COVID Self-Portraits, day 33: Much Of The Day.

In my continuing series of interpretive self-portrait, Day 33: “Much Of The Day”. These portraits are staged, but real: they reflect both what I am doing on the day, and the mood—not just my mood, but the way I think the world’s mood is developing as we all realize that the world we know will not return for a long time, if ever.

Apart from cropping plus some desaturation and an increase in presence, I do minimal editing. Doing self-portraits is not easy, both in technical terms and in terms of subject and composition, but with some training and some equipment, it can be done.

If you are interested in honing your skills, do it now, while you are stuck at home. I now teach my courses online, live, interactively, in very small classes: just like at the store, really. Contact me if you are interested: details on http://www.michaelwillemsphoto.com.

Stay well, everyone!

More self portraits…

In this days of social isolation, what do you do? Me, I get creative. With flash, of course. And apart from cropping and, in some cases, adjustment to vibrance and presence, it’s straight out of camera (“SOOC”) – it’s what you do once you know flash. Which, incidentally, I teach.

Here’s the most recent days:

Day 14: Rainy Day Outside
Day 15: By the car. remember cars?
Day 16: Contemplating.
Day 17: Cooking. Again.
Day 18: Pensive
Day 19: Juggling Watches
Day 20: Playing with Toys
Day 21: Attitude?
Day 22: Maintaining Standards. One flash with 1/4″ grid.
Day 23: In The Spotlight. Left, flash with Honlphoto 1/4″ grid and Mikkel Blue gel. Right, flash with Honlphoto 1/8″ grid and Egg Yolk Yellow gel.

I hope you, too, dear reader, are keeping busy with something creative. Regardless of what our governments regards as “essential”, we cannot live on bread alone.

And above all, stay well.

Day 13

The rest of my self portraits are posted elsewhere, but here’s day 13. At some stage I will re-post all of them here. Day 13 is “making do”. Sleep, shower, shave, etc, TV, sleep, repeat. What else is there to do?

Covid day 13: Making Do.

For today’s portrait I use a prop. And the camera is set to f/16, 100 IUSO, 1/250 sec. The light is a single speedlight fitted with a Honl Photo 1/4″ speed grid. Took about 30 seconds to do this portrait. Now the rest of the day…

A portrait a day

And I continue to do a COVID-19 period self portrait every day. Here, for example, is yesterday’s:

Rembrandt-type light, using two small flashes. One, in front of me, with a small 8″ Honl Photo Traveler8 softbox; the other right behind me, using a “chocolate” Honl photo gel. Both in manual mode at 1/4 power; both driven by simple (manual-only) pocketwizards.

How quickly things change.

The thin veneer of civilization… I am sure it has been mentioned enough to be a cliché. But just like truisms, clichés are true – that’s why they are clichés. Civilization can change, turn bad, or disappear quickly. I reflect on this these days.

And change is what we are seeing now. My store is closed for the duration and I am at home. Fortunately, I can teach from here, interactively via the web.

So let’s see the silver linings. This is a good time to learn. (My ebooks, incidentally, are temporarily on sale for just $49 for the collection: go here and use checkout code “COVID” at the end to get a $30 discount.)

Another thing to do? Get creative. Take out your camera and a flash (or two), and make some documents of this time. We are documenting, and even making, history here.

As for me, I am going to do a portrait every day. Here are the first four:

Because I am a photographer, you can see the equipment. In the last photo, for example, that is two manual speedlights fired with Pocketwizards. The left one is fitted with a Honl Photo Aurora Borealis Green gel; the one on the right is equipped with a Traveller-12 softbox. (See them here). In the second image you can also see a Honl Photo 1/4″ grid in use as the hairlight. Yeah, let’s get creative in these terrible days. Learn flash!

Michael

PS: I’ll teach a flash course online live next week; contact me for details or for future dates.

Math is useful…

Yes, math is useful sometimes. And when I say “math” I do not mean simple arithmetic. I mean math. Real math. Calculus, and things like that – such as Fourier transforms.

