Photography 101 Seminar: More students’ photos
July 19, 2010 by Brad ·
Last week, we worked a lot on showing motion through the use of shutter speed. Since we had already hit upon lot’s of accidental instances of fast shutter speeds freezing motion that the eye usually misses (mouths frozen mid-syllable, eyelids half shut, you know – real flattering stuff!), we worked mostly on slow shutter speeds creating motion blur. I’ll spare you the many images of my feet and let you see the students’ work that was aimed at Miss Nikki’s much more presentable peds. Nikki brought along some shoes and a few other items she had been doing photo homework with, in hopes of creating original images to populate her own shoe blog.
Even after we wore her out from walking back and forth for us, we worked on using available light to make some impromptu “product shot” images that might suit her blog needs. My goal was to explain how we could use household scenes and common light fixtures to come up with something beyond a snapshot. What goes into real commercial product shots is overwhelmingly painstaking, time-consuming, technical, and complex. It’s also really not suited to the level of class that we’ve got going on here. So we had fun, we made it fast, and we wound up with just what Nikki wanted!
Here’s the motion, captured by Bethany. Nikki, struttin’ her bad self…
After all that walking, we had Nikki stand just so, and worked on composition, filling the frame, depth of field, and low-tech lighting.
This is the behind the scenes view of the photo above. It’s really quite simple, which is what this first series of classes is geared toward.
This one has a story. I don’t normally like selective color (where the color is dropped out of everything except, say, the flowers in a bride’s bouquet) because it’s getting a bit tied to a particular time period (which is pretty much behind us now). But this is an image that Nikki first thought was going to be a throw-away, one we could just delete in camera. But I suggested that she consider its unorthodox composition as viable for alternate uses. I see it as a practical template or background for a webpage/blog-page that would have text (maybe slanted text, hmm?) in the empty space that grows from the top-left to the bottom-center. I dropped out the color entirely to further my point. Then, in an effort to suggest just how vast the possibilities were with this “throw-away” original, I clicked a pre-set in my software and brought back only the reds. She loved it! So here it is.
In the Bicycle Radio studios
July 18, 2010 by Brad ·
Last week I was graciously accepted into the Cat 5 Tattoo Studios; the home of Bicycle Radio’s Escape the Peloton, a live streaming internet radio show and downloadable podcast that reaches tens of thousands of listeners around the world. This being Tour de France season, the show’s audience was peaking, and the discussion was hoppin’. Spirits are always high on the show, and as the photos below attest, the broadcast is a fun combination of joviality, professionalism, and great music. Check it out.
After getting permission to bring my camera, I decided to approach the night as a no-flash, low-light challenge. It was much darker in the studio than it looks in the photos. I had fun stretching the camera’s (and this photographer’s) ability to perform in the dark. It’s always good practice, as the halls, churches, and hotel lawns where I photograph so many weddings and receptions are often barely lit. There, I usually have the option of working with flash, on and off-camera. But location limitation, church rules, or technical problems can occasionally leave one with no additional light. So this was a good low-pressure time to practice.
The Bicycle Radio’s production level sounds great — like top-notch terrestrial FM shows. But this is podcasting, right? DIY radio. I expected to find anything other than the slick professional studio that Sean & Larry have put together.
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The show’s host, Sean Mellor, comes from a deep background in commercial radio, and has taken to the new frontier of internet broadcasting with an unmistakable joie de vivre.
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Co-host and producer Larry Hendon is no silent partner behind the boards. His fingerprints are all over the show, and his commentary and insights are entertaining parts of every broadcast.
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Efraim Rojas is the show’s sage of professional cycling, Belgian beers, and all things linguistic.
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Staff-member Marty was there that night too, but he declined to have his image captured and shared with the world. I am one of the lucky few to have seen his face. And alas, the lass Jerri was unusually absent the night of my visit. Without her, the show was without its news and upcoming events for the week.
