How Dark Is It?

I looked around and asked my Sheridan College class, yesterday night: “how dark is this classroom?”

Most said “rather dark”, because it looked rather dark.

To us.

But not to my camera. Not necessarily.

I showed them. Click-click-click-click-click. And it was this dark in the room:

No, this dark:

No, this dark – not that dark:

No, this dark – not at all dark:

No, this dark – extremely bright:

The point I am making: your camera is a light-shifter. Do not settle for “my eyes are seeing X so the photo must look like X”. Why? Says who? Unleash your creative side, and see the camera as a light shifter.

And when you combine that with flash, you have a true creative tool at your disposal. Learn it; use it!

 

Tilt. Shift.

Why do I use my 45mm tilt-shift lens so often? Because I can. Because I like focusing manually. Because it is sharp. And because I can do shots like this even at a wide aperture:

I just shot some pages of one of my exhibit guestbooks. I did this for the upcoming Photosensitive “Picture change” Project, which I am very much honoured to be a part of.

To make pictures of a book like this from behind it, I would normally need to be at, perhaps, f/16. Which would mean no hand-holding, but a tripod and a long exposure. But by tilting the lens down, just as if I were using a view camera, I can shift the plane of focus so that the entire book is in focus even at a wide aperture like f/4. Simple and quick.

I used my tilt-shift yesterday as well, to do some nudes, as training material for the upcoming “art nudes” course. You can see them on my Tumblr feed. Not an obvious lens choice, perhaps (I would normally want a lens in the 35mm range, in a small room), but a good choice under the circumstances, where I am pointing up and down (which is where the shift comes in).

___

(By the way: there is still space on the course, just two spots left; and there are more courses planned too: see http://www.cameratraining.ca/Schedule.html)


Find the Umbrella

Of course you bounce, yeah? I mean – one on camera flash, and you bounce that off the wall? My favourite modifier!

So you do NOT, ever, do the following indoors: aim straight at your victim. You see why:

Ouch. In spite of lovely Sarah, that gives flash a bad name. Instead, you bounce your flash off a wall or ceiling:

How do you decide where to point it?

One of the many things I teach in my Flash courses is just that. When using on-camera bounce flash, you should “find the umbrella” – i.e. where it would be if you were in a studio – and then point the umbrella there.

That often – usually, in most social situations – means you point the flash behind you.

Not straight up, when you are close: straight up when close to people means you get “the undead”: people with dark eyesockets:

Also, in this situation you do not point forward and up 45 degrees, for two reasons: (a) you get only a lit forehead and background; and (b) you get a lot of direct forward light, so it’s back to the horrible shadows:

Poor Sarah.

Let me correct that by showing you how it looks when I aim the flash up, 45 degrees behind me:

It’s easy once I show you. For now, just remember: find the virtual umbrella and point your flash there.

(By the way: when you do need to point forward -when the subject is far-, you need to do something else, and I will teach you a cool trick about that soon.)

___

The above images, featuring Sarah, are from yesterday’s all-revamped Flash course that I taught in Hamilton. Good news if you had to miss it: several new dates have just been scheduled, and several new courses! Sign up right now: www.cameratraining.ca/Schedule.html

 

An important law

The “inverse square law”, passed by the Ontario government in 1988 as part of bill 42-C sub… no never mind. It is a law of nature:

And that is why forward flash from your camera gives you those bad black backgrounds (not even mentioning the shadows, the oily skin, the deer-in-the-headlights look, and so on).

This inverse square rule should be part of your photographic DNA, if is isn’t yet. Move a flash closer, and it can have more power. And vice versa.

But this law is sometimes understood incorrectly. It applies to distance between light source and object. NOT distance between object and photographer.

Find that hard to understand?

Then consider this: does a pale person turn into a dark-skinned person when you move back? Does a black-skinned person turn Caucasian when you approach? No. They turn into, respectively, smaller and larger persons (so the rule that fewer photons reach you does hold), not into darker or lighter persons.

My all-new flash course runs at 2pm in Hamilton: two and a half hours to go. I had better pack!

 

Humdrum to competent in easy steps

One thing I teach photographers in my flash courses (like the one I teach tomorrow in Hamilton – hint, just two spaces left) is to take pictures away from what Uncle Fred does. You know Uncle Fred, the guy with the camera, who always carries it but h knows little about how it works. Every family has one.

If Uncle Fred knows about exposure (which is not at all a given!) he might produce this:

So he has exposed for the subject. Good. But a little boring.

I prefer this:

By using flash I have achieved:

  1. A much better background, with colour and saturation.
  2. My subject is now the Bright Pixels (and remember Willems’s Dictum: Bright Pixels Are Sharp Pixels).
  3. We have shaped the subject’s face. Flat light “from where the camera is” is boring and makes faces look flat.
  4. We have catch lights!

Not bad, and not difficult. Simply:

  1. Camera to manual
  2. Expose for the background, keeping shutter below 1.250th
  3. Bounce flash up and left (or right)

Oh. That was easy.

Yes, and those of you who read here and especially those of you who are my students tomorrow will learn this, and a whole lot more.

 

 

Noooo….. not me….. noooo…..

We all, as photographers, encounter people who do not want to be photographed.

Usually, in my experience, women; and usually because “I am too old”, “I don’t have any make-up on”; “I am not photogenic”… and so on. Sometimes “because the images will get onto the Internet”.

