Photography Basics

It’s days before Christmas so I don’t have too much right now. So, let’s go back to some basics. Here is an easy step by step for how to manage a session using flash of any sort.

Step 1: Compose the shot.

Step 2: Adjust for the natural lighting.

Step 3: Add and adjust flash as you want. Not all at once, you need to adjust for each individual flash so if you have 1 flash, step 3 has just one step. If you have 29 speedlites on tripods all around (you monster) step 3 is 29 steps long.

Step 4: Take one more look to see if it’s composed to how you want it.

Step 5: Take the picture.

Step 2 and Step 3 is where a lot of people go wrong, at least its where I’ve gone wrong early on. I’d add and adjust for flash and then wonder why my background was blown out. You get the background down to levels you want it to be (thus step 2) then you add flash to bring back out your subject (thus step 3). Of course, you also need to consider the inverse square law of light, but there’s a reason that’s usually talked about on its own – it’s simple to see but complicated to explain.

Anyway, these photos were just another test with a speedlite. Then the puppy escaped the fence by walking right through it like it was the terminator or something, so we puppy back and moved somewhere else.

For the dogs.

All he wanted to do was just relax in the yard, but then the puppy came along and just wouldn’t stop biting his face. His head is lifted in some of these because she can’t bite his face or ears if he does that. Unless she gets up and climbs on him. Then he tried moving to the other side of the yard, but she just followed him. I don’t want to call her a jerk, but she’s a jerk.

As always, be patient with pets, they don’t know what a camera is, and they just want you to be happy. For these photos I just let the chaos play out. The big guy decided to relax in the yard, and I knew the puppy would do what the puppy does best – play. These two actually play well together. The rest was just getting on the proper angle and since they were playing, they didn’t really care where I moved.

For lighting, this was 100% the sunlight. Sure, the shadow placement wasn’t the best but bad shadow placement is better then losing the action in this situation. There is no guarantee they’d keep playing if I got them to move and there is even less guarantee that they would stay in the area that would have been ideal. So, I just went with what they were offering, and it worked out well. Making these decisions and gambles are part of photography.

Christmas Spirit

I heard on the radio that their Christmas spirit was the only one with heart and soul. We disagree. The Christmas spirit we conjured has heart and soul too – granted it’s someone else’s heart and someone else’s soul. I don’t think they will be getting a return on their heart and soul either. Anyway, be careful what spirits you invite to visit.

This idea literally came from the radio and sort of worked from there. As for props, the heart is made of white resin and painted. The crystal ball is just me not being able to resist using it again. I am overly fascinated by what it does to light flashes. It’s just so weird. I’ll likely overuse it. The headpiece came from online but days before I found stuff in the dollar store that could have done the same for cheaper. We used a little fake blood left over from Halloween. The rest my model put together on her own and she handled her own face makeup for this session.

As for lighting, things are a bit more complicated. For the first two photos it is a 4 light shot. Two speed lights to the sides of the model bouncing light at an angle upwards. 1 strobe in back to bounce light against the fog machine fog. Finally, one light positioned just behind the crystal ball with a boom stand which is edited out into the fog. For the rest of the photos, we got rid of the back light and just used the other 3.

Nightmares Before Christmas!

To start off our Nightmares Before Christmas fun we invited our here who is burning bright with that Christmas feeling. Unfortunately, he seems to have mistaken “feeling” with “gasoline and fire,” which happens sometimes. But hey, at least he has a friend at this time of the year. Maybe not a willing friend but a warm friend, nonetheless.

This was a year in the making. Our first attempt at this was last year but this sort of shot is challenging to do because you need two things to work perfectly and just getting anything to work perfectly is a challenge. To do this, you need the fire to burn bright and high. Meanwhile, you also need your autofocus to be able to “see” what you are focusing on and in the dark (remember, the fire is in back so we had to use a low artificial light up front). Last year the fire worked, the autofocus failed, and the small LCD screen in back lied. This year we used a different light and we learned from our mistake. I had my assistant practice earlier in the day with me, and then again just before we lit the fire and things worked out.

Anyway, I set up two strobes with grids. One strobe directly to my right and one just up front and to my left. The fire acted as a backlight. My assistant helped dirty my face up with some of her SFX stuff and then I had her take the photo. Then I took her photo. As for our friend, whom we named Yorick, well I’ll post about that on Friday if I don’t have anything else to post between now and then. Otherwise, I’ll get to it when I get to it.

In the meantime, Merry Christmas, and if you don’t like what we did here you definitely won’t like what we will be doing next week. Let’s just say we will be getting into the “spirit” of the season next week.

