Tips Archives - Page 10 of 21

Location Scouting

authorized — Don't expect location scouting to be this easy - by Richard Webb

On a recent TFP shoot with a dozen other photographers and selection of models, I received an important lesson about location scouting: Don’t over-think it.

We were all milling around with the models and I walked down the block to start getting an idea of what kind of locations we had to pick from. I was only away for a couple minutes. When I got back everyone else was already out shooting. They had ducked down a back alley behind some remodeled apartments and found a perfect location: Public access, a mix of sun and shade, bold colors, interesting shapes, and a eclectic mix of old and new architecture.

Those are all good qualities to keep in mind when scouting locations, but not the only ones.

Public Access

Like many things in photography, there is more than one school of thought on this subject. There’s the “get permission” crowd and, on the other side of the coin, the “seek forgiveness” types.

For most streets, sidewalks, parks, beaches, and other public places, you don’t usually need permission, provided you’re not hauling a ton of gear or blocking sidewalks or building access. If it’s just you, your subject, and a flash on a bracket, I’ve never had a problem. I can usually get my shots and move on to the next location before anyone even bothers to notice. If you’re constantly changing locations, there’s rarely a problem.

If you’re hauling a lot of gear, need to set up lights and need a power supply, you might want to look into whether you need a permit. Most photographers don’t do this, but if you’re doing a big shoot, it’s worth asking. Start setting up floor lights and a generator on a sidewalk or in a park and you’re going to attract a lot of attention.

Private Property

This is where it gets sticky. Some of the best locations are abandoned buildings, rail yards, junk yards, and other semi-industrial areas. For abandoned buildings it’s frequently difficult to find the owners or the original company may be out of business.

The get permission types will find a the perfect location and seek permission to shoot there from the owners or owner’s representatives. I’ve been pretty successful getting permission. The usual point of contact will be a realtor and I’ve been able to work out using industrial buildings and luxury rental properties in exchange for pictures and video. I’ve also had success working with nightclubs during off hours, yacht rental companies, resort companies and others in constant need of promotional pictures.

If the shots are for use in a commercial context or microstock images and the building is at all identifiable, you’ll need a signed property release anyway. It also helps if you can show the property owners you carry your own liability insurance and offer them a liability waiver.

The seek forgiveness types will sneak in, shoot like crazy, and hope they don’t get caught. Apologetic ignorance is their shield and, to be fair, the vast majority of the time pleading ignorance, apologizing profusely, while offering to immediately pack up and leave works. The cops really don’t want to write trespassing citations, especially if the area is not well marked with signage. Most of the time they just want to make sure you’re not tagging the property or wrecking anything and if you’re polite and right on your way, they’re content to let it go.

Sometimes you can’t really tell and, in those cases, I’m with the seek forgiveness crowd.

Keeping Track of Locations

The best time to scout locations is as you’re about other business. Use your cell phone camera to make notes about locations you happen across. I also carry a bound notebook in my car all the time for making notes.

A spreadsheet is a great way to keep track of your location finds because you can add notes, pictures, contact information, and owner information in one place and keep it all organized.

Striving For Perfect Exposure

Polaris Digital Light Meter — A good quality light meter is still worth carrying in the world of digital photography

I’ve been taking pictures for decades. For at least the first 10 years of that time, I was a pretty much a full auto shooter and got results that were consistent but unimaginative.

In the old days of film cameras, the light meters could be off as much as a full stop. Occasionally the discrepancy would work in my favor and I’d produce some fantastic shots, proof that even a blind sow gets an acorn once in a while. Nikon shooters had an advantage in those days, as their internal light meters were far more consistent.

Then I started to get suspicious that my camera’s light meter wasn’t always giving me the whole story and got an incident light meter. That was quite an education. Then I went the opposite direction. I turned into the manual exposure hall monitor from hell. Internal light meters in cameras were crap and anyone who didn’t think so was hopelessly amateur. The worst part was that I was shooting really amazing pictures in those days, which only reinforced my bad attitude. I was an exposure snob.

Today I’m back to shooting on auto. Well, not exactly and not completely, I shoot mainly on my Canon 7D’s CA, or Creative Auto setting. With the menus on the back I can quickly bump the exposure up or down, change picture styles, and control the depth of field without manually setting the aperture. I do a lot of what’s derisively called “chimping”, checking the LCD screen every few shots to see if I like the results. If not, I change the exposure and try again.