Whatever the reason, what are we as photographers to do?

I think the answer comes in several forms.

First and foremost: be sensitive to this. If I were in charge, no medical doctor would be allowed to graduate without first having undergone a digital rectal exam, and no photographer could use that job title without first being photographed, preferably in the nude.  In other words, you need to be sensitive to others’ hesitation to be photographed. After age 30, we all think of ourselves as permanently 25 – except me, because I know I am 25.  And these silly camera things distort us so we look older!

Second, try to assure these subjects that if they let you take their photo, they can look at it and you’ll delete what they do not like. You need to have skills for this (hence all my courses), but it is worth it. Skills like not lighting in an unflattering way, using flash, keeping parts dark, and so on.

Third: use tricks. Like this, one of my favourite party shots. I tell hesitant subjects “I’ll blur you – hold out your drink, I’ll show you”.

The usual reaction is “awesome”.

Or try more unusual shots, like these:

There too, the usual reaction is “awesome”.

Finally: do respect the “no” and walk away, but do try again later. Often people change their mind. In photography, sometimes “no” means “No, but I hope you persuade me”.

 

Simplicity – with a capital “S”

If anything, my mantra has always been: “keep it simple” – reduce everything to the essence and you have a much better product. I am big on this in business, in photographic composition, in presentations; in teaching; in writing (do it in half the words!). In just about everything. Simple is good.

Including in computers, and that is why I use a Mac, and that is also why the book I just read, “Insanely Simple” by Ken Segall, struck such a chord. Get this book – Ken is an advertiser who worked with Steve Jobs for many years and relates his view on why Apple is great very succinctly (and, I think, gets it right: one word: “Simplicity”). Another example: go choose a laptop at Apple.com. Go do it, Right now. Ah, you’re back after a minute? Good. Now go choose one at Dell.com. Good luck, and see you in a few weeks.

Such a relief to read this. I have been saying this for decades: a great consultant makes complicated things simple; a not-so-good consultant makes simple things complicated. Steve Jobs understood this like no other. Cell phones were brain dead.. he made one that wasn’t. It’s not as though I and many others had not been saying that for years – we just did not have the power to change things. I used to curse at my Blackberry’s stupidity – designed by people who apparently took delight in making things complicated. They took the easy way out.

You see, simple is difficult to do, and difficult is simple to achieve. It is easy to make a bad phone, hard to make it simple and intuitive. Be lazy – let the client do the work! Like the makers of TVs today. I, and the four remotes on my table, do hope Apple breaks apart that market, too, and very soon.

In photography, it’s the same. Simple means thinking “how can I reduce this photo to its essence”?

Perhaps by using a long lens with a wide aperture, to make the background blurry:

Or by tilting up to keep things out of the picture, as in this 15-second exposure:

Or by angling to keeping a landscape simple, as in this image made near Drumbo, Ontario:

Or by cropping to make things simple:

or by using simple light – my favourite outdoors light by far is a single umbrella with an off-camera flash, sometimes with a second flash to be the hairlight (although I prefer to use the sun for that, from behind). Here’s a two flash setup:

Which gives us:

Or by leaving out light:

Sometimes I fail, like in this image where I inexplicably did not trim off the leaves on the left:

But when this “light from one flash” works well, which it usually does, it works very well:

So my message is: go the extra mile to simplify your images. However you do it, simplifying is a way to reduce an image to its essence; to get clarity in your work.

Simple minds think that simple is bad. Sophisticated minds know that simple is good.

POSTSCRIPT – ADDED:

Let me illustrate… this is how dumb TV systems are. To turn on my TV, I need to:

1. Aim remote at cable box
2. Press “cable” on remote
3. Press POWER
4. Aim at TV
5. Press “TV” on remote
6. Press POWER
4. Aim at audio amp
5. Press “Audio” on remote
6. Press POWER
7. Press “Cable”
8. Adjust volume and choose channel
9. Put down remote
10. Grab Apple remote
11. Aim at Apple TV
12. Press MENU
13. if Apple tv is to be watched:
a) grab remote
b) press TV
c) press INPUT
d) select APPLE TV
e) grab Apple remote
d) select program

I cannot imagine why we allow this nonsense. APPLE, WHERE ARE YOU!

 

X marks the spot

Today, another small but important tip:

When you shoot portraits, stick some painter’s marking tape onto the floor exactly where you want to subject to stand.

Why? Well, if you shoot with manually set flash, you will want to  keep the subject in the same place, because if they move even a little closer to, or away from, your lights, you need to re-meter and re-set your exposure or your flash power. But even when you use TTL, there is a lot to be said for consistency. Your light direction is paramount, and small changes in position can dramatically change that. Finally, the marked spot makes the shoot faster: no need to subjects to constantly be told where to stand.

So make life easy for yourself: “X marks the spot”.  This way you can make every shot consistent and successful.

 

TOTD – Tips Of The Day

Tip: If you have an iPad and like showing your pictures, get Foliobook. Now. This app allows you to present pictures that you want, as a portfolio or slideshow, the way you want. And to create a front page. And your own order and categories. It is everything the built-in viewer app isn’t. $12.99. And no, I do not get commission.

Tip 2: View images on this here blog as the original large size. To do this, click on the picture, then click on the “Full Size Is…” link, and then if needed click on your computer’s “+” magnifying glass cursos. That is the only way you see what an image is really like. Small kills. So this example (click here) is what you see when you do that.