10 things you can shoot, edit or create this month, from ice skating and cathedrals to winter foxes

TIP CARDS

Use your tips cards

This project features in this month’s bonus tips cards. For a handy guide to capturing photos like this, take your tips cards with you.

1 | STILL-LIFE

Bag yourself some pirate booty

Relive watching the umpteenth Pirates of the Caribbean film over the festive period with first mate Wendy Evans

Wendy Evans

Well, that’s Christmas over with – a Bacchanalian orgy of consumption and, of course, whatever pirate-themed film was showing on the TV and streaming services. Well, it was in my household, anyway. But if thoughts of golden treasure and peak Johnny Depp have been distracting you from the cold and rain outside, then why not involve your favourite pastime (not eating – photography, remember?) and have a go at this project? You can either approach it from a still-life perspective, or get close-up and focus on a key element to make it a macro shot. In fact, once you’ve got the scene all set up, why not try both?

For the still-life, a candle is an essential component, but that’s really more for effect: reflections, highlights and shadows. Unless you have quite a lot of candles, just one won’t generate enough light. So you’ll need an additional lighting source, which can be as simple as the window light next to where you set up, or more flexibly, a portable light source you can move around. I used a Rotolight Neo 2 (which you can get from MPB in excellent condition for £109), as this offers control over both brightness and colour temperature.

1 Arrange the elements

The more pirate-style things you have, the more flexibility there is in arranging them. However, you’ll definitely need some gold coins, a weapon or two, a candle and, of course, a map. I got the coins and map from eBay for under a tenner each. The flintlock pistol was simply a prop.

2 Set up your lighting

Light the candle, but make sure the base doesn’t get so hot that it sets light to the map. Test where the reflections and shadows from it fall. Add an extra light source to provide the main illumination. Take test shots to see how the composition works. If you’re overexposing areas, either use Highlight metering or dial in -1EV.

3 Try some angles

You want enough elevation so that you are looking down on the scene and can see into the pot of gold coins, but not too much that it’s directly overhead. Ramp up the ISO so you can move around easily, and keep the shutter speed up for handheld shots. Some digital noise will add to the effect rather than degrading the image.

Get the lighting right

As mentioned, using just a single candle doesn’t provide enough light and reflections, so a Rotolight Neo 2 was used as well. I tried different light levels from it to complement the candle, rather than completely blot it out. I also lowered the colour temperature on the Neo 2 to make the output warmer, but you will need to change the white balance setting on the camera to Daylight/5600K, otherwise it will simply match the colour temperature of the scene and make it look white anyway. The photo below shows how using Auto White Balance will make things look.

Final touches

To finish the image off, I used Gaussian Blur with a Layer Mask to blur the edges of the photo and to make a slight vignette. Then I added a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer to give the image more of a retro feel.

2 | PORTRAITS

Shoot better indoor portraits

Wendy Evans reveals four ways to make the most of lens choice and location in your people shots

Wendy Evans

The advantage of shooting portraits at an indoor location is that the setting will be much more interesting than a studio, but you still aren’t at the mercy of the weather. Light is a huge factor: when it’s sunny outside, there’s uneven lighting through the windows; conversely, if not very much light comes in because it’s murky outside, the light levels will be low. However, as long as you mitigate the problems, shooting indoor portraits on location can deliver some interesting photos.