star party

At the McDonald observatory, Fort Davis, Tx. Shot with moonlight and the red safety lights they use, to help preserve your night vision. The observatory does a few tours and star viewing sessions a week. I was really impressed by how good their presentations were and how well they explained things. Learned a few ideas that really helped through the whole week. Also got to see Saturn through a big telescope - could see the rings really clearly and a couple of the moons. It was almost a full moon last week, hence all the bright moonlight in this shot, shining off all 3 domes. Was also great for actually viewing the moon directly.

I've done the first pass on the images I took last week, cut away about 75% of the shots so far, down to a final selection of close to 500. There are quite a few potential HDR shots in there, maybe 100 or so frames to be combined as and when I work out a workflow for doing them. Getting there slowly.

run recovery

g10 vs 1DII

Spent a few minutes last night trying out an external flash on the G10. I used it with the Canon ST-E2, triggering a 580EX speedlight, firing into a custom built light tent (or a big cardboard box with panels cut out of the side). The shot of the G10 is taken with the 1DII with the 100mm macro lens. The shot of the EOS-1 was handheld with the G10 in macro mode. (note the slight difference in aspect ratio between the two cameras)

I was quite impressed with the control available on the G10, in all manual mode. You can switch the flash into full manual too and control the power output directly from the camera. You can also use the standard flash through the lens metering (E-TTL) and adjust the flash power up and down using flash exposure compensation. In this fairly easy lighting scenario, it did really well and produced a great quality image, even handheld. I've heard good things about using the G10 in a studio and it balances quite well with the ST-E2. Certainly better than putting a speedlight directly on top of the G10, which would really unbalance things. The 580EX is slightly bigger than the G10 itself.

For the G10 shot I held a sheet of paper up, just to the camera right of the shot to bounce some light back into the lens opening and add some more light. Small changes like that can make a surprising amount of difference. Overall it might be a subtle change but it can really make or break the feel of the shot.

rock band

We went around to Arun's this weekend to play rock band. Rather than make people suffer my singing, I took pictures and played guitar. Such a fun game! Not bad lighting for in someone's living room, either.

christmas is coming

Seems to be sooner and sooner every year. But then everyone complains about that, so I'll stop right there. I really like shooting Christmas lights. Meaningless, pointless and fun. I have a hard time standing still and shooting or using a tripod. I seem to always end up waving the camera around, or shooting out of focus or running back and forth while taking the pictures. Long exposures, out of focus, lensbabies, zooming the lens or my feet. So many fun ways to shoot Christmas lights in a non-literal way. Even with a small point and shoot camera, you can get good results, zooming with your feet while exposing, or twisting and turning the camera through the exposure, weaving trails of lights on the sensor.

easy questions about finding light

On this post, Mark asks a question:

How do you get Amanda exposed so nicely against such bright background colours? Or is it that there wasn't strong sunlight coming off the yellow background, so it didn't underexpose Amanda?

A good question without an easy answer. On the day, I put her in light that I thought would be good - didn't give it much thought at the time. That's an easy but mostly useless answer. Thinking about it more carefully, I put her in light that I knew would work well within the limits of the particular camera I was using. I was, as my friend Randy would say, in the pocket, shooting within the dynamic range that the camera can work with. I suppose I've learned where that is by taking a lot of bad pictures and looking at those results.

Maybe more usefully, these particular shots were taken on a bright, sunny day, but in open shade. The walls are in shadow, with the sun the other side of the buildings. Amanda and the walls are both facing away from the sun towards the open sky - bright day, lots of even light. Randy again describes the situation of finding light as going to where the light isn't, and looking the opposite direction. You find good light flooding in from there. Be in the shadows, and shoot with the subject facing the light.

