February 1: one more chance to do the Six Day Seeing email course.

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Yesterday, I shot a portrait session in my Brantford studio with a recent graduate from McMaster University (Congratulations). Here’s a little description of how I do such a shoot.

We did various shots (LinkedIn, Informal, Low Key, and the “Graduate Photo”. The latter because the one the university itself took wasn’t great. Here is a proof of mine:

A few notes about this picture:

• The border is McMaster University’s official colour. The university describes exact CYMK and RGB colours on its web site).
• The blue-green colour, made using two speedlights with Honl Photo gobos and blue-green gels aimed at a black background, was my suggestion; namely, a colour that contrasts nicely (on a colour wheel) with the university’s colour. It took a little use of the “HSL” tool in Lightroom to get the exact hue, saturation and luminance. This is important.
• I made some adjustments to the background in Lightroom. Adjustments such as a slight sharpness and clarity reduction using the brush with auto-mask set to ON, and using the post-crop vignetting effect.
• I made the frame in Lightroom also, with the extra help of an add-in called “LR/Mogrify”.
• When a graduate does not have a robe, I rent the robe and scroll. And the “mortar board with tassel” hat, but of course this graduate has a turban instead.
• The main and key lights were strobes with softboxes; the edge light was a strobe with a snoot.

As you see, shooting something as simple as a graduation picture does take a little more than just smiling, positioning the subject right, and clicking. All that is essential, but the rest is, too. It all has to come together in a successful shoot.

And these milestones are of course very important. Not just for parents and grandparents, but also for the person him- or herself. You need to have a visual record celebrating your life events, and one that is better than a bunch of cell-phone shots. Don’t get me wrong, those are great also, but an event as important as this deserves more.

If you want me to do yours, contact me. 416-875-8770, or better, michael@willems.ca

As you’ve heard me say many times: turn on the xml file option in Adobe Lightroom “catalog settings”.

Look it up: “save settings to xmp”. That allows Lightroom to save all edits you do into a separate XML file. That gives you some redundancy, in case your catalog file somehow gets corrupted. And that is important, because the catalog IS Lightroom. And if you are a serious photographer, that means that the catalog is your life.

So I just noticed something that I never noticed before: this does not work for jpg pictures. It only works for raw pictures. So if your catalog gets corrupted and you shoot jog: you’re out of luck. Unless yin make daily backups. Which I hope you do.

But the main take-away from this? Shoot raw. Now you have yet anoth reason to do so.

This is virtually straight out of camera (“SOOC”):

Life model Kim Gorenko straight out of the camera, in Toronto, Ontario, this evening.

I would hope that all shooters take photos out of the camera, rather than after an hour or two of photoshopping…!

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“How do you optimally set up a Canon 5D Mark 3?”, asks a student.

OK. Glad to help. Because yes, you do need to make a few changes. Canon has most options set up right, but there are a few exceptions, and a few settings that make this excellent camera significantly better for pros.

So let me take you through them.

