Or “Quick Tip Of The Day”:
I am setting up for a portrait shoot, and his reminds me to mention to you the following quick tip:
Always have some music on the in the background when shooting a portrait. Age- and person- and shoot-appropriate music. This way you set the mood, you relax, and you avoid awkward silences.
Now to that portrait shoot and talk to you in a few hours.
A word about a very important aspect of people photography: angle.
When I make a portrait, one of my main tasks is to find the right angle. People have flattering angles, and less flattering angles. Angles that make them larger and angles that make them ssmaller. Angles that make them friendly, and angles that make them intimidating. My job is to find the very best angles.
Like this angle, in a shoot a few days ago of model Kim:
And look at me, photographed on Wednesday by David Forster. Less beautiful, of course… but that makes it more of a challenge. First a neutral angle:
Now, an angle from above, with the camera tilted a little:
See how different that looks? I like it much better – I look better when seen from a slightly higher viewpoint, it appears.
And finally, the first one of those two, but now tilted a little to the left in post-production:
Much better than the first one, no? Not like the second one, but better than the first one.
A little angle adjustment can make a huge difference and cause a huge improvement in your images. So – experiment with viewpoint, with person angle, and with camera angle.
I recently told you about an honourable company, that shall go unnamed, that settled an unlicensed use of my image to satisfaction.
There’s another such company – but this one did not do the honourable thing. They did not even bother to reply, even though I attempted to contact them several times since 18 July 2011. They had a large image of my 7D with 16-35mm lens on their web site. This company is http://www.dirtcheapcameras.com.au/
So since they have not deemed fit to respond, to pay, or anything else, I warn Australian readers to stay clear of them – they willingly and knowingly stole an image, and then did not respond when the owner repeatedly contacted them. That kind of ethics does not make for good business.
A forbidden word when doing portraits, especially of men: “SMILE!”.
I say that for two reasons. First, you do not necessarily need a smile in every portrait. Art portraits, glamour: fashion, personality: there are many categories that do not need (that actively should not have) smiles.
Secondly, people, especially men from age two upward, are usually not good at smiling on command.
Here’s me, photographed the other day by student David Forster in his studio, using his D90:
That is kind of a wry smile – and it certainly works, for me. If David had called out “smile” I would have looked much more awkward.
The lesson:
If you want smiles, make your subjects smile – do not tell them to smile.
The shot was lit with speedlights with Honl Photo modifiers: a grid for the background light, and a snoot for the hairlight. A softbox was used for the mainlight and an umbrella for the fill light.
As predicted, Kodak has just applied for bankruptcy protection.
A sad almost-ending for a company that made the photography field into what it is. But a predictable one. Kodak failed to keep up with the digital world. Just like Polaroid (but unlike Fuji): when Film ended – Kodak ended.
Kodak, you see, was afraid of cannibalizing its film sales. Digital will do that – and did do that. But here’s the problem: if you do not cannibalize your own sales, someone else will. You need to be market-trend centric, not “me-centric”.
The same is true in my field. I teach as well as shoot. Some colleagues criticize me for “training the competition”. Yes – but at least I train them well, and most importantly, if I do not train them, somebody else will. If there is a demand, there will be a supply.
Which is why I train at Sheridan College, at the School of Imaging, at CameraTraining.ca, at The Granite Club, at this daily blog, and at various other venues. These are great times to learn photography, and I will do my utmost to train as many people as possible.
Tip or photographers: embrace the concept of trends. Trends are unstoppable. So in terms of trends (not individual products – look at Apple), you should look where the market is going and go there. For us that means supplying images on a DVD, for instance. Using the cloud and the web to share work. Providing cheaper, or fewer, prints. All these are unstoppable trends, so embrace them.
I am not saying “all change is good”, but I am saying “once a change is unstoppable, recognize it and embrace it – see how you can make it into a benefit”. Fuji dealt with the Tsunami of Digital – while Kodak singularly failed to.
It is important, when taking a snap of, say, a tourist destination, to think for a few seconds.
Take this image, of a guard at Stockholm’s Royal Palace:
A snapshot, but one I thought about for a bit.
A little thinking makes your shot from a snapshot into a photograph. Just think of subject, context, background, light, and composition.
I am currently writing and teaching a course at Sheridan College on “Small Business Photography”. This is a 12-week course on running a small photography business.
And today I thought I would touch here upon one of its subjects: the name you choose for your business.
Your name needs to be:
Your name is a large part of your brand identity. So I would avoid business names that are:
That last point is worth expanding. What is your market? The Sears market? Then by all means call yourself something that sounds like the Sears studios, like “General Photo Studios”.
But I think that as a photographer you are probably in the photographer business, not in the photography business. So, advertise yourself. While my company is officially called “MVW Photo”, I usually use “Michael Willems Photographer”. Simple, available (see www.michaelwillems.ca) and clear.
Whatever you do – do decide on a name, and on the other hand don’t obsess too much.
All you need to create web site galleries of your images in Adobe Lightroom is Adobe Lightroom and a web server/FTP server.
In the WEB module, you can lay out your gallery of selected images any way you like.. many templates are available and many settings are available in these templates. For instance, like this:
Which, once you upload it to a web server, leads to a web site like this:
I hope this spurs you on to doing something with your pictures: get a web host, learn how to FTP files to it, and share your pictures with friends and family – or with clients – with minimal effort.
A shoot from a shoot yesterday will help illustrate a point I am ambivalent about: whether to do post work that materially changes an image, or not.
The original shot is rough: lit with two speedlights, on one camera and one off camera:
So we do some minor skin adjustments (including a minor “clarity” decrease) and a somewhat major crop:
That crop is essential: simplify, simplify, simplify!
That is all the post work I normally do. It does not materially change the image. My rule of thumb: could I have done this with light? If so, no problem doing it in post.
Beautiful.
But in this rare case I want a very different look – so now I do a post action in Lightroom to make it look the way I want. Rare for me, but here it is:
What do you think? Allowed in this rare case? Of course by definition you are allowed to do whatever you like – you are the creative artist – but I would counsel against doing too much.
….is bad.
Or is it?
“Flare” is what happens when an incoming light source throws light into your lens – you are perhaps not using a lens hood, or you are using a filter (which can increase flare) and you have a close light source. The picture loses contrast. Which is usually to be avoided.
But sometimes you use deliberate flare for effect. Like in this image – the favourite of my model in today’s shoot (and that shoot explains why this post is so late):
I like the flare in that – my model loves it.
How would this look without flare? Maybe in B/W? Like this:
So – try to add a little flare in some pictures every now and then for effect. Just aim next to a strong light source.
(Incidentally, that light source here was an off-camera speedlight – I aimed it towards me.)