I learned about FFTs (Fast Fourier Transforms) as an undergrad in university. And today I discovered a use for them in my photography practice. Namely, to remove unwanted repeated patterns from scans of old photos, printed on textured paper.

But let’s start at the beginning. What is a Fourier transform? Well… think about transforming a time-domain picture to a frequency-domain picture. (or, as Wikipedia puts it, “The Fourier transform (FT) decomposes a function (often a function of the time, or a signal) into its constituent frequencies. “. A picture full of repeated lines thus become two dots, for example.

And this (detail from a) picture, full of a repeating pattern due to the original photo paper…:

Becomes this, when transformed through an FFT:

But now I can remove the dots:

..and then I can do a inverse FFT, to end up with this:

And if that isn’t magic, I am not sure what is. There you have it: Magic through math.

Incidentally, the app I use is ImageJ, a free Java-based app from the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Your tax dollars at work, here: https://imagej.nih.gov/ij/.

“I need pro equipment”… ?

I hear this a lot: students almost apologizing for “only” owning, say, a Digital Rebel camera, or a similar “starter” model. Because, they say, “of course you need a pro camera for pro results”.

Pro lenses, maybe. But pro camera? Not always, not at all. And even the lenses: this, for example, is student Veronic this morning, using a Yongnuo 50mm lens for Canon (a clone of the cheap Canon 50mm f/1.8, but cheaper):

Veronic. (50mm f/1.8 Yongnuo lens, Yongnuo manual flash, two pocketwizards, Honlphoto grid.)

If you were to see this at full size, you would see it competes very well with photos taken with my pro equipment.

Those of you who take my lessons learn all about this; for the rest of you: be a little skeptical with regards to what you read. Yes, equipment is important. But no, it is not always needed for a quality picture.

Get Cool

Today, I was reminded of how I should not let you all down – the many people who read this blog. Like one reader, Dr Jason Polak, who kindly dropped by in the studio today to have a chat.

(Hint: anyone near Ottawa, feel free to come say hi. The store is open 9:30AM–9pm weekdays, and slightly shorter hours at weekends). So anyway… I promise I’ll write more. Starting today.

One thing to write about is portraits. And how I love doing them. And how I like doing not just the “stand there and smile” pictures, but also slightly more creative pictures. You do not need to look at the camera smiling, not in every picture!

So here’s one I took this weekend—one of a series:

A simple shot; I used two speedlights with Honlphoto grids, driven by Pocketwizards; and one strobe in a softbox, also driven by a Pocketwizard. Took two minutes to set up.

If you need to learn how to do this, it is remarkably simple. You might buy my books or attend my courses, for example. It’s worth the effort!

Here, another one, again showing action:

And that same day, a photo of a dog who was nearing the end of its life: it was sick, and was about to see its suffering ended. A sad event, but good to create a lasting memory:

The message is simple: shoot some portraits that are not just “stare at the camera and ‘smile'”. Worth the effort and you will be happy with your results.

One more, then:

And finally: a new course for those of you near Ottawa: “Take Better Photos Of your Kids”. Sign up soon, because as usual, classes are limited to four people.

Ajax and Karsh

I just spoke as one of the keynote speakers at an Ajax Photography Club event called “Discovering Karsh”. All about Armenian Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, whom The Economist, after his death, described as “the best portrait photographer in the world for the past fifty years”. 

Karsh can teach photographers today a thing or two, and that was the subject of my presentation. He was a master at light, mainly in moody low key portraits (think of the grumpy Churchill portrait, where Karsh had respectfully pulled the cigar from Churchill’s mouth), for one. Google it—for copyright reasons I cannot reproduce it here.

He was also a real people person, and that was his super power. He studied his subjects before a shoot. He talked to them. At length, often, if given the opportunity. Instead of taking 100 pictures and choosing one, he took one or two when the moment was right. He was a master at choosing the moment. And his subjects trusted him and his ability to make them look good.

Google “Karsh” and see the iconic portraits that defined the 20th century. Sure, Karsh is not everyone’s taste—his portraits are low-key and often moody—but they are certainly masterful. And they defined the people that he photographed as well as reflected them. As a portrait photographer, if you can do that, you have made it.