Category Archives: Composition

Jamaica

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As Bob Marley said:

No want you come galang so;
No want you fe galang so.
You want come cold I up;
But you can’t come cold I up

(“I don’t want you to be like that / You want to put me down, but you can’t put me down” – from “Trenchtown Rock”).

Jamaica made me cheerful. Not just because Bob Marley, whose music I have listened to since 1975, was from here (I saw his Mausoleum, and much ganja was smoked there), but because people are friendly and happy and smiling; and because I love the Jamaican patois, and the handshakes, Ya man, everyting irie. Respect!

But I am cheerful also because Kristen and Dan’s wedding was a lot of fun to shoot. Since I was with them all week, they got the entire week covered: the trip, the wedding day, the “trash the dress” the days after, and their friends and family.

And when the mood is great, the photos are great, as was the case here this week.

And in the Caribbean, it is all about colour and light.

Or lack of light: keep light off subject, then expose for the background and the picture takes itself:

But sometimes the light needs some help, like here:

An image like that is taken how? Well..

  1. by first exposing for a darker background – 1/250th second, 100 ISO, f/8 perhaps. F/11 would be even better but then the flash has to punch through that f/11, so it had better be a powerful, close by flash.
  2. By taking the flash off camera. I used pocketwizards and one flash, today.
  3. And by modifying the light.

My single flash was modified and held by guest TJ:

This makes for great photos, some of which I might also do a little Lightroom treatment on, like here:

And some I will not do that to, like this:

I apply the Rule of Thirds, of course. And I use negative space. And close-far. But can you see how here, it is all about light and colour?

In family shots too, which I made for a few people (featuring Catharine, the groom’s mom):

Now in all these I used the settings and rules and principles above. But as the day went down, it as necessary for me to progressively open the lens more. More about this later – and how and why I did them without using either TTL or a light meter.

Going home tomorrow. No want Sunwing to cold I up….!

Michael

 

Details, details…

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You have heard me say many times: details count. Very much so!

So, when the camera position results in extraneous stuff, and it cannot be avoided at the time, as in this interview photo – taken last week, when I was being interviewed for Jane Dayus’s Hinch’s Wedding Café:

Then you do post work to remove  things. Can you see it?

Well, I am assuming you can see what’s been left out here:

Right… I may think of myself as holy (and no I do not) – but I have no cross growing out of my head. Nevertheless, as said, do not worry if you have to shoot something like this – get the shot, fix it later, if you have to.

 

Face it: you can do without faces

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Following up from what I said yesterday: You can do without faces in portraits, and often it’s better, because the viewer, as I so often say here, has to put the story together in his or her mind.

You see that I focused on his face, but you cannot see it. What you can see is his intense focus (pun intended) on the subject.

Or this moody portrait of a nude on the Lake Ontario shoreline:

Guarded, anonymous, closed: what’s the story? We cannot tell, we can only guess.

Or this faceless shot of amazing photographer Peter McKinnon also does not rely on a face:

As you see, faces are not needed to make a photo interesting. Here’s one more example:

Your assignment, should you choose to accept it: go shoot an interesting portrait that does not show facial detail.

___

NEWS: http://photonetworkexpo.com/ : come see me talk this weekend in Toronto about Flash Photography, and even better: book online and use promo code Michael2013 to get 50% off a weekend pass. See you then!

NEWS: There are still spaces left on my signature workshops in Hamilton in the next few weeks: see http://www.cameratraining.ca/Schedule.html to book now!

Light

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I shot a few pictures featuring light, Monday night.

Light can be depressing.

Light can show as bright, in courtyards that to us look pitch black. Just turn up the ISO, lower the f-number, and slow down the shutter speed:

Light can leave trails:

Light can show you things we cannot see… to my eyes, this sky was pitch black:

In other words, light can help make your image in more ways than you might at first imagine.

Tip: when shooting and looking for “creative light”, look for:

  • Shadows.
  • Ways to make “what we see as dark” light, or vice versa.

That way, you get intriguing images. Give it a go. The images above took about, what, three minutes. Given half an hour, what could I have come up with? With eyes wide open, a lot.

 

Ave Caesar

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Why did I shoot this stature of a young Julius Caesar, who forgot to put on his pants, this way?

Well…

  • You might say “to make him look dramatic and powerful”.
  • You might say “to emphasize my subjugation to the mighty Roman empire”.
  • You might say “to compose using the Rule of Thirds”
  • You might say “to get three dimensionality into the shot”.
  • You might say “to offset Julius against the nice patterned glass ceiling”.
  • You might, if you were there looking over my back, even say “to get rid of all the Japanese tourists which were crowding around”.