One part of this is learning to see how your camera sees a scene - rather than how your eye sees. Sitting in a cafe, having lunch at the weekend Amanda & I were playing around taking pictures of ourselves. We were sitting up in the window of the cafe. Lots of light, a big window that faced the open sky, without any harsh sunlight. The window faced to the North (which is always a great window to use in the Northern hemisphere for portrait light). A generous woman at the next table offered to take our picture and we accepted her offer. Immediately she wanted to pose us with the window behind us, because 'the street outside was a more interesting background'. The only problem was the great light for portraits was coming in the window she wanted to put behind us. I suggested maybe we'd shoot it the other way around and she was happy to do it - maybe somewhat confused why I wanted to have the picture with the boring solid red wall of the cafe behind us. The same situation here - the light was outside, so we faced it. Also, the shot was taken with an appreciation of what the camera can do and how it sees light, rather than how our eye sees it. I snapped a quick shot of the alternative direction, just to show what it could have been like - bright, well exposed outside world, black silhouette of me. I could bias the camera to expose for me in the middle, but the window would be totally blown out. Shooting against the light (contra jour) can provide great results, but for portraits, I tend to like quite quiet, simple light. The other solution is to add light to the scene - with a flash or other light source, but the on camera flash is terrible on a small point and shoot and these are just quick snaps.

So the simple answer to Mark's question is have the subject stand in good light and orient them appropriately for the light source (the sky in both of these cases). Watching the background helps a lot too - keeping it cohesive with the subject - that doesn't necessarily mean bland or boring, but hopefully building on what you are trying to express, rather than fighting with it. Dealing with the direct sun is tough, so in both cases, I just avoided it - being in the shadow of the building in one, or using a North facing window in the other. Becoming sensitive to these sorts of things takes some careful attention to start noticing how shadows fall and where light is coming from. It also takes some experimentation to get familiar with how your camera sees a scene compared to your eye. All things that can be learned with a bit of focused practice.

I've got a part-finished sequence of images and comments that might give a bit more insight into how I try to find these sorts of locations with just ambient light and subject placement. Some day I want to go further with those examples. Maybe that's SoFoBoMo II or another book.

halloween

A good chance to put what I've learned about off camera lighting to the test. Well, really a chance to take everything I've learned and try to do the opposite! Amanda did a fantastic job as the corpse bride. I had fun playing with make-up to give myself a big head wound, with a squash ball smack in the middle. Kate went for a classic vampire look. A lot of low angles with the flash and up close to get harsh shadows and quick fall-off. Was also a good time to use all those wacky coloured gels that you can't normally get away with using!

a mixed bag of lighting

A couple of common themes for portraits in the last week. I did a lighting class last weekend and found while doing the more controlled, constructed lighting was interesting, I was still spending more time playing around with the ambient and trying to accentuate the lighting in the location. I'm not sure if I just don't really have the imagination to see completely contrived lighting, or I think really, I'm just not motivated enough to want to create it all from scratch. I do like finding the interesting light already available, then trying to build on that. I did some shots using strobes and adding in lighting, but I was still mostly working with the light I could find. One that I like was where I replaced the existing light with a strobe to essentially mimic what was there already - but being able to shoot at a much lower ISO and smaller aperture. It was in a hallway with a bare bulb hanging in the ceiling (below right) and I liked the light quality. With some help I put a strobe and a small softbox up in the same place, getting very similar light but slightly less harsh. A grid over the softbox helped control the fall off and edges, to shape it a bit more. I'd picked this hallway for the blocky green and orange wall paintings and thought it'd play well with the checked dress the model was wearing. All that I think works well, along with the lighting - but I struggle with posing a full body. That's why so much of my photography is tighter head and shoulders shots - fewer limbs to position and deal with.

Another theme has been shooting using windows and mixing in the daylight with the available indoor light, playing with the mixed colour temperatures that you find around those edges. Eric Ogden has many portraits shot with the window actually in the frame, blowing out behind the subject and I tried a bit of that with the portrait of Amanda above. Just put the meter on center spot to ignore the background and shoot for these - nothing too clever going on. I like how the outdoor light turns slightly blue when her skin is balanced for the indoor light - made a bit stranger by the fact we were in a predominantly green-walled restaurant which added some unique colour casts to the shot. I also used an old idea of shooting through glass, for the second shot of Kevin, above, using the neon lights in the bar we were in, along with an empty, slightly dirty pint glass in front of the lens to create the coloured flare.

