snappyjeff

Trip Report: In the studio with Joe Gattuso

2012-02-13T05:29:00.000-08:00

Joe Gattuso was one of the first performers I shot after I decided to make this a "thing". Scroll back and you'll also see a live shoot with his band back in December 2011, too. He's a born performer, patient, and always puts his pictures to good use, so when a Saturday morning shoot opened up, he was the first person I messaged to see about making the best of the situation.

This was my first shoot with a full-size 107" seamless paper backdrop by Savage, which presented its own set of unique challenges. It fit into my car with just about an inch to spare. The back was up against the rear gate, and the front was a short stop away from the front windshield. I wouldn't be giving anyone a ride anywhere as long as the car was loaded up, but I can tell you for a fact that a 107" roll of seamless *will* fit into a car.

107" roll in front of a 110" Honda CR-V

My goal for this shoot was a series of black & white full-length portraits, taking advantage of the added real estate, while also keeping things close and personal. Less like stock photos, more like Rolling Stone. Joe's eyes lit up when he heard those magic words.

f/9 @30mm

I used nothing but primes for the shoot. My 60D is a crop body camera, so getting full-length shots pretty much meant 10 feet away with the Sigma 30mm 1.4 or from the back of the room with the Canon 50mm 1.4. Both of these lenses are fantastic, and even when not shooting in ridiculously low light, they give such pleasing geometry to a shot.

Because it was prime lens day, I also busted out the 85mm 1.8 for a tight shot while Joe did his signature Chomp Chomps bit, performing a solo with his teeth.

9 out of 10 dentists recommend doing this

For lighting, I had a pair of Paul C. Buff AB-800's up front, fill on the right from a bounced umbrella, and main light from the 22" gridded beauty dish. I lit up the background with a single AB-400 with a set of barndoors on it, which kept the light from kicking back onto Joe. During actual shooting, the main light was moved closer to center, but still enough to the left to give dimension to the shots.

I metered the scenes to be a step brighter on the paper than at the subject's face, using a Polaris SPD-100 incidental light meter. Eventually, I'll do a blog post about why and how to use an incidental light meter, in conjunction with reading a histogram, but for now, know that shooting against a white background will automatically register as overexposed. In order for your camera to be happy with a plain white background, it will compensate until it's grey. Since we're in a controlled environment, and we know that the background is white and not grey, we're able to set that ahead of time, and then just adjust the exposure of our subject with distance and lighting adjustments up front.

Fresh paper, yo

I'm very happy with the shoot, and have two more similar sessions on the books for the coming weeks. It's actually quite a simple and inexpensive setup for the product it's capable of producing, and in terms of post-production work, there is something very primal and raw about working knowing that you will be flattening everything down to monochromatic.

Flash Modifier Showdown Hoedown 2012: Part 1 - Theory

2012-02-09T10:58:00.000-08:00

Light modifiers are capable of only one thing: changing the direction of light coming out of your flash. That's it. There is no magic involved, nothing that can't be sketched out on a napkin, and nothing that allows for a temporary alteration of the fundamentals of light theory.

Light travels in a straight line. When it leaves your flash, those photons travel straight out of it like buckshot in zero gravity, with a small percentage scattered to the side by the plastic cover/diffuser. Once they're out of the gate, they will likely bounce off of walls, a ceiling, people, and anything else they can until all of their energy is absorbed into the environment. With any luck, some of that light will ricochet back towards you and find their way onto your camera's sensor, otherwise you'll end up with a 100% black image. It seems dry and clinical, but that's all there is to it.

In most portrait photography, we benefit from having as large a light source as possible. For the studio, we use big umbrellas and softboxes. Wedding photographers will stick radio-controlled flashes at the corners of a room to illuminate the ceiling and walls. Even when we shoot outside, we vastly prefer overcast days to clear sunny ones for the best and most flattering shots.

We also want to avoid hitting our subjects with direct light. Light traveling from a flashbulb can only hit our subject from one direction, which creates drastic shadows like the ones on your drivers license photo. Whenever possible, we want to shield the subject from direct light and make sure that it has a chance to get scattered around a little bit, either from a large diffusion panel, or bounced off of something else that will illuminate when hit with light. It's the same reason we put lampshades and frosted glass around lightbulbs in our home.

There are two main types of add-on light diffusers; Bounce and Diffusion, and it all comes down to whether light is passing through or bouncing off of the material. Neither is a one-size-fits-all solution, so it is important that we understand exactly what they do, and what they don't do.

"Diffusion" style light modifiers include the Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce, and the Gary Fong LightSphere. The basis behind these modifiers is that you aim your flash up towards the ceiling, and rely on the diffusion material to scatter the light around in every direction. Most of the light will continue traveling up, where it can bounce off the ceiling and bathe the entire room in light, but it also kicks a certain amount of light directly forward, so you get some indirect light on your subject's face, and catchlights in the eyes. The Gary Fong stuff takes this original idea and increases the surface area of the diffusion material, which in theory, produces even softer light.

Note that both of these devices are omnidirectional. You're no longer just lighting the person in front of you, but the entire room around you, so you'll go through batteries extra fast, and might notice slower recycle times between shots. If you're shooting indoors, just buy the Omni-Bounce and point the flash up towards the ceiling. You likely won't benefit from the larger surface area of the LightSphere, and you'll spend half the night explaining to people why you have a piece of tupperware attached to your camera.

"Bounce" style light modifiers include the LumiQuest PocketBounce, Rogue Flashbender, HonlPhoto SpeedGobo / FlashCard, and many others. These work by providing their own surface for your flash to bounce off of. The Flashbender and FlashCard "skim" the light coming out and direct it back towards your subject (or away, when used as a flag), but still allow you to use the ceiling/walls if you've got it. The PocketBounce is an entirely self-contained bounce solution. All of the light is bounced off of the top of the device, and sent towards your subject. This is beneficial when taking photos outdoors, where you don't want to waste energy sending light up to the moon.

There is middle ground, too. The LumiQuest 80/20 Bounce directs 20% of your flash's light directly forward, off the bounce hood, while allowing the majority of the light to continue through to the ceiling. The advantage of this is that it gives you a larger light source for softer shadows, but also allows you to fill the room with light. This is something I'll cover more in depth when I finally write up an inverse square post (oh boy oh boy oh boy!)

Stay tuned for Part 2, where I actually put photons to plastic and make some pretty pictures!

Fitness Photography Followup : The L-Pullup

2012-02-01T18:17:00.000-08:00

After last week's fitness shoot, I did a follow-up shoot with a local fitness expert, Jess, who runs BareBones Gym. She wanted a few pictures in and around her gym doing exercises typical of her workouts, so we figured out a plan of attack and went at it. We ended up with a number of good shots, one in particular that I'd like to take some time to break down below.

This is an L-Pullup. If you're like me, it hurts just looking at this, but thankfully, Jess was able to do this repeatedly, and hold it while I adjusted composition several times. It was good, however, to be at a shoot where I wasn't doing the heavy lifting for a change.

This shoot was all about short controlled lighting. Where I'm normally inclined to set up a big umbrella just slightly out of frame to cover everything in fill, I wanted shadows all over the place here. This was achieved with three Alien Bee lights; an AB-400 at the left side with barn doors to punctuate the L part of the L pullup (and show off those socks), an AB-800 with a fabric-gridded striplight off to the right to give some separation, and a 22" gridded beauty dish as my main light angled downward across the arms and body. I shot the scene using at f/10 1/250 using a Canon 28-135 lens @33mm.

Product Links:

The striplight and AB-400 with barndoors are set up almost in a cross-lighting arrangement, which keeps the subject from disappearing into the background, while the beauty dish gives that quasi-direct light that makes this really sells it. Fake sweat courtesy of a 50/50 glycerine and water mix... just be careful not to get any on your lenses or equipment, it can be difficult to get off.