And all of those would be correct!q

 

Sam The Studio Man

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When I prepare a tricky shot, I tend to use  stand-in model while I work on light, so the model does not need to stand there for half an hour while I adjust and move lights.

But these stand-in shots are often good, which is why I use them. While preparing to shoot model Danielle, I shot Sam Taylor, who runs the studio I teach in (see www.cameratraining.ca and click on “Schedule”).

I set my exposure for the window: 1/60th sec, f/5.6, 400 ISO. Then I added a strobe with a softbox, and I moved Sam far enough from the window so the strobe would light him up (from 45 degrees above), but would not light up the reflective inside of the window too much. And then I set flash power according to my camera settings. Finally, I did a little desaturating in Lightroom. Result:

Short lighting, great grunge, serious expression, rule of thirds, good balance of background and foreground. A tricky shot, and one I am delighted with.

One of my students remarked on how refreshing it was to see the problem solving process, and to realize that photography is in fact problem solving, yes it is. When I set up a shot, I do not have all the answers, but I see what I want, and I know how to solve problems “step by step” until I get that result.

And sometimes you change your mind. In the final model shot, I could not move the model away from the window, as she sat on the sill. Hence I could not get rid of a shadow cast by the snooted speedlight I ended up using. So then the shot changes entirely: if you cannot beat the shadow, embrace it! To spare those of you who are sensitive, I shall not show you that shot here (it’s a nude),  but if you are interested, click here to go to my tumblr feed.

(By the way: have you considered being photographed this way? if not: consider it. Some beautiful shots of yourself like this are worth making. If you don’t, you may well regret it later in life).

 

Street

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A shot from today, as I was awaiting my lunch Roti, on Queen Street East in Toronto:

Grunge. Street. Sign. Composition. Thought. Storytelling, or rather, making the viewer look at what’s happening and try to figure it out. The moral of this story: carry your camera everywhere. Do not be afraid to use it. Tell stories, raise questions. No, I do not only shoot portraits and nudes.

(Though I do shoot those, too. Look here for a set of two (warning: nudity – if that warrants a warning in your world), and view both: a recent nude I shot, and then one from over 2,500 years ago – an awesome coincidence, as I had never seen this until after the shot. Plus ça change…)

 

About A Crop

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Yesterday’s post prompts me to talk a little about cropping, today. After all, cropping your picture (either in camera or, more commonly, afterward, in post) is an essential step to making the image what it is.

You crop in order to:

  • Fit to a certain aspect ration (say, 5×7).
  • Get rid of “stuff” that doesn’t belong – i.e. to simplify.
  • Get in close.

Famous photojournalist Robert Capa once said: “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough”. He had a point.

Consider these three images from the other night: the original, and two crops:

There is no “right” or “wrong” in these crops. But I would argue that the third image, i.e. the closest crop, is the most powerful version. They are certainly all very different images, that tell different stories (or raise different questions).

You can crop in camera, or shoot a little wide, to leave space for cropping later (that’s why the Good Lord gave you all those megapixels). I tend to often shoot just a little wide in the camera, so I can creatively crop later.

Exercise: crop your recent images really tight and see what you end up with. Yes, you can cut through heads, as I am doing above.

 

Simplicity – with a capital “S”

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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!

 

Learn from the real pros

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Namely – you can learn a lot about composition, portraiture, and so on from painters.

Like Edgar Degas. He was the master of making paintings look like photography – capturing the moment. Here’s an opportunity of learning from a painter who learned from photography. Like in the use of his crops:

Who would ever dream of cropping people halfway, and of having people look right out of the frame? Degas would, that’s who. He took what the new art of photography did and made it into some of the most artistic paintings we have ever seen.

And then there’s John Singer Sargent, the master of portraits.

See Rembrandt and his light in there?

And in this work by Singer Sargent, do you see Velasquez?

Here’s Velasquez’s “Las Meninas”:

My point ? That we all stand on the shoulders of giants – we do not copy what came before, perhaps, but we certainly are inspired by it, learn from it, and use its lessons in our own compositions.

So my advice for you today is to go to art museums, buy art books, and browse art. If a painting is famous and in a museum, tat is probably because it is great. And we can all learn from the greats. Don’t restrict yourself to great photographers; learn from the great painters also!