Sourcing the items for this DYI brought me to different locations and I even landed on a metal/aluminum fabricator for the bracket. Moreover, several technical considerations and options were explored in calibrating the convex mirror.

Here is the finished product compared w/ the smaller ‘beauty’ dish I discussed in my previous post.

I didn’t have time to take a photo of the the backside where the bracket is shown but here is another shot w/ the diffusion sock I had the local seamstress do for me.

I also wanted to take a comparative shot of this DYI strobist beauty dish w/ my recently modified Visatec 16″ beauty dish. My DYI is 2″ bigger than the Visatec, although the Visatec had a grid. Am still thinking how I can port that grid or make a DYI grid on my strobist setup.

Regarding the calibration, I googled “distance of convex mirror dyi beauty dish” and saw this discussion from photo.net.

I initially went the opposite track from what the others did & pulled back the convex mirror as far back as I can to the edge of the dish so that the reflected light can have a wider area of coverage on the dome dish. This resulted to some ‘leak’ lighting since you can directly see the uncovered flash when positioned from the rightmost, leftmost, topmost, bottommost angles :)

You can clearly see the sweet spot and the ‘leak’ from the first photo.

On the second photo above, I tried to put in several modifiers to cover the flash and soften the ‘leaking’ light such as:
a) the default sb-800 diffuser
b) the gary fong lightsphere 2
c) another DIY adjustable snoot

I ended up putting the convex mirror closer to the flash to correct the leak. I also wanted to source out the biggest convex mirror I can install and also paint it black (instead of the common white used in other beauty dishes), I wanted to make mine sort of a hybrid beauty dish / ring light so that there is a black spot in the middle.

The beauty dish light fall-off is simply something to behold.

Below is a self-test I made shortly before the start of a shooting section.

The haggard looking me became more handsome looking (?) thanks to the beauty dish. Also notice the light fall-off w/c can only be achieved (I think) w/ a good beauty dish.

You probably would like to see a real model instead of a tired photographer so the next post will show an appropriate beauty for the beauty dish setup :)

Course content is very similar to the more extensive 2-day workshop but is designed for participants who can’t spend two whole days for a workshop. Also this is a more affordable and budget friendly rate.

Getting Started w/ Strobist Lighting is a 3-hour half day course w/ a maximum of 5 participants only.
Course fee is P1,500 and preferred schedule can either be on a weekday, 6-9pm or possibly on a Saturday afternoon.

You can email me directly at shootme@renegaviola.com for scheduling info or just post a comment below. Also, I may try to get an aspiring model to pose for you, the aspiring strobist :)