I've also been thinking about and cropping nearly all the shots over the last week to a square format. I've been shooting with that crop in mind and just seeing how it works for me. I doubt there will be a Hasselblad anywhere in my near future but that different crop has been interesting to work with. I'm blaming looking at Mark Tucker's portraits for that particular influence. I don't think it is something I'm going to keep doing much longer but it was interesting to try adding another arbitrary constraint into how I was shooting for a short time. It certainly changes how you arrange things in a frame.

Another shot, (below) was lit using the available light and the modeling lights of the alien bee strobes that we were using. I'm not sure that that really counts as using the strobes properly, but any light that's available counts. the modeling light is low to the camera right, balancing with the wall light fixture. This could be another example of me only being able to see what the continuous sources give well and not having enough experience to predict how the brief strobe will act, but I much prefer working with the continuous light sources - it seems to suit my biases and process. Maybe I should be thinking about video more!

a direction

I was pointed towards a couple of really amazing photographer's web sites today. I'm partly inspired and partly depressed in equal measure, but think they are all worth sharing. The common thread in Eric Ogden's images is beautiful, found light mixed with some additional strobe. Along with lovely locations and a great sense of story. Image, after depressingly great image, they unfolded infront of me. Looking for more, I found this interview with him from PDN that describes a bit about his process. Looking through his images pushed me to revisit Aaron Hobson's equally cinematic work. A common thread of narrative as well as lighting here I feel.

Another that blows me away is Mark Tucker. Again lovely light and clean, great portraiture. Inspired all over again. To finish off this linkfest, I went back and looked at Mark Robert Halper's site. The last two maybe don't have quite the cinematic feel of Eric Ogden's sumptuous images but all share a common thread of found light mixed in with artificial that really appeals to me. The idea of working in a studio doesn't interest me much at all, I've realised more and more. Setting up lights in a dark corner of a location has a similar lack of appeal - I want to find great light and enhance or play with it, rather than making it all from scratch. I need to stay on that thread for a while.

This shot above of Amanda is perhaps not in the same league, but shares some queues, using the light that was there in interesting ways. It has the advantage that I didn't have to get off the couch to take it and play around with the lighting options. Something to explore further over the months to come. I've spent a year or so getting comfortable with finding and recognising good available light - now I want to add and enhance, rather than overpower or replace. Working out what I like and maybe even more so, working out what I don't like helps move things forward.

back in Austin

Got back to Austin on Friday night, after a few weeks away. I'd hoped that I would do more photography while in North Carolina, but really the urge never quite grabbed me. Really that means I didn't get out enough with my camera and start shooting, until the urge grabbed me. It is very rare for inspiration to find me, until I actually have the camera in my hand and take a few frames. So in NC, my camera languished in the bag and I watched the Olympics. Took some pictures in the Outer Banks, but mostly recording the places I'd camped and things I saw - nothing too interesting. Then I shot a bit with a point and shoot when hiking in the Smokies. Started getting a bit of a twinge of an idea and did some motion panning on the trees. A small step but got me thinking photographically again at least for a few moments.

Then this weekend, the Austin Strobist group seems to be resurrecting like a phoenix from the hot ashes of an Austin summer. People are turning up, plans are being hatched and it is shaping up to be an interesting Autumn season. I went along just to see people, but took my camera. Then snapped a few while people were talking. Ideas started to flow, I began noticing the light where we were talking, and took a few portraits, playing with the stupendously purple walls and inflatable furniture and the directional window light. Having fun again and motiviated. All it takes is taking some pictures. Now why didn't I do that when I was away?

