Author Archives: Michael Willems

Snow

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I have a reminder for you of how to expose for snow.

Snow and sand (yes, beaches to a camera look just like snowscapes) are brighter than your average scene.

So to get them to look natural, i.e. to get them to look bright, you need to tell the camera it is looking at a bright scene.

Unless you do this, the scene will look dark.  The camera, by virtue of its reflective light meter technology, tries to make everything look mid-grey (we call this “18% grey”). Like this:

Not bad. But unless you want the dark look for effect, it’s not good either; it was brighter than that outside my second home, the other day.

With +1 stop exposure compensation (that’s the plus/minus button), it looks like this:

And that is better. Your guideline:

  1. Snow should look white, not grey.
  2. The histogram should have a peak (the snow) on the very right, just before the end of the graph.

So use Exposure Compensation, have fun, and dress warmly.

Or if your thing is a beach, don’t dress at all.

You get to tell me.

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So Canada has gone even crazier than the USA in cowardly kowtowing to the terrorist morons.

A clear terrorist suspect tries to blow up a plane with his underwear, and in response our Canadian masters decide the same day that we cannot bring hand luggage on airplanes, must not use our iPods, cannot read books, and may not use the washroom. Ludicrous. Rex Murphy calls it exactly right, here.

But worse. This is real, folks. Much as I resent the decrease in my liberties for no other reason than our moronic and kneejerk-oriented masters’ cowardice, I also have very real practical problems with this. Which is why I am asking for your advice.

I am planning another US trip in late February. Meaning I fly to the West Coast and teach pros and emerging pros how to use flash properly. So this means I need to bring my standard camera bag. This contains a Canon 1Ds MkIII, a 7D, a 70-200 f/1.8, a 16-35 f/2.8, a 24-70 f/2.8, a 35mm f/1.4, a 50mm f/1.4, four speedlights, pocketwizards, and more. Total value around $25,000. I guess I could cut it down to $20,000 if I really tried.

So at Christmas, some idiot religious kid tries to blow up his underwear, and we react by making it illegal for me to bring the above into the cabin. So now I need to check this.

Right. Meaning a very good chance it will not arrive, or will not arrive in one piece. And I mean 50-50. Luggage gets scanned and there are no video cameras down below where the unionised workers open it. Who knows. And we have all seen how luggage is thrown around.

So what do I do? Go, and run a 50-50 chance of losing $25,000 (and getting $100 back from the airline)? Or just cancel my US appearances forthwith and change my market from 300 million North Americans to 33m Canadians? Or drive, and increase my prices eightfold to cover the 8 day drive?

Well, I see no solution. I think professional photographers can no longer travel. It seems to me that we have given Al Qaeda yet another significant and easy victory, totally unnecessarily. This is not Al Qaeda’s fault: it is ours. Our “leaders'” fault.

The odd thing is that I have seen virtually no-one agree with the idiocy. And yet it thunders along, destroying our way of life, bit by bit.

Seller beware

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Since I now have three cameras, and only need two, I am selling my Canon 1D Mark III (since I have a 1Ds MkIII and a  7D as well).

Great camera, as new, low shutter, works perfectly, original box, not the “fixed, blue dot” version but a newer version, all good. $2,750, which is great value.

But seller beware. I’ve put this up on Kijiji and Craigslist, and particularly Craigslist is already engendering scammers who want “the item” sent to Nebraska, etc, and they will pay for “the item” with Paypal etc.

I’m afraid it’s cash only for me… Paypal does seem to bring out unpleasantness!

Here’s a pic my colleague Danielle made of me with it the other day (click for large):

That picture also shows that the megapixel thing is silly. The 1D MkIII is an 11 Mp camera.

That image is scaled way down to 1200 pixels long; the original is much more detailed still. 11 Mp is enough for huge prints (smallest prints I ever make are 13″x19″).

Believe me, more megapixels are all very well, but you’ll never need them. And they come at a price. 15 MB for a RAW from this camera; 30 MB for a RAW from my 1Ds. Megapixels are to a large extent marketing.

Power Tip

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Quick tip for today: you do not need to power down your camera after each use. When timed-out, it uses the same minimal amount of power that it uses when you turn it “off” (which is not in fact really “off” either).  So no need to keep that switch moving: Just leave your camera on all day, and only turn it off at the end of the day, or when you pack it into the bag.

You're in business

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I just read an article about a New Mexico-based photographer who was sued (and lost) for refusing to photograph a same-sex wedding. Something about her “belief system” (not sure how believing comes into taking photos, and not sure how systematic such beliefs are).