I still go back to manual exposure in certain situations when the lighting is tricky and I know that even the marvelously accurate computers inside the camera are not going to meter the scene properly. I still use a light meter sometimes, more in the studio these days than outside, but lately there are fewer situations when the camera and light meter disagree.

A properly exposed photo is still a thing of beauty, but now we’re so used to near exposure perfection from even average digital cameras that the manual tweak of imperfection is becoming a statement in its own right.

The main thing is find your own style for dialing in the perfect exposure. Don’t let anyone tell you chimping is not okay. The LCD screen on your camera is a fantastic tool, use it.

But do invest in a good quality light meter, they really are quite handy. Even doctors need a second opinion once in a wile.

The Art of Car Photography

Photographing cars can present unique challenges and it’s hard to do right. A friend of mine is a dealer of rare and vintage cars and hired a “professional” photographer to take pictures of some of her cars when she was behind schedule one week.

I watched the photographer work, he was using a Canon camera with a 430 EX II on a bracket handle with a bounce card. It didn’t seem right to me, but it wasn’t my job so I kept my nose out of it.

The photos were dreadful. Beyond bad and that’s not just my opinion as a photographer, that was the client’s opinion. They were worse than the pictures she took with her little point-and-shoot. I don’t think I would have even delivered the photos I saw. If I screwed up a job that bad, I’d just give them their money back.

Cars are hard to shoot because they’re so reflective and with clear coats, pearalesent paint, and a variety of waxes and finishes employed, those reflections are rarely uniform and can cause bad things to happen to your photos.

Job One, Cut The Glare

A rotating polarizing filter is a must for shooting cars. You can eliminate most reflections, or, ideally, tone them down to the point they don’t distract from the picture. Sometimes a complete lack of reflections is unnatural looking, particularly in glass.

With a rotating polarizer you can pick the amount of reflection you want, though do be aware that with some types of custom paint, a polarizing filter can yield some strange results.

Don’t Touch

If you’re at a car show or vintage car show, never touch a vehicle without the owner’s permission. The velvet ropes are there for a reason. Most owners are very approachable and will gladly help you stage photos, especially if you volunteer to send them copies.

Try to get them to remove the show placards and Do Not Touch signs if at all possible.

Lighting

The best lighting is light overcast daylight, open shade, or golden hour daylight just after the sun has set. The worst lighting is indoors with fluorescent or arc lighting.

Lighting with strobes presents its own unique set of problems. Getting something the size of a car to light evenly with strobes is going to be a challenge. Situations like this is where you’ll be glad you bought high quality light stands because you want to get your soft boxes up as high as your stands will go. I’ve never been able to get really good car shots with handheld lighting, but there are show offs like Steve Demmit who pull it off.

Some big shops that do a lot of high-end vehicle photography have banks of softboxes suspended from the ceiling in a studio the size of a garage.

Movement

Know what you’re doing before attempting any shots of or from a moving car. As you can see in this video, the car doesn’t have to be moving that fast, or even moving forward, to get the sensation of speed at slow shutter speeds. Walking speed is plenty fast enough.

Working out on public streets is illegal in some places, though if you use a bit of common sense it’s rare anyone gets in trouble.

Five Tips For Taking Better Black & White Photos

For many of us getting started in photography years ago, learning to shoot in black and white was not an option. My first photography customers were all newspapers and you shot the film they gave you and, except in rare cases, that was almost always black and white.

Today almost everything is in color, newspapers and magazines are disappearing, and film is on life support. Still, even today with cameras containing high speed computers with more computing power than the space shuttle, a well composed black and white photograph is a thing of simplistic beauty.

While I disagree with instructors who want to start out teaching students black and white photography, it is worth learning. Below are five tips for taking better black and white photos.

Start With Raw

I actually shoot RAW+JPEG and do probably 90 percent of my work with JPEGs. Part of the 10 percent when working in RAW are the pictures I think would make a good B&Ws.

A lot of tonal information is tossed out by the JPEG compressing and this is one of the times you want it back.

Pick Your Day

The worst days for shooting color are sometimes the best days for shooting black and white. Dismal, gray, and overcast days, so called “low contrast” lighting is made for black and white photography. Ironically, these are the days you’d stay home shooting color photography.