Mother and Baby Session

A few indoor photos of a mother with her baby and one annoyed cat. Remember, you don’t need strobes or speedlights to do photography. All of these were taken indoors utilizing only the window and the sunlight coming through it. For these photos I knew I had to work quickly and keep movements to a minimum. You generally don’t want to push anyone around but especially not babies because you are going to lose every time. So, I kept the photo session around one set of windows and moved myself to different angles.

As always, assume parents understand their babies and work with them to get that smile, but also just go with it some. Everything is new to babies, so they look around with wonder. Capture that too.

Simply moving can solve many of your "problems."

Another quick post as I have lots of processing still to do, but I am getting it done.

I recently had a wonderful photo session in Annapolis with an amazing family. We walked all over downtown Annapolis taking photos when we got to the docks and suddenly a person in red was doing stretches in the back, this particular situation is one of the things I love about photography because it’s not the problem it seems to be. For starters, let me be clear – this person had every right to be there and good for him for exercising! Yes, him being there posed a problem for the shot framing but not a big problem, actually he posed an easily fixed problem.

Sure, I could go into Photoshop and spend minutes or even hours editing him, or I could go into Lightroom and attempt to carefully use the heal brush and make him disappear, but why do all that work? Instead, I merely moved around so he was positioned directly behind my subjects. And with that simple movement the person in red was gone. No time is spent editing him out in processing so I can focus on other things when I am doing processing and I didn’t have to ask him to move for the shot. Never underestimate what your feet and movement can do to quietly solve your problems. You can save hours in the processing phase if you carefully consider your positioning during the actual photo shoot.

More Pet Tips

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. More pet photos. Let me get the standard tip out of the way first:

Be patient when photographing your pets. They don’t know what a camera is and they have no concept of what a picture is. Getting frustrated with them because they won’t frame into your picture correctly will just upset them and make them afraid whenever you get your camera out. Now these dogs in these pictures are starting to understand that my camera out means the treat train is arriving very soon. If you do pet photography correctly then the pets you photograph often will come to associate great things with your camera and start to pose every time.

With that out of the way, let’s get into trickier pets – pets with dark or black fur. Dark fur can pose numerous problems because it is easy to have your sensor over adjust and suddenly you got a silhouette of a dog. There are several ways you can address this issue, but you have to put a little more thought into things. Thankfully, every trick you learn to use when working with dark fur will help your photography out tremendously and will help you out in low light situations.

Anyway, the three easy approaches are this:

1) Consider your background – if you put a black dog in white snow, your scenario changes drastically. Granted you don’t always have snow, but you have greenery or other colors to play off of and help utilize the dog’s fur to make it the center of attention.

2) Use a flash to help give the dog some depth. Darker color absorbs light, which is why your camera sometimes goes overboard in trying to figure out how to deal with animals with dark fur. If you throw some light in up front that will help the sensor in your camera find that depth.

3) Processing tools. This is the easiest but does add an extra step in your workflow. You can use the shadows slider in most photo processing tools to help counter what your camera’s sensor is doing. Just be sure you are shooting in RAW format when you take the pictures. Processing tools love photos in RAW or your camera’s equivalent of RAW.

Anyway, all these were shot using light from a window. Processing tools were used to add depth to the cat and dog. Also, the cat isn’t in some sort of kitty lockup, that’s just a play area for kids so the dogs don’t mistake the toys for chew toys.

More Low Key Lighting

Here is another low key lighting setup that builds on the setup in the previous post. This time we used the overhead speedlight with a snoot and a grid and we added a speedlight on the side with a cheap small soft box. This was done because we threw in an umbrella and if we just used the overhead light, it would likely block out most of the light. By adding the light on the side, we are able to still light our subject while still getting that overhead light.

To be perfectly honest, most light that appears to have a single light overhead usually has a second equal or weaker light down lower off to the side or up front to help soften or outright remove those downward shadows the eye sockets, forehead, and nose produce from an overhead light. Emphasis on the “most,” sometimes those shadows are what you are going for and in those cases you obviously wouldn’t use that lower light.

This time our model was dress up a bit more and despite her begging me for this photo session she wasn’t interested in smiling. So, I went for a serious look and rolled with that. She and I both liked the end result.

Low Key Lighting

Some low-key lighting practice work here. It is a style I enjoy playing around with though I am far from mastering this technique. In this setup I was using a single speed light aimed down. I used a snoot for some and no snoot for others. I also generally prefer this style in black and white, but I included a few in color.

