Photography Archives - Page 10 of 32

The Essence of Great Portraits

sample portrait — A very decent head and shoulders portrait that may be the most unimaginative work I've ever produced

You all probably remember the series we did on studio lighting a while ago. While we were focused on the technical aspects of lighting a good portrait, it completely overlooks the art. Sure, what we came away with was a completely decent head and shoulders portrait. Looking at it now I realize it lacks any imagination and creativity.

Okay, that’s not totally fair. I shot those photos to demonstrate how changes in lighting change the look of a portrait, not as a demonstration in portrait photography. And yet it still bothers me. The reason it bothers me is that many photographers would think that’s a perfectly fine portrait.

You can have the camera, the lens, and the lighting and take fantastically lit portraits that are technically near perfect, and still produce average work lacking in imagination and creativity.

The Essence Of a Great Portrait

The essence of a great portrait doesn’t come from the lighting or the camera, it comes from getting to know the person and capturing the essential qualities that make them unique. I don’t think the best portraits always come in a studio setting, they come taking the shots at home, in the shop, or where they work. Maybe that’s my background as a photojournalist talking, but those are the places people are most relaxed and most likely to be themselves.

If you are going to work in a studio, which does offer a lot of advantages, have the person bring something unique to them. For someone like my sister in law, I’d have her bring her knitting bag. I have a friend in Seattle, for her it would be one of her bikes and one of her cats. How you work such bizarrely different props into a single picture, that’s what you get the big bucks to figure out.

The bottom line is anyone who thinks they can capture a person just by having them sit on a stool or stand in front of a background is doing them a disservice. Spend some time getting to know your subjects and figure out what makes them unique.

Good portraits show people on the outside, great portraits show people on the inside.

Do I Need a Light Meter?

digital light meter — A light meter like this Shepherd/Polaris SPD100 are incredibly useful and relatively inexpensive

A fair question these days is whether or not you still need a hand-held light meter? In the old days light meters in the camera were pretty simple. There was a needle over on the side and a center mark on the scale. The closer the needle was to the center mark, the better off you were. Cameras were “center weighted” which meant whatever you had in the center of the field of view was what the needle was registering.

That arrangement seems hopelessly primitive compared to today’s cameras that use sophisticated multi-point metering systems that sample many points inside a photograph and use that sample set to compute the optimum average exposure value.

Despite the difference in applied technology, the meters are still doing basically the same thing: Reading the light reflected off a subject and calculating an exposure value based on 18 percent gray. Why 18 percent gray? Because it turns out if you average all the values across a scene it all boils down to that figure.

When considering the decision of whether to get a light meter, it also helps to understand the difference between reflected light and incident light. Reflected light is what allows you to see anything. When you look at an object, your eyes are seeing the light reflected off the object to your eye. Incident light is measuring the light falling on the object, irrespective of what’s being reflected.

Light meters work by filtering the light through a dome that approximates an 18 percent gray card.

When incident light meters are most useful is when you’re working with strobes. You can remotely pop your flash setup and get an exact light reading at your subject. You can also take readings from multiple sides if you’re trying to set up a particular light ratio.

Having a decent light meter can be a great way to add consistency to your photography, by helping you dial in your starting settings. That saves a lot of time when working with expensive models. As often as you’re changing the light setup and moving around, a good light meter will be invaluable for working fast and changing setups.

A good light meter does not have to cost a lot of money. Here are a few good models for under $300.

Sekonic L-308S

Gossen DigiPro F

Shepherd/Polaris SPD100

Taking Better Holiday Kid Pictures

Some of you are coming back from Thanksgiving vacation a few weeks back to discover that the family pictures you took were less than stellar examples of kid photography. Fortunately, you still have time to rally before Christmas, the premium moment for kid pictures all year. This time be prepared.

Kids and Animals

Working with kids and animals have gotten many Hollywood directors and photographers to consider a career in real estate, so don’t feel bad if your turkey day photos weren’t that great. It’s a tough shooting situation, even for pros.

– Plan picture time just before meal time. The kids will be dressed for dinner, still relatively clean, and animated in anticipation of eating.

