Get ready… Partaaaay…!

December. Christmas, Hannukah, office party, family get-together: important events and the year’s highlight.

But ephemeral. The great company lasts six hours. The food, about the same. The fun, ditto. The hangover, if you are so inclined, a day and a half.

But the pictures: forever. I strongly recommend you photograph your events. Or have it done. And if you are SO inclined, I am available to shoot all your events. Prices on http://www.mvwphoto.com/Prices.html and for November and December, I will include a large 13×19 print and USB stick free of charge. Be quick, since my dates are filling up.

And for all of you, in the next weeks, some advice on event and party shoots!

Make-Up Tip

When you shoot portraits, you may want to have your model use make-up. Even with someone who normally does not need, or use, make-up. Even in many cases for men!

Why? For several reasons, as so often when you ask “why”. Or rather, when I do, for rhetorical reasons.

One is to change appearance. Eye shadow or blush can make someone look different. Different looks can be interesting.

Another reason: to make the model feel better. Confidence is a good thing and your shoot will go better.

Another is to fix oily skin. Photographers always carry powder to stop reflections from softboxes or umbrellas. Shoots can be hard work, and slightly sweaty or oily skin can cause a lot of imperfections.

So can blemishes. Yes, Lightroom (or Photoshop) can fix these very well, but take 100 shots and now you need to fix 100 images. One application of make-up is

Then there’s age… make-up can stop its visible progress.  Always a good thing, if you ask most people. Under-eye shadows are a good example.

The following picture is a good illustration of how make-up can change someone’s appearance from the usual:

View your work

One of the most important things you should do as a photographer is to review your portfolio with a pro. Critiquing (not criticizing – big difference) your work is the best way by far to improve quickly.

Full disclosure: I offer this as a service. Portfolio reviews can be done via Skype/online and are a very beneficial formof tuition. “Tough love” is a way of introducing feedback.

And however you do it, get that feedback. Every good learning system, from evolution in biology to op-amps in electronics, uses feedback to adjust its output to external traction to that output.

So however you do it, get feedback, and then act on it in Lightroom or Aperture and become your own critic.

In the next week, some examples. Stay tuned!

Detail, detail

When travelling, I like to take snaps, like any other tourist.

But I often make sure I get no other tourists in the snaps. I do that by tilting, zooming, and moving myself. Like these, in The Venetian:

And this, the sky in Henderson, NV:

 

And some more:

These are nto your travel images per sé. But they are great as background, “storytelling” images. The kind you use in your book, when you make a book of the trip. Perhaps as supporting or even background images. Remember, above all: keep them simple. Simple is good. Blurry background, zooming in, tilting, all great ways to keep them simple!

 

 

Aftermath – Abandon All Dreams

“Aftermath” – a short series I shot in a foreclosed home in Henderson, Nevada yesterday.

The contrast between the beautiful home and its present gutted nature, the abandoned dream is so great, and so sad.  None of this was staged, of course. The stories are human (look at the card in one of the shots: in fact it says “For Mommy, With Love”.)

 

Air Show Tips 2

And a few more tips for shooting events like air shows.

Avoid what happened to me above: the grey area on the bottom left is the outline of the head of another spectator. I was too late – just a quick visit, so I was not at the front.

Use a crop camera if you have one – your lens is 1.5/1.6x longer that way! And consider using an extender to make your lenses longer. I used a 70-200 on a full frame camera, so I had to crop; a longer lens would have been great. 1.4 and 2.0x entenders are good. Not cheap, and you lose some stops, but there should be plenty of light at these events.

Be half way down the runway – that’s the lowest point for many routines and flybys.

Stay where you are. Find a position and stay. If you move, you lose shots.

Look at the sun. Be aware where the light is coming from.

Bring a Hoodman Hood Loupe – so you can check your exposures.

Um.. and have fun. Though doing this must be a lot more fun than just watching it:

(Yes, he is upside down).

 

Shooting an Airshow

I took a few shots yesterday at an airshow in Las Vegas.

And this is interesting to you why? Because it reminds me to tell you something about shooting air shows and such.

Equipment:

  1. Use a stabilized long lens-  200-400 mm or longer is best.
  2. Set the stabilizer to “Active” or “Mode 2” if it has that option: you will be panning with the aircraft.
  3. Also bring a wide lens for close-up shots of ground equipment and parked aircraft.

Camera settings:

  1. Use manual mode. Figure out exposure for aircraft and set to that. Take into account direction – back lit or front lit, that makes a difference.
  2. Set your focus mode to AF-C / AI Servo. Continuous focus is usually best.
  3. Ensure a shutter speed that is fast enough – maybe 1/500th second for prop planes and 1/2000th or faster for jets.
  4. Use continuous shutter release mode.

A few more samples:

Other:

  1. Get close to the landing strip
  2. Arrive early and get a good spot with no-one in front of you
  3. Crop images when needed!
  4. Your bag may be searched, so keep it simple.
  5. As said above… use a wide lens for detail shots – lots of stuff on the ground.
  6. I always use one focus spot, except at air shows.. only one thing in the sky. So I use the “camera chooses where to focus” way. But one thing I had not realized: the camera will try to focus on the darm smoke trails. So a smaller focus area might be a good idea.

And finally, a few more samples. All at or around 1/2500th second, f/2.8, 100 ISO, with the 70-200mm lens, cropped as needed.

So.. go shoot at airshows, and enjoy shooting moving objects.

 

Not Immediately Obvious

In a good photo, it is often good to not make your message too obvious. It is better to “talk without saying much”. A photo like this, taken yesterday, “model reading book”, is often more effective in conveying a situation or mood than an explicit image that tries to lay it all out:

Make the viewer put it together. That way the image is much more effective. In the case of the image above, the image benefits from the following elements:

  • Black and white.
  • Blurred subject, while foreground is sharp.
  • Face not visible.
  • Rule Of Thirds composition.
  • Action (“what is happening here”) is not immediately obvious.

The “not immediately obvious” is key. Are your images always immediately obvious? Like “Spouse Standing in front of Eiffel Tower Smiling at Camera”? Then I suggest you may try some of these techniques to make them more interesting.