Context

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Michael Willems

One trick when you take a picture – no, make a picture – is to tell a bit of a story. One way to do that is to provide both a subject and context. And to separate them. By position, or by distance, or by size, or, as in this picture, which I took for The Oakville Beaver in April, by blurring out the background – which then becomes the context.

In fact as you see I used size as well: the ultra-wide lens (16mm) makes the distance look far away, because I am so close to the foreground object.

For a shot like this I use my 16-35mm f/2.8 lens on my Canon 1Ds MkIII camera. That great lens gives me the ability to get close, go wide, and yet to blur out backgrounds, which at wide angles is not easy unless you have that kind of wide aperture. Of course “getting close to your subject” is a way to enhance the “blurry background” effect.

Assignment "snap"

Posted on September 20, 2009 by Michael Willems

Here’s an interesting assignment for pros, emerging pros and enthusiasts: Shoot in Program mode for a day.

That way, for once you are not thinking about Aperture, DOF, drag, motion blur, and such. For one day, you will be thinking about your subjects, instead of about technology. And this makes some sense; One famous wedding pro even shoots in “P”mode, I am told.

MVWS1292

You might try this assignment in the city, for some street photography. Or at some event. Either way, it’ll likely reset some of your thinking. And perhaps even open your eyes a bit more in familiar environments.

Have fun!

Charge!!

Posted on September 19, 2009 by Michael Willems

Nope.. not the command of the Light Brigade commander to his men.

Well, that too. But in my case, advice.

Unlike the old “memory effect” NiCad or NiMH batteries, modern Lithium Ion (LiIon) batteries like to be charged every day. Like your car battery. They do not suffer from being topped up all day every day – rather the reverse. They like it.

And your modern camera battery is the same. Which is great news. It means you never have to leave home without a fresh, 100% full battery.

So here is my advice: charge your battery daily. Yes, every day. Every time i get home, my battery gets a topup. That is good for LiIon batteries, and no they do not suffer as a result. The charger will stop when they’re done. And doing this daily is good for LiIonbatteries.

Sometimes, technology gets better. Actually, often it does. It is rare that it gets worse. Concorde is one of the very rare examples of the opposite.

Balance light

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Michael Willems

You know the problem. You shoot a living room with large windows and what do you get?

OK outside. A bit light but OK. But dark furniture. Like, silhouettes.

Ah no – you went to a photo course, so you know about “exposure compensation” – the “+/- button”. So you turn that up to, oh, plus two stop (to make it brighter) – and yes, now the furniture looks light. Nice.

But uh oh – the window is now all white. Nothing visible. Like a gateway to heaven in “heaven can wait”.

Fortunately, you have also done a “mastering flash” course. So you know to:

Turn exposure compensation down to make the sky nice and blue
Then turn on the flash (and turn it around so it lights up the wall behind you)
Then take a test shot
Then decide whether to use “flash exposure compensation” – the “plus minus with flash next to it”. This turns the flash power up or down. You decide you need some more light on the furniture so you turn this to plus one stop.

Now here’s your picture:

Nicer, no? Try this technique if you haven’t yet. And you can compete with the best interior photographers.

Chili chicken.

Posted on September 17, 2009 by Michael Willems

I have always thought that for clarity, “white balance” should be called “colour balance”.

White balance means “interpret the red-blue-green respective channels to match the colour of the light hitting the subject, in order to neutralise the colour cast”. Your camera does this every time (Auto White Balance, or AWB).

When it gets it wrong, which sometimes happens, you see a red, or blue, or green cast to the light. In that case, you can correct this by manually telling the camera the colour of the incident light. Setting the white balance, in other words.

So you go from this (tungsten light):

MVWS0116

To this (corrected).

MVWS0117

That was the chili chicken I had with Baz Kanda, a very talented Ottawa/Mississauga photographer, just the other day. Or rather, it was the remains after we had eaten the chicken. And a photographer plays with his camera even when eating dinner. And when you use a fast lens, like the 35mm f/1.4 I was using here, available light is enough.

TIP: if you shoot RAW (which I do 99.9% of the time) you can leave your camera on “auto” at all times and do it in Lightroom or Photoshop later, on your computer. By clicking on a white item (e.g. the place) with teh white balance dropper. Yes, that’s a bit more work while editing – but it’s also a lot less work while shooting. Guess what I prefer, so I can concentrate on the Chilli Chicken?

