Yuri Arcurs: Mr. Microstock

Do you dabble in stock photography? Maybe, say, a little microstock photography?

If you do, this is the guy you are up against.

To say Yuri Arcurs has the game figured out would be a bit of an understatement. He sells nearly 2,000 images a day, 24/7/365.

Hit the jump for a video tour of his insane, made-for-micro studio, and a look at his lighting techniques.
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Made for Micro

I have to admit that when I first started watching this I thought it was one of those parody videos. But then I realized that Yuri (a nom de photo used by Jacob Wackerhausen) has basically beaten the microstock equivalent of the Kobayashi Maru by creating an entire facility based around the needs of microstock.

Insanity? Genius? Maybe a little bit of both:




(If you are reading this via email or RSS, you may have to click on the post title to see the vids.)

This being a lighting blog we are not gonna let you out the door without at least a little lighting tute. Yuri has everything down to a science, and his lighting reflects a quest for repeatable, predictable quality -- designed to make those warm, happy photos that make a microstock purchaser dig deep down into the couch cushions and cough up 40 cents to seal the deal. Over and over again.

(The lighting info starts at the 2:56 mark.)




You can see more about Yuri at his website, and you can also follow him on Twitter.
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[UPDATE, via Anders C., in the comments:]

For those who wonder about his studio: Back in January a Danish photography magazine arranged an interview with Yuri in his daylight studio (as opposed to his business office).

After driving around for a while the journalist had to call Yuri and tell him that he simply couldn't find the studio in the area where it was supposed to be - all he could find was a lot of very large, industrial greenhouses outside the city. After a few seconds with Yuri on the phone, one of these large greenhouses started flashing!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you create a bloody large daylight studio: An industrial greenhouse combined with loads and loads of white, semi-translucent material.


Indeed.

Boot Camp II, Assignment 1: Results

I have now been through the 700+ photos that were submitted for SCBII's first assignment enough times to be thoroughly sick of every single photo in the pile.

Kidding.

They are great. But I did go through them a lot.

A few standouts, some notes and a lucky winner -- inside.
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First of all, it was neat to see so many people go to the effort to talk someone into letting you photograph them. I know this was not easy for many of you, and I hope it ended up being a growth experience. It was also great to see so many of your faces, and I will admit to that being an ulterior motive of the second portion of the assignment.

Second, I was impressed with the sheer number of photos that would have looked right at home in A-list magazines -- including more than a few potential covers. Bearing in mind that most of the readers of this site are amateurs, that rocks.

Now the hard part -- picking a winner. It is, of course, subjective. And any of at least a hundred photos in the stack could just as easily been featured here today. I had time to leave some notes on a few pictures -- although not much, as we are both finishing up moving and closing on the old house this week. (Kinda crazy around here.)

That said, I pulled up some entries to talk about and use as examples. I hope you will indulge how personal (and, thus, seemingly arbitrary) picture editing can be. The important thing is that so many of you jumped right into the deep end.

And, hopefully, benefitted from the experience.

Some of the photos below are dual-pic composites, others have the photographer's headshot in a nearby frame in their Flickr stream.

As always, click on the pic to see it bigger and see who shot it. And please take a moment to leave a note under your fave.

Enough yapping. On with the photos, and the reasons they stood out to me.
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Because looked like it jumped off of the pages of WIRED Magazine.

Because of the DIY biz-card gobo on the key.

Because of the in-focus background that could have been a weird distraction, but instead carried the shadows from the low-fill in a cool way.

Because the photog shot his recently unemployed dad, which probably injected a fun, purposeful shooting session / family activity into a stressful period.


Because of the impish expression on the subject's (top) face.

Because of the use of graphic lines and color.

Because of the inclusion of background context while still keeping a headshot framing. The photo has layers of of interest.

Because of the confidence exuded by the subject -- he looks like he is ready to take on the world.


Because of the inclusion of vocation-specific background, but not in a way that hammers you over the head.

Because the lighting is simple, elegant and does not call attention to itself.

Because the subject exudes professionalism and warmth -- her expression makes her look like someone you would want to work with.

Because the composition -- including contextual background -- is still tight enough to work as a Facebook and/or LinkedIn avatar and still be readable. The photo can be used in a variety of ways.


