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This site provides aspiring and professional social photographers with an inspirational blend of creative, technical and business articles so that they can take better pictures and earn more money.
The comments within ProPhotoNut pull together the thoughts and ideas of many photographers, from fledglings to some of the finest professionals in the world.
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March 24th, 2010 10:05pm
damien
The Nikon creative lighting system is able to create the wow factor in the right hands. Three Speedlights, a few ideas, a bit of a rig and fine tuning make this shot work. The difference between success and failure involves light setting, testing and adjusting. The Stothert and Pitt steam crane on the Bristol docks makes a fabulous background.
The Nikon creative lighting system is a mighty powerful tool. These shots were taken easily using the SU-800 infra red trigger or the pop up flash of my Nikon D700.
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March 23rd, 2010 09:29pm
damien
Shooting Chloe in sunny Bristol was a delight for my second ever Canon Speedlight Mastery workshop. This shot was lit with sunlight as a key and a pair of 580EX2s as backlights. The next shot shows the complete set up.
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March 20th, 2010 06:09pm
damien
This portrait was lit with a Speedlight in an Orbis ring flash adapter. I used the PW system to expose using TTL. Orbis is the ring flash adapter that is not camera model specific. It is great for Canon, Nikon, Sony and Pentax too.
I had to modify the Orbis by adding a Velcro lock for my Speedlights to avoid them accidentally dropping out of the bottom. Over the next few weeks (more…)
March 18th, 2010 08:01pm
damien
It is time to flex the muscles of the Nikon Creative Lighting system and go beyond the basics. With this in mind Tuesdays delegate was up for the challenge and between us we really started to rock the boat. A few familiar locations plus my new shoot zone.
A quick shift of Kelvin and a full Honl CTO gel in my Easybox Hotshoe was just the trick to make the most of this location.
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March 17th, 2010 09:34pm
damien
This a bit of random to start my shooting season blog posts. It's the only shot in this set not lit with a Speedlight.
Here is a small selection of the shots taken on Tuesdays Speedlight Mastery workshop for Canon shooters.
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March 13th, 2010 08:57am
damien
Now that the wedding season is under way I thought I’d spend a bit of time sharing our system of picture management with you. It’s all too easy to add hours or even days of work to each and every wedding for little or no reward. There is not just one correct workflow and the system you currently use may suit you better than ours, but there are many bad, inefficient workflows out there and a lot of life is wasted in our industry. (more…)
March 4th, 2010 11:15pm
damien
Our team at Focus this year are Blaise Williams, Claire Hanley, Steve Devey, Marko Nurminen and myself. In previous years we have been swamped and unable to connect with as many of you as we had wanted. So this year we comissioned a far bigger stand and as you know it’s not the stand that matters it’s the team so here they are: (more…)
March 4th, 2010 08:13pm
damien
I may have seemed a bit quiet over the past few weeks. but believe me I have been flat out developing new product lines and preparing for our biggest Focus show ever. One of these product lines is the definitive collection of continuous lighting equipment.
The Lowel id-light out on location
Why work with continuous light? Well, all pro DSLRs seem to have HD video shooting capabilities these days and they are being used in many ways. From the basic shooting of promo clips for blogs right up to the production of hybrid wedding multimedia products. When it comes to shooting video alongside stills continuous light is a must. (more…)
February 24th, 2010 07:39pm
damien
I was giving my Evolve delegates their two day closing session on Monday and Tuesday. When it was decided that a mini shoot with Speedlights would whet the creative appetite. So Blaise, my amazing PA rustled up Lauren our model and on Tuesday afternoon we produced these shots at the Matara in the Cotswolds.
Snow was falling, it was nearly dark outside but the light from one Speedlight was all I used for this interesting portrait.
We used the potted plants as dingle and the Honl gobo strapped to the Speedlight as a close coupled reflector. All of us were shooting completely different images from this session. Both the Nikons and Canons were producing extremely varied results. TTL often struggles to produce consistent results when Speedlights are used as backlights. (more…)
February 11th, 2010 11:15pm
damien
Here are the pictures from the second of two one day workshops earlier this week.
The LoveCube™ takes centre stage for this shot of Becca.
Three Bowens flash heads with grids provided the key, backlight and background illumination whilst a Speedlight on 1/4 power triggered with a PW Flex was inside the LoveCube™ (more…)
February 10th, 2010 09:47pm
damien
Tango the dog finally gets to share the stage with Sarah. This shot was lit using a Broncolor ring flash plugged into my trusty Mobil A2R kit. Wall colour was provided by Dulux.
Wow what a day! We shot simple set ups, and created repeatable dynamic images. We studied shadows, the qualities of light and had fun on the way. (more…)
February 7th, 2010 12:01am
damien
With Hannah pointed into the wind, I shot from below using a Nikon D700 and a 200mm lens. ISO 320, 1/60th at f/4 with the camera on a monopod. A fairly bright covered zone kept us out of the rain and in wonderful natural light.
