Archive for March, 2008
Improve what you can, starting with the light
Sat Mar 15th - 1:29am
Some photos just are what they are. You want them to be so much better but ultimately they're only ever going to be a person holding an award, someone handing over a cheque, or a group of kids in a line. Sometimes you can do something with the arrangement of people or the composition, but often the best you can hope for is everyone clearly visible and looking at the camera.
There's one thing you can nearly always improve, though, and that's the lighting. And the simple set-ups can work wonders…
Yes, it's a line-up of kids from a school play. I had high hopes for this shot but it quickly became clear that with so many of them on a small stage we were going to end up with two lines of them, some standing and some sitting. Basically the same photo that is in every local paper every week.
But there is one thing different about this photo, and that's the lighting. Rather than use direct flash (bad) or basic 30-degree lighting (much better), I used 90-degree cross-lighting and fill flash. The cross-lighting gives the photo that nice natural, warm look, while the fill flash does exactly what it says on the tin and fills in the parts missed by the side lights.
Excuse the rough diagram, but this is how the lights were set-up:
Notice that the side lights are almost level with the stage. For this set-up you want the side lights to be side lights, I just positioned them about 6 inches forward in case we ended up with the kids dangling their legs over the front of the stage.
The on-camera flash was set to 1/4 manual power, which in this case was about two f-stops darker than the side lights, which is just about right for fill. The camera was set to 1/250s f/8 ISO 100 so there was no ambient light in the exposure.
To illustrate how the results of this technique are so much better than direct flash, here are two unprocessed shots. The top one uses the cross-light with fill technique, the bottom one was lit entirely with direct flash. What a difference, eh?
And here's a close-up, first the cross-lit with fill, then the direct. Notice how there are lots of shadows in the cross-lit shot that you might instinctively want to avoid, but overall the shot looks nice and the lighting appears natural.
The reason why direct on-camera flash looks so, well, "flashy" is because our brains don't recognise it as natural lighting. In real life you never see anyone lit directly from your viewpoint because you aren't a light source! So when you see a photo lit from the camera's viewpoint, your brain immediately recognises the lighting as being unnatural. Direct flash = unnatural. Fact!
Move away from using direct flash and your lighting will appear more natural. At the most basic level you can reduce the power of your flash and let more ambient light bleed in to the exposure. Bounce the light off a wall or the ceiling and it will look a lot more natural. Even better, get the flash off the camera entirely.
Once you're comfortable with off-camera flash, you'll find that the sky is the limit. You can experiment with fairly basic techniques like the one used for this line-up shot. You can put lights behind people. Above people. Below people. Anywhere! Some ideas will look bad, but most things you try will at least look better than direct flash simply because your photos will look more natural.
(And if you're new to off-camera flash then Strobist is essential reading.)
Invergordon Academy skateboarding lessons
Fri Mar 7th - 1:04am
One of my pet projects has landed with a bump on the front page of this week's Ross-shire Journal. I've written before (here) about photographing Invergordon Academy's skateboarding lessons, although after two attempts I still hadn't got the killer action shot that I was looking for. One photo did have something about it though, and with some processing effects it started to look okay.
I'm not intending to make a habit of processing my newspaper pics so heavily. In fact that photo was never intended for print but the editor wanted an action shot and he was happy to use one that had been processed.
This group photo was also used inside the paper, although it appears in black and white which really doesn't do it justice.
Tip for success: Stop being a photographer!
Wed Mar 5th - 5:47pm
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a naturally talented photographer. I like to think that what I lack in talent I make up for in enthusiasm, but the truth is that it would be better if I had the talent in the first place.
Before I passed my driving test in October last year, I could only do a couple of newspaper photos each day and I would often be hanging around at locations for several hours. That gave me lots of time to plan shots, plan lighting, plan positioning, etc. And the results would generally be well lit, subjects would be well positioned, and overall the photos would be… boring.
