Latest news from Keith Robins

It's been ages since my last blog post here but Keith Robins Photography is still around and busier than ever. For instance, I recently surprised myself and managed ten on-location portait photoshoots in eight days besides working a fifty hour week in my plumbing business.
Now I've turned 67 it should be time to relax and put my feet up. But, as luck would have it, my long term hobby is photographing young ladies so I've brushed the dust off my camera, charged up a few batteries and taken a few on-location photo trips into the countrtside. River shoots seem to feature quite highly in the requests from young feminine beauties closely followed by 'on-the-rocks' at the seaside. If this is what retirement is all about - bring it on!

  I'm not sure how or why but Facebook was kind enough to give me a private page plus a business page, which I don't mind at all as it gives me a couple of options when I upload the results from these exciting photo sessions. Okay, so Facebook resizes all the images for me automatically, which helps make them less desirable to rip-off merchants, plus there is plenty of space for loads and loads of albums. This in turn has attracted quite a few viewers and resulted in new models contacting me ref photoshoots.

    I normally work on a TFCD basis which means I give some of my time and skill, the model gives her time and good looks. The model gets a set of CD images and we both end up improving our portfolios.
    Now, this might sound as if I'm losing out on a load of cash. But actually it's the very opposite - I'm saving myself money! What's happening is that I am now meeting some really attractive models, my persona and techniques have changed for the better. Plus, I consider myself a much better photographer and my skills level has shot through the roof.

   I'm now in a position where I could start charging for my skills because I can physically prove that I'm the photographer who is capable of producing stunning results.  Similar in a way, I suppose, to a brilliant violinist going on the X factor and winning and all his neighbours saying, 'Well I didn't know he could play like that!'
You have to show what you can do, how good you are and only then will Joe Public beat a path to your door. I look on Facebook as being my shop window, plus they even tell friends of friends how good you are - and it's all free!!!!
     I'm gradually putting a two or three results from each of my most recent photography shoots, along with a write-up, on to my Facebook page at:-   www.facebook.com/keithrobinsphotography
I also run a blog based website at:- http://www.keithrobinsphotography.co.uk
    Meanwhile, seeing as I'm now drawing a pension and my customers won't let me retire in peace, what's the point in charging loads of money and then paying income tax on all of it? Or am I sonehow missing the point?
 

Studio flash outdoors - at night! Okay so maybe it's been done before via an extension lead. However, Keith Robins Photography is adventurous enough to investigate the great outdoors as a backdrop and discovered that full length portraits do not need rolls of expensive background cloth / paper. Nor is there any need to flag any of the flash heads to prevent stray light illuminating those annoying creases which seem to occur in even the smoothest and blackest of background material.

In a few of the recent posts of YeoPhotoGroup, an off-shoot of Keith Robins Photography, you may have noticed us using a generator to power a pair of Elinchrom D-Lite 200's. Handling that heavy beast of a generator took two men to carry it plus two more to carry our camera gear and all the other boxes and bags of lights, stands, reflectors, modifiers, softboxes and assorted cables necessary to operate an outdoor studio.
Eventually, in a rash spur of the moment decision, I splashed out on a caravan inverter plus a new 12 volt 45 amp battery for my works plumbing van meaning there is now a spare battery in fairly good nick going spare. We can now operate two powerful studio lights from a small two wheeled shopping trolley containing this make-shift 230volt power supply.

Elinchroms are renowned for their 0.7 second recycling time which allows you to capture that fleeting expression of relief just moments after the shutter has fired which is when some models appear to briefly relax during the often daunting task of posing for the camera. During this two hour bridal shoot the recycling time for our D-Lite 200's remained very close to manufacturers specs and never went once over two seconds. An additional benefit is that once the really short time the lights take to recycle, the drain on the battery drops to such a minimal amount that it would probably last a whole weekend before the old van battery needs recharging.


In the first image here, Hannah is sat on a plastic sheet to keep her dress clean. A softbox front left and quite close created a soft main light and another Elinchrom with an alloy reflector lit the bushes behind her. Grace joined Hannah for the second and third pictures and revealed the difference our lights made to the texture of their lovely dresses. A silvered sun shield from a car windscreen mounted on a framework of plumbers 15mm copper pipe helped illuminate the shadows on the right. (More details on this DIY gadget in a later post)
Using 1/200th of a second shutter speed caused the background of Sydney Gardens in Yeovil to go black, while f11 at ISO 200 controlled the lights. All this was between 8pm and 9pm on 9th September, hence the lack of available light.
Our next challenge is to get a little more ambient light into the background, probably a seaside sunset along with a striking silhouette.
Then it'll be a portrait session with a firework display going on behind, okay so we could handle either of these tasks in Photoshop but where's the lighting challenge in that? We'll probably revert to our hotshoe flashguns for this one although I am very tempted by the much stronger Elinchroms which can handle a softbox or a large brolly without losing too much light.