Because of the strong graphic quality.

Because of the quirky expression.

Because of the creative use of a light modifier as a quickie background.

Because of how the high-key, airy exposure brings the whole picture together.


Because he placed the subject on a background that many people miss as they are walking around on their background looking for a background.

Because of the way the expression, hair, grass and everything work together.

Because of the composition that makes the flower in the ground look as if it is in her hair.

Because the shooting angle allowed the photog to use an umbrella as key and the cloudy, overhead fill as a huge, on-axis softbox.


Because of the intensity.

Because of the tight crop, which adds to the above.

Because of the keyboard reflection being pulled off very well in the curved glasses. Not novel, but done very well.

Because of how the B&W conversion added to the simplicity of the photo.


Because the subject (left) oozes cool.

Because of how well the specular highlights were handled with the glasses.

Because of the color palette and tonal range. The internal separation is great -- the face works perfectly against the background.

Because how many sons can pull off a photo of their dad that "oozes cool" on Father's Day?


Because of the expression and connection in the subject (left).

Because of the lighting.

Because the background, which at first seemed too busy, is actually composed of the DIY crafts the subject makes.

Because of the diagonal crop to the headshot.


Because of the well-executed profile lighting. (Lighting from a little behind the subject, as here, is a better bet than straight-on profile light.)

Because of the expression and moment.

Because of the photographer seeing the design on the background and using it to add a dynamic element in what could have been a static photo.


Because of the composition of the subject (left) and how well it works with the lighting.

Because of the distillation of the photo that happens with the conversion to B&W.

Because of the connection between the subject and the viewer -- and how well the two brothers' photos go together. Probably not a bad thing to pull together a few days before Father's Day.

Because most brothers I knew at this age could not stop beating each other up long enough to pull of two photos like this.
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So, there are a few sweet examples in a huge field of entries, many of which could have just as easily been on this page.

To see a slideshow of all of the entries, settle into a very comfortable chair, grab some caffeine and click here.

Oh, yeah -- and to see which one of these photographers has won the Speedlight Pro Kit, the Strobist Lighting DVDs and the Trade Secret Cards for the first assignment from SBCII: Click here.

Two Photos that were Tough to Toss

Boot Camp II Assignment #1 yielded over over seven hundred entries, which I have thus far winnowed down to a baker's dozen. It is getting very difficult to edit them any further.

At this point, I have to look hard to find reasons to knock photos out. I just dropped two photos for no other reason than they are not really headshots. But they were both so beautiful I wanted to stick them up on the site and show them off -- and help me procrastinate a little longer in picking a winner.

One of them would look right at home in the NYT Sunday Mag, the other is an art photo mag cover waiting to happen.

Too loose to win, too good to throw away -- after the jump.
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Beautiful Look in Horrible Light

Jerome Love's photo of "Thulani," a youth program director in Soweto, South Africa is a wonderful example of how bad midday light can be finessed with small flashes. (Click the pic for bigger.)

If you look at the area in the right of the frame, you can see what ambient Jerome was dealing with. So he worked the shadow side of a building to build his light in the shade. He cheated the building a little to use the sun as a rim. This added a nice layer of texture to the portrait.

He used two bare SB-28s. The lack of a mod helps in the light output department. The key was high camera right, at 1/4 power, zoomed to 85mm throw. The fill was on the ground in front (on the vertical lens axis) and was set to 1/8.

Note that the key was upper camera right -- same side as the rim. This little departure from convention always adds a different feel to a lit portrait.


Bad ambient light: Free.
Two SB-28s: About $200.00.
Owning midday with two small flashes: Priceless.



I Can't Stop Looking at This One

Toni.R's timeless portrait of her 14-year-old daughter works even before the addition of the seagull, which is posed so perfectly it looks like a suspended movie prop.

The lighting is simple -- a bare SB-26, dialed way down, from camera left. It is working against the sun, which comes from camera right. (Check out the gull for ambient-only light.) Toni's light modifier -- a Tupperware bowl -- was rendered inoperative when it was accidently mistaken for the coleslaw dish.

I'll bet that never happens to Annie.
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These both had beautiful light, interesting composition and an atypical look. But beyond that there was a strong connection between the subject and the viewer in each portrait.