The things to consider with low key lighting are obvious and not obvious at all. For starters, you have to consider shadow and light, those will be the two main factors in your photos. Where you put the shadows and where your put the light will impact how your picture connects with the person viewing it. But you also have to consider smaller details. For example: what color will you make the light? Or what background, even if lacks visibility, will you use. What clothing is involved? Seated or standing? Leaning forward or sitting back?

Low key lighting reduces what can be seen in the photo and in doing so it ups the importance or value of what can be seen and in doing so means you need to consider what is being seen when you are setting up your shot.

Anyway, in case I forget, Happy Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Utilizing Seats.

Another quick post as I am swamped with processing work, which is a good problem to have.

Seats! You’ve seen me use stools and chairs and, in these photos, we are using an antique bench that came from an old fancy cruise ship. The “what” your subjects sit on is not as important as how you utilize it. Obviously, you can go for the main use and shoot straight on to the seat, but don’t discount other approaches, especially if you can move and adjust the seat. For example, we put the bench at an angle and worked from there. In fact, I meant to turn the bench around, so the back was facing the camera and have my subject look back, but I got sidetracked on the dogs.

On that note, two of my repeat reminders:

1) Be patient with pets on your photo session set. They don’t know what you are doing. They have no concept of what a camera or a photo is. They just want you to be happy and getting angry at them will just make them upset and you can pretty much just end your photo session at that point.

2) When working with younger children you can save a lot of processing time and touch up work if you remember to wash their face, especially if they have eaten recently.

Anyway, this was a two strobe light setup. Each light had an octagon softbox. I originally thought about having a back light, but I liked the way the background looked without a back light.

This was a wonderful wedding engagement shoot that I shot back in October. And again, I didn’t want to post these photos next to horror photos, so I am posting them a month or so later. But this was a lot of fun because they brought their dogs. Pets on scene usually just makes everyone involved happier. The clients tend to be happier and more relaxed because most people like their pets and I like animals, so I was happier too. This was an exciting session.

The thing I love about pets is that they look around. They look at you, they look at me. If you time it right, you can utilize pets looking around to bring the viewer in and make the picture more intriguing. You can use the direction the pets are looking at to act as a sort of leading line. Your eyes will ask “what is that dog looking at?” and then go in that direction on the photo. Or you can use the pets looking at your camera to connect with the person viewing the photo and pull them into it. Either way, using a pet to bring the viewer in is a happier way to do so as opposed to using just some random item as a leading line.

Don’t get me wrong, I love leading lines and try to incorporate them into my work often, probably too much. But if I can use a pet that just happens to have the right look in the right direction – I will got with that every time because animals make me smile.

All in all, this was a wonderful evening at Downs Park. And we shot it during golden hour. I did have a speed light for some of it but quickly just reverted to my camera. I also had a ND filter I kept putting on and taking off depending on the angle.

Homecoming

I did these Homecoming photos last month, but I didn’t want to post them along horror photos, so I held them until now. Also, I got permission to use these photos. I’m a firm believer of getting permission before you use photo work you did for a client even if you may not legally need permission because the reputation you can get from potentially annoying clients after the fact just isn’t worth whatever you may be trying to do. After all, it’s what your clients aren’t telling you that kills your business.

Anyway, working with teens can be challenging as they tend to be more self-conscious and generally don’t want to be around adults, especially for a photo session, but that is all kind of different for Homecoming and Prom. For Homecoming and Prom, they have planned up to this moment and they want pictures of where they are. Furthermore, they usually have their friends or dates involved which tends to put them in a good mood. In other words, when it comes to Homecoming and Prom, the photo session is something they likely want, and their friends make it something fun.

Two things I do in process is edit out acne (something I didn’t have to do in these pictures) and consider social media. We’ve all been teenagers so we know how big a deal acne is for them and modern photo processing tools offers numerous ways to edit out acne. Also, consider social media. Teens use social media all the time, so if you can include some photos that are proper dimensions for the various social media sites out there you are really helping out the teenagers you are photographing.

These photos were taken on a raining night, so I brought my equipment and setup studio in a garage My backdrop started off as a peach color, but it just wasn’t working out and fortunately I always bring other backdrops and I always have black, black is a good fall back color if nothing else is working. This was a three-light set up with 2 strobes with soft boxes and grids as the key and fill lights and a speedlight as a hair light.

For posing, don’t be afraid to use hands and arms to get depth. Also, you can have your subject lean in some. You can lock knees and unlock knees and all sorts of things. Honestly, posing comes down to practice. Practice by yourself in the mirror and practice with a model. The more you practice posing the better you get and the more creative you end up being.

