See the latest issue of “Photo Life” Magazine – the June/July issue,which just came out:
http://www.photolife.com/currentIssue.php
Scroll to the bottom of that page, and look on the left: article by me on this subject. Go get yourself a copy of this magazine now, if you ever shoot indoor flash at events (like parties).
An event shoot the other night prompts me to point out how important it is to bounce your flash into the right place.
When you shoot an event, you:
That gives you images like this:
You now adjust aperture, shutter and ISO according to ceiling height, available ambient light, background colour, and “how you like it”. For a neutral, normally lit background you want your in-camera meter to read roughly -2 stops when taking an average reading. So take a test shot, adjust where needed, and carry on.
Fine. But where exactly do you aim?
You aim the flash:
If you do not get the bounce area right, you get this, where I got it wrong (I aimed the flash too far forward):
Instead of this, where I did it right (I aimed it behind me):
Because I aimed correctly, the wall behind me became a big virtual umbrella, and cast natural light throughout the room, not mainly into one area like in the previous shot.
Another couple of shots from the event:
I like warm backgrounds. That’s my style.
Dancing in dark rooms is hard to capture. Shoot a lot.
Yes – you can shoot in wood-paneled rooms too, but it can be challenging.
Want to read more? Watch out for the June/July issue of Photolife Magazine, with my article on “Flash: 20 problems, 10 solutions”. It should be in the stores any day now.
When I shoot, I like as little glass between me and my subject as possible. Obviously I need a lens, but as little extra glass as possible is good.
The reason is that glass can distort, and it can introduce extra flare.
When you shoot through an aquarium, for instance, do not shoot at an angle. Because this results:
Look closely:
Ouch. We call this “chromatic aberration”.
The solution: shoot straight, and avoid wide angle lenses.
No aberration even when you look up close.
So glass can cause problems – which is why I use as little as needed. Meaning I do not use filters on my lenses except when needed. Like “Protection”, “Daylight” or “UV” filters. Yes, I have them in my bags in case it starts raining or snowing, or I am in a sandstorm or on a beach, but unless those things are happening, I will not use them. Every little bit of clarity helps.
One mode is underestimated today – black and white.
As I have pointed out here before, black and white can make your images much more powerful by allowing the eye to concentrate on your subject – not on coloured objects.
This image works better in black and white:
Because in colour, the red chairs draw the eye towards them instantly. You do not see the forest for the trees:
So when your subject is not the colours in your scene, consider using black and white. When colours would distract, use black and white. When you want to convey a certain mood, use black and white.
And when you use black and white, convert afterward, in Lightroom. That way you can tune the relative brightness of colours – this is like using filters in the old days.
So by using the HSL control to tweak the red colour, you can, if you wish, make it look light like this, say:
Or dark like this:
And the same goes for all other colours.
All those reasons are why if you are not yet using B&W, you should start. Shoot RAW and do the conversion later. And have fun.
The front porch is full of tulips. Beautiful. And we will have Vancouver-type weather (i.e. rain) for the next seven days so I shot a few snaps while I could.
Tulips in the front garden
I used a macro lens.Handheld, which is bad. And I used the light you should never use: direct sunlight. And yet, I wanted a few pics.
So what are my strategies to deal with this? here are some of them.
Shoot close up. Use a macro (Nikon: “Micro”) lens if you can and capture detail.
Tulip sex organs
Select a small enough aperture. A small “F-number” like 5.6 or 4.0 will give you way too restricted depth of field. You may need to shoot at f/8, f/11 or even f/16 or sometimes beyond.
Tulip
Watch the wind. Shield the flowers from it, or shoot when they are momentarily still.
Use a high enough ISO. That way you can get the shutter speed up to, say, 1/500th of a second, while keeping a nice small aperture.
Shoot through the flower if you can. Nice saturated colour will result, instead of washed-out overexposed colour.
Tulips in the front garden
Watch the backgrounds. Simple is good. Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Select contrasting colours. Red and green. Or colours that go very well together like purple and green, my favourite combo.
Tulips and background
Wait for a rain shower. Gentle spring rain looks good:
Gentle Spring Rain
Alternately, do not wait. I have two secret words for you. Spray bottle, and water mixed with glycerine (available from any drugstore). OK, that’s six words.
