Archive for September, 2008
Feathering: It’s like off-camera lighting… but faster
Mon Sep 29th - 2:56am
I've mentioned before (here) about using light feathering to create an even coverage of light on subjects that aren't equidistant to the light source. The example I gave before used off-camera lighting, but for reasons of working speed I nearly always use on-camera flash nowadays.
One of the major problems with using on-camera flash for editorial work is that a lot of your pictures will have some people close to the camera and others further away. You can often do okay with just flashing the people at the front, but sometimes that's not good enough. This is when light feathering can help.
Consider these two pictures:
In the first picture, the boy at the front is about three feet from the camera. The woman at the back is about eight feet away. But everyone was lit equally by simply turning the flash to the right. By angling the flash like that, the girl and the woman got a good blast of light from the centre of the beam while the boy in the white top got some softer light and the boy at the front got the very edge of the beam which is softest of all. The end result is that they all got roughly the same amount of light. To prove the point, here's another unedited frame when the flash didn't fire:
For the picture of the two men with the plane, the flash was angled to the right and also upwards. The man at the back got the main blast of light while the man at the front got the soft edge of the light. The reason for angling the flash upwards was to avoid getting too much light on the white paintwork of the plane, which would have over-exposed it. Again, here's a frame without the flash:
It can take a few attempts to get the hang of light feathering in this way but then it's a technique that will help you countless times. News pictures require interesting compositions, and interesting compositions nearly always require layering of subjects. With feathering you can layer your subjects and still light them evenly so it's an essential technique to master.
Police raid in Balintore
Thu Sep 25th - 11:32am
It was all jolly exciting in Balintore last night with armed police and dog handlers responding to reports of a gun being fired in a residential street. I wish I could have got closer to the action to get the real heavy pics, but the police asked me to stay behind their cordon. I do like this pic though…
24 September 2008: Police officers respond to an incident in Balintore in which a firearm was allegedly discharged outside a Spar shop, according to local sources. It was later confirmed that the alleged incident involved an air rifle.
Megapixels? No. We’re talking GIGApixels!
Thu Sep 25th - 1:48am
Unless plans change at the last second as they frequently do, this week's edition of the all-singing, all-dancing Ross-shire Journal will feature a panoramic view of Dingwall and the surrounding area taken from the top of the Macdonald Monument last Saturday during Doors Open Day.
At the time, that was the largest panorama I'd ever created, weighing in at around 53 megapixels. If you click the thumbnail to view the larger version then what you'll see is still only about 5% the resolution of the full version.
It took a fair bit of work to stitch that panorama together as it was created from a series of 17mm vertical frames, so there was considerable wide angle distortion. It's preferable to create panoramas from telephoto images, and that's exactly what I did for this next image which is a proof-of-concept for a much larger project. This image isn't meant to be of any great interest or artistic value, it's only an illustration of what can be achieved. This one is 137 megapixels but that's small compared to where the project is heading, which will be in the gigapixel range.
When you click through to the larger version of that one, what you'll be seeing is less than 2% the resolution of the full version.
Straight angles have become odd angles
Fri Sep 19th - 8:05pm
For as long as I can remember I've shot mostly off-angle. Nearly every shot I do is from high up, low down, camera twisted, etc. It's an effective way to make pictures more interesting and to give them more impact. It's also a useful composition tool, allowing you to fit pretty much any shape in to the standard 3×2 aspect ratio.
But last month I met an awesome photographer. And I don't use the word 'awesome' lightly. Gordon Lennox, staffer with the Press & Journal, showed me some of his favourite photos from his own portfolio, and some of the ones that impressed me the most were done from a distance, long lens, and dead straight. Since then I've been experimenting whenever possible with that style of shooting.
One thing I've quickly learned is that straight-on telephoto shots lend themselves best to minimalist compositions. When you shoot off-angle there's a tendency to fill the frame with as much detail as possible, and for newspaper work that's often the point of doing it. But sometimes it's nice to limit the amount of detail and cut the image down to the basics.
For example, one key aspect of a story about fishing ganseys (jumpers) was that each region has a different style of knitting pattern. The museum had two boards full of different patterns, so we stuck the boards to a wall and I asked a member of a local knitting group to just stand and look at them. Instinctively, if you wanted a photo showing 18 different styles of knitting pattern, you might expect the photo to be very busy because you'll be packing a lot of information in there. But I think this minimalist photo conveys the same message, even with lots of negative space:
Similarly for a story about school pupils preparing for a visit to Auschwitz, this sombre silhouette shows two pupils looking at a photograph from last year's visit.
This museum exhibition was, to be polite about it, not as photographically exciting as we were lead to be believed. But by making the picture about a local artist who kindly agreed to come and pose for me, the posters and TV screen became secondary elements. I'm sure I'll re-use this idea in future: When the thing I'm intending to photograph isn't visually exciting, find a person to be the main element in the photo and allow the other things to merely fill in the gaps.
Finally, this image of a sports centre coordinator is wide angle but I'll include it here because it illustrates how you can have an interesting perspective without twisting the camera. I actually climbed up the weights machine and hung over the top of it, with the back of my head flat against the ceiling, to get this unusual angle looking straight down at her. The angle serves no purpose in the story, it was done purely to create an unusual image that will grab people's attention. If there are four pictures on a page, all by different people, then I want mine to be the one that you look at first. And last.