Short, controlled lighting really helps in situations like these. Start with a pitch black shot, and build from there using light sources that can be tightened and narrowed down. You almost want to be skipping your light photons across the subject's skin like rocks across a lake. How's that for zen?

Book Report - Sketching Light by Joe McNally

2012-01-25T21:11:00.000-08:00

Another book brought onto my radar by the fine folks at TWIP, Sketching Light: An Illustrated Tour of the Possibilities of Flash illustrates exactly how some of the author's most stunning and inspirational images were created. For every image in the book, there is at least one page detailing what equipment was used, why the location was chosen, and what direction/motivation was used to get the performance out of the subject. It is *very* thorough.

Now, what makes this book great for some might make it a bit of a nuisance for others. Joe mentions every piece of gear used for a shoot specifically, so if you see a shot that you'd like to recreate or incorporate into your portfolio, you can easily find the parts to pull it together. He also seems to go out of his way to use as many different light modifiers as possible throughout the the examples, when it would maybe be more advantageous to the reader to see the setup from a basic fundamentals level and leave the specifics for a list at the end. Someone just starting out might feel like they need to buy five different sized softboxes to get the shot they want.

I'm also curious about why the author seems to rely on arrays of speedlites rather than a single Einstein or White Lightning. It was pointed out that the reasoning may be that it's easier to carry around four speedlites and a bag of batteries than it is a single heavy head and portable power supply. Either way, the decisions that Joe McNally makes with regards to equipment choices should probably be taken as suggestions, and not "must haves". If you have the opportunity to make a shot and you only have a bounced umbrella rather than a 24" softbox, just take the shot. Every photo that's every been made can be argued one way or the other.

The slant towards gear honestly irked me a bit, and left me wondering what the real motivation for this book was. I noticed that the majority of gear referenced, particularly in the first few chapters, was stuff that recently came onto the market, and I just have to wonder if that had anything to do with the release date of the book being pushed back from its earlier announced date. Either way, it's a solid book that does what it sets out to; dissect powerful shots in ways that they can be recreated by us mere mortals. Joe is mindful of the things that many of us just plain forget about; color temperature and backgrounds to name two.

We can all learn a lot from Joe McNally and this book... I just wouldn't take his breakdowns too literally.

Fitness Photography

2012-01-25T11:59:00.001-08:00

I don't profess to being an expert on fitness photography, but thanks to a last-minute crash course (google) and an evening spent at the YMCA with the lovely folks of hvclick, I can safely say that I know more than most at this point. In fitness photography, emphasis is on an individual who has built their body to perform a specific task, and while that may sound cold and clinical, it's an important distinction between fitness photography and the more common beauty and glamour photography.

A typical Gatorade or Nike ad, especially in print, is a good example of fitness photography. It can deal with either a lean gymnast whose body type is light and flexible, or a solid mass of muscle like a weightlifter. The important element is to illustrate the results of their hard work.

I got to work with Maggie, a young athlete from New York, who was very eager to visit the shootout and give me some of my favorite shots of the evening:

I also grabbed some time with Rajon, a dancer of all styles (except Tap!) who happily sat down for a while to help me get this shot in the gym:

Rajon cools down for a bit

I came away from the event with a few important lessons learned:

1) It's hard to fake fit - We can always bring in arm and belly fat using the Liquify tool in Photoshop, but you can't fake the natural poses and balance of a true-and-true fit person. Rajon and Maggie sit, walk, and carry themselves like athletes who know and can control their bodies. This is really the only way to guarantee good results in true fitness photography.

2) Short, shallow lighting - Unlike 90% of shoots, where you want the biggest, softest light source possible, hard, shallow lighting is required to show off the definition of muscles. You will still need a small second light source, or perhaps a reflector, to kick extra light up to the face and keep them from looking like a film noir character, but lean towards striplights and gridded beauty dishes rather than umbrellas and softboxes.

3) Sweat, baby, sweat - A light amount of sweat, whether fake or real, turns the skin more luminescent, making it more reactive to light. You will be able to illustrate a greater range of light on a shiny leg muscle than a dry one, which is why bodybuilders grease up with baby oil before a pose-down. On a lesser scale, mixing glycerine and water in a spray bottle and misting from about a foot and a half away gives the subtle sheen needed for truly stunning fitness photographs, especially when processed in black & white.

Speeding up Aperture by using multiple libraries

2012-01-21T17:49:00.000-08:00

If you're an Aperture user like me, you've likely noticed it getting slower over time. Especially as your library grows, and you begin working with more versions and imports. You don't want to get rid of anything, in case you want to pull up an image from way back, but you also don't want to be wading through that stuff every time you search for a shot from last week. What's a well-organized digital packrat to do?

Grand Perspective shot of my hard drive. Guess which block is my Aperture Library.

Before doing anything drastic, it is important to understand just how Aperture keeps things organized. An Aperture project is made up of two parts; the master and the version. When you import a file, whether it be a JPEG or RAW file, it is kept in its original state where it was imported. Aperture is a non-destructive editing program, which means that as you make changes to a picture, it is kept as a series of changes based upon that master file in a Version. You can have multiple versions based on a single Master file, and those version files are all stored in the Library. It doesn't matter how you organize your folders, projects, and sub-folders, it's all in the current working library.

You can store your master files either in the current working library or in another folder. If you are smart with your library management, it makes sense to keep everything in the library file. It'll get huge over time, but it'll be easier to manage, and easier to change over later on. If you start out annually changing library files and then get super-busy, it will be just as easy to switch to a naming scheme like Aperture_2013_Q3.

When you start a new library, you start anew. All of your preferences and presets stay the same, but the library starts over again. You'll also notice that edits take less time, creating duplicates and moving files around happens quicker, and that Aperture in general starts up faster.

To create a new Library, simply to to File -> Switch to Library -> Other/New.

... then pick a new location/name for the library:

As you can see, I created a few other libraries, some for keeps, some for testing. You can switch between Aperture libraries on the fly like this, or by holding down the Option key while starting up the program. This will allow you to pick your specific library before it loads the default/last one.

Holding down Option while starting Aperture allows you to select which library you want to start up with

One way to keep your machine speedy without kludging up your local hard drive is to import new project directly to the local hard drive's library (faster than an attached drive), and then export it when you're done. This is also ideal when you want to start working on a project before you get home to your Aperture attached drive.To do this, take the following steps:
1) Import the images to the local library
2) Do your magic as usual
3) When back home and ready to export the files to your attached usb/firewire/whatever drive, mount the drive and export the project as a library, making sure to select the "Consolidate Masters" option.

This will make a self-contained library that will be easily importable into your other library. As such, it might take a looong time to export.

Tah Dah!

4) Change over Aperture to the library you want to import into, either by going File -> Switch to Library or restarting with the option key held down.
5) File -> Import -> Library/Project

Find and select the project file that you exported from step 3 and commence waiting. Aperture will begin merging the project files:

6) Once this finishes, you have successfully imported a project from one library into another. Note that as of right now, it is in two places. To save space and keep things speedy, make sure to delete the old copy from your local library the next time you load it up.

And that's it. With an understanding of Aperture's masters/versions system, you will be spread out your storage and stay speedy with your edits. This is definitely something to keep in mind from the very beginning, although it's not impossible to implement further on down the road with even an 80GB library... as I found out.

ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish in action

2012-01-18T13:09:00.000-08:00

I finally got a chance to really try out my new ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish the other day during a quick shoot with Elise (MM#105473). There wasn't much specifically planned for this shoot, and I purposely traveled light to keep setup time as short as possible. The only light source was the BD, mounted to an AB-800, and an assistant held a 30" silver reflector off to the left. Here's the result:

Model/Hair/MU: Elise. Owl tattoo (marker): Vanessa Foerster

Dish was about 5 feet away from the subject, angled down about 20 degrees. What immediately struck me about the images is the mix of lighting characteristics across the image. There is sharp dropoff around her shoulders and lower body, and even where there is direct light on her face and faux tattoo, it's coming back to the camera nice and evenly. It does wonders for skin, which is what's really going to make or break your images.