Gentle Spring Rain
Go on, go have some fun. Even if you live in Vancouver – sunlight bad, overcast good, for flowers.
Have you ever thought that a nice black and white photo was very worth looking at?
That is because in B&W we do not get distracted by colour: we see the pure image. A photo is composition + moment + light, and in some cases colour just distracts from that.
So this one-light image, from the other day, is fine:
But this image is simpler, and, I think, more powerful:
Plus… there are fringe benefits. Doing a B&W conversion I can selectively increase or decrease colour channels. And by slightly, every so slightly increasing red, orange and yellow, I can:
Now of course a teenager needs none of these, but you can nevertheless see this is a better image:
And this only took a few seconds in Lightroom, which has en excellent B&W conversion tool.
And we do this in Lightroom, not in the camera, because that way:
When you shoot B&W, do feel free to set the image style to B&W on your camera if you shoot RAW (because in that case you are still saving all colours; it is only the preview that is shown in B&W), but see that preview just as a rough idea and convert properly in Lightroom on the computer.
TIP: if you want to see where someone may develop skin issues decades from today, convert to B&W and then pull red up and pull orange down in Lightroom. You wil now see someone with any skin imperfections magnified hundreds of times. I wil not do it to this lovely young lady, but to see the effect, do it to a picture of yourself.
Note to all – I can still take one more person for my small, intimate “Event Photography” course in Oakville at 10AM on Sunday. If you are interested, please let me know.
Event photography is challenging. You never have enough time, light or space. Your customer has told you the wrong time. There’s misunderstandings about what should be shot. You can’t carry all your gear. You’d love to light up the room, but you cannot. Or you shoot outside and can’t bounce your flash. Things move. But you must deliver – failure is not an option. How do you handle this? What are the success strategies that help you deliver? What gear to carry, what preparation to make? I teach you all these in an intensive four-hour course. If you are, or want to be, an event photographer, come learn how to best handle this tough type of shooting.
I taught at a local college today. A real pleasure, teaching bright young enthusiasts.
However, due to scheduling the two hour lecture turned into a barely one-hour lecture. This forced me to take some shortcuts. I taught some fast hands-on lessons. One was how to shoot indoors with a bounced on-camera flash. The other lesson was all about studio light.
“Studio? But surely, Michael, that takes a lot of time”, I hear you say.
Not necessarily.
What does that get me?
This:
Nice light, nice catch light. So I handed the Pocketwizards to the students,one by one. They all got similar shots.
Why did I say I would have preferred a shoot through umbrella? Here’s why:
See the flash in the umbrella? If we had shot through, no flash would have been visible.
But that’s a minor quibble. Nice portrait, took only a minute or two.
…the computers are being hooked up again soon, and I expect by tomorrow this time my usual teaching posts will be able to continue. Until then, enjoy going out and shooting!
A student wrote to me just now, about last Saturday’s workshop, “You and Joseph make it look so easy!”.
He means things like turning this well-conceived but not-very well made available light snapshot…:
…into this creatively lit art photo:
That was from the workshop last Saturday. And yes, we shot this in the camera like that – it’s not Photoshopped.
Our student is underestimating himself, and based on past performance I am sure he did great – but his point is well taken. Experience makes everything seem easy. Brain surgery, too (one day I must ask brain surgeon).
How do you learn? My teaching uses the following methodology:
That is behind my basic teaching (“learn the camera”), and my advanced teaching, in particular the “Advanced Flash” and “Event Photography” signature courses. And it is also behind the practical workshops Joseph Marranca and I teach to small groups of students.
Sometimes this teaching can seem a bit much. So many facts to learn! But compare this to driving a car, which is also complicated. Or try riding a bicycle.
An image is the confluence of moment, subject, and light. So, the key to the shot above is:
On the workshops, we do everything from step 1 to 6. The shots above are made by everything coming together. Without the idea – nothing. Without model and props – nothing. Without technical skills – nothing. Without equipment – nothing.
So how did we make that shot?
We rented a boat, and… oh wait. No lake.
So we used the following:
Not something you set up in ten minutes, of course. But when you do it, and it all comes together, the images are great.