Straight light

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Michael Willems

You know about Rembrandt lighting, loop lighting, broad and short lighting, and so on? If not, you will. But today a note about simple lighting for models, women, in general anyone who wants to look their best and show youth and beauty rather than experience and character (which can be a euphemism for age).

That is straight, flat lighting. Like this:

As you see, that is nice, flattering light.

Whenever I shoot anyone where the main emphasis is on this person looking young and attractive, I draw an imaginary line from their face straight up at 45 degrees, i.e. not to either the left side or the right side. Where that line straight from their face hits the wall or ceiling, that is where I aim my flash. (An external flash – please, you don’t use the on-camera popup flash, do you?)

And when I do that, pictures like the one above result – when the model is as pretty. Even when the model isn’t as pretty, this light is best if you want to minimise wrinkles.

Richmond hill

Posted on September 14, 2009 by Michael Willems

I did a great presentation tonight at the Richmond Hill camera club. 100+ people in the room and they were all sooo engaged, laughing out loud all evening – I was appreciated but more importantly, I really appreciated this wonderful audience.

And this serves as another reminder of how badly the engineers treat the fans of photography. Tonight’s subject was advanced camera use. You simply cannot learn this stuff from the manuals. The cameras are also not very well laid out in terms of logic. Learning illogical cameras from badly written manuals intended for those who already know it all: no wonder people are confused.

The good news: once it is explained well, you totally get it. And that’s why tonight’s audience had such a great time. And audience of over 100 is great – fantastic size. These pictures were taken before the presentation started in the standing-room-only space.

Wonderful experience, and now I can get some sleep knowing we contributed just another little bit to Canada’s becoming the world’s best educated country in terms of photography education.

Lightroom file setup suggestion

Posted on September 13, 2009 by Michael Willems

A quick post today.

Adobe Lightroom has taken over most photographers’ post-production work. Myself included. Although Lightroom, an application for managing and editing and post-producing your images, takes a few days to learn, this is time well spent. Your post-production time (the time spent on your pictures after you get home) will be cut in half – or better. I recommend it.

When I teach Lightroom, people often ask me “how do you set it up?” – especially with regard to backups. Safety is everything.

So I thought that I might share my suggested file locations and backup methods with you here. Here’s how I do it.

Catalog: The main Lightroom Catalog (which I renamed to something including my name, i.e. MVWPhoto.lrcat) lives on my main computer (in my case, a Mac). That’s standard.
Photos: The actual images (raw) live on an external USB drive, in a folder called “PHOTOGRAPHY” (and within that, per year and then per date). New images go there too. That’s better than on my Mac.
Catalog backups: I make a copy of the catalog every day (you can set up Lightroom that way, in Preferences). That copy also goes to the external drive (in a folder called “LR backups”).
Photo backup: The external drive gets backed up to another external drive.I do this manually every day, or after every import.

To back up the first external disk (Iomega-1TB-1) to the second (Iomega-1TB-2), I run the following little script:

#Photo disk sync
rsync -a –verbose –progress –stats –delete /Volumes/Iomega-1TB-1/PHOTOGRAPHY/ /Volumes/Iomega-1TB-2/PHOTOGRAPHY/

If you don’t know how to create or run a command line script, just get a computer person to help you with it. It’s that simple!

Miniature Assignment

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Michael Willems

Following up from previous posts, here’s an assignment.

Put your 50mm f/1.8 lens on your camera and, using just available light, go shoot twelve things in your living room that show its character. Or shoot lots, but pick the best twelve.

Then put these together in a 3×4 arrangement, like this (yes that’s my living room):

This assignment forces you to look properly. What is it that shows the character? What makes for a simple shot? It also forces you to use the right techniques for simplifying and filling the frame. And you get to practice low-light shooting, selective focus, and so on.

But most of all, you get to think about subjects. Initially you’ll struggle to fine ten – then suddenly 100 pictures will suggest themselves.

Show me your results!

Annie is safe.. for now.

Posted on September 11, 2009 by Michael Willems

CNN reports that Annie Leibovitz is safe, for now: lawsuit dropped and payment extended.

I breathe a sigh of relief. If Annie Leibovitz could not make it as a photographer (her day rates for a portrait are $100,000, apparently), then who can? Plus, she is such an icon: I would hate for anything bad to happen. Even though she is “controversial” – she has photographed naked people. (Like John Lennon, on the very day he died).

In the USA in 2009, that is enough to make you “controversial”?

One amusing note when you follow the link is that CNN has put that article in the “Crime” section (see the URL).

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