While both of these photos were technically not headshots, they get the highest compliment I can give a photo -- that I really wish I had taken them.

Food Photography Made Easy: The Lunch Box

Shooting vittles can be as complex as you want to make it. But it is pretty easy to get elegant, well-lit food photographs with almost no money out of pocket.

Hit the jump for a gastronomic update on a Strobist cheapskate classic.
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Of the 1,000+ posts on Strobist at this writing, one of the most popular is the $10 Macro Studio -- a cardboard box hack that makes it almost impossible to take a bad shot of a small object.

With a little alteration, that same concept can be used to create classic food photography lighting with a light source as simple as a desk lamp. Of course, a speedlight will work great, too...


Thinking Outside of the Box

The classic direction for lighting food is from the top/back. In typical presentation, food has more width and depth than it does height. So the top/back is a logical position from which light can rake across the food to reveal texture and form.


For this walk-through I raided the fridge for some fresh tomatoes. Not complex, but nice and 3-d for illustrative purposes. Here they are with a bare light hitting them from the classic, top/back position.

This hard light almost makes the 'maters look as if they are made of wood and painted glossy red. You can do a lot to manipulate the visual perception of surface quality with different lighting techniques.


Here is the same shot with a wider lens. The light source is a bare SB-800, but it could just as easily be a desk lamp.

You could easily soften that light with an umbrella if you have one. But if your food or setting is specular, those ribs (Mmm-hmm-hmm-hmm... ribs...) are gonna give you problems.

This is one of those instances where a soft box is much better than a shoot-through. But there is no need to shell out for one if you are not shooting this kind of stuff all of the time.

Instead, you can hack a large cardboard box (quite literally) and essentially turn the soft box inside out.


So, here is the basic box -- use a big one -- cut up and placed back together to give you a sense of where the cuts are. The more of an angle you put on that diagonal cut, the more your light will come from the back. I did this one kinda middle-of-the-road, but you might want to crank it up a notch or two.

And if you use a razor knife like I did, please be careful. Or at least bookmark this page before you start. Just sayin'.


(LIGHTING GEEK NOTE: I had fun doing a quickie shot of the cut-up cardboard box. Click it to see bigger, with notes on the locations of the four flashes involved ...)


That big open square on the top is gonna get some diffusion material, so the window will do its job and improve your harsh light source. Tracing paper is ideal, but tissue paper (big, like from a gift) works great. Stretch it smooth. Wax paper will do in a pinch, too.

I scrounged a little Rosco Tuff Frost, which is tough (duh) and uniform, not to mention color-neutral. That last part is important, if you are using some type of mystery diffusor.

Also, if you are using this with a desk lamp, use an incandescent bulb (no CFLs) and set your camera's white balance to tungsten. Everything will work fine.


Here is the part you keep, and by now it should be getting pretty self explanatory as to how to use it to soften that bare flash or desk lamp. If you are more of a food blogger than a photographer, you can do this all with continuous light and a tripod -- just crank that aperture wayyy down for lots of depth of field.

(Not that this is a foodie blog, but you regulars would be surprised at who passes through here while learning to shoot stuff for their site.)


Okay, so lets stick our box in between the light and the subject and see what happens. Right away, the tomatoes look way better. I am using a sheet of black plexi as a background, to get a clean reflection of the new, slicker light source. (The umbrella would suck for this background, because of the ribs' reflection.)


Here is a pullback, which actually is a pretty cool composition. But looking at this (and the photo just above) our next problem is that the bottoms of the tomatoes are too dark. This is because all of the light is coming from the back/top.

That's an easy fix, and we do not need another light, either. We can get double-duty out of our nice main light by adding a reflector:


Since this is a no-wallet Monday, let's fix this with a folded sheet of printer paper (or, if you are over 50, typing paper...) Just fold it and stand it in front of the tomatoes -- maybe to one side, as shown. (You could stick it right in front, too for a different look.)


As you can now see, that one sheet of paper makes a huge difference.

By default, it will not overpower the main light source, either. It's a reflector, and cannot give out more light than it is receiving.


So, let's try another reflector on the other side. It may be that the second reflected light source ends up being too much. But at two cents a pop, go for it and see what happens.