Two things worth noting, however. One, you need a lot more power to push a 22" beauty dish than a similarly-sized softbox. I'm not sure if it's because of the extra bouncing that light does before it leaves the bowl, or because of the grid, but I had to push my AB-800 to just about half-power to get a decently-exposed image, even in the small shooting space. There's no doubt science-afoot, but just know that if you're having trouble powering a direct-diffusion light modifier as it is, you'll need something more substantial with this. Second, if you're not careful, you'll turn your subject into the bat-signal. The shadow, while nicely feathered around the edges, is definitely round in shape, so it's a good idea to pay attention to where your shadow is being cast.

I'm very happy with the performance of this "cheap" beauty dish, and will no doubt be using it for most shoots from here on out. I do have some concerns about the grid being damaged before I can find an appropriate carrying case that doesn't cost more than the dish itself, but we can be clever in the meantime.

If you're an Alien Bees user like me, make sure to check out the ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish, also available for speedlites.

Anatomy of the Beauty Dish: the ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish w/ Grid

2012-01-13T19:34:00.000-08:00

I've been wanting a larger, gridded beauty dish for a while, but it appears that so does everyone else, because every major supplier has either jacked up prices ridiculously high or gone on backorder. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some of the high-dollar dishes in action, and the results are incredible, but once you understand the basics of how a beauty dish works, you maybe won't feel so bad about going for something that doesn't cost as much as decent midrange zoom.

A beauty dish, also called a radar reflector, or pan-head reflector is a unique light modifier that relies on the reflective properties of the dish's main body to produce a light source large enough to feather out shadow edges, yet direct enough to still show shape and dynamics of the body. In terms of light modifiers, it is fairly complex, but it can be easily understood by just tracing the path of light, one layer at a time.

The ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish (for Alien Bees) is one of the cheapest beauty dishes you can find that isn't made of something resembling a tin pie pan. Having had a good time with my 16" version, and knowing that it was made of the same damage-resistant material, I waited for one to come available on amazon.com and pounced the instant it showed in-stock.

ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish without grid attached

The outer dish is a nice thick hardened aluminum, black on the outside, and with a textured silver lining. This surface is the most important factor in the quality of light put out by a beauty dish, so it's worth paying attention to. If it were a smooth, mirror-like coating, light would shoot out the front like a spotlight, but the tiny wrinkles and specular properties of the paint ensure that light will scatter in all sorts of directions upon hitting it.

It is, of course, very easy to spray paint the inside of a dish with glossy white paint, which will make the light reflecting off of it even more omnidirectional. The design of the beauty dish ensures that the light hitting your subject is predominantly reflected off of the main shell, and not coming directly from the main light source, although in this image, we can see the Alien Bee's flashtube out in the open. This is how the dish appears without the included metal grid, which is another important aspect of beauty dishes, and lighting in general.

A grid, in photography, is a honeycomb structure, usually about half an inch thick, and made of metal. Its purpose is to kind of straighten out the light leaving a source. It cuts down on the diffusional properties of a light modifier, but also makes it easier to control where our light is going in a scene. When using a large beauty dish like this, we have a lot of direct light leaking out the sides of the dish, which will wind up hitting our background, walls, floor, and ceiling.

A beauty dish without a grid viewed from varying angles

In the above illustration, notice how we initially are being hit with light being reflected cleanly off of the surface of the dish. As we angle away from the center of the dish, we begin to see more light reflected off of the dish's textures. This is the feathered area of the dish, where many photographers like to place their subjects. It is where you catch the most variety in light paths, and where the lighting will look most dynamic and exciting. Once we get around the inner reflector, the bare bulb begins to peek out, throwing a fair amount of direct light out towards the edges, where we end up.

The grid attaches to the outer rim of the dish by way of three metal clips like this. The circumference of the grid sits in a ridge of the main dish's outer hoop, and with a very un-scientific shake test, it seems that the grid will indeed stay in place during a shoot, although I'm also pretty sure that I'll be using a few small clamps along the perimeter just in case. It's worth noting that the grid is metal, and is somewhat fragile, so be careful not to let anything bump or crush the surface, because it's just a whole lot of little metal fins in there, and like a car's radiator, it doesn't take much pressure at all to bend.

Beauty dish with grid viewed from various angles

The metal grid serves two purposes. First, and most obvious, it serves to eliminate the direct light coming out the side of the dish. There is no chance of any direct light coming out of a gridded beauty dish, it's all reflected off of the specular surface inside. Second, it narrows the light coming off of that surface to 15,20 or 30 degrees, depending on what grid you use. This means that we can very easily see where the boundaries of the light source are, and make the light source a little bit more controllable. Most of the images you've seen that make you want to get a beauty dish were taken using a gridded beauty dish, so when pricing things out, make sure you include the price of a grid, otherwise you're going to end up with something very similar to a reflective umbrella, which is a whole heck of a lot cheaper.

The ePhoto 22" Beauty Dish is not the fanciest or lightest dish out there, but for what it is, it's a good value. The inner surface is textured nicely to give a good spread of light, and the shell is hard enough to take normal usage without getting deformed. Also important, it being all metal means that you can use it with a modeling lamp on an Alien Bee without melting plastic.

Suppose it's also worth mentioning that it comes with a sock, or an elastic-rimmed piece of diffusion material that you can place over the rim of the light. This serves to scatter the light one last time before it leaves for your subject. With the diffusion sock in place, your beauty dish basically becomes a circular softbox. I haven't seen any reason to use a diffusion sock with a beauty dish other than when using a single beauty dish as a sole source of light, or when I was too lazy to drag out an actual softbox to provide fill right next to a subject, so you'd be safe leaving that in the package.

If your paycheck depends on the results of your photography, and you need the very best, you no doubt want the Mola or Kacey. If you're the DIY type, there are plenty of routes for you to take as well, although making the grid might be a little difficult. For the hobbyists and middle-of-the-roaders like me, I can highly recommend this guy as a solid piece of equipment that does exactly what you need from a beauty dish.

Diffusion for Dummies

2012-01-11T18:36:00.000-08:00

Knowing how your camera works is a requirement. Understanding the principles of light is what's going to make the difference between randomly good snapshots and beautiful consistent images. As discussed earlier, there is no shortage of things you can attach to a speedlite to diffuse the light source, but by understanding exactly what the light modifier is doing, we can make more informed decisions both when purchasing gear, and when selecting a loadout for a shoot.

Unless it's being pulled at by the galactic force of a black hole, light travels in a straight line from its origin to whatever is going to eventually absorb that light energy. If you've ever played with a laser, you've seen roughly how a beam of light travels.

When light leaves a flash, it travels in very much the same way. Half of the light goes backwards, and is then reflected back in the opposite direction by a metal backplate, and then passes through the plastic screen on the front before shooting off towards your scene. Because the light source is omnidirectional, like a bare light bulb, the light beams fan out, but still travel in straight lines. The effect is similar to making shadows outside on a bright clear day, because the if one section of light is blocked (say, the one in the middle of the illustration), because it fans out, there is no chance of any of the other sections of the light filling in its space. This is exactly why your camera's built-in flash is brutal for portraiture, and exactly why we want to diffuse that light source.

The best days for outdoor photography are cloudy, overcast ones. This goes counter to instinct, but remember that pretty much any time you step outside when there's daylight, you're going to have much much more light than you would in even what we would consider a very brightly lit room. It doesn't take a lot of the sun peeking through to get us fairly high shutter speeds.

But why overcast? Like we discussed earlier, the sun is a single point of light. When those beams of light have to pass through a layer of clouds, it scatters the light in different directions. If you can't clearly see the shadow you're making on the ground on a cloudy day, there won't be harsh shadows under the subject's eyebrows and nose in the picture. The light source has basically changed from a single spot of light to a gigantic floating scrim in the sky.

To get a similar effect in the studio, we use umbrellas to spread out the light. By doing this, we are essentially making the source of light bigger. This is the same principle behind putting lampshades on lights in our houses; to make the light more diffused and even across the room. Photographic diffusers are usually made of a white translucent material that scatters light in all directions. Think of it like a giant game of Plinko for light particles.The degree at which light is deviated from its original path is referred to as the specularity of the light source, which may be a good topic for another discussion some other day. It also determines whether you want to use a bounce or shoot-through umbrella for a shoot.

Our main light source is now the surface area of the umbrella. Light can come from many directions, and hit the subject from many different angles. This makes for a far more pleasing exposure, and one where the source of light is not so obvious to the viewer.

Another way we can diffuse light is with a scrim, which is a sheet of that translucent material. Many do this on the cheap by hanging a simple frosted shower curtain and shooting light through that.

This produces an effect similar to a frosted window, or a ring of lights around a mirror. The light source is said to "wrap around" the subject, where shadows and highlights smooth out around facial features. We still need to pay attention to basic composition and posing in order to get a pleasing ratio of key to fill, and to make sure that we're keeping the majority of the light on the area of the image that we want to draw attention to, but by paying attention to the path that our light takes on the way to lighting our subjects, we can begin to make the most of what we have, what we have available on-location, and what we need in the future.

Book Report - Visual Stories: Behind the Lens with Vincent Laforet (Voices That Matter)

2012-01-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

It's not often that I real books, so when I do, I try to make sure they're good ones. Visual Stories: Behind the Lens with Vincent Laforet (Voices That Matter) comes off of the recommendation of TWIP host Frederick Van Johnson, who has a style and approach similar to my own, so I added it to my Amazon.com wishlist and waited for the holidays to roll around.

Visual Stories is a 264 page book with lots of pictures written by renowned New York Times photographer Vincent LaForet, who has created some of the world's most stunning images while on assignment during Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Open, and The Olympics. His style is unique and his images are unexpected, yet instantly familiar. His true gift is being able to grab an image that sums up the accompanying story.

A good example of this, which is discussed in the book, is his famous shot of the Queen Mary 2 pulling into Pier 92 in New York City. The obvious shot for this would be to grab a wide-angle lens, go down to a spot near the pier and document the ship heading in the direction of the pier. The picture illustrates the story of "large ship goes to pier", which is clearly not as interesting as they would like to have it seem. For this reason, Vincent went with a narrow shot down a busy NYC street with the QM2 emerging between buildings to put everything into perspective.


Vincent Laforet/The New York Times 2005

While I'm not particularly interested in doing photojournalism, there is much to be learned here for all applications. Too many books will show you a great image, and then spend the whole opposite page explaining why it's great, while the gentle reader not-so-gently shouts "But how did you know how to do that?!?!?!" Vincent gives you the before, during, and after, starting with why he grabbed the lenses he did, how he executed the shot, and how it was used in the media the next day.

There are a lot of subtle tricks that Vincent relies on to get shots that assist a story, or catch the viewer's eye. Some of it is in the compositional or exposure details while some is in waiting for the magical moment. He mentions when a tennis ball is frozen in the air, sitting at the apex of it's toss as the key moment of a situation. Indeed, many of his shots looks like they were plucked out of the air at the correct magical moment, like a sniper from half a mile away who has been following a subject around for weeks.

Much of the success of Vincent's shots does indeed come from his intense research and location scouting. When you're shooting a gymnast, it pays to know which direction they will be facing when they land their make-it-or-break-it move. When you only get 5 minutes to shoot with a celebrity or political figure, knowing their history will allow you to capture them in the correct context. The research and follow-through of the author is surely something that we can all learn from.

Check it out if you're into photojournalism, or just in the application of style to documentarian-style photography. There really is something for everyone in here, and even if you take nothing away from it technically, it's great to hear the stories behind some of the most iconic NYC photographs.

Wherein Shootproof makes my life a thousand times simpler

2012-01-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

I think we'd all like to spend a little less time dealing with the nuts and bolts of running a photography business. The shooting and the editing are obvious aspects to the gig, but a big portion of our time is taken up with emailing out proofs, putting together orders, finding out what images the customer wants edited, and so on. That's where a proofing site comes in.

I'd heard a lot about sites like ZenFolio and SmugMug, and was about to sign up for one of them until a pal mentioned how much he was enjoying the fairly new contender, ShootProof. I signed up and started poking around, figuring if nothing else, I could use it to help make it easier to produce a few print orders during the summer month of "freebie" shoots.

List of the most recent, open events

After a shoot, I'll typically go through the day's take in Aperture and 'star' any candidates. Once I'm down to a set that I'm happy with, that batch gets exported to 2048px jpeg @95% and uploaded as a new event. As you can see from the above picture, sometimes I'm less selective with my candidate process. Event albums can be password protected at multiple levels, so you can upload a client's shoot without other users having access to it.

Pictures within an album

Within an event, we can set up several sub-albums. If you're shooting a music festival, you can keep separate albums for each day or stage. Here, I keep one album for the raw dump of images, and another for the edited versions. This looks different from the album view a customer sees, which has an attractive color scheme (that you get to pick), and an easy way to buy/favorite the images.

Set your own prices for prints


Keep separate price sheets for different types of events

Using ShootProof to create and keep track of orders is where you'll really save time, though. You can add any item to your list of available products, including printed photos, books, calendars, posters, mouse pads, etc. You can even create items for non-tangible items like skin retouching, special effects, and b&w versions. Digital downloads are handled through ShootProof itself, and there is no need to crank out multiple sizes of images beforehand. Payments can be handled manually by you (check's in the mail!) or through an automated payment gateway, built into the website.

Above, I've got my three price sheets. Which one I use for an event is based on how much I want to give away, or if the customer has already paid for their shots. Additionally, a viewer of an album can "favorite" their picks and share them with friends, which is a nice way to increase traffic back to your album.


Orders from previous shoots

When an order comes in, it sits in pending status until you mark it as paid. For digital downloads where you set the price to zero, the customer gets a link to download their picks immediately. Prints and other items are handled manually, so when a customer orders a couple of 8x10's, it's your job to head down to the photo lab or create an order for them. The upside is that you get to set your own prices, get it done at your own lab of choice, and keep more of the profit! How you handle the specifics is up to you.

I can say that having something like ShootProof definitely beats writing up custom web pages to display all images from a shot. Once images are uploaded, they're easy to manage and move around. Orders show up in your email (if you prefer) making it very clear what you have to get done, and the staff is incredibly responsive to suggestions and questions. If you're in the market for a new proofing/gallery/sales site, definitely check out ShootProof, and definitely use that link right there, because they have a nice affiliates program :)

The Barber

2012-01-02T09:08:00.000-08:00

Back in my college days, a few of us would load into a car and head over to a real barber shop a few miles off campus. I say a real barber shop because this was certainly not supercuts. This was a sports magazines on an end table, dark wood paneling, chair from the 20's, real-life barber shop, and the man did a great job. But just like a certain Seinfeld character made a great soup, you had to know what you wanted, let him do his job, pay, and leave.

Like this, but more horrible

One of our friends didn't know the rules, and asked for what would go on to be known as the faux-hawk; shaved down the sides, with a 2" strip of hair running down the middle. A hush fell across the room. We squirmed in our chairs in an attempt to disappear from our friend who would surely ruin it for all of us. Surprisingly, he did not protest, but did begin working with the condition of "Just don't tell anyone who did this for you".

That stuck with me for a while, and I relate to it when someone insists on an outfit that I don't think particularly flatters them, a location or background that won't work as well as another, or invariably picks the candidate images that I *really* wish they didn't pick for me to work on for their finals. The customer is always right, and I'll always do whatever I can to make their choices look as good as possible, because at the end of the day, it's a gig, and if I do a good job, they'll be back. If I do a really good job, they'll be back with their friends.

It's easy to get caught up in the "rules" of photography about cutting off hands/joints, the rule of thirds, short/broad lighting, consistent angles, correct exposure, and all of that fun stuff. You and I know what makes a good picture, but if a client wants the underexposed picture cut off at the wrist with a tree coming up right behind their head, that's what they're coming to us for. Provide what they want, and save the "good" candidates for editing in your free time.

If you have paying customers who aren't immediate friends and family, that is, people who came to you for your work, and not out of convenience, then you're already doing it right, and you've probably spent more time thinking about price points and taxes than f-stops and shutter speeds. And of course different markets call for different tactics, but I was always surprised by, and reflected back to the neighborhood barber who took the job that he didn't really care for. Weeks later, when time and hair-growth dictated, we all went back, and my friend got a grown-up haircut. That's just good business.

Expanded Off-Camera Flash using ETTL

2011-12-30T08:46:00.000-08:00

dIn my previous post, we discussed using a manual off-camera flash to add depth and dimension to images. The obvious downside to this is the amount of dial-spinning and button-pushing that we must do along the way to get a correct or desirable exposure. Well, help is on the way, thanks to the secret moon-language of flashes, ETTL.

In addition to just barking "FIRE", flashes can communicate with one another through a series of pre-flash light pulses. This chatter happens in a fraction of a fraction of a second, so to us, it appears like one continuous flash, but it's actually a complex conversation that allows us to guarantee correct exposure while using off-camera flash.

A TTL "conversation" takes place between a master and one or more slave units. The master flash unit (usually physically attached to the camera) broadcasts out basic information, almost like two Navy ships communication via morse code.

"Ok, we have evaluative metering, a ratio of 2:1 for groups A to B, a shutter speed of 1/160th of a second, and an ISO of 125. Group A, sound off"
"Group A over here"
"Cool, I see you. How about Group B?"
"We're right over here, behind this wall"
"Excellent. Ok, let's start off with Group A at 1/64th and Group B at 1/128th. Ready, 1..2...3.."
"Fire!" "Fire!"
"Ok, looks good, let's try again with Group A at 1/32nd and Group B at 1/64th. 1..2..3....."
"Fire!" "Bang!"
"Thanks guys, I'm going to run these numbers through the camera's computer and see what the final values should be, I'll see you again at the main exposure, peace!"

Now picture all of that happening in a millisecond right before the main exposure. The camera is able to tell how much the lighting needs to be adjusted in order to record a correct exposure, and the commander gives those orders to its units just in time for them to burst at that correct intensity for the shot.

My camera has a commander built right into the popup flash, which is very handy because I can use it to command remote flashes, such as the 430EX ii. If your camera does not have this capability, there are options in the Canon community. First, there's the Canon 580EX ii, Canon's currently top-of-the-line speedlite. The 580 is a very capable flash with the added bonus of being able to command other ETTL flashes. For example, you could attach it to the top of your camera and use its light as a fill, while using the light from a commanded 430EX ii as your key light, just out of frame. You could even shut off the flash output of the 580 entirely and use just the 430 as your main light, but then you'd basically be buying a $450 flash to use just as a trigger, and at that point, you have another option still.

My not-Canon ST-E2

The Canon ST-E2 is a commander and nothing more. It is able to carry out the conversation portion of the TTL exchange, but has no flash tube to illuminate the scene itself. I will eventually write up a full review of the ST-E2 (sort of... you'll see), but for now, just know that the ST-E2 will allow you to get off-camera flash with TTL to compatible flashes without the need for wires or manual settings.

I use this with my 430EX ii just a few feet in front and to the side of me to give my subjects a more dynamic look without requiring much extra equipment or setup time. For as much as we talk about bending rules and fighting against the camera, it is nice to come home from a shoot to find that your images have a good amount of data to at least work with. If you're not in the habit of checking your histograms (good idea for another post alert!), it can be easy to think that an underexposed is actually correctly exposed if your eyes have grown accustomed to the dark. Vice versa for bright sun. Letting TTL make up the difference, in conjunction with the appropriate metering mode, will get you more keepers per shoot than chimping any day.

Dimensional lighting on a budget

2011-12-30T07:33:00.000-08:00

Quality, depth, and dimension of light are often times what make the difference between a nice shot and a great photograph. The reason that a lot of people call themselves "natural light photographers" is that they tried to take pictures using their on-camera flash and were horrified by the results. Harsh shadows, flat DMV-esque portraits, and a marked difference between what we saw with our eyes and what showed up on the camera afterwards. When dealing with natural light created by the big guy upstairs, we have unlimited angles of light to work with. We can position our subject so the sun runs along their left side, we can catch the reflection off of a cool lake, or position them in front of a well-lit frosted window to get nice diffused light.

When working with on-camera flash, we have one option: dead-on lighting. Our main source of light is now just a few inches above our lens, and traveling parallel to the viewing angle. This is most unflattering to the subject and most un-interesting to the viewer. This might not seem intuitive, but go to any magazine and look through the pictures. To be compelling to the viewer, there must be an element of shadows and depth, which can only be accomplished when the main source of light is off-axis to the lens.

Pictured left is Chris, who runs a site that provides information to sports bettors. He needed shots that showed him as being confident and authoritative, which called for some dramatic lighting on my end. The highlights in the picture are the right shoulder and side of the head, which transition across the contours of his face, disappearing to shadow at the cheekbones and chin. For this image, having light off-camera was vital to creating a powerful image.

Now that you've mentally broken down my lighting setup (bare flash 45 up/off behind, facing subject, and a large softbox cross-lighting on the left), picture the same image if it were taken with on-camera flash. Imagine everything the same light intensity, with his face being one well-illuminated orb of skin, rather than the contoured surface it appears here. For creating telling images,
the first step is getting the main source of light off of your camera.

This obviously isn't possible when your built-in flash is part of the camera body, so we do need an external speedlite. You can, of course, go to Home Depot and get shop lights and go that route, but I'd much rather spend $70 on a photography flash that I can run off of batteries than $40 on a "nice" set of halogen lamps that require AC power, produce a ton of heat, and aren't compatible with any standard light modifiers. For starters, I recommend a manual flash that can take a beating and produce pop after pop of light, the Yongnuo YN-560. This is a manual flash, meaning that it takes no input from the camera itself. All light intensity is based on how you set it using the buttons on the back, so you need to be constantly aware of your camera settings, ambient light, and distance between you and your subject. That's cool, though, because 1) it'll help you become more aware of that stuff and 2) we're not going to be using it on our camera anyway.

Most speedlites (flashes) have a little optical eye on them that listens, or watches, rather, for burst of light from other flashes. This is called Slave Mode, and when a flash operating this way sees another flash goes off, like the one on your camera, it fires too. This triggering is electromechanical, so it is able to take place in an instant. To the naked eye, it appears to be happening at the same exact time, so you can use high shutter speeds like 1/200 sec.

Knowing this, we can use this cheap manual flash and place it somewhere in the scene, pointed at our subject, to provide off-camera flash of our subject without the need for any additional equipment. Now, a few caveats:

Most popup flashes are working in TTL mode, which means that they are shooting out pre-flashes, which may trigger your off-camera flash before the actual exposure. To stop this from happening, go into your camera's settings and set the flash mode to Manual.
While you're in there, set it to as low as it'll go so the on-camera flash will only trigger the off-camera flash, and not actually light the scene you are photographing.
You are limited to line-of-sight for optical triggering. This means that the red "eye" on the off-camera flash needs to be able to see the on-camera flash go off. Most flashes (including the YN-560) have swivel heads so you can spin the body around, facing the camera body.

Off-Camera-Flash Frosty

On-Camera-Flash Frosty

Above, we have a setup that will seem familiar in a second. Assume we're using something like a 100mm lens, and the flash is positioned just slightly out of frame. With this setup, we can use the flash to light the subject with dimension and depth, while leaving the picture-taking duties to the camera way back at the other end of the room. With our camera's popup flash set to its lowest possible setting (1/128), and the remote flash set to something like 1/4th power, we are able to take pictures with depth and dimension quickly and easily. Now, a snowman might not be the greatest or most interesting subject in the world, but it's what was available. Yes, we still have Christmas decorations up, don't judge.

Notice that you can see the separation between Frosty's scarf and his body. Look at the shadows in and around the bucket, under his nose, and around the legs and feet. The softness of the shadows is helped by a small softbox strapped to the end of the flash, which I highly recommend as well. This $12 wonder will help spread the light around and zap harsh shadows. Compared to a dead-ahead flash with no diffusion, the off-camera-flash diffused light Frosty has a lot more going for it, and would definitely nab a few extra bucks on eBay (not that he's going there).

So if you're reading this and looking for a few quick and easy recommendations of ways to boost your photography, consider investing in a flash unit to allow for off-camera flash. You can start right away using optical triggering mode without the need for any additional gear, and built upon that investment later. Your images will improve dramatically right away, and more importantly, you'll be able to get shots that the popup flash folks simply won't have access to.

Yongnuo ST-E2 AF-assist beam not firing: Fixed!

2011-12-23T18:49:00.000-08:00

I'm going to do a full writeup of the Yongnuo ST-E2 once I get a chance to really try it out, but I wanted to make sure I wrote this up in the meantime in case anyone else was spending hours googling around for the stupid answer:

*ahem*

The ST-E2 (and any other flash or flash-like device with an AF-assist beam) will not fire unless your AF mode is set to ONE-SHOT. Change your AF mode to ONE-SHOT and the AF-grid will project.

I was having trouble figuring out exactly how the ST-E2 was going to help me shoot in low-light conditions, when it wasn't firing anything at all other than the ETTL signal flashes (most cameras will pick up infrared signals... you can test this with a point-and-shoot and a remote control), but it was firing in Auto and Portrait mode.

Mystery solved... get back to work.

New toy alert

2011-12-21T09:02:00.000-08:00

There is no shortage of gadgets for photographers to strap, bolt, or otherwise fasten to the top of their speedlites. From the simple bounce card to the crazy tupperware Gary Fong Lightspheres, the basic idea is to spread the light out, or diffuse it, so that you get something more appealing than what you'd get from just shining a flashlight at your subject.

Most modern speedlites (flashes) have a built-in flashcard, which pops up on one side of the main lens. This lets you fire the gun upwards to illuminate the ceiling (and therefore the room), while still having a big bright source of light above the lens to illuminate the subject's face, and provide catchlights in the eyes. Catchlights are incredibly important in portrait shots to showing emotion and giving life to the subject.

The new hotness is the Rogue Flashbender, and at face value, it really isn't anything that special. People have been strapping white foam and neoprene to speedlites for years, but this has two things going for it that are worth noting. One, the strap is built in. With a unique snap and velcro system, you can adjust between two ranges for the elastic/velcro strap to attach as an anchor. At the tightest setting, it still tends to fly off my YN-468 head unless I put some wide elastic bands across the top, but on my larger YN-560s, it stays put. I much prefer this integrated strap to velcro attachments because (Two), it's got a bendy metal "spine" running down the back, which keeps it in an upright position no matter how I orient the camera. Sort of like those fuzzy pipe cleaners you used in grade school, it allows you to set the shape of the panel just by bending it into place.

With a shape-able bounce panel like this, you can bend it forward, like a wave, to almost fake a ceiling bounce, or bend it back to create something more spread out and diffused. In the picture above, I have the speedlite angled back and away to throw the light off of one side of the scene more than the other. This is what I used for the majority of my shots with Joe Gattuso's band the other night, where I did quick 5-minute portrait sessions with the guys outside in-between sets. As you can see, the light source is soft, yet there are still cues on the subject's face to indicate depth and dimension. Being able to keep a TTL light source bolted onto the camera also means no Statue Of Liberty-style posing with a camera in one hand and a light source in the other.

So big ups to the Rogue Flashbender. They make it in several sizes, including a humongous version with three metal strips down the back for the maximum in light bendability. I'm happy with my smaller version, though, and I imagine most would be. People look at me funny enough as it is, I can't imagine what they'd say if I started coming at them with a giant square sticking out the top of my camera.

So that's my glowing (ha) review of the Rogue Flashbender. For someone obsessed with using off-camera-flash, this relatively cheap panel has gotten me back to basics once again.

On Assignment: Joe Gattuso and the Livestream Band

2011-12-19T08:24:00.000-08:00

Earlier in the year, I met up with singer/songwriter/keyboard-player/does-everything-better-than-most-er Joe Gattuso for an informal photo shoot. We did a whole mess of photos while he played at his church, then over at his family's farmhouse out in PA. It was a great day, and we planned to do it again once the band was up and running.

That opportunity presented itself last night, when Joe and his band hit Fulgrum's Bar in Montrose, NY. They came with a guest violinist, a decked out light show, and sound that should make any other local band want to just pack up and call it a day. We talked about doing live shots as well as a few posed portraits before and in-between the sets, so I came prepared, although not overly-burdened:

Canon 60D body
Canon 85mm f/1.8
Canon 28-135 USM
Sigma 30mm f1/4
Sigma 10-20mm
Yongnuo YN-468 TTL Flash w/ Rogue Flashbender
Yongnuo YN-168 LED Video light w/stand

Yes, I still consider that packing light in that it all fit into a single bag (minus the stand). The LED video light has become invaluable for quick portrait work in that it provides a good amount of fill light, and also gives my AF something to lock onto. I'll probably do a writeup on it one of these days by itself, but it's an array of full-color LEDs with buttons on the back to adjust power. It's got a couple of glaring flaws, but I can think of a couple of shots that I wouldn't have without it.

The band sounded great, and I was able to work around the gang to get all of the shots I wanted and then some. I thought this post would be a good opportunity to highlight the strengths of each lens, and the type of shots that I typically go for with it.

Canon 85mm f/1.8 - Something about the geometry of an 85mm lens, whether Canon, Nikon, or some other crazy moon brand, just makes everything beautiful. Stepped down all the way, from at least 15 feet away, you've got a crisp subject with enough DoF to get all of the facial features, with a creamy wash of colors in the background. In a close-proximity environment, it's typically only good for one subject at a time. I tend to use this lens for shots of individuals, with just enough directed flash to keep them 2 stops lighter than the background.

Canon 28-135 USM - What a great value this lens has turned out to be. It's not very sexy, but it's got a decent range, and Image Stabilization really helps out when you don't have something to prop up against. IS, of course, won't help you from blurring moving subjects, but when you're reaching past 50mm to capture something across the room, it definitely pays off. I used this lens for a couple of group shots and some mid-range live shots.

Sigma 30mm f/1.4 - I initially got this because my Canon 50mm was producing wonderful images, but was too tight on the crop body. The added spread lets me get a more natural field of view, while still letting me get crazy shallow DoF. This lens is great for establishing shots and portraits. It's a fast focuser, low-light monster, and produces consistent images. When working in low-light situations where I might be tapped on the shoulder to grab a shot of two people a few feet away, this is what I keep attached.

Sigma 10-20mm - This one is just for fun, but oh what fun it is. Back when I was looking at a nightclub photographer gig, I was introduced to the Wide Angle Lens + Slow Shutter Speed + Rear Curtain Flash = Dance All Night equation. I took this lens out later on in the night when people were really letting loose, and worked off of the room's energy.

The YN-468 did a great job of keeping up all night, and working anywhere between 1/128 and 1/4th power for pretty much every shot, it never once overheated or needed its batteries replaced. It does suffer from Yongnuo User Interface Disorder, where anything less than a 100% deliberate attempt at changing one of the values will result in you having to do a full "trip around the world" to get to the setting that you really wanted, but I really don't have much to complain about. Coupled with another darling, the Rogue Flashbender, light was not a problem.

Headshot Day: Good idea or worst idea ever?

2011-12-15T07:38:00.000-08:00

Post an ad for photography on craigslist, and inevitably, you'll end up with a dozen messages from people looking for headshots. A lot of gigs require one, and it's the kind of thing that most people realize you can't just do yourself on an iPhone. Problem is, it's still a 3-light shoot for me, even if the actual shooting only takes 30 minutes with another 30 minutes of editing, so I usually pass, and I don't know where these people end up going... but it simply isn't economical for me.

So I'm thinking of turning things around a bit and doing Headshot Day. Something like $40 for 30 minutes, with 3-4 edited versions hitting the web within 48 hours. The area is full of musicians and model/public figure hopefuls who are always looking for a way to boost their image... I just need to figure out a way to run things that would not a) be a logistical nightmare b) end up costing me more than I end up pulling in. I think the fact that it's only 30 minutes would actually be beneficial to attracting people who just want to stop in and get it over with, too. My other concern is that people are always late, and I don't want to be operating on a backed up schedule.

This requires more thought.

First time shoot with Jessica V.

2011-12-15T04:23:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back, I started talking to a friend of another model who was curious about doing a photo session. We figured out a date, talked ideas, and made it happen this week. This was her first time doing a photo shoot, but I thought it'd be good practice for me, and it'd at least be another piece for my portfolio.

We shot for about two hours, focusing mainly on shoulder-up shots. I saw from a few facebook photos that she had very intense and pronounced eyes, so I wanted to highlight this, along with her straight hair that would play well with the angles of the shot in my mind.

Here's the highlight shot of the day:

The goal was to make something bold, yet personal, with a subtle, understated expression. I've read complaints that it's too yellow, so I tried pushing her skin a little colder, but it just seemed to take the life out of it for me. To each their own. I think it rocks.

Here's the lighting diagram:

Lens was a Canon 28-135USM @f/10 set to 35mm. Main light was a 32' umbrella positioned about 5 feet away and 30 deg. to the subject, angled up slightly. Small softbox on the right (mostly because my reflector disc holder was doing double duty holding up the backdrop), and a bare head AB-400 kicker at a pretty shallow angle against it. The backdrop was a yard of silk fabric from Joanne Fabrics hung in front of white seamless.

To process, I did the usual levels/contrast adjustments in Aperture, then applied one of my special Nik secret-recipes that takes 10 minutes to render on my 4-year-old Macbook. The key elements here are the detail extrator, gold reflector effects, and dynamic skin softener. A final quick trip to Photoshop to fix some nagging bits and there it is.

Switching over to Shootproof

2011-12-13T02:11:00.000-08:00

I've been looking into hosted proofing solutions for a while, and now that things are starting to pick up, I'm trying to get off of DIY solutions and onto more professional and automated ones. This was a good first step.

At the recommendation of a friend, I joined Shootproof. If you've never used a proofing solution before, it's kind of like a gallery, except that it's used primarily to view and select (and then later on, order and download) images from a shoot. The interface allows me to set passwords on albums so that only the participants of a shot can see past the preview image, and makes it real easy for me to throw a CF card's worth of pics out on the web without worrying about someone just nabbing the whole thing.

Admittedly, the interface is a tad clunky, there is no integrated printing solution yet, and the watermarking function is still sticky with duct tape. Still, I can already see how it will save me time and frustration down the road. I can shoot an event, upload all of the pictures that aren't complete garbage, and let the public decide what they want. A dollar a download, and if they want prints, then it kicks out a manual order to me, which I will get fulfilled on my own (for now). For TFP and paid shoots, I have another price sheet that I can apply to any "event", where instead of setting prices for digital downloads, I have a custom item created for selecting, or picking a picture.

Even if the whole dollar-a-download thing is a huge flop, it's still almost worth it to not be burning up my own server diskspace, and let some else worry about shopping cart solutions. Hurrah delegation.

Shooting with CB Smith and the Lucky Devils

2011-12-12T19:11:00.000-08:00

A day-and-a-half long rainstorm and faulty gutter led to a chance of plans for Thursday's shoot with a local modern bluegrass quartet. The whole operation was moved up into the living room, and we proceeded to bang through as many shots as we could in the two hours we set aside.

Once we talked about what kind of shots they needed, I set off getting individual shots, then a few combination of group pictures. Having a band put on a show just for you will hopefully never get old for me, and these guys sure loved playing all sorts of stuff.

For lighting, I stuck to a proven formula of a 16" beauty dish as a key, 22" reflector disc for fill, and an AB-400 as a kicker in the back, for lighting/coloring the backdrop or providing rim light, depending on the setup. If it had been a day later, I might have put the new Saber Strips to use, but truth be told, I still need some time to get comfortable with them. That's for tomorrow's shoot :)

Something that's always an issue when shooting band members is keeping the headstocks of guitars and basses within the constraints of the image. Having worked with violin players before, I remembered to pay extra attention to the bow's movements. Long, smooth movements mean long, beautiful notes... but don't translate well to the images. Catching (or posing) the bow at a near-perfect diagonal angle across the frame draws the eye nicely across the image, leaving the majority of the facial details in an upper corner.

So all in all, a good, although slightly rushed, shoot. In this case, the guys (and girl) needed pictures as soon as possible, and there really was no time to set up a proper studio shoot. I was happy to find out what could be done with limited time and space, and I'm pretty sure the band is happy with the results.

HDR Without Guilt

2011-12-07T21:44:00.000-08:00

Talking about HDR in photography is like talking about Autotuning in music. Used by some as a technical band-aid to an impossible or otherwise-ruined project, while used by other as the focal point of the work itself, it's something that you use either because you have to or because you've run out of ideas.

HDR is High Dynamic Range, where you take multiple exposures from the exact same spot with (typically) one "correct" exposure, one over-exposure and one under-exposure, and smoosh them all together in software. Where there would be a shadow in your correctly-exposed image, the software grabs from the overexposed image. Where there would be a highlight in the correctly-exposed image, it borrows those pixels from the overexposed image. The result is a sort of surreal or dream-like image where the luminosity of everything has been compressed more to something that more resembles a painting than an exposure.

Of course, with great power, comes great responsibility, and it wasn't long before HDR fell into the hands of the unwashed masses. Every mouth-breather with a pirated copy of PhotoMatrix began making HDR images of things that had no business being rendered in such a way. Flickr had become overrun with what the goons lovingly call Pastel Colored Shit, simply maxing out every slider without thinking anything but "Whooooaaaaaaa look what I can do!"

So when I got my copy of the Nik Suite (post about this later), I almost didn't install the HDR portion, because I didn't want to accidentally fall into the HDR Hole. Eventually, curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to finally put the software to good use, but I'd do it with a purpose.

Alarm set and tripod in hand, I drove out to a scenic bluff overlooking New Paltz, NY. From up here, you look down on almost the entire town, which includes a very busy state university, several acres of farmland, and many natural pretty things, all worth capturing. I picked out a vantage point, chose an angle, and waited until that first ray of light way hitting the houses in the small community below.

Using AEB, I fired off three shots in rapid succession, about 1 1/3 stops apart. Truth told, I snapped about 200 pictures that morning, but what else is a guy supposed to do while standing in a parking lot waiting for the sun to wake up? I exposed for the houses in the center of the image, knowing that the foreground and surrounding trees would be underexposed, and the sky would be overexposed. See, HDR with a purpose, not an afterthought.

Here are "slices" of the raw image, showing the range of exposure between the three of them.

Notice the elements that are visible in one that are in shadow or blown out in the others. Namely, the foreground on the left image and the details of the sky in the right image. Using Nik's HDR Efex Pro, I smooshed these three images together and feathered the values to get a fairly-realistic composite that focused more on the landscape than the effect itself.

A touch more tweaking, and this is my final result:

Notice the detail on the houses in the middle of the image, while still retaining the structure of the sky, mountains, and brush in the foreground. In this case, I used multiple exposures to create an image that would not otherwise be possible without hours of masking and blending in Photoshop.

I will not profess to be an expert in this style of photography or processing, but with most any other production, the payoff comes from the planning.

Snappyjeff North

2011-12-07T19:56:00.000-08:00

I'm fortunate enough to have access to the Hodge Podge, a music rehearsal studio that gets turned into a photo studio whenever I have a project that really needs the high ceilings and wide open spaces. Sometimes, though, smaller gigs come up, and it's nice to be able to do it in house. This week, I'm shooting a local modern bluegrass band, and due to time constraints, we had to keep it local and quick. Enter Snappyjeff North:

It's... still very much a basement, but you'd never know by the shots that come out of it. I've got muslin backdrops hung all around the perimeter to block and redirect light (and to hide the nitty gritty basement things), a nice sound system, and plenty of instruments to keep everyone occupied. It's a three-light setup, with two AB-800s and a 400 for a kicker on the backdrop. There's a gel holder and barndoors on that as well so I basically have any color background I want, or I can just roll it up entirely for black.

And actually, this picture was taken before I found out just how much that white cloth on the left was reflecting back the fill light on the right. I swapped it with a black and now it's much more controlled. The only thing I really need to pick up is a proper beauty dish with a grid, because the spill from that 16" is crazy. For stuff like this, though, I'm not really using it for the beauty dish aspects, but more as a smaller softbox that gives circular (rather than rectangular) catchlights in the eyes.

Maiden voyage tomorrow. If they let me, I'll post a few sample images.

H&M using cyborgs to steal your money

2011-12-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

File this under "I can see why they would, but something about it just doesn't feel right". Clothing giant H&M has begun using computer-generated bodies as models in their catalogs. Let me clarify that these aren't just existing photographs with clothes 'shopped on top, but 100% computer-generated images with photographed heads stuck on top.

The knee-jerk reaction is of course "They're taking our jobs!" but does anyone really want to spend a day taking 50 pictures of the same model wearing the same hat in 50 different colors? This is basically the digital equivalent to having mannequins in a store. An H&M spokesperson said "It’s not about ideals or to show off a perfect body, we are doing this to show off the garments". It decreases the time it takes to get a new line out there and available for the public to buy, and in the long run, will save H&M a ton of money that would have been spent on doing one-off photo shoots.

I guess I'd say don't confuse this with fashion photography, where unique images are an absolute must for every product or line. No designer, outside of a goof or novelty act, would allow 3-6 months of work to be represented solely by an algorithm.

However, anyone who is involved in catalog photography should probably take note of this, because you know that the other large-volume designers certainly will be. When the marketplace learns a new trick, it's usually a good time to make sure you're prepared for the inevitable shift that follows.

RPConfusion

2011-12-06T10:57:00.000-08:00

Two items that have long been on my "buy when the opportunity arises" list showed up this most recent Black Friday with pretty decent deals, and I was left with no choice but to jump on them. Or at least that's my excuse :) Firstly, I've really wanted a Studio version of RadioPopper receivers ever since I saw what a time-saver having remote power control can be when you've got a strobe hoisted way up high, behind a model, or being held be an assistant. RP had a 10% off sale, so I picked up a new Studio receiver and an RPCube to use with a flash gun. On a related note, SaberStrip was having a ridiculous 50% sale on their 3' light diffusers, so I snatched up two of them while I was at it. Basically, my goal being to build up my strobist setup in time for a few upcoming shoots where space is at a premium. Don't get me wrong, I still love the AlienBees, but setting them up and dragging them around does get bothersome.

We'll talk about the SaberStrips once they get here and I have a chance to use them (hopefully this weekend) but getting back to the RadioPoppers, the way the JrX system works is this: You get a transmitter that goes on top of your camera body. This is a simple one-pin configuration and does not pass through any sort of TTL or flash intensity information. It fires off when the shutter goes click. It can be configured to transmit on any of 16 different channels (for when you're around other RP users) and in 3 different groups. It's got three knobs up top. one for each group, which you can set the intensity of each group with.

The receivers simply plug into your flash or Alien Bee/ White Lightning head and go pop when the transmitter sends out the signal. The benefit of these over the cheap wireless triggers is that first of all, they're a heck of a lot more reliable. I have yet to have a misfire with the Radio Poppers, which is more than I can say for the $20 eBay ones. Second, the sync speed goes up to about 1/250, instead of the 1/160 I was getting before. This may not seem like a huge difference, but when you're dealing with moving hair and performance-type shots, the more action-freezing power, the better.

The icing on the cake, however, is the remote power control. Plugging my new Studio receiver into an AB-800, right away I could see the modeling lamp adjusting to the setting on the transmitter's dial, and flash intensity changing to match. Perfect. However, things got a little less fantastic when I tried to get the same action on my flash heads.

To get the JrX receivers to fire off a speedlite, you need a hotshoe adapter, which they sell as the RPCube. This doodad plugs into the receiver while attached to your speedlite, and allows you to fire and remote-control the power output of your battery-powered strobes.

I've been using the Yongnuo YN-560 manual flash heads for a while now, and have no reason not to. They're solidly built, quiet, recycle fast, and are easy to read even from 10 feet away. Being a manual flash, they don't do any sort of TTL or otherwise evaluative light reading, so the intensity of the light output is based entirely on how high you set them on the back. Fine if you own the space you're shooting in, or you have time to adjust things, but my concern was that with the SaberStrips, I wouldn't be able to easily get to the controls if I wanted to raise or drop the output without unscrewing the base collar of the strip every time.

Well, apparently the Yongnuo flashes don't play well with the JrX RPCube system. Granted, it makes sense that the 560s didn't, because they're entirely manual, but the manual for the 560 makes reference to the S2 mode being TTL compatible. Ok, chalk it up to a bad translation, I have a YN-468 that has a full pin configuration underneath and definitely supports TTL. This didn't work either. Googling around finds a few dozen other folks complaining about the same problem. Apparently Yongnuo flashes just don't play well with the RPCube. I was able to get an older Canon 380EX flash to play nicely with it, which is promising, although it's one of those old flashes that takes forever to recharge and makes a high-pitched whine the whole time.

As of right now, there is no sort of chart or list of 100% compatible flashes that the RPCube can reliable control the power output of. I know that the key issue seems to be an analog quench pin, which acts as a thyristor, taking power from the bulb once light has reached a certain level, but that hasn't really helped me in my searching.

So now I'm thinking do I want to try and pick up a pair of more modern Canon flashes to make this outfit work? Being that I'm not even using TTL, I could even grab some older Nikon flashes, since those seem to be a bit more reliable. Do I even care that much to get my strobist setup working with all of the bells and whistles, or will I be ok with just doing it the old fashioned way? Fortunately, there's only one way to find out, and that's with a few more photo shoots.