Category Archives: Learning

A family shoot

Posted on by
Reply

This, a couple of samples from a family shoot I just did, is why you probably want to hire a photographer for a family shoot rather than using an iPhone to just snap away:

Those are pretty much straight from the camera. So what does that take? Well, experience, insight, plus:

  1. A large battery-powered flash fired into an umbrella.
  2. A couple of pocketwizard radio triggers.
  3. Set your shutter to 1/250 sec, ISO to 100.
  4. Start at f/8 and be ready to change the aperture to set the background 1-2 stops below nominal (f/11 in this case).
  5. Turn the subjects away from the sun.
  6. Position them right.
  7. Shoot at just the right moment.

Simple once you know. And if you don’t know, I have two pieces of advice: One, learn (I teach, and I write books!) and two, start by hiring a pro.

 

Phone tip

Posted on by
Reply

A phone tip today. Because iPhone.

So you want to take a clear picture of something, to post. Super clear, like this:

Then I have a few tips for you!

  1. Ensure you have plenty of light; preferably reflected light. Like at a window, but not in direct sunlight.
  2. Take the picture from some distance away rather than from very close up. Then crop. This results in an overall clearer image, because very close up images suffer from lack of depth of field, and are hard to focus accurately.
  3. Sharpen the image. I use ProCamera, a camera/edit app that costs a few dollars, but is worth every penny.

If you follow those three steps, your phone images will be better than ever!

 

And another event

Posted on by
Reply

Sunday I shot an event: a baby shower. In a back yard and inside, and in a tent. Portraits, with two strobes (one with umbrella, one with small softbox), as well as event pics.

The portraits, with or without props, looked like this—and you will see it is all about the light. Hence the strobes, and the subjects in the shade as much as possible. I used a 24-70 for this, as well as the 85mm f/1.2 lens.

Some spontaneous, like this – don’t forget to look for those spontaneity moments…:

Indoors shots were like this, shot with thew 24-70 f/2.8 lens and using a bounced flash—here too, look for people interacting or “doing things”:

And outdoors with a flash aimed directly at the subject, which gets us the subject as the “bright pixels” and saturated colours. And when there’s something happening, look for the right moment. either to get the right pose:

And if you pay attention you can often get “the decisive moment“, in this case the piñata falling to the ground in pieces.

Photos were, as far as I can tell, universally liked, and I bet those who did not have their picture taken regretted it in the end.

Oh and the human species will probably survive, judging by the number of pregnant women present. Like half of them, it almost seemed.

 

Event tip

Posted on by
1

Last night I shot an event with many celebrities. Not being totally in touch with Canadian  popular culture, I did not recognize a single one, while everyone else was fawning over them. F1 race car drivers, famous boxers, politicians, NBA stars: the fact I do not know them is probably, I think, an advantage, because I am not intimidated at all. 🙂

An event photography tip. Problem: I had to shoot the red carpet photos by bouncing against a wood wall. Result: the images would look horribly red. Solution: set white balance to the appropriate colour temperature – by trial and error, yesterday that was 4600 K.

 

Colours and «croak croak»

Posted on by
Reply

Wednesday was another day for the macro lens. This time at the Botanical Gardens in Burlington, Ontario.

These froggies were in glass cabinets, so the main objective is to avoid reflections:

Then, plantie thingies, with some brilliant spring-like colours, because it’s spring, at least in the greenhouse:

 

And then there’s the niece:

Settings were: 5D Mk3 with macro lens; manual exposure mode, 800 ISO; various aperture and shutter speed settings achieved using the built-in light meter.