Death Valley, after the storm

I'm heading off for a few days to Death Valley National Park. It's my birthday and I'm taking a few days to do some shooting and maybe try to write a bit more. This shot here is one of my favourites from the first time I went to the park. I'd been shooting all week and this was the final day. We were stretched thin by lack of sleep and there had been a blowing sandstorm a few hours before. I'd hiked out with the group through the sand and got some beautiful shots of the sunrise. I was tired and finished. Walking back to the car with the instructor, Craig Tanner, we were just chatting about things, then suddenly we noticed this scene unfolding in front of us. I was tired, ready for breakfast and almost didn't bother taking a picture. The sun was up. The shadows were getting pretty harsh, it just didn't look like a good photo to me, but Craig was excited. So I took a couple of frames. For me, this was probably the biggest lesson of the trip. I still haven't quite worked out what that lesson was, though, three years later. So I'm going back for another crack at it. See what I can learn on my own this time, listening to my own thoughts. I think since then, I've come to learn what a huge part clouds play in Craig's process - so maybe that was part of his excitement. I was on my first ever landscape workshop and hadn't really taken that concept in, until I got home and looked at the images I shot this particular morning. I was also still pretty green at making black and white images - still am really. This shot took a bit of coaxing to really appear from the original. Mostly though, this shot takes me back to the conversations I had that morning and the feelings I had enjoyed surviving the blowing sand and making great pictures. Nobody else gets to feel about this shot, the way that I do and that's okay. Maybe that's the lesson - the images have to stand on their own, as they don't tell others how you felt when you took it. Unless you really manage to put your heart and soul into them.

jessa

85mm 1/250s @ f1.8, ISO 1250

This is Jessa, from the Strobist get together in Austin. We found what probably looked like the least appealing end of the corridor that we had been shooting in, for this shot. I think Kirk wanted us to see what you can make, from essentially nothing. There was no interesting light - other than the tungsten light fittings in the hall. No ambient light in the corner we'd picked either. We sat down in the middle of the corridor and I put my canon 580EX flash on the floor, pointing to the wall on my right. Tried a few shots like that. Then we put a large silver reflector on the floor, that you can see in the catchlights in her eyes. The flash was aimed up towards the corner of the wall/ ceiling and fired in TTL mode. I composed the shot to use some of the lighting elements in the background to provide a frame and just fired a few shots. This was my favourite. I had originally planned to take it to black and white, but after doing that, I partially resaturated it to bring it up to this muted, half colour half black and white palette. I've used this technique quite often when I try black and white images. Often I like the feel that you get - a uniquely digital palette, but not overly obvious or too saturated. Subtle colour, turned down but still part of the composition. It seems to work particularly well for high ISO shots so that the noise in the image adds a subtle grain, particularly in the out of focus regions. Holly asked How are you using your flash off camera? I got a Canon ST-E2 infrared flash controller for Christmas, so I've been playing around with that. It means I can use TTL flash triggering, which seems to be a mixed blessing. Easy to get good exposures, but it seems you can't use it to manually trigger the flash at a given, repeatable power output. I've also got pocket wizards, which have a much longer range but no TTL capability. I'm working on learning how to use both more effectively.

amanda, tim & kate

Lensbaby, star aperture ring and some Christmas lights

the westway method

A couple of readers have mentions the ads that have recently appeared on this blog. I'm not getting in to advertising in a big way, but I am helping to sell a product that I was involved in developing, over a period of five years. There's an instructional DVD available now and an e-book coming in the next few weeks. The Westway Method of Photography is a DVD created by a good friend of mine, Randy Kerr. Randy is a very successful wedding and portrait photographer, working at the highest levels in Austin, Texas. I met Randy about 5 years ago through a shared acquaintance and we've hit it off ever since. I have never met anyone with such an innate understanding of light and photography. Nearly everything I've learned about natural lighting for portraiture, I've learned at classes taught by Randy and that I now help him teach. He's also a bit of an unusual character, developing his portrait business in a field in Bastrop, Texas - about 30 miles outside of Austin. Living in a tent and working the land, he carved out a portrait studio, cutting back trees to suit the light in particular seasons, building features to use as backgrounds and planting wildflowers to provide foreground elements throughout the year.

The Westway DVD presents Randy's 10 step approach to photography, describing it in a very down to earth and non-technical way. There's a clear description and demonstration of camera basics along with some rarely documented fundamentals on finding and using natural light for portraiture. The subject matter ranges through landscapes, portraiture and wildflowers, with an ecological bent. The 1 hour DVD also touches on using lighting modifiers and teaching you how to work within the limits of your camera equipment, to get the best from your photography. I have to admit I also make a brief appearance in the DVD, working through the effect of depth of field and aperture on final images. I think this is a great instructional DVD to introduce the fundamentals of photography and light and really presents some hard to find information on natural light portraiture, in an understandable way. It would also make a great Christmas present! You can see an example chapter from the DVD in the video link below, at slightly reduced quality for web display. I particularly like the visual way it teaches how to identify mid-tones in a scene, to help evaluate exposure.