But after I passed my driving test I started doing lots more jobs each day, and I would often arrive just a few minutes before we were due to do the pic. But instead of the photos looking rushed and unplanned, they started to look more like the good photos that all those naturally talented photographers do. Instead of looking at other people's photos and wishing I could do the same, I was looking at my own and thinking: Wow, I can do them too!
Since Christmas, there has been a huge drop-off in the amount of newspaper work I've been getting, and I've fallen back to doing photos that are less rushed and more planned. And again, boring.
Last weekend I had two sports photos to do. The first was a pic of the winners and runners-up in a primary schools badminton competition. I was there early and it finished late, so there was lots of time to over-think the picture. The result…
As I often do, the shot was conceived from back to front. I decided to use the three badminton courts as a background. I moved parents and equipment out of the way. Half an hour before we were due to do the pic I had lights set-up and I was taking test shots to find the perfect angle. And then, because some of the kids had been in both the singles and doubles competitions, I spent several minutes positioning and re-positioning them to find a somewhat sensible order.
And what was the result of all that effort? A picture that you've seen a thousand times before. And when it's cropped tight on the kids, as it will be in the paper, you can hardly see the background at all.
Conclusion: Lots of planning is NOT guaranteed to produce a good photo.
Now consider this second photo, done about an hour later, showing the six basketball players selected at regional trials. I won't try to explain how it was meant to look but it was quite different from the end result…
But I like the photo. It's miles better than the badminton one. And I think that's because I didn't have time to over-think it. Even before I'd brought my equipment in to the sports hall, one of the girls was saying that she couldn't stay more than 10 minutes. By the time I had two lights set-up, I had a parent making hurry-up noises behind me. All I could do was line the kids up, tell them how I wanted them to hold the basketballs, and quickly grab a couple of dozen shots. And I'm confident that a carefully planned and carefully executed set-up would have been a worse photo.
Another example is this photo of musicians from a school orchestra…
The plan had been to do a photo of the whole orchestra but I could tell it was never going to happen, there were way too many people in a location of nightmare backgrounds, and lots of parents wanting to go home.
The idea popped in to my head of getting four kids, each with different brass instruments, and having them pretend to play in an over-the-top cartoony sort of way that would jump off the page. Either I didn't explain that properly or they were just a bit shy, but the poses they ended up in were nothing like what I had in mind.
The lighting was meant to be strong cross-lighting and although the front lighting is perfect, I set the hair light wrong and it ended up acting as more of a fill light, ruining the dramatic shadows that I wanted.
But I like the picture! I think it's one of my best.
Cool over concept
The reason why I think the basketball and musician photos work, even though they failed technically and you could even say they're a bit 'scruffy', is because they were conceived at a very basic level. Instead of planning out every intricate detail of the shot and then fussing over getting it perfect, the thought process was: I've got 5 minutes to get a shot that isn't boring, what can I do quickly that will look cool?
I'm sure I'm not the only professional photographer who finds that amateurs often take better photos. I think that's because professionals get so wrapped up in the technical intricacies of photography that we forget the most important part of our job: We want people to look at our photos and say: That's nice! (Or that's cool, exciting, interesting, whatever. So long as they like it.)
In fact I sometimes think that learning to do everything manually was a dumb move, great in theory but foolish in practice. I'd have probably been better with an automatic camera! Nobody really cares if the lighting is flat and the focus is off, so long as the photo captures the essence of what it was meant to capture.
So if your photos are perfectly lit, perfectly set-up and perfectly executed, but also perfectly boring, then maybe you need to do what I'm now trying to do:
Stop being a photographer and start taking photos!
Should you obey the police?
Sun Mar 2nd - 9:06pm
Any photographer who does newspaper work will inevitably come into contact with the police at some point.
