Stop! He's Got a Camera!!

Last week I was shooting pictures downtown during my lunch hour. Nothing special really. It seems lately I have been favouring bikes and buildings. Anyhow, what really amazed me on that particular day is the number of times my partner had to tell people, "that's OK, you can go ahead" because people were reluctant to step in front of my lens while I had the camera to my face.

I really find it quite humorous because without the camera to my eye people's behaviour is markedly different.

I am sure we have all had cars brush close past us while walking through crosswalks. Most of us have probably had to make room on the sidewalk so groups of two or three, walking side by side could pass by without a collision. I have even been rundown on the sidewalk by a bicycle courier! But oh man, when that camera comes up to my face, suddenly, the world waits for me. It really makes me laugh.

"Is he taking a picture of this?"



I really do not mind people stepping in front of my lens. On the streets I expect it to happen and I try to operate as discretely as possible with minimal interaction with the people around me. I just want to go about my business quietly and efficiently.

I have never taken the time to see if the same thing happens with a little compact camera as opposed to a DSLR but my suspicions are that it would.

I guess on the bright side it is nice that people are making the effort to be courteous. What would be really grand though is if that was the default behaviour for all of us, every day, without the camera.

Keep shooting.

Change of Perspective

Tonight's 365 pic was hard. See below.



It is not a complicated or technically difficult picture. The hardest part was finding a fresh, interesting composition. The end result is not where I began. I actually started standing on a chair shooting down and had one, gridded, Canon 580EX II flash aimed directly at the flowers from about two feet above. I played with that position for quite a while. I would climb up on the chair, take a few shots, climb down, load the shots on my computer, evaluate them and repeat. I did this several times but found the pictures less than inspiring.

Continuing on I added another light to try and get the vase in the game too. Up until that point, shooting from above the flowers, the vase was barely visible at all. With the second light in place I tried various gobos and reflectors to modify the look. After a few variations and a few up-and-downs from the chair nothing was grabbing me so I stayed on the floor and with one hand on the second strobe and one hand on the camera I began to fire off some shots while repositioning the second flash. I reviewed the pictures and voila! I think I was on to something.

I had my new perspective. We typically are always looking at flowers from above so even though I had thrown some unique lighting on my subjects, it was the same old ho-hum look. But just the slight change of altitude and the flowers instantly looked unique and interesting. I played with the lights a bit more until I got a result I was pleased with.

Although it was not where I started, where I ended was a much more interesting place. I remember a scene from the movie Dead Poets Society where the teacher, played by Robin Wiliams, had all the students climb on their chairs just to get a fresh perspective. Heck if it can work in the movies, it can work in real life too!

Try a new perspective and keep shooting pictures.

31

Just the other day I reached my 31st shot of my first "365" project, a small but significant milestone. I still have 334 shots lying ahead but getting the first month done felt like a bit of an accomplishment.

The first few days were a bit tough. I had not done a lot of shooting in the previous two months and it felt like a struggle not only to find the time to make a picture but to come up with a bit of creativity each and every day. But a few days on things started to flow again. I regained my excitement and creativity and was looking forward to each new opportunity. And best of all it was forcing me to keep the camera with me much more than usual. As Chase Jarvis says, "The best camera is the one that's with you". I only have one camera so packing it along more frequently meant more pictures. Win!

This link will take you to my 365 project set and below are my two favourite shots thus far.



Get out there and take some pictures!

Gels...

A gel is a transparent, coloured plastic material used in photography for altering or correcting the colour of light. Gels are inexpensive and durable and an absolute must in any photographer's kit.

In my kit I have several gels. Red, blue, three shades of colour temperature orange (CTO) and green. The red and blue gels are for fun, the CTOs are for changing flash to match tungsten or adding warmth to skin tones and the green gel corrects for fluorescent lighting. You can typically find gels at your local photography store but any place that sells or rents movie studio or lighting equipment is likely to have some too. In Calgary I get them at a place called MTM Equipment Rentals where a one foot by two foot gel will run you $7 - cheap! That gives you an absolute ton of material for multiple flash heads.

Once you have the gel material you can cut it down to the size appropriate for your flash head. And to make attaching/detaching much easier and quicker, pick up some velcro tape. I prefer not to gum up my flash heads with velcro tape so instead I use the Honl speed strap. The speed strap provides the loop side of the velcro so I just apply the hook side of the velcro tape to the flash head and it is ready to go. I made up at least two sets of each colour.

If you are not a do-it-yourself kind of person you can always purchase gel correction and colour kits from Honl directly here. Of course Honl is not the only game in town but their speed straps and gels do work together nicely. I also have a Honl snoot and grid in my kit and although they are a bit pricey, they do work very well.

To give you an idea just how fantastic these gels are take a look at the photos below. The lighting is basically the same except in the first shot I turned off the background strobe. The background material was white seamless paper.



On the second shot I used a "079 Just Blue" gel manufactured by Lee Filters. Big difference hey? Lee's website has a ton of product information and tools to help you find precisely what you need. And they have this nifty "swatch ball" where you can check out their vast selection of coloured gels.

One of the great things about coloured gels is that they can turn your plain white background in to any colour you want. It saves you having to buy a different colour for every occasion.

Not only are gels invaluable for colour correction they are a cheap and easy way to add a little fun to your photography.

Nice.

Cherry!

Man, oh man I am loving my new cherry seamless paper background!