I hope it is needless to say that I will be more than happy to shoot anyone’s ceremonies and events, from conservative old-money weddings to leather fetish parties to same-sex ceremonies – hell, if people are having a good time I’d be delighted to photograph it:

But this case does raise an issue: when you go into business as a photographer, do realise that you are in business, and that ordinary business laws apply to you. Copyright, model releases, responsibility for damage, lawsuits such as the one above: all these are worthy of consideration.

So if you wish to do business as a photographer, my advice is to have

  • Good written agreements
  • Stated Dispute resolution policies
  • Model releases
  • Disclaimers
  • Stated policies, and so on.
  • And liability insurance.

Relatively small effort, and you never know when you may need them.

OK, I’ll shoot anything fun: after the break, a few more sample shots of that recent event, but first the legal Disclaimer: if you are likely to be offended by slight lack of clothing, do not proceed past this point.

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Snap

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Photography is about composition/subject + moment + light. I reckon I got several of these right here:

From earlier this year. Using a 35mm lens on a 1.3 crop camera (meaning it’s 50mm), set to f/2.8 at 1/160th second.

Moral of the story: a “standard” lens is great. This is equivalent to a 50mm lens. Do take lots of pictures and do not forget the “moment” aspect.

Top Ten Tips for your Web Site

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A tip for pro and emerging pro photographers, today.

Your web site is your store front. It is your chance to confirm that the good impression people have of you is justified. It is also the chance to lose that first good impression.

So for would-be pros here, today I have a few web site tips.

  1. Avoid a front page with an “Enter this site” button. If the user is there, it is because he wants to be on your site, so that extra click starts them off annoyed.
  2. Careful with Flash. It takes time to load, cannot be indexed by search engines,  needs software installed, and cannot be read on such platforms as the iPhone.
  3. Ensure that your site works on Mac and PC, and on IE as well as Firefox and Safari.
  4. It’s not about you – it’s about the customer. Not “I take nice pictures” but “have me make your pictures as eternal mementos”.
  5. Make it easy to contact you.
  6. Keep the design simple – white space is your friend.
  7. Avoid “Under construction” pages at all cost. If a page is not ready, do not publish it.
  8. Update the site often. Nothing worse than a site that has visibly been updated last two years ago for saying “this business is not active”.
  9. Put a few of your best photos up; not many iffy photos.
  10. And finally: Avoid thinking that the web site will bring in business all by itself. It supports – like a business card. That’s all.

And with that, I leave you to go redesign your site – or hopefully, I leave you nodding “yes, I know all that”.

Hot stock tip

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Nope – not for the stock market. I know little about it, and I suspect hat is because there is little to know (it is mainly randomness).  No, I am talking about stock photography. What makes a successful stock picture?

You can define this in many ways, but I like the following way of explaining the needs of a good stock picture that feature a person. You know the type of image: happy business people shaking hands, happy business people smiling, that sort of thing.

Those images consist of four elements:

  1. Background: the non-distracting, simple, background and its contrast to the subject, its theme, and its colour,
  2. Person: the person, who is doing something (what?)
  3. Symbol: An icon, a thing that explains what this is about; tells us “where we are” (e.g. the businessman wielding a fountain pen as he is signing a contract)
  4. Involvement: the tying-together of the above.

That goes for stock photos, but it also goes for many other photos.

An exercise I recommend: run your recent photos of people by those rules, and ask yourself “how do they measure up? What is my background? What is my person doing? What is the symbol? What is the involvement of the person with the rest of the image? What could I have done differently, even better?” Frameworks like the list above help you do this in a repeatable way.

Sunny Sixteen

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So early in 2010 we travel back to 1950. As follows: for beginners and for digital photographers who did not grow up in the film era: here’s the “Sunny Sixteen” rule.

When your meter is not working, you can set your exposure manually, within a fairly narrow margin of certainty. And you do this as follows:

  1. Assume your exposure time is set to 1/ISO. So if you are at 100 ISO, set your exposure to 1/100th second.
  2. Then use the following aperture settings:
  • Sunny, no clouds, hard shadows: f/16
  • Some light cloud, shadows soft around the edges: f/11
  • Overcast, hardly any shadows: f/8
  • Totrally overcast, no shadows at all: f/5.6

That’s all. Simple! And remarkably effective.

Of course you can use equivalent exposures in all this; e.g. 200 ISO at 1/200th second, or 400 ISO at 1/400th second. And you can adjust aperture simlarly: 100 to 200 ISO means f/8 would go to f/11, for example.