Hi, my name is Tasneem Alsultan
and this is my Redline Challenge.
I'm from and based in Saudi Arabia
and I photograph weddings, portraits and stories in general.
I'm right now in the historical district in the city of Jeddah
and I'm here with a Saudi couple to photograph them
and share with you some of my favourite tips on how to use
foreground, texture, silhouettes, illuminating the couple
just really how I add that little bit of magic.
Light in the dark doesn't have to mean night time.
Here, I'm starting off in the afternoon
and still using pockets of lights before it's dark.
I love this place because of all the contrast.
There's so much hard sunlight and then extreme shadows
and I love to play with that.
I noticed that there was beautiful ray of sunlight that was
falling at the entrance of an old building
and I immediately just asked the couple to go and stand there
and just keep busy, talking to each other, being playful,
and just forget that I'm around.
Just say a word that triggers her memory.
I’m exposing for the forehead and the cheek bones
because that’s really what I want to share
and I want everything else to be very dark and extreme.
I love the drama of the extreme dark and brightness next to each other.
So, with the 5D Mark IV, I usually have a 35 mm,
and then with the mirrorless EOS R camera I have a 50mm.
In this photoshoot specifically I will be playing around a lot
with the 40mm tilt-shift lens.
I generally use this lens to play around, to kind of
hide everything that I don’t want to focus on,
and it just gives me that beautiful blur
and softness around everything else but the portraits.
While I’m walking in the Al-Balad district and
it’s so busy with people passing by,
I found a beautiful leafy alleyway.
I think what makes a photographer capture amazing images
is to have a lot of layers in the forefront and the background
of the portraits which you want your viewers to always focus on.
It’s a beautiful way to frame the images and contrast
with the stark sharp blue light in the background.
So, while I’m walking the alleyway of Al-Balad district,
I found a beautiful frame and it’s a gate to
an old, empty site and it’s gloomy and dark.
There’s really nothing there.
But centring the couple there and asking them to
hold my off-camera flash behind them,
it’ll create a beautiful silhouette and it’ll add to the entrance
a lot of magic and drama.
I already have in mind that the off-camera flash behind them
will create a beautiful halo around and it’ll splash between their faces,
bounce to the walls, and then back to them from the front.
So, I have one light being used as a backlight and also front light.
It’s creating a beautiful dramatic moment.
So, I have a little tip to really make a dull background
transform into a magical beautiful location.
My favourite go-to secret weapon is fairy lights.
So, the fairy lights are very light.
It’s a wire that has beautiful sparkles and you can move them
around your lens and I can easily hold it while I’m taking photos.
You can just move around and really test out which photo is
gonna be that just perfect, magical photo.
So, I don’t use colour gels for my off-camera flash but
because I’m using fairy lights, that warmth from the fairy light
will kind of throw off and make the off-camera flash light seem cooler.
And having that blue, the coldness and the red warmness just makes
a beautiful photo become even more of a fairy tale and I just love it.
Everywhere I go I look for little pieces of glass
and I’ve played around with everything.
Even if I’ve forgotten my own little pieces of glass that I’ve collected,
I’ll still use a champagne glass at the wedding
and just use that in front of my lens and play around.
And really anything can transform a normal regular photo
into something more dramatic and more magical.
Oh my God!
I love the kind of ghostly look that you can get from the reflections of glass
holding it right across the lens and it just reflects right off
and makes that beautiful surreal look.
Because it’s very dark, I’m going to use the LED light just to
make sure that I have their faces in focus. Sometimes I will have it on
just to give that little bit of fill of light in the space without overbearing
and I’ll still have the off-camera flash be my main light.
If you don’t have any fairly lights and you don’t have a shard of glass
or a glass table that you know you can reflect off,
then the most basic trick that I use is my phone screen.
And I’ll just hold the phone screen right next to the lens
and use it either at the bottom to have, to reflect sunset or portraits
or anything and it can make one person looks like there’s two!
I find that when I’m using an actual mirror, it’s just too perfect.
I want to confuse the viewer to think and evoke their emotions.
I want them to look more and try to figure out how I got it,
and what’s happening in this photo.
When I’m using a phone screen, it makes it a bit darker and a bit tinted.
So, play with your phone screen and just see what you get.
I think photographers, when they start out, they tend to be very safe.
And they don’t get out of their comfort zone.
They want everything to be in the centre and everything to be well lit.
We don’t always have the confidence to play around.
So, experiment.
Put your subject on one end of the frame at the corner,
play around and put them all the way on the top.
Use light. Use sparkle.
Use everything that you have to make a beautiful photo.
You’ll be amazed by how beautiful your photos will be
once you get out of your comfort zone.
I hope I’ve inspired you with my tips.
Please remember to enter the Redline Challenge.
I cannot wait to see what you can do.