Here it is close-up, which is the same photo at the top of the post. Maybe you like the extra detail, or maybe the second highlight turns you off. That's up to you -- add salt to taste.


Here is a pullback with two reflectors for clarity's sake. Depending on the topography of what you are shooting, these reflectors do not need to be big, or symmetrical -- or even white. You can illuminate those shadows exactly the way you want by placing as many reflectors -- large and/or small -- wherever you want.

Need more light? Try aluminum foil reflectors. That's what I used for this cake. Crinkle it up, then straighten it back out for a nice, smooth, pebbled reflector surface. You can choose the shiny or matte surface, too, for different looks.


Here it is, from the side angle.

Again, that SB-800 flash could easily be a desk or floor lamp. And the grey backdrop was just to hide the white wall reflection in the initial shot. Once you get the diffusor panel up, that problem solves itself.
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Fast Food

So, there you go -- an easy entré into food photography. If this kind of thing floats your boat, you might want to consider a medium-sized soft box, which will of course make this kind of light very easy. And it travels well, too.

If you're a food blogger and you decide to play with it, link in and spread the luv -- and post a comment so we can see what a hotshot food photographer you are now...

Tick, Tick, Tick

Just a quick reminder that the first Boot Camp II assignment is due at end of day (local time) tomorrow, June 23rd.

Lotsa entries pouring in from the procrastinators, and you can check out some of the people blogging along with it here.

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On Assignment: HCAC Dancer

I am working on several projects this summer, the most enjoyable of which being a series of portraits for the Howard County Arts Council.

I photographed Kassi, a dancer, for this series and got a chance to play with one of the two-light techniques we talked about earlier. This was also the first chance I got to use a new boom setup that is a little heavier duty than the one featured earlier this week.

More, inside.
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Riaz Redux

I normally like to play around with new lighting styles before trying them out on an assignment. In this case, I used the small-flash lighting class in Dubai earlier this year as the guinea pig for this shoot. You might recognize the top photo as being lit similarly to that of Riaz, the first example in the two-light portrait series.

There are a couple of differences, but the grid key / umbrella fill was a common denominator for both. In shooting Riaz, I had the umbrella squished right up under the lens. With Kassi, I put the umbrella on the floor with a flash mounted to it but with no stand.

I used an umbrella swivel adapter to attach an SB-800, and stuck the assembly on the ground. The umbrella rests at about the correct angle for uplighting a low-to-the-ground subject by itself.

Ratios were done without a meter and without regard to any absolute settings, as usual. I positioned the fill light first and altered my flash power and/or aperture until I saw a nice baseline exposure for the frame.

Generally, I like to get it to a full exposure, and then drop my power level on the flash or close down the aperture until I get a nice looking floor to the fill light. The idea is to use the fill as a sort of safety net, to lift the shadows that will be formed by the key light, lest they get too dark and contrasty. If you are coming from off axis with the fill, you'll also introduce a second angle to the overall light.

I really liked the look of the low-in fill, as it gave its own shape to the subject -- much more so that would an on-axis fill. But as much as I liked the shape of the fill, I was going back and forth on the shadow that it threw over Kassi's head and shoulders.

In the end, I wanted the direction of the light, but not the shadow. So I toned the latter way down in post. There is definitely a procedural learning curve for me, even two full years after leaving the tightly controlled Photoshop environment of The Sun.

I have to remember to loosen up, as my default is typically to "do it the newspaper way." But then I remember if I were personally doing everything the newspaper way today, I would be drowning in debt and arbitrarily lopping off perfectly good body parts in a misguided attempt to get a "good return on investment."


Oh well. Back to the light.

The key, as you can see, is a gridded SB-800. We have already locked in the fill level and shooting aperture, so the key level is set by altering the flash's power level. (We can also move the flash closer or further away, but that would change the look of the light.)

Unlike the grid on Riaz, I wanted to catch Kassi's face and body with the key but mostly miss the wall on the leading edge. This way I could control the tone in the white wall, even though she was leaning against it. To do that, I didn't aim the grid at her face, but rather out in front of her face a little bit. So her face is nearer to the edge of the beam than in the center of it.