I have a very positive opinion of the police, and this has been reinforced by many encounters in which officers went out of their way to be helpful and co-operative. But I've also had some negative experiences, and in each case I've been forced to obey police officers even though I knew they were in the wrong…
This first photo shows a man being arrested during a street party in Alness:
I had watched the two officers leading him away from the high street and up a side street to where their car was parked. As they neared the car the man turned towards one of the officers and immediately both of them threw him onto the bonnet of the car and put their weight on to him. Now, rightly or wrongly, it seemed like an over-reaction to me and I dashed over and took a photo. As I prepared to take another photo, one of the officers pointed at me and told me to stop. I hesitated a moment and he told me again. So I did.
This photo of the Kessock Bridge in Inverness was taken two days before the fireworks display to mark the end of Highland 2007:
The photo was taken from the garden of a couple who had offered to let me park my car in their driveway when I came back to shoot the fireworks, so I wouldn't have to carry my equipment too far. At least that was the plan!
When I arrived about an hour before the fireworks were due to start, the police were stopping people at the entrance to the street, to ask if they were there to view the fireworks or if they lived inside the cordoned-off area. They were limiting the on-street parking so only residents and visitors were being allowed through. I explained that I was there to photograph the fireworks for the P&J but I had arranged in advance to park in someone's driveway. The police officer insisted on seeing my P&J identity badge, but of course I don't have one because I'm just an occasional freelancer. His response wasn't to call me a liar, but he stated: "If you worked for the P&J then you'd have ID." That was as far as the discussion went, and I was told to park about half a mile away.
And finally, this photo of an accident on the A9 was taken from within the police-controlled incident zone, with the permission of one of the officers:
Unfortunately, the officer who gave me permission to go into the controlled zone, soon decided that I had enough photos, and he politely told me that I'd need to leave, which of course I did. On the way out I mentioned that I was going to walk further along the road and take some photos from outside the controlled zone, showing the whole area of the incident. He told me that I wasn't allowed to do that. Why not? His words: "Because this is a controlled incident zone and you need my permission to take photos of it, and I'm not giving you that permission."
Now, the title of this blog entry is: Should you obey the police? And in my opinion the answer is yes. In each of these three situations, I believe I was right to do what the police told me to do, even though I knew they were wrong. There was no legal reason why I couldn't photograph someone being arrested in a public place. I shouldn't have been forbidden from making a pre-arranged visit to someone's house, simply because I didn't have a newspaper ID badge. And I shouldn't have been forbidden from taking photos of an incident scene from a public road outside the controlled zone. But even so, in the same situations I would advise anyone to do exactly what the police tell you to do, both for your own good and to avoid giving the police any extra hassles in what might already be a difficult situation.
But having answered that question, we must ask another one:
What can we do about the few bad apples in the police force who are abusing their authority to unlawfully dictate what members of the public can and cannot do?
(For what it's worth, I don't differentiate between journalists and members of the public. We're just members of the public who are occasionally granted some extra privileges. We have extra responsibilities, yes, but no extra rights.)
This question will hopefully be one that I can answer some time soon, as I'm going to pursue the matter with my local police force and the Home Office. Having to obey an unlawful order is unacceptable. Disobeying it is unacceptable too. So what will the police themselves advise us to do? What is the correct course of action?
Stay tuned…
Do you refresh?
Sat Mar 1st - 11:07pm
If the answer is yes then this might seem like the most obvious piece of advice ever, but do you refresh your camera's batteries?
Not every battery charger has a refresh feature but if yours does then you should be using it. As far as I understand it, the idea is that it drains the battery's charge way beyond what happens with normal use, so when you recharge the battery it will be able to hold the charge for longer.
Before I started refreshing my batteries it had reached the point that I was charging four of them every day and they were all exhausted by the evening. A single battery would last for maybe half a football match. A battery used for a quick job early in the morning would be showing low charge by the beginning of the next job an hour later. If a battery wasn't used at all that day, and wasn't recharged the next morning, it wouldn't make it through the first job of the day.
Since I started refreshing my batteries I can usually charge all five on a Sunday afternoon and they'll see me right through the week. In a really busy week I'll need to recharge two of them by Wednesday.
Canon's recommended refresh rate is once per month if you're using the batteries extensively every day, so I would imagine it would be the same for other brands.