The DVD also recently won a Telly award for an educational product and was very well shot and produced by Bradley Helgerson. If you are interested, you can order the DVD here. There are also reviews of the DVD available from other owners, here.

me, myself & I

A quick self portrait. Haven't had much time in the last few weeks to take pictures but I did manage to make this shot. It probably looks more complicated than it really was to shoot - I had the basic idea of wanting the larger, straight-on self-portrait far down in the frame and then with that image made, it was just a case of printing and reframing/ reshooting until I had enough levels. Lighting was just a 580EX flash in a shoot through umbrella quite close to the camera and subject. Took about 20 minutes to shoot the whole series. I think it helps that my Epson R800 is such a fast printer! Fun to shoot and yet another use of the red nose. I still haven't quite got to using it for the portrait series that I originally planned to use it for, but still getting some mileage from it!

halloween

It is Halloween today so here's a suitable ghoulish photo that I took at the weekend. We were sitting around outside at Randy's place in the country, talking after an afternoon workshop. We got to talking about painting with light and he casually mentioned he'd just picked up a 5 million candle power spotlight. I was all over it :) This shot is a mix of the light from a sodium vapor floodlight, to the camera right, that is providing the vivid green colour and then the rest of the shot is painted in using the portable flashlight/ weapon of mass illumination. 5 million candle power is bright! I also painted myself in as a suitably ghostly presence on the porch, it almost looks like I'm wielding some sort of phantom sword too, from how I swung the light around. This was about a 30 second exposure. The one thing I try to remember when doing this sort of painting with light is not to set up the camera and then illuminate everything from that same perspective. You have to move around, get off axis to the camera - otherwise it's as exciting as putting a huge strobe right above the lens.

Interview with Steve McCurry

Just finished up listening to a great podcast interview by George Jardine with Steve McCurry. He explores his approach to working with strangers and photographing them, even when he isn't really able to communicate with them verbally. Also his ideas on light, composition and how that should be applied to portraiture is really informative to hear. At the bottom of it all though, he details how much work and dedication is required to get great pictures. The interview is about 40 minutes long and well worth the effort, I think. Steve McCurry is well known for his National Geographic portraits, such as the iconic Afghan Girl. There's also an exhibition of his work currently on in Waco, Texas that I hope to get to soon.

The most important thing is to photograph something that you are passionate about. Thanks to John Cornicello for the link, via the RadiantVista website.