Black and white can also give a scene a cold, detached feeling. Hearkening back to the days of film noir, a good black and white photo can create an air of suspence.

Go Low On The ISO

For the same reason you’re starting with a RAW image. Get as much photo data as possible before deciding what to take away. At higher ISO ratings some cameras can start picking up noise, particularly in the blacks.

If you want grain you can always add a film grain filter in post-processing.

Composition

The rules for composition in black and white are not a great deal different than in color photography, with more emphasis on textures and strong lines. Without color to draw the eye, you have to depend more on composition.

Maybe that’s one of the reasons some instructors want to take that away for new students, to get them to focus on lines and framing instead of color.

Look For Patterns

With black and white you’re more likely to select a shot purely for the design elements, not necessarily a definitive subject. That would particularly true for patterns with strong lines with a point of convergence.

Just because I don’t lead with black and white when teaching a photography class, doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s worth learning and practicing. I’ve seen pretty average color pictures turned into something with real impact, just by taking away the color.

Here are some excellent examples. How many of these would have lost impact by adding color?

Low-Budget Portable Lighting Rig

remote fill — Using a slave as a remote cuts down on the cost of the wireless rig

A little while ago we covered the lighting setup for a pro wedding photographer at ImagesForever.net down in Melbourne Beach. A few of you might have read that and gotten depressed because, when you added up all the separate components, you realize the cost of that lighting setup was close to $1,800.

Many of you don’t have that much to spend, others may enjoy photography as a serious hobby but aren’t willing to risk divorce court by trying to talk your significant other into dropping that kind of cash on portable lighting.

So, I took on the challenge and wanted to see how close I could get to a usable lighting setup on a budget more people can afford, say $250.00 USD. Certainly there are going to be some compromises: Build quality, fit and finish, and convenience will all be challenged to move the price point that far. You get what you pay for, but if you’re creative in moving stuff around, you can sometimes get better results than the price tag might suggest. Besides, you can always upgrade individual components if you have the money.

Here’s what I came up with. Please note the prices are subject to change and don’t include shipping:

1 Yongnuo YN-467 ($85.64)

This flash is pretty good for the money. It’s compatible with my camera’s e-TTL system and does a respectable job lighting the scene. The refresh times are surprisingly fast for a sub-$100 flash. With fresh batteries the flash can fire as fast as my camera can write images. It’s also got a built-in diffuser plate and bounce card.

The build quality does have issues. The battery door feels cheap and flimsy, take extra care changing the batteries.

YN467 Flash Text — The YN-467 on a monopod tethered to my 7D with a Pixel TTL compatible sync cord. I used the monopod because the bracket didn't arrive in time

1 Yongnuo YN-460 Slave ($39.39)

Instead of two YN-467’s, I went with a dedicated slave to save some money. Now I have the freedom to mount the fill flash on a monopod or light stand that I can move around. The downside to not having the AC3 Zone Controller is I have to walk over and change the power settings on the remote manually, instead of flicking a switch on the top of the camera.

Another limitation is having the bracket flash tethered to the camera with a cord. It limits mobility quite a bit. I could still mount the bracket flash on a light stand if the situation called for it, but I’m not going any farther than the cord.

1 Pixel TTL compatible sync cord ($23.18)

A $20 cord still gives me the ability to put the primary flash on the bracket handle and still sync with the TTL in my camera. Instead of shooting everything manually, I can use the Creative Auto (CA) setting and change the exposure of at least the primary flash with the exposure compensation adjustments in the camera.

Two bounce diffusers from eBay $1.95 each.

Okay, that brings us up to $152.11 and we can go shopping for a flash bracket and light stand.

For the flash bracket I picked the Stroboframe Quick Flip 350 on sale for $35.95, which unfortunately did not arrive in time for the article photos.

Which leaves me enough room for a pair of PBL heavy duty light stands for $51.95.

Which brings my total to $240.01, with enough left over to buy pizza for the TFP models.

So How Does It Work?

Judge for yourself. With the exception of the bracket handle, I took all these photos with the components described above.

Because the remote operation is manual, it sometimes took me a couple shots to dial in the fill flash power. Sure, it’s extra walking, but how much walking will you do for $1,400?

article photos — That will pass. Might have been a little better with the main flash straight on

article photo — Lighting the entire pool room was no problem

test photo 1 — By putting the remote behind the subject I was able to achieve the outline highlights that seem to be all the rage right now