My shooting workshops start in March each year for a reason. Three months from the shortest day gives me a whole day’s shooting and a bit of natural light to utilise in the covered areas and interiors on my shoot routes. If all my delegates owned a D3, D700 or 5D mk2 then I could shoot undercover all year round. It gets a bit nippy for the models at times but modern cameras come alive in the dark of winter. (more…)
February 4th, 2010 12:12am
damien
The LoveCube™ is here at last. No, it is not dodgy but it will brighten up your photographs and look great at home after the shoot too. Details
The LoveCube™ is a studio prop that will look just as cool in the woods, on the beach, up the Eiffel Tower or in your home. It comes complete with a light fitting (removable) so that it can be used as an illuminated coffee table.
Twitter continues to amaze me. I’ve connected with 800 or so photographers now and it seems the tipping point has been reached. (more…)
January 30th, 2010 05:22pm
damien
Five pictures that charted my career. By Damien Lovegrove 2010
Mirage in the Western Desert in Egypt. Taken by me in 1996 using a Nikon F90 with a 300mm Tamron lens and an unbranded 2x converter on Kodachrome 64. This picture was shot for stock and continues to sell well today. Sales from this shot alone total over £20,000. Every GCSE student of Physics will recognise this shot from their text books. Dorling Kindersley love it too and it often appears in their publications.
Have you ever sat down and written a title for an essay with absolutely no idea how to complete the task? I perhaps stupidly suggested to Terry Hope, the editor of PhotoPro magazine that it would be fun to write a piece about just a few pictures that became stepping stones in my life. Then perhaps he could invite other photographers to write the same essay. He wrote back and said okay get the job done. So here is the start of what might be an interesting chain of personal stories loosely strung around photographs. (more…)
January 20th, 2010 12:21am
damien
It was right at the beginning of my career as a photographer that I realised I needed to be able to capture the emotion between people in my pictures rather than just shots of the people themselves.
In this grid you can see how I’ve often used very tight shots to eliminate distracting elements and to add impact to the shots. The collection shows shots from, Cherish the Dress workshops, Passion on the Streets workshops and a wedding. Notice how in some of the shots I’ve directed the girl to place her hands on or around the guys head.
The easy option was to adopt a reportage style of shooting and capture what was there in front of me but I was put off this idea after having spent three years shooting news for the BBC. I was more interested in (more…)
January 4th, 2010 12:21am
damien
I’ve been on a fabulous creative trip in 2009 teaching photography and researching my latest DVD/ Blu-Ray, Speedlight Mastery. The journey has taken me to six cities in Germany, the Meatpacking district of New York, Sienna in Tuscany, Castlefield in Manchester and my beloved Bristol Waterfront. On the way I have shared creative moments and precious times with talented photographers from around the world.
Below are my favourite 50 pictures of 2009. It is a strange notion to choose pictures over a time span. I thought about sharing the following sets: My 50 career best pictures, or my 50 favourite pictures of the last decade, or perhaps 50 favourite pictures of the past year, or 50 best shots of the past month. I went for the past year option.
I wonder how many of my pictures I would have selected for all four sets? It’s worth thinking about this. Ask yourself, Is your photography going in the right direction. This is totally subjective and only your opinion counts. Another list category I thought about was the 10 photographs that charted my photographic career. This would be more of a narrative that discussed each images significance rather than the image itself. A lot of the shots I’d choose in the key career shots set would not make any of the ‘best’ sets listed above. It’s got me thinking so I’ll write about the career milestone shots in the coming months but for now here are my 50 favourite pictures of 2009:
The season started with my big flash in the country workshops. And this frame was one that shone out of the overcast day in the dark woods. Lit with two barefaced Broncolor Mobil heads powered from the same A2R pack.
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December 31st, 2009 04:17pm
damien
Here is my technique for creating striking studio portraits using a grey background and the Lovegrove Studio Collection of gels. Grid collections like the one above make fantastic large acrylic products or canvas prints for the home. They are easy to shoot, command high prices, and they look great in a studio shop window too. Here’s how I shot the one above. (more…)
December 31st, 2009 04:16pm
damien
Here is the full colour chart showing picture samples taken with each of the 38 gels in the Lovegrove Studio Collection at various levels of illumination. The gels are listed in numerical order. The 38 gels each measure 12″x 12″ (305mm x 305mm). For the technical details of how these shots were taken please see my other post here. These shots are ’straight from camera’ I used a Nikon D700 with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens set at f/11 and I used the ‘flash’ white balance preset. All the shots were batch cropped to 10×8 proportions in Adobe Lightroom before being exported.
What’s your favourite colour? Let me know in the comments box below.
LC01
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December 22nd, 2009 10:34pm
damien
In this 2.5 hour production I shoot 23 set ups using single or multiple Speedlights. The simplest set up uses just one Speedlight on camera and the most complicated used 3 Speedlights off camera, a Lastolite Ezybox and a reflector. I’ve tried to show every nuance of the rig and shoot. I’ve avoided detailing some of the button pushing info that is flash model specific for brevity reasons knowing that this information is in the manual that came with the flash.
Some set ups are explained in more detail and others that repeat the same action are shot at my normal shooting pace to avoid too much repetition.
I am on hand to answer your questions here. I’ll reference and link to more resources as required or requested. So if you have (more…)
December 19th, 2009 12:37am
damien
Here is my 10 point plan for creating a successful portrait business. Get the retail business basics right and reap the rewards in 2010. (more…)
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