Did I have a good time? Of course! But I’m not going to spell it all out here. The photos above tell most of the story. Listen to the podcast for the rest. If you’re a cyclist or a fan of the sport, make it a regular part of your routine, especially the live-streaming music show that begins an hour or so before each episode of Escape the Peloton (Tuesdays 7-8pm MST).
·iPhone photo(s) of the day
July 9, 2010 by Brad ·
As I prepare for an engagement session like the one I’m photographing this evening, I go through a series of gear preparations. Batteries are charged, memory cards are cleared, lenses cleaned, etc. Since I’m working with a very creative couple today, I even went through my iPhone, making sure I had old images safely offloaded. I scanned the photos from a school trip to the beach that I chaperoned a few months ago, because the bride-to-be from tonight’s photo session was on that trip too. I didn’t find any of her on the iPhone (the only camera I took on that trip), but I did find this one these.
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The wind that day was strong, allowing me to get surprisingly close to the seagulls, who were reluctant to fly very much or very high. This one is cropped slightly in Lightroom, where I also dropped the color out. Aw, heck, I’ll share some more.
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iPhone photo with a slight crop and noise reduction in Lightroom.
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iPhone photo with slight crop, color removal, and noise reduction in Lightroom.
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Captured and processed completely within the iPhone. Best guess: used BestCamera app & LoMob app
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Captured and processed completely within the iPhone. Best guess: used BestCamera app & LoMob app
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·2nd Week of the Photography 101 Seminar
July 7, 2010 by Brad ·
Below I’ve included a gallery of images from Week 2 of my first seminar on the basics of photography. The images range from examples of showing motion via longer shutter speeds, to students’ homework, to in-class creations. We had a great time, and every single attendee stayed late as we reviewed homework photos.
I was holding my hand up behind the orchids to give participants something with more detail than just the wall to throw out of focus. Apparently, my face was more useful from this angle.
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From this angle, the goal was to create a proper exposure with part of the orchid in focus and the fuzzy lampshade out of focus.
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Caralie was having so much fun with the f/1.8 lens that she couldn’t resist finding new ways to exploit the shallow depth of field. Here she isolates the clock against a shallow background.
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Johnnie captured Bethany in beautiful reflected light off the rug. I was so pleased with how Johnnie out-thought the camera’s meter to expose for her subject, letting the background blow-out (overexpose) intentionally. Taking it a step further, Bethany’s use of the camera was identified as the true subject of the photo by the use of focus and depth of field.
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Caralie captures an attentive Johnnie as I explain the virtues of solid camera support.
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Someone was listening to when we discussed composition and how showing flowers from angles people don’t usually see can create much more interesting photographs. I love this one! We gave it a little extra attention as we team-edited it in the digital darkroom.
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Good exposures of this still life scene were not easy. The hallway was not at all bright enough for no-brainer photography, and the seminar participants are are still required to operate their cameras in full manual mode.
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Nikki’s waving hand was a prop we used to practice conveying a sense of motion a few different ways. We’ll do more of this in later classes, particularly when we get into flash photography.
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Nikki nailed a beautiful exposure of this scene she spotted. Again, she was working in full manual mode, balancing the darkness on the right with window light from two different directions (left & behind). The highlight on the rim, with shadows that don’t lose detail on the (admittedly fancy) cup and the table’s wood grain combine for a beautiful scene of everyday items.
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1st Week’s HOMEWORK notables:
The shallow depth of field here, considering the lens they had to work with, was an impressive feat given the proximity of the ground to the top of the shoe. Sorry for the pun. Feat. Yeah, I’m a dork. That’s part of what makes the classes fun. (The dorkiness, not the puns.)
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Exposing for the shadows. Bam! Backlighting fun.
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Serious backlighting in manual mode. When you’re the one deciding every camera setting, something like this doesn’t just happen by accident. Well done.