A few more quick tips.

I am smack dab in the middle of processing dress rehearsal photos so another quick post. This time some tips for working with younger kids, in this case a four-year-old but these tricks could work with any kid that is able to walk and maybe even younger. Some of these are repeats, but I am very much for repetition. You repeat things until you get them done solid and then you repeat them even more.

1)      If they aren’t feeling like a smile, then don’t make them smile. Worst case scenario is that you end up needing to work in some framing or some shadows and grayscaling the photo so it matches the tone of the mood. This way you end up with a much better moody photo then you could ever end up attempting to force a smile which at best will have a clear as day fake smile and at worst a child in tears.

2)      Try a different angle if the shoot is feeling too generic. On our nature walk, we stopped by a small playground. Instead of settling for a straight on shoot on the playground, I walked around to the other side. This resulted in a more energetic shot and a different take on a playground shot. But…..

3)      Sometimes settling for a generic shot isn’t that bad. Once I got her on the slide, I asked her to stop and took the photo. She shot me a serious look and I just went with it.

Bonus tip. Most of my photography tips have a theme: just roll with it. You can and should plan your photo sessions but understand even the best plans reach a point where something isn’t going exactly to plan and you just have to go with it and play through. Photography is all about the unexpected and by embracing the unexpected your photos will be more interesting.

Anyway, I’m not sure I will have anything posted Friday. If not, things will resume Monday of next week.

Indoor Pet Photography Tips

I have a big weekend I’m prepping for so a kind of quick post this week.

A few more tips on photographing pets, but this time indoors.

First for indoors, when working indoors and just going with a camera remember that you have access to one of the brightest lights around – the sun. Use your windows to let a little light in. If you pay attention to how the sun shines through your windows you can time when to take the photo with the specific type of light you want. You may have to move stuff around, but that secret can stay between you and your pet, especially if the shot ends up looking great.

As for pets, again, when indoors, wait for nap time. A lot of energy outside is manageable. A lot of energy indoors is a challenge. However, if you take the photo when it’s nap time you get a much calmer subject to work with and that means you can get your camera closer without making your pet nervous. That also means they might look at your camera more.

And once again, and as always, be patient. Your pets just want you to be happy. They don’t know what a camera is, nor do they know what a photo is, but if you get frustrated with them during a photo session, I guarantee they will start to fear your camera. However, if you keep it upbeat and happy, even if they aren’t doing what you want them to do, they will stay upbeat and happy whenever you get that camera out and that’s most of the way to an amazing photo of your pet.

You can learn a lot from a costume session.

Halloween is passed, but one last one post regarding Halloween to get a few more tips out. First off, I always recommend trying at least one costume photo session. It doesn’t have to be a carefully planned out and carefully put together costume, the exercise is the point. Trust me, you will get some ideas from doing such a session that will carry over into your other sessions.

Here my subject has a costume on (Cruella). Right off the bat there are three things that came to my mind – Cruella is a villain, my subject has a dress, and my subject has a pearl necklace. All three of those topics offer posing options and posing options make for more interesting photos and a better photo session. We started off with a standard pose and worked from there.

After the first set of poses I told her to laugh like a villain. This threw her off at first, but I demonstrated (never ask your models to do something you aren’t willing to do yourself) with an over-the-top villain laugh making sure she saw my hands and arms out. Then she went for it and those shots turned out great. From there we added in touching and grabbing her pearl necklace while laughing.

When it comes to jewlery, glasses, hair, or essentially anything around the face, just think what people do when they have those things. Your every day regular person touches their face too much and if they have anything near or on the face, they will touch those items as well. So just think about that, think about how people might touch those items, and work from there – you will come up with something that makes sense. Then we moved on to her clothing. We had her twirl, because she had a dress that can twirl, and it looked great. When having a subject twirl in a dress remember to tell them to look at the camera as they do the twirl and try to time your shot carefully. She also did a shot or two adjusting her gloves.

So, if you are looking for poses take a second and see what your subject has on. They have more poses on them then you realize. One final note: white clothing bounces light. Keep that in mind when you add white articles of clothing, especially in a speedlight/strobe situation.