the amanda project

I've been talking a lot over the last year about the value of projects. A recent vacation to a few national parks seemed like the perfect opportunity to work on something with a consistent theme. For this trip, I picked my wife, Amanda, as the subject. The goal was to take a set of good pictures (around 20) of her that we were both happy with, in the various locations we found ourselves.
I decided to limit it technically too - I just took two lenses with me. I had a 50mm prime and an 85mm prime. The 50mm is one I haven't used much at all and the 85mm has been my go-to portrait lens for the last year. In fact, it's been my go-to lens for almost everything for the last year. I wanted to use the 50mm but put the 85mm in the bag as a fall back position. I tried to shake things up a bit by shooting almost everything with the 50mm. It turns out that about 90% of the shots I took were with the 50mm. Quite a turn around for me.
Now a 50mm and 85mm lens aren't exactly classic lens choices for a trip around national parks like Death Valley and Yosemite. Typically, you'd be thinking about some super wide lenses in the teens range and also a longer telephoto to abstract elements of the landscape. I decided to totally skip those options. I've been to Death Valley before and shot a lot of very wide scenics. I've never been to Yosemite but I've certainly seen a lot of classic landscapes from there. I wasn't going to compete with those images. I didn't even want to bother recreating various Ansel Adams views of the park, in worse light, or David Muench cloned images. Maybe I've finally gotten to the point where I have the courage to look for my own vision rather than copying others. Or I've switched to copying portrait photographers - I guess I'll find out over time. A few people suggested I was mad in taking this approach. That I'd spend the entire week regretting the decision or kicking myself, missing shots of a lifetime with the wrong lenses in my hand. Instead I took shots of my life and my times - I shot what matters to me. More valuable to me than pretty scenics of well-worn subjects. There's a joke that says half dome requires an extra stop of exposure now, than it did when Ansel Adams first took his shots of it, because so many photographers have sucked the light out of it. I contributed a bit, but with a slightly different motivation.
So the Amanda project was born, from an idea from Steve Barth with his excellent series featuring his wife. One week, 800 shots, lots of locations, dramatic changes in lighting, collaborations on clothing choices, hair. Hiking for miles, 4am starts, rain, bear sightings, climbing, driving : all in all a great time for both of us and I think a pretty good collection of images with a consistent theme.
I did cheat a touch on the only 50mm/85mm lens selection aspect - I took along a small, wide-angle, panoramic format point and shoot that I used a couple of times in this collection - but other than that, nearly all 50mm. I think there is one 85mm shot and that's the night image from Las Vegas. By the end of the week I was trying to find fresh ideas, use lighting, new focal lengths. I never actually felt I was missing out on shooting the grand landscapes by not having a wide angle lens. Yosemite is beautiful. Death Valley is amazing. We drank it all up, together, looked at the views, enjoyed the sunrises, sunsets and times in between. I did take a few landscapes and I'll start posting them up later, but I had a much more interesting project to work on, than scenery.
The project focus also pushed me beyond some of the standard portrait shots I'd have taken. I started looking for new angles, compared to how I've been shooting with the 85mm. Normally all I do is fairly tight head/shoulders portraits. The 50mm forced me to step back a bit. Shooting the same subject for an extended period forced me to look for new angles, new body positions, new ways to move. It got me thinking about posing a full person, even when they aren't posing as such, rather than just eliciting an expression. So again I found that pushing a subject area via an assigned project has helped me break new ground. I also pushed my lighting skills a bit, using room lights, rearranging furniture, etc. to light the night time Las Vegas shot. Something I probably wouldn't have done without this assignment in the back of my mind.
Hope you enjoy the results. We had a great time shooting them all. Click on the collage above to go to the set of images. Comments are very welcome.

In the comments, Kate asked: Of the shots in the project montage, were most with the 50mm? Of the 25 shown, 18 were taken with the 50mm lens. 2 were taken with the point and shoot DMC-LX1 and five were shot with the 85mm lens (old habits I guess).

elizabeth

I went out on Sunday afternoon with a couple of friends to talk through some portrait lighting techniques. We walked around one city block and looked at the different ways light was bouncing around and how to find the quiet light. I took a few pictures along the way and this one has beautiful, glowing light bouncing around a very brightly lit, sunny plaza outside the new Austin city hall. We are under a big white tent, providing even more wrap around fill. All just available, found light. No modifiers, no strobes, simple once you find it. I went back this evening and walked around, shooting overview shots of the light we'd found on Sunday. Next step is to put those pictures together with the portraits I took and try to explain how I find the light. Going to be serialising that article in this blog over the next couple of weeks.

Austin City Limits

Took a break from the photos of my week in Savannah and went to the Austin City Limits festival. This is a three day event but we just decided to head out for the Saturday. Kate and Tim came through from Houston to stay with us for the weekend and we went there pretty early on the Saturday afternoon. It was hot! I think I've been spending more time than is good for me shooting conceptual ideas, hence the quartet of portraits above. I've got some more traditional views over in the flickr set (or as a slideshow)

I'd had high hopes of seeing The White Stripes but they pulled out earlier last week, bumping Muse up to be the headline act for the night. I didn't really know much of their music so didn't have a lot of expectations. They put on a great show though - fantastic visuals, high energy stage show and they rocked it out. I had a great day, all in all.

Standing, watching, reminded me of how much I've enjoyed the few attempts at gig photography I've done. The energy is hypnotic and as a photographer you get to be right in the thick of things, in front of the audience, right under the musicians. The hours don't fit too well with my schedule, the smoke and atmosphere isn't too great but Austin has all these smoke free venues so that shouldn't be too bad. The energy is such a rush that I'm drawn back to doing that again.

I was also impressed how well my little point and shoot camera (a Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1) stood up to shooting in various locations and light - bright sun light, low concert light, the results were all pretty good and spectacular for a little camera.