I had this great idea today. It was about doing some location scouting and testing the gear all in one go. Turns out She wasn’t so much into it, as you can probably tell from the pictures :) Nevertheless, got some good test shots and tried out my 32″ octabox without a diffusion.

Meaning and origin.
Olga is an Old Russian borrowing from the Scandinavian languages. It derives from the Old Scandinavian name Helga that is a feminine variant of the name Helgi that means “holy, sacred”. The name Olga means “holy, sacred, light”. The mistress of this light and beautiful name is usually a remarkable person. The persistence of the Vikings is concentrated in the name. Perhaps this is the reason of the integrity of Olga’s character.

Name and character.
Olga is a real princess with the people around her. She is serious, thoughtful but offensive and vulnerable. She is rather a self-loving person but this usually leads to self-criticism. However, she might be sometimes envious but she is really sorry for it. Olga is very womanly; she usually dresses carefully and takes care about herself appearance. Olga can’t stand anyone giving advice to her. So she is rather narrow-minded. She may be very hypocritical as she is extremely pleasant to the more powerful people and extremely slighting with the people she dominates. She is good at cooking. She is a faithful wife. However, she’s rather cool. She sometimes feels like gossiping.

Emotional characteristics/Spirits.
Olga is a very emotional and passionate girl. She may be evil and revengeful. However, she is always able to manage herself. Olga may sometimes even seem to be a fanatic. She is a self-critical person. She is envy with her successful friends. She may be dangerous when angry but she is a very devoted woman.

Morals.
Olga follows the strict moral principles. She never forgives anything and can remind you the old mistakes. She feels like searching the true reason of difficulties and problems and destroys it. She is quite aware of her powerful will but tries not to showm it. She doesn’t want to be the leader or to manipulate the people and if does so then usually unconsciously.

Hobbies.
Olga enjoys watching films and visiting exhibitions with her children and husband. She is fond of cooking.

A noir moment is one of those things that happens in daily life where you can’t help but wonder how (insert film noir character) would have handled it better, or at least more interestingly.

To put it more complicatedly, it is one of those moments which at first may seem innocuous, but depending on your psychological state of mind at that precise second, can be perceived entirely differently, and your subsequent course of action could alter the course of everything that follows like a tumbling row of dominoes.

These moments may touch on a noirish psychological state such as unrequited desire, paranoia, obsession, despair, and so forth.

I’d trade you places any day,
I’d never thought you could be that way,
But you looked like me on Sunday.

About males: “These pictures are part of a series of around 2500 “special photographs” taken by New South Wales Police Department photographers between 1910 and 1930. These “special photographs” were mostly taken in the cells at the Central Police Station, Sydney and are, as curator Peter Doyle explains, of “men and women recently plucked from the street, often still animated by the dramas surrounding their apprehension”. Doyle suggests that, compared with the subjects of prison mug shots, “the subjects of the Special Photographs seem to have been allowed – perhaps invited – to position and compose themselves for the camera as they liked. Their photographic identity thus seems constructed out of a potent alchemy of inborn disposition, personal history, learned habits and idiosyncrasies, chosen personal style (haircut, clothing, accessories) and physical characteristics.”
Male gallery LINK

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,
All play and no work makes Jack a mere toy.”

These are my “Peter Hurley wannabe” portrait’s. It’s a clamshell setup with two shootthrough umbrellas and a couple of strobes.

What you will need:
Cardboard box (daa)
tin foil
gaffers tape
double sided tape (hope i got that right)
polybanner (for the cover)
smooth iron
velcro (black of course)
utility knife
measuring device
pen

Let’s get started.

1.

Cut the edges of the box with the utility knife til you are left with something like this:

2.

Tape the inside of the box with a gaffers tape so there is no stuff that is sticking out, also tape the holes that were there for carrying purposes.

3.

Now, use that double sided tape i was talking about and tape the inside of the box, that thing is going to hold the thin foil that we are gonna cover the inside of the box with. I got mine (tape) from a wide roll, if you can’t get it you can use the one that comes in a normal size roll and you should be able to buy it in any hardware store.

4.

Tin man! Grab the tin foil and go wild, cover the entire inside of the box with that stuff until your eyes hurt :) We wanna make the inside as reflective as possible so that light can bounce around like crazy and maybe our little strobe doesn’t have to blast so much power to light the box.

5.

Clean, cut, get rid of :) excess foil that hangs loose over the edges and once again grab the gaffers tape and tape it around the box near the edge. This does 2 things, first it’s gonna hold that edge and second we are going to tape the velcro to it, but that’s the next step.

6.

Velcro. We’re going to use it for attaching the cover, in our case polybanner material (if you don’t have it, some silky stuff will do), to the sides of the box. Now, i bought velcro that you can stick to your cover material with a smooth iron but you can use any kind. I cut the velcro to small pieces and left the “female” side for the cover material and “male” side was taped to the side of the box, to do it i had to use that double sided tape and make them “stickable”.

Polybanner. I used the stuff for inkjet printing, got that laying around the workplace since i’m in the printing business. You can buy it at stores that sell that kind of material or you can head to your local sewing shop and get some silky material. The thing is, polybanner is pretty dense but still transparent. Measure and cut the piece and leave some 5cm (2 inches) on each side, we are gonna need it for our “female” velcro remember. If you got the velcro like i got, the one that sticks with smooth iron, iron it on, if you could not find that particular kind i guess you can sew it on, as long as it holds you are safe :)

And we are done with the cover. TADA!

7.

Cutting a hole for a strobe. If you got 2 or more strobes, use the biggest flash for reference so you can easily fit all the others inside :) The hole is not going to be at the back as one would expect, no sir, that would be to mainstream and we’re all about original ;) Hole is going to the shorter side of the box and when you stick your flash inside you’r gonna point it to the back (the tin foil cover side) so that light bounces around and then goes out through the cover, this way it’s going to be even more soft then directly pointing the strobe to the polybanner.

VOILA! You got yourself a nice big softbox, that you can use as a standalone unit or you can have someone hold it thus making it a “hendheld SoftBox©” :)
Hope you had fun making this ugly thing and now scram! go make some photos! :)

examples

These were all made with the use of this softbox, in some cases 2 flashes were used: