Archive for August, 2007
Beach mats as cheap diffusers
Sun Aug 5th - 11:07pm
Thanks to bossnas for this tip about some alternative light diffusers available from Habitat in the UK. For £8 (or £3.60 in the sale!) you can get a pack of two beach mats which can double as diffusers, about 6' x 4' each, and they appear to be quite sturdy. Example photos in this Flickr thread.
Golf prize-giving with backdrop
Sun Aug 5th - 6:01pm
I've photographed several golf tournaments at Tain Golf Club and I usually hang around afterwards to do pictures of the prize-giving ceremony on my own time, just for completeness. Those pics are generally quite poor due to cluttered backgrounds with lots of light fittings, windows and pictures on the walls.
Yesterday I was there specifically to photograph the prize-giving for the sponsor, Balblair Distillery. So we decided to get the job done right and set-up a backdrop. And I wanted to shoot f/8 @ ISO 100 so I set-up a studio strobe with a 100cm softbox. This set-up was still not ideal as I didn't have a lot of room to work in, so I had to shoot around 70mm and I couldn't use either a fill light or a hair-light. But it was the best of limited options.
As always it's good to plan for all eventualities and I would have put money on the club committee wanting a group shot with the sponsor. So I used a full 3m wide backdrop and lit the full stretch. And sure enough…
Here's a shot from a previous prize-giving at this location. This shows pretty much the whole area available for doing the photos. As you can see it's not a case of having to find a clean background, it's a case of there simply not being any clean backgrounds available. And that's not even taking into account the number of people standing around.
Yesterday's shoot went perfectly with one exception: I'm too polite! The photos were done at one end of the bar and we'd cleared away a few tables so I could set-up the strobe to frame right. I needed to keep the lighting angle fairly sharp in case anyone was wearing glasses. Just as I was getting the strobe set-up a couple came over and asked if they could move a table into the place that I had reserved for the strobe. Well of course I didn't just say yes, I actually went and got the table and chairs for them! What an idiot I am sometimes.
So anyway I then had to put the strobe to frame left, quite close to me, producing some nasty reflections in people's glasses. Took a couple of hours to remove the reflections in Photoshop.
In all seriousness, though, I think this was the right way to handle the situation. When you're working for someone you are effectively representing them, so you need to conduct yourself as if you were any other employee. So if someone asks you to do something then the answer is yes and you need to work around any problems you create for yourself. It's, uh… par for the course. 
Classic portraiture
Sat Aug 4th - 6:00pm
Thanks to lightnewb for this link to an online book about classic portraiture by photographer and instructor Joe Zeltsman. You'll notice immediately that the example photos are from sometime around the 70s or 80s but the posing and lighting is no less valid today.
Bobby Nelson is new SPP staffer
Sat Aug 4th - 2:23pm
I've been waiting all week for this news to become public, and now at last I can publicly congratulate Tain photographer Bobby Nelson on his new position as staff photographer with Scottish Provincial Press in Inverness.
SPP owns the North Star, Ross-shire Journal, Highland News, Inverness Courier, and several other papers. For as long as I've been following the newspaper business in this area they've only used freelancers. This has always struck me as strange because it's more expensive to use freelancers, and with staffers you have the major benefit of a consistent style throughout the paper. So it totally makes sense for them to take someone on full-time and I'm sure everyone around here will agree that Bobby is the best man for the job.
When I originally heard about this I thought it was great news, even though I had assumed it would mean less freelance work for me. (I'm too objective, I know!) But I've since learned that there will actually be more work around this area as Bobby will be covering Inverness. So it has worked out really well for everyone.
Anyway, bottom line: Congratulations to Bobby. He richly deserves the job and it couldn't have gone to a nicer guy. It's a huge boost for SPP too.
Balintore vs Brora Rangers
Fri Aug 3rd - 9:54pm
This week's football pics didn't turn out quite how I thought they would. The Balintore 2007/08 season team pic was in the North Star as expected, but for some reason the John O'Groat Journal didn't use the Brora Rangers team pic. And none of the action pics from the Balintore vs Brora pre-season friendly were in the Ross-shire Journal although they did use the Inver team pic from last week's Seaboard Cup final.
Wedding photos with off-camera lighting
Thu Aug 2nd - 10:17pm
Wes Craft shows us how it's done with this set of wedding photos using off-camera lighting set-ups. Not just the formals, though, as that's standard practice nowadays. (Even I light the formals!) Wes takes it to another level by lighting the reception too. I don't know what's more impressive about these shots: The speed that Wes must work at, or the way he makes his lighting look so natural. Seeing these shots is definitely pushing me towards doing this sort of lighting at my next wedding…
Student Andrew Worrall covers Minnesota bridge collapse
Thu Aug 2nd - 9:57pm
The NPAA has a story about student photojournalist Andrew Worrall who was one of the first on the scene of the Minnesota bridge collapse. Some of Andrew's images are in his SS.com gallery. And CNN has the first video showing the actual collapse which is leaked footage from a security camera. (Note that you might have to sit through an advert before the video starts.)
Update: Photo District News has an interview with Andrew.
Seagull and sail boat
Thu Aug 2nd - 6:13pm
Seems like I've been sat at this computer for weeks, doing prints and then re-doing them, over and over and over again. Upgrading to Vista and a backlit screen was a great move in some ways, but it also means I need to approach my workflow for prints very differently. I'm only just getting the hang of it.
So I'm sitting here this afternoon, bored and gazing out of the window, wondering how it would look if I went and took a picture of this big tuft of grass with a flash behind it. Then a seagull landed on the only rock that stays above the water at high tide, so I went and took a picture of him instead.
I wanted to get a shot of the gull as he flew off but he decided to turn around and fly away from me. But then a sail boat arrived, presumably the same one I saw at 4am this morning. If anyone knows who the owner is then drop me a line so I can send them a copy of the picture.
Both shots were done with a Canon 1D and 300mm lens with 1.4x extender. You can click either picture to view a larger version.
Key shifting explained
Thu Aug 2nd - 3:02am
If you're just starting to take an interest in lighting, or if you want to learn an easy trick to get more from your on-camera flash, then this is a must-see video:
Digital Photography One on One
by StudioLighting.net
In this first episode, Mark Wallace of SnapFactory.com explains so-called key shifting, which isn't a term I've heard before but basically it's the technique for controlling ambient light and flash light separately in the same image. This is arguably the most important thing you need to know about your camera as it is fundamental to so many other techniques, and as soon as you get the hang of it you can start making some cool dramatic portraits with exactly the same equipment that you're already using.
Update: If you've watched the first episode and you don't want to wait for the second then head over to Mark's blog as he has posted it there already. This one discusses light meters in the same ground-up super-informative style.
Penny softbox
Thu Aug 2nd - 2:12am
Trying something for Lighting 102 yesterday and I needed a way to point a softbox downwards. Gear freak that I am, one thing that I don't have is a boom so this is the cheap alternative I came up with.
Instructions:
- Trim a thin strip off the long edge of a piece of white copier paper.
- Tear about an inch off the end of that strip and stick the long and short pieces together so you can fold them out to produce a T shape.
- Tape the T shape to the middle of the copier paper.
- Tape the other end to the middle of your flash head.
- Set the flash zoom to the right amount to cover as much of the paper as possible without spilling over.
You could increase the stability by using two strips, taped to the paper a couple of inches apart and then taped to either side of the flash head. That would prevent the paper from twisting and keep it flatter.
Total cost: One pence (rounded up)
Here's a sample image. The penny softbox was the only lighting used to make this image, positioned about 6 inches above the grater.
I've done shots like this before with £1,500 worth of lights and modifiers and the results were no better than this shot made with one flash and a sheet of paper. Admittedly I still use the proper gear for paying jobs, so if you're a future customer then don't worry about me turning up with a load of makeshift DIY stuff. But this example is further proof that you can produce strong images without spending a fortune on all the over-priced light modifiers on the market today.