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We all loved this original. Except Johnnie. She didn’t like the way her nose looked. (Oddly, we’d been waxing philosophic about the special nature of nose skin. It doesn’t sound fun in the re-telling, but there were laughs.) Anyway, I took the opportunity to illustrate a few things: 1) how over-exposure can be used to diminish subjets’ areas of sensitivity, 2) how high-key lighting can accentuate eyes & hair, 3) how adjustments in the digital darkroom (e.g. Adobe’s Lightroom, Apple’s Aperture, etc.) can be creative tools, and 4) the benefits of capturing files in RAW vs JPEG (yes, it’s geek-speak, but that’s why there are seminars, right?).
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Here, Caralie put into practice my admonition (borrowed from the great Scott Kelby) to give the subject’s gaze “a place to go”. I likened it to the dotted lines of vision one might see in a cartoon that show where a character is looking. If that’s too close to the edge of the photo, it will seem awkward. We didn’t discuss the Rule of Thirds, the Golden Ratio, or the Fibonacci Spiral until after these homework images were made.
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This is a re-edit of a photo that the students had deemed un-usable due to over-exposure. I don’t adhere to the saying that there’s no bad original, but sometimes there’s beauty to be coaxed out of an image that diverges far from what would be considered a “correct” exposure. It’s not perfect, even after we made changes in the digital darkroom, but it’s worth keeping now, and it serves to give us ideas on how to re-create this kind of feeling intentionally from the start, but with the ability to make it a little more pleasing next time.
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·Featured on Mashable!
July 1, 2010 by Brad ·
Honored (okay, “geeked up”) to have one of my photos make the short list on the summary of Social Media Day at the mother of all social media blogs, Mashable.com (photo #11 in the slideshow). It’s not every day a wedding photographer gets big web guru coverage, however vague. (And I hate to watermark my images, but this is one time I’m second-guessing that decision!) It’s even more rewarding because the particular image was one that I first pre-visualized, had to schmooze to get access to the vantage point, then had to overcome technical challenges; working hard on the scene and innovatively in post-production. (I shared the technical recipe in this previous post.) It’s not that I want to make my job sound so hard. It’s just so rewarding to have something that I put so much into be one that gets recognized. Thanks to Mashable, and thanks to whomever local may have had a hand in getting my image in front of their eyes.
Last night’s sunset
July 1, 2010 by Brad ·
As I left Social Media Day Phoenix, I spotted what looked like a beautiful sunset peaking over the buildings in downtown Tempe. I raced out to the railroad bridge as the sun disappeared under the horizon in time to capture this image of twilight. It was no surprise that as I was walking off the bridge, I passed a couple who had scheduled their engagement photo session with another photographer walking out onto the bridge. What fortuitous calendar decision they made! I should have gotten the guy’s card so I could see how their photos turned out.
Social Media Day Phoenix
July 1, 2010 by Brad ·
This afternoon I attended the inaugural Social Media Day, as proclaimed by Mashable. The local incarnation was spearheaded by SocialMediaAZ.org and hosted at MADCAP Theaters in Tempe. I was as much a participant as I was an impromptu photojournalist. It just happened that my camera bags were packed as I was headed out the door, so I took a portion of my stuff with me. I have posted a small gallery of more images online at this link. As the photos show, I was particularly enchanted by the band, Bears of Manitou.
Other sponsors included SmashBurger, Mill Avenue District, City of Tempe, GoDaddy, and Social Media Club Phoenix.
* for the techies and photogs: If you were there, you may remember that the theater was never this bright. In fact is was downright dark! So how did I get this image? Here’s my recipe: Nikon D3s at ISO 5000, 1/30th sec shutter speed, f4.5, 24-70mm f2.8 lens at 32mm, 0 E.V., Manual Mode, with the camera actually resting on the projector that’s casting the image on the screen behind the speaker. In post: Lightroom 2.7 + Topaz Labs DeNoise4 + Topaz Labs Adjust4. The DeNoise4 was probably overkill, but I figured that this would be the key image of the evening, so I made sure it was as clean as it could be.
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