A grid on a speedlight is a very small light source and thus produces very hard shadows at this distance. But I know they won't fall too far off of the table because I built my fill light first. The combination is soft vs. hard, high vs. low and tight light vs. everywhere light brings a lot of different contrast layers into play. If I wanted, I could have used a 1/2 CTB on the fill and a 1/2 CTO on the key to add a neat color contrast in there, too.


A Bigger Boom

For another look, we wanted to do Kassi dancing. She is very athletic, and incorporates that into her routines. So we set up to light a photo of her leaping.

I knew she would be looking back over her shoulder at me, and wanted to light her face from a flattering angle. To do that, you have to find the position of her face and then get the light wherever it need to be to hit that angle.

In Kassi's case, to three-quarter light her, we'd have to be above, behind and camera-right of her face when she looked over her shoulder. So we were going to need to get the key up pretty high -- especially considering we'd be going through an umbrella, too.

For that I used a bigger, heavier-duty boom than the Interfit model we talked about earlier this week. I used a Paul Buff counter-weighted boom arm attachment on a 13-foot light stand. I got this to be able to get my bigger flash heads up high. And while it is not super heavy duty, it is sufficient for that kind of work.

You buy it in two pieces -- the stand and the boom arm. The stand is a heavy-duty, 13-foot stand, which is also a great thing to have kicking around when you need it. The boom assembly includes a two-section extension pole, a multi-angle clamp and comes with an 11-pound, slide-able counterweight. They total up to $160.

Needless to say, this is rock solid for a speedlight, and I also have been happy with it in a supporting role for both my SB's and my WL's.


So, here's the setup. The key light is above/behind/camera right, through an umbrella. There is a back/separation light (an SB-800) hiding way back at camera right on a compact, 5-section stand.

The key light location was trial and error, done as Kassi worked through a few practice leaps. In the end, it was a perfectly logical location, given the position of her face. Kassi's leap put her about two feet in front of, and to camera left, of the umbrella.

The fill was a bigger problem, as we could not just open the shutter to let if build up the ambient. By balancing that way, we would have lost the shutter needed to freeze the leap. So it would all have to come from flash.

It had to be soft, come from close to on-axis and reach back to light the back wall, too. So I needed a physically big light source, coming from the camera's direction and pretty far back. Fortunately, our room was a neutral, light color, so the wall 15 feet or so behind me became my modifier.


I fired a WL 600 into that wall, building a nice, soft, directionless fill that would be far enough back to reach back to the background wall without losing too much oomph. My shooting position was about three feet in front of the light.

If you are in a neutral room, always consider your walls as possible huge bounce surfaces that you can employ as everything from a soft key to a humongous soft ring-like fill. But you'll need some power if you are going to use it over a large area.

This is one of many examples of a way in which you can use a monobloc with smaller flashes. Ironically, the SB is my key and the WL 600 is the fill. This doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you consider how much more efficient a close-in, umbrella'd light is than another light bounced way back off of a wall and having to carry another 30-40 feet after that.

Having a big light in your back allows you wallpaper fill light over a large area while accenting with speedlights.
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Read More: On Assignment

Q 'n A

Meredith, of Jackson, Mississippi asks:

I'm in the process of setting up a studio in a new space. We were trying to pick paint colors, and the rest of the building has a black ceiling.

The photo studio, I think, should obviously have white walls instead of some crazy color. But then we were questioning the ceiling color -- should it be white, or black? (It is a very small room.)

Which would you do? If it sounds arbitrary, give it a little thought before making the jump.
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Meredith, if you think about it, you probably answered your own question when you brought up the room size. The classic color for a studio ceiling is black, since that controls unwanted reflections better than any other color.

You can always put a light up there if you want top light. But you certainly won't want it all of the time, and that is what you'll get to a large degree when working in a "very small room."

Small rooms are the most difficult for controlling stray light bounce, so the smaller your studio is, the darker you will probably want to paint the surfaces. If you can't escape light walls, you want to create some "negative fill" reflectors out of a flat black surface of some kinds.

Bonus points: Paint your reflectors white on one side and black on the other, and you'll have it both ways. But the main point is that you want to be able to control the bounced light.

And dark surfaces -- including the ceiling -- will help you do that.