1. Shooting Menu 1: Image Quality. I recommend you write RAW to card 1, and Large Fine JPG to card 2, as a backup. You could make the backups raw as well, but then you need a lot more storage. (Note, you should do item 7 on this list before you can set this).
2. Shooting Menu 2: Turn Auto Lighting Optimizer OFF if you are shooting RAW images. Otherwise the camera will “Photoshop” your images, so you will not even see that you are, for example, underexposing the background.
3. Shooting Menu 3: Turn Highlight Tone Priority OFF. Unless you want the camera to make exposure decisions for you, that is.
4. AF Menu 4: Select AF area selec. mode: I suggest you turn all options ON.
5. AF Menu 5: VF display illumination: suggest you turn it ON.
6. Playback menu 3: suggest you turn Histogram disp to RGB. That way you also see if you overexpose just one colour channel (which leads to bad colour). Looking at jusyt the average histogram, you miss this.
7. Wrench menu 1: Record func+card/folder sel: suggest you set Record func. to Rec. separately,
8. Wrench menu 1: Set File name to something meaningful (mine is “MW5D”) and select it instead of the default.
9. Wrench menu 1: Set Auto rotate to the middle option (do not auto rotate on playback).
10. Wrench menu 2: make very sure your LCD Brightness is set to manual. (Else, you will make bad exposure decisions).
11. Wrench menu 4: Enter your personal Copyright information. Set Author to your name and Copyright to “All Rights Reserved”.
12. Custom Functions 2:  Set Multi function lock to Main Dial and Multi-controller. That way, you lock both aperture and shutter when you wish to lock your settings.
13. Custom Functions 2: Custom Controls. Set the bottom right option (Multi controller) to “AF point direct selection”. That way you can select an AF point just by using the little joystick.
14. Custom Functions 2: Custom Controls. Set the SET button to change ISO. That way, press and hold the SET button while you are composing your image and immediately change the ISO value without removing your eye from the viewfinder, so you can see the effect on your actual image.
15. Custom Functions 2: Custom Controls. You may optionally want to set the Main Control to Av and the Quick control dial to Tv. That way, the main control dial changes your aperture whether you are in manual or aperture-priority mode—and those are a pro’s most used modes.

Finally, set your personal menu to contain some useful options. Personal choice. Mine are, in this order:

• Battery info
• External Speedlite Control
• Beep
• Sensor cleaning
• Highlight alert
• Format card

That’s it. You are in business.

Of course settings are personal, so you can set anything you like, any way you like. But I am sure you will find most, if not all, of these suggestions very helpful.

You can use your iPhone for some pretty good photos. If you know how.
Exposure is one of them.

Click on a dark area, and you get a light exposure. See the yellow box, where I clicked:

Click a light area, and you get a dark exposure. Now the yellow box is on the light window.

At the same time, you will focus where you clicked.

And finally, you can adjust exposure in addition, by dragging up or down after you tap.

The moral of the story: even for an iPhone you need to know things. “Automatic ” is never the best option.

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I am often asked: “why use Lightroom instead of what I already use? I use Photoshop, Photopaint, Picasa, or some other app, and I am happy with it”.

Good question. But yes, there’s very good reasons to use Lightroom.
They include:

• Lightroom does non-destructive editing. Your original image, whether it is a RAW, JPG, or any other type of image.
• Lightroom is great at handling large numbers of photos. I have 200,000 images in my library.
• Lightroom is a fantastic asset management tool
• Lightroom is great at workflow.
• Lightroom is great at quick editing. Yes, you can do it all in Photoshop. But it’ll take you get times longer.
• Lightroom is a great production tool. Whether it’s prints, web sites, books, slide shows, or files, you’ll save oodles of times with LR.
• Lightroom was made by photographers for photographers, and it shows.

I have saved 80% of my production time since switching to Lightroom full time. Yes. 80%.

Worth looking at, and worth a lot more than the $150 that Adobe charges… But please don’t tell Adobe that I told you so. 🙂

Come see me for an hour and I’ll show you Lightroom and I promise you that you will be impressed. The best thing since sliced bread, verily.

Michael

Say that it’s cold out, and you want to shoot a family photo. You would perhaps want to go to the forest, or to a park, to shoot something like this:

(If that’s your family, you have issues).

But going back to the subject for a moment: I didn’t shoot this in a park. Instead, it is in my comfortable studio. And I can shoot this during hurricanes, in the rain, in snowstorms, at 3AM: any time I like.

Now there are a number of ways you can do this.

• Move to a park, and remove a studio wall.
• Use “green screen”, then add the park in post-work, in Photoshop. (If you do not know how to do this, search for “green screen” using the search field above).
• Shoot against anything and just laboriously remove the background using Photoshop.

Or there is the “brute force” low-tech way:

Buy a backdrop with the scene on it. Like so:

So… if you have always wanted to emulate my “nudes in nature” shots, like these:

…and you  never had the nerve (or have never been able to find a model with the nerve), then I guess I have just solved a huge problem for you. Donations welcome!  🙂