For this particular shot (at left) I used a Canon 580EX II flash shooting through an umbrella for my main light. This flash was set on manual and was set for f/8, around 1/8th power, I believe. To get that nice halo effect around my subject I used another 580EX II on the background but that was set up a bit different. To contain the light in a small circle I had a Honl 1/8" grid mounted on the flash. OK, $45 seems a bit pricey for a hunk of plastic but the thing works fantastic and it is quite well made, even though it is only a few cents worth of plastic. To attach it to the flash head you need a bit of velcro. You can either go to your neighbourhood hardware store and pick up a big roll of velcro or you can grab the fancy Honl speed strap to hold it in place. Either will do but I'm sure you can guess which option is the least expensive.

The spill from the main light illuminates the background well enough and the gridded background light creates the brighter halo effect around the subject. For this shot I wanted a bit more drama so I neglected to bounce light on the shadow side.

The next picture of the bowls is a bit of a different setup. This time there was a bare flash illuminating the background to keep it evenly lit. The bowls themselves are lit with a Canon 580EX II shooting through an umbrella, again manually set for about f/8.To minimize the shadows on the right side of the bowls a small piece of white foam core was used to push back a bit of light.

The final shot below I added a second light to the right of my subject for a bit of fill. The fill light was set about one and a half stops below the main light so it was around f/4.5. The fill light was also pushed through an umbrella. All the flashes were triggered with Pocketwizards. You can see a picture of the setup up shot here.



Oh yah, I am lovin' that cherry background.

Project 365!

I just decided today to do a "Project 365" for 2010. Yes, I know, I started a week late but I will either make up the 7 missed shots along the way or just run a week in to 2011.

"Project 365" is certainly not a unique idea. If you look on Flickr there are probably hundreds or thousands of people doing the same thing - all the time. The idea struck me today because I really had not been shooting a lot lately and I needed some kind of project to get back in the flow. It's not that I didn't want to shoot it is just with the holidays and other demands it had been difficult to get out there and make pictures. Project 365 is the antidote!

There are an absolute plethora of different ideas for a shot-a-day type projects. Some people choose to do a self-portrait, while others may shoot a specific location in their area for an entire year. Myself, I am just committing to making one picture a day for an entire year. I don't expect every picture to be a work of art and some may even be from my laptop or cell phone. It is really just about making pictures and that's it.

So, one down, three hundred and sixty-four to go.

Kids

Wow. Kids can be tough to shoot.

A few weeks ago I was asked to take some portraits of my partner's sister's kids. As I am always up for the experience, I happily agreed. The kids and I are good pals so I figured it would be a snap. My only real worry was the venue. We were doing the shoot in my partner's parent's house, which, without mincing words, is a terrible location. It is just way too cramped. To make matters worse her sisters were engaged in Christmas baking (big distraction) and the kids came in late, had being going all day and were tired and hungry. A long day, tired and hungry pretty much described my condition too. Perfect.

Things started a little rough. There was no room to set up my eight foot seamless background so I decided to improvise with a table cloth. It wasn't horrible but it had some big creases that were not working for me. To counter I kept the backdrop dimly lit, I opened up the aperture to blur it out as much as possible and moved my subject far away from it as I could. An example is below.

I thought that the background ended up a bit too dark but otherwise my subject looked good. The ugly table cloth had won round one.

I started the session taking pictures of my partner's niece Felicity, not her nephew Aidan but after taking about twenty pictures of grumpy face, disinterested face, completely annoyed face and I would really like to be doing something else face, I decided to switch subjects. Usually Felicity is an incredibly patient and cooperative subject but not tonight. However with the help of her mom (we all know what happens when mom threatens punishment) we were able to get some keepers.

The next task was to get a shot of the both of the kids together. I tried to work them in with the table cloth background but it was not quite wide enough and it was getting harder and harder to hide its ugliness. I decided to switch settings. I took down the backdrop, placed the table cloth on the couch (the couch colour and pattern was way worse than the tablecloth) and moved the kids there. I took a few trial shots and things looked pretty good. The background was not the best but I did like the combination of the brown blinds and green couch. They complimented well. There was an antique looking clock to camera right that I kept in Felicity's solo shot but left out of the group shot. I though the time piece added a bit of interest to the background.

The shot of both kids was a pretty simple light set up. The main light was a 580EX II flash at camera right, shooting through an umbrella. At camera left another 580EX II shooting through an umbrella but this one was set about one and half stops lower than the main light, giving me a 3:1 ratio. This was done for a couple of reasons. One, I wanted to diminish the light on the blinds to de-emphasize them and two, to help contour the faces of the subject, adding depth. The lighting turned out pretty good. I would have liked to play with it a bit more but the kids and I were getting tired and just wanted to be done. They had cookies to decorate and eat and I just wanted to go to bed after a long day. So I settled for adding a bit of a vignette in post-production to darken the background a bit.

Moral of the story...

When you are taking pictures of kids the number one rule is eliminate distractions. If you are not the most entertaining thing in the room (think cookies = more entertaining), you are not going to hold their attention. Even other siblings, friends, moms, dads, grandparents and others can serve as a distraction. I think at one point we even had a hyperactive dog in there too! Simply, the less people the better. Rule number two is probably equally important. Make sure your subjects are rested, watered and fed, which is a rule that certainly can apply to the photographer as well. Being tired, thirsty and/or hungry will also serve as a distraction and likely lead to impatient, uncooperative subjects. And lastly, patience is your best friend. If you follow the rules above and still have trouble getting your subjects to play along then threaten them with physical harm. OK, OK, I am absolutely kidding. Get their mom to do that.

This was my favourite shot of the two of them.