A Girl and Her Puppy II

October was awesome, a big thanks to every single person who sat in front of my camera or gave me space to practice my craft or both in October – you all are awesome! On that note, let’s start November off right with more puppy photos because every month should start with puppy photos or kitten photos or puppy and kitten photos. And this would be a good time to put my constant reminder about working with animals:

When working with animals, be patient and kind. Our pets just want people to be happy, but they don’t know how to make that happen. Throw in a camera and maybe photography lights and you have a setting they just completely do not understand. So, give them a break and just sort of go where they lead you – they are trying the best they can. Besides, if you get all upset, they will pick that up and then good luck getting anything other than worry out of them.

Anyway, for this shot I went with a quieter setup. Just two strobes with grids on either side of the models. One strobe was the key light and was brighter and the other light was just a very subtle fill light set low. This set up is great for melodramatic shots or calm shots where you really want to “paint” with light and shadow. One side note – if you don’t have another strobe or speedlight you can get a similar effect with the white side of a photography reflector though I’d recommend an assistant for adjustment as you zero in the exact angle or something you can adjust easily that will hold the reflector.

The Moon!

Another quick post as I have processing work for a client and that has a majority of my focus right now.

The moon!

A full (or full-ish) moon is a great way to practice learning the photography trinity – shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings on your camera as the moon is a great way to practice what you may know about them and see a clear effect as you adjust them. It is also a great opportunity to dip your feet in the manual mode settings on your camera. Do keep in mind that the moon and the night sky moves faster then you realize though and you will get motion blur if you set that shutter speed too low. But that’s all the more reason to practice with the moon – so you experience that too.

After that you can get into the finer details of getting trees or clouds in front of the moon. Clouds take patience though. And just building from there. The sky’s the limit so to speak.

Also photographing the moon introduces you to truly understanding your subject as much as possible. For example, the moon has phases, and getting the phase you want to photograph will require research. Furthermore, understanding how the light involved works can help you decide on better photography settings.  Finally, the moon moves around in the sky, so you might need to know where the moon is and where it is heading or you might find it’s nowhere to be found in the sky when you go to photograph depending on the time of year.

I’d recommend starting with a tripod as well until you get a handle on them, though keep in mind I rather dislike using tripods and often get mine out only to have an argument with it. Not to imply tripods are bad – they are amazing tools, just not usually with my photography style at this point in time. They make great paper weights too.

Props and Movement

Another quick post, this time with refresh pointers.

Props and movement.

Never be afraid to use a prop, they give the hands something to do while at the same time adding to the content of the photo. The trick is to use a prop that makes sense for what you are trying to do. For example, these were taken in October so it makes sense to have a pumpkin of some sort.

Then there is movement. I always try to have my subjects moving in some fashion or another. It helps make the poses look more natural. Instead of having the muscles clinched up because the subject is trying to “freeze” for a photo, I have their muscles being natural as they do what they do best – control movement.

However, when you take props and mix them in with movement, you or your subject sometimes get ideas for other possible poses you can do so it usually ends up paying off having both.

The Mouthless Horror

He was told it was from another reality. That he could only look at it but that he mustn’t touch it. They warned him it would change him in horrible ways if he touched it. He did not listen. Now he’ll never speak about it.

This is a more complex shot then usual with 2 tricks being used. There are 4 lights involved with 3 on in any shot. The two strobes were consistent for general lighting of the subject. One strobe up front with a honeycomb grid over a long soft box and one over head with a honeycomb grid to create a circle of light around the subject and the items.

The tricks occurred with the speedlites. For the first trick we put one speedlite in the box with the crystal ball but under one layer of the sheet. This made the ball appear to be glowing from the box. If you do this, be careful. Flashes get hot when they go off, and a sheet can catch fire if you go too fast with this. However, this will make something in a box or other item appear to be glowing.

The other trick was lining a light up with a purple gel perfectly with the crystal ball. This would make the light shine through it and make the ball appear to glow. The color could be any color gel we had. However, the light in the background had to be aligned with the ball perfectly or it wouldn’t work. Good exercise for verbal command practice. The light was also equipped with a snoot and a grid to help constrict where it went.

The mouth disappearing was done with prosthetics we made. I’ll post a “how to” later. This may not be an effect you want to recreate but the technique can be easily adjusted for other ideas and is worth knowing.

I’m short of time at the time of typing this up so this will be quick.

3 quick and easy tips or a review of 3 quick easy tips:

1)      If you want some dramatic lighting, position the sun so your subject’s head eclipses it. Keep in mind that if your subject moves much you can expect to be looking directly at the sun so coordinate carefully.

2)      Focus on the eyes. Poets write whole poems about the eyes for a reason.

3)      Get down or up to your subject’s level. What level? See number 2 here; eye level.

Bonus tip: a simple background often converts well to grayscale.