– Have a supply of toys on hand, particularly anything small that walks, rattles, or makes noise. Wind up toys that walk around are perfect.

– Ask the older kids to help with the younger ones. In my experience kids respond better to their older peers than whoever is taking pictures.

– You can also use the older kids as translators for the younger ones. A lot of time you as an adult might not understand what a child is saying, but the other kids will know.

– Put the wind up wiggly toy on your head when you’re ready to shoot. You’ll have about 10 seconds of full attention.

– Pictures when they’re engaged in an activity are almost always better than posed pictures.

– A puppy or kitten will almost always provide a great group shot.

Don’t

– Don’t have another adult standing behind you trying to help. That’s almost always more distracting than helpful and it’s really annoying to have a choreographer standing behind you.

– Don’t try to pose kids, it almost never works. It is better to get involved doing a song they learned in school. It puts them at ease, gives them an easy task they can manage, and gets everyone smiling.

– Don’t drag it out. You have maybe 10 minutes of quality shooting time before someone starts getting fussy.

– Don’t let kids wear shirts with logos or printed designs. Bright, bold, solid colors are best.

The ABCs of ISO

iso comparison — A comparison of grain at different ISO's - by HuttyMcphoo

The three legs of a good exposure are shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. In the old days ISO was called ASA and was dictated by the type of film you had in your camera. The standard for color and clarity in those days was Kodachrome 64 and, for really fine work, you might pick Kodachrome 25. The lower the number on film, the finer the grain and the slower the film, meaning it needed more light to get good results.

In modern digital cameras the theory is similar but the application is quite different. Modern image sensors can change ISO, the sensor’s sensitivity to light, to suit the scene. Most digital sensors are optimized to produce the best results in natural daylight at lower ISOs, but it takes better eyes than mine to see the image quality degrade at ISO 400 and below. And the noise introduced by digital cameras at higher ISOs is not a constant. Ever year sensors get better and noise reduction algorithms in your camera’s computer also improve in every generation of hardware. What’s true today may change in a couple years.

Just like in film, the amount of noise in a digital picture increases at higher ISOs. It starts getting more noticeable at ISOs over 800 and becomes really noticeable at 1200 and above.

As a general rule, use the lowest ISO you can and still get a reasonable shutter speed. Ironically, long shutter speeds can introduce their own brand of image anomalies and sometimes it’s a matter of picking your poison.

When it comes to the three legged stool of exposure, ISO still works like it used to…for now. But expect this one to change sooner than either of the others.

Getting Silky Looking Water In Stream Photos

flowing water — Slow shutter speeds are necessary to get this whispy look to water - by baaker2009

We’ve all seen the photos of rivers and waterfalls where the water looks silky smooth, almost a blur. Well, it’s not almost a blur, it is a blur. Not because the water is moving particularly fast, but because the shutter speeds are very slow.

To get those silky smooth blurry water shots, you’ll need to get familiar with your camera’s shutter priority settings. That would be the “Tv” setting on your Canon dial and the “S” mode on Nikon.

There are many instances where you’ll want to use Shutter Priority, it’s handy for a lot of different types of shooting. It’s probably the program mode I use more than any other besides CA (Creative Auto) on my Canon. You’ll use either Shutter Priority or Manual for most strobe lighting situations, unless your external flash is compatible with your camera’s eTTL system. It’s also the setting you’d use when photographing objects moving very fast at air shows or racing events. And it’s the setting to use for getting blurry water shots in a stream.

You’ll need a moving stream will a little bit of fall and a tripod. Once you have your scene framed, select a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second or faster, if you want the freeze the water. For the blurry effect, start with a shutter speed of an ⅛ or ¼ of a second and go longer from there, all the way up to two or three seconds.

Surprisingly, an object doesn’t have to be moving very fast to get the blurry background effect. If you’re trying to make a car look like it’s going fast, it doesn’t have to be moving much faster than a slow walk to make a car look like it’s speeding along with a slow shutter speed.

Just like with water in a moving stream, you can get the blurry effect with ocean waves. When done right it actually looks really cool, almost like mist over the ocean, but that takes some really long shutter times, three or four seconds. For many modern DSLRs that means working right up until it’s almost dark.