Exhausting day... Photography

On Monday I was shooting stainless steel exhaust systems for an old client, I was shooting them in the client's workshop, the engines they were mounted to had seen better days.

As you can see the original image (above) is a little different to the final image (top)

I had four Bowens flash heads, one 750w and three 500w, all set up with softboxes and a 6ft x 3ft white panel reflector on a pair of rolling stands, to light the exhaust with. Keeping the lights close to the exhaust gave me the effect I wanted.

I used a Canon 5D Mark III with a 24-70 f2.8 L lens, space in the workshop was a little limiting, I had a guy cutting steel tube behind me, another guy working on a Ford Transit van behind the engine I was photographing, he was creating a lot of dust, and smell, using a grinder to cut out a section of rusted metal from the van's floor. So I was working at the wider end of the lens for most of the shots.

So the above images show the progress through photoshop to achieve the final effect, a fair bit of cutout work was involved, a few layers too, but I'm pleased with the results considering the working environment they were shot in.

All images ©2016 Alistair Kerr Photography

The Blog rolls over 100,000 page views

It has been a while since I sat down and thought about the blog, I have noticed that it rolled over the 100,000 page views mark, though I only really noticed once it hit 101,204. It's taken time to get to this point, I'm pretty sure it would have got there sooner if I'd been inclined to write blog posts regularly. The Apple Box construction blog posts are still the most popular, with over 9000 hits between the three part blog. 

On the studio side, my Bowens GM500 Pro heads have been off to Bowens Service Centre again, couple of little faults, they returned, but one of them then developed another fault on the first shoot I used them on, Bowens had it back, sorted it, and got it back to me pretty quickly, and didn't charge me for the second fix, which was great of them, all working fine now.

I've recently got some newish equipment, I picked up a Canon f1.8 50mm lens off ebay, and another Wacom tablet, I've managed to get my old Apple MacPro desktop computer working again, so the Wacom will come in handy for that, I just can't use a mouse anymore, I find them cumbersome and slow. I was also given an old film camera, a Kodak Brownie, by my dad's next door neighbour, they are moving to Spain, he found it in his loft, dusty but still in its case, there wasn't any film in it, with it requiring 620 film it looks like I won't be using it, but it looks great on the shelf in the office next to my other old cameras. It's given me me an idea for some marketing, that'll be at the top of my to do list when I get some spare time. Spare time, hmmm I think my good lady wife has an idea that any spare time I get will be spent decorating the house, that's me smelling of paint fumes for the next few months then.

After quite a slow start to the year it looks like work is starting to take off again, which is nice. In fact I better go and do some now...

LED Solar Lights

Some recent images of LED lighting and LED Solar Lighting for a client in Hong Kong. For packaging, promotional and web.

All images copyright ©2015 Alistair Kerr Photography

Studio and location photography from the last couple of months.

A day in the studio shooting wooden skateboard wheels...

A day in the studio shooting wooden skateboard wheels, yes you read that right, wooden skateboard wheels, actually the wheels are made from recycled skateboard decks, made into blocks and then turned on a lathe. Peter Urbacz at The Splinter Cell produces these, and an array of other fine products.

Lighting for these shots was from two Bowens 250W heads, one camera right with a 22" Calumet Beauty Dish with a shower cap defuser, pointing down, the other head was camera left level with, but at 45° to the skateboard truck and wheels, with a Bowens 7" reflector with a 30° grid, additional light was reflected using gloss silver cards to put light under the wheels.

I didn't want anything to distract from the colours and patterns in the wheels, so I chose black Perspex to stand the truck on, and used black velvet as the background.

As usual my trusty Canon 5D MkIII, with a 24-70mm F2.8L lens, was mounted on a tripod, and I used an electronic cable release, with the mirror lock up turn on to reduce the chance of any camera shake from mirror movement.

The images were dropped into Photoshop to check for any spots of dust that I had missed whilst cleaning the perspex, and I made a few slight adjustments to enhance the colours to bring them closer to the original product.

All images ©2015 Alistair Kerr Photography

At last I'm shooting skateboard shots again, been too long.

It's been a long time since I shot some skateboarding photos, to long, that was put right last Saturday when I remembered to pack my camera and flashes as well as my skateboard, helmet, and pads. Usually I only shoot bowl and pool riding, streetstyle isn’t my thing, but I’m changing my mind about that as I really enjoyed trying to capture the crazy flips and manoeuvres these guys were pulling off. So armed with only my Canon 5D3, a 17-40mm lens, and a couple of beat up Canon Speedlights I did my best to do them justice.