Dawkins

Posted on September 29, 2009 by Michael Willems

I photographed Richard Dawkins tonight. In the sold-out Bader theatre in Toronto, where he introduced his new book to an enthusiastic crowd:

Usually, theatre lighting is quite simple – if you get to sit in the right place. Since my son Daniel and I sat in the very front row, today was no exception. The background is dark but the subject is lit brightly:

I did not need more than 400 ISO, which gave me 1/100 sec at f/2.8. In manual exposure mode, of course.

“No flash“, the slightly inept people from the publishing house (who did not believe I had talked to their colleague on the phone earlier – Simon and Schuster Canada, you lost out on some free shots!), said time and time again. (The Dawkins web people aren’t very responsive either: four attempts to contact them. to multiple email addresses, offering free coverage – and zero responses: instead, I helped their own shooter, who was an ’emerging pro’ and asked for some advice).

No problem!

The only problem was focus. My 50mm f/1.4 lens front focused on the 1Ds MkIII by at least 6 inches, which is disastrous. I had to adjust it to a setting of “+17” (out of a possible 20!) in the ten or so minutes before prof Dawkins arrived. The 35mm f/1.4 and 24-70mm lens would not properly focus at all in this light (they were consistently way off), so while I switched many times, I kept coming back to the 50mm lens with +17 adjustment.

One day Canon will make a camera that focuses well. Perhaps. I am not holding my breath.

Anyway, I got some nice shots. Photojournalism is never easy, but sitting about 10 ft away from Richard Dawkins makes up for a lot.

(A few more shots here)

The art of the dramatic portrait

Posted on September 26, 2009 by Michael Willems

So how did I use the softbox I showed myself holding yesterday? Or rather, what picture did I get in the end?

As a reminder, I was using a Canon 1Ds MkIII with a 580 EXII flash on the camera in TTL master-slave mode in group “A”, and a 430EX II flash in my left hand as slave in group “B”. The “B”-flash had a Honl speedstrap and a Lumiquest Softbox III on it. The E-TTL A:B ratio was set as 4:1, so the handheld second flash fired two stops brighter than the on-camera flash.

I was in Aperture Priority mode (Av), and to darken the ambient light and the sky I used an Exposure Compensation setting of -2 stops.

Because my friend has dark skin and was wearing dark clothes, I also used flash compensation (“FEC”) of -1 stop. Otherwise he would have been overexposed (the camera would have tried to make him “18% grey”).

The result:

(I left the softbox and my reflection in his glasses deliberately, of course, since I was showing him the use of this softbox. Else I would have moved his head to camera left and down a bit).

Finally: his face is a tiny bit distorted because of the 35mm wide angle lens. I could have used the 50mm lens instead, or even the 24-70: but I think this look flatters him. h

One more sample:

Motion a drag?

Posted on September 25, 2009 by Michael Willems

…only if you drag the shutter. You may have heard this expression, “dragging the shutter”. What does it mean?

It means taking a flash picture and then letting the shutter stay open for a while longer, so it “drags”.

Why? To capture more light. Not more flash light – that comes and goes in a thousandth of a second or less. No, it is ambient light we’re after. Dragging the shutter means the backgrounds get some light, instead of being dark. So we get better flash pictures.

There is a danger, of course: the danger of motion during that extra extended shutter time. And a very particular kind of motion:

MVWS1197

What is happening here? The flash lights up the foreground, and the flash is 1/1000th of a second, so that is frozen in time. But the background is lit by ambient light so is affected by hte long shutter speed. A very recognizable “ghostly” kind of look.

How to drag the shutter?Turn on your flash and:

On Nikon cameras, activate “slow flash” and use shutter or aperture mode.
On Canon cameras, simply use Tv or Av mode.
Or on either, use “night portrait” scene mode (but you don’t use scene modes, do you?).
Or use “manual” and select a slow shutter speed, like 1/15th second.

Have fun trying. This takes a bit of practice, and everyone has their own limit as to what they will accept.

Let there be light

Posted on September 23, 2009 by Michael Willems

..and let it be managed.

I have talked about this many times before, and I will do it again. When you add light, and manage it, massage it, and work with i, you get drama, cheerfulness, whatever you like. So when you make the light, you make the mood.

Case in point. In the model shoot I did Monday on Toronto Island, here’s the light the way it might look to a casual observer, and the way it might appear in a properly exposed photo:

Fine. Nice. Pretty young lady (Miss Halton, incidentally) on the beach.

Now let’s work with that. That background is a bit bland to my taste, so let’s darken it. The colours on the model are OK but I’d like them to stand out more.I want drama, and I want the model to stand out, not to be just a thing on a beach.

So first I turn down the ambient exposure. Two stops.That will make light blue into dark dramatic blue. Then I add a flash, on a light stand – shot through an umbrella to get soft light. I fire that from my on-camera flash using E-TTL II IR technology. I turn the flash up or down as needed.

I now get the result I had in mind.

That’s better.

And more importantly: that’s entirely different. And that is the photographer’s task, to make things the way he or she wants them. You can say you like, or you don’t like – but you can’t say it isn’t different!

How I rate photos in Lightroom

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Michael Willems

It occurs to me that it may be helpful to share my “rating”-workflow in Lightroom. I go through the following sequence:

Import everything as 2 stars
Go to grid view and step through them, and reject any that are technically bad (e.g. out of focus or badly exposed, or the subject is blinking). They get an “X” marking. I exclude X from my view.
Go through them again and rate any that “could possibly be used” as 3.
Go through the threes again and rate any that are “great in this shoot” as 4.
Go through the fours again and give any that are “great and can be used even outside this shoot as portfolio shots” a five rating.
Then I select just the 4 and 5 stars rate them all as PICK.
Then I step through the 3 stars and decide with of them I want to use; I rate those as PICK also.
Then I check for doubles and unpick those.
Then I do any post on my picks.

Done.

Here’s a couple of (unedited) 4-star images from yesterday’s Toronto Island model shoot:

(70-200 f/2.8 IS lens on 1D MkIII, manual exposure -2 stops from ambient and key flash though umbrella, fill flash on camera.)

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.

Smile!

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Michael Willems

The waitress at the pub yesterday, where Peter and I had dinner prior to the workshop in Richmond Hill:

As you can see, Peter is putting a bit of light into her face. Reflectors can be improvised: anything light will do.

And as before, it is amazing how people will smile when you point a camera into their faces. Try it!

Silhouettes

Posted on September 15, 2009 by Michael Willems

How and why do I shoot a silhouette, like this one I shot recently in Toronto:

Why? To create a mood. In this case a serious, almost grim, mood suits the Gothic cathedral theme, and goes together well with the threatening sky, and the wide lens adds to this “closing in on me” feeling. I suppose if I were religious this would not be the sort of picture I’d make!

How do you do this? This is just an underexposed picture, in essence, so it does not really matter how you get there. Manual, or metering off the sky, or exposure compensation (negative). Or all three.

Me, I use my spot meter to meter off the sky. Then I lock that in using Exposure lock, after I perhaps add some negative exposure compensation. Or more likely, I use manual – again, using the spot meter on the sky as my starting point.

My aim is to get the building almost black – I prefer to do the last bit in Lightroom, because if I am too low, I have to increase exposure which adds noise. Decreasing exposure does not add noise that way.

Go shoot a few silhouettes, for fun!

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