Air

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Here’s a few shots from Monday’s Toronto airshow (view at full size for detail):

What did I use?

  • A 1Dx camera, but the 7D would have worked as well, if not better (it’s a crop camera, unlike the 1Dx).
  • A 70-200mm f/2.8 lens
  • A Yongnuo 2x lens extender, making that lens an effective 140-400mm f/5.6 lens.
  • My settings were: 400 ISO, 1/800 sec, f/7.1

Pretty much the same settings throughout the shoot. Watching, of course, for light changes.

Why those settings?

400 ISO to get a fast enough shutter speed. f/7.1 in case I get focus slightly wrong. 1/800 sec to freeze motion.

A few more:

You need to pan with the aircraft to keep them sharp. Set IS/VR to mode 2/active, if you have that option, and pan (move the lens with the object you are shooting).

Which way was I panning here?

A few last ones:

Only a little cropping was needed here, due to the tele-extender. The 7D crop body, as said, would probably have been even better (another 60% range!).

 

Brantford

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OK… I can do my job again: I have moved to Brantford, Ontario, and am open for business with a newer, larger studio. Need a portrait for LinkedIn or your company web site? Or need a family portrait? Or have a corporate or family event you would like photographed? Or a wedding? Whatever it is, I am here for you: let me quote.  Or if you want to learn: I teach privately, as well as at Sheridan College in Oakville, and I talk at photography clubs.

At the Ex: the Krispy Kreme Donut Burger was great

Please do photograph yourself and your events: life is short and the days pass you by and can never be replaced. The universe had 20 billion years without you; then you and your loved ones get here; then, an infinity of nothing. That blink is everything: photographing it is the way to keep your precious moments forever—and every moment is precious.

Today’s lesson is a reader question:

“Do you use TTL when shooting events? My results are inconsistent with a lot of under- and ocverexposed shots.”

Yes I use TTL, and I am very consistent. How? Read this article: “TTL: 10 problems, 20 solutions”. Practice all that and you know how to get TTL event consistency!

Give me a call: 416-875-8770 or email michael@mvwphoto.com

Mission: impossible

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Sometimes you are faced with a situation that would be easy to solve with a flash.

Like this church, in which I co-shot a wedding on Saturday:

You can see why the situation needs flash. Without it, I am stuck: I expose for the church, and the stained glass pretty much disappears, as you see above.

Or I expose for the glass:

Yeah, the glass is back. But now I lose the church.

OK, flash then. Simple! (If you have done my courses and bought my books.)

But Wait.

It is a Roman Catholic church, and that church is used to an authoritarian top-down command structure, and in this particular case that works against us. Because the photography rules (and there’s a full page of them) say:

“No Flash”.

Now I am stuck. As my colleague George quite rightly says: “we are here for the people” (and you can imagine him shrug). Right he is.

But hang on. There are still tricks we can use.

One: use the built-in HDR mode in your camera, if it has is. Some high-end cameras do, and my 5D Mk3 is one of those.

Select it and press. The camera now takes three pictures (my choice), two stops apart from each other (my choice), and crunches a few seconds, while it combines them into a JPG file:

Now, the bright and dark areas are no longer 12 stops apart.

And that was the problem: the difference between bright and dark was simply too great for a camera to handle in one image.  Select HDR (which you all know stands for “High Dynamic Range”—right?) and hold the shutter down until it has done three shots (or more, if you prefer).

And then you can work the image a little more in Lightroom, if you like. Problem solved. There’s always a solution.

___

I have moved to Brantford, Ontario. The new studio and classroom welcome you: call 416-875-8770 or5 email michael@mvwphoto.com.

 

About to re-start.

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The teaching blog is about to restart. My office is being installed.

My first note: a quick tip.

Make backups. Make backups. Make backups.

  • I like to make backups at a time of MY liking – not automatically. That way I only back up good files, not errors.
  • You need multiple backups. At least 2. Disks are failuires waiting to happen. All of them.
  • Of your backups, at least one should be off site.
  • Print your photos, too. Good pigment prints on natural fibre paper last.

If I had not moved the disks myself, what could have happened makes me shudder. Do not become part of the “I lost everything” crowd.

 

 

You’ve done this yet?

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Zoom in or out (as said before, it does not matter which) while shooting. Slow shutter speed, 1/15 sec.

The centre will be relatively clear; the outside more and more blurred. Wide angle lens works best, of course.

And in general, learn what slow shutter speeds do. If you want to be a good photographer, that’s how you learn: by doing, trying, experimenting.

What are you doing reading this? You should be shooting!

More lifestyle

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A lifestyle shoot like the one the other day involves many aspects of photography. Firstly, the images need to be good technically. But they also need to tell stories, and more particularly: they need to force the viewer to complete the story in his or her mind.

Here, I used side lighting to add interest:

And this is a typical storytelling image:

If you analyze carefully where your eyes go, you will see it is to the man’s face, then to the woman he is talking to, and you then realize they are all smiling; then you take in the rest of the detail, including the drinks.

Drinks are the focus here:

But again, the story is about the relationship between the people and whoever they are looking at. The models, who included professional actors, were excellent.

 

Happy Happier.

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So yesterday was a lifestyle shoot. That means…

Happy:

Colourful:

Musical:

…Hawaii-themed:

It also needs careful lighting: yesterday for me was about composition and light. Two speedlights, one in an umbrella, that’s all I used. Everything in manual; flashes operated by pocketwizards. And careful balancing of foreground and background light. And saturated colours as a result.

A shoot like that also needs design, storyboarding, props, models, and timing. Everything is designed. And a photographer who knows what is required. I can shoot in any style required, and for this style, colour is the big requirement: colour and happiness and interaction, communication, “party”. It’s great when everything comes together, and yesterday’s shoot, for a mobile spa, was one of those.

 

 

Mood. Moody. Moodier.

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Feelings. Mood. That’s what we are all about, and that’s what series of photographs can also be all about. Like these, from a theme shoot on Saturday: can you tell what mood they portray?

That’s right: Sadness. Depression. Desperation. Suicide.

And the trick is to portray that without totally spelling it out. You do that by such things as:

  • Using appropriate facial expressions.
  • Using appropriate body language.
  • Lighting carefully.
  • Using harder rather than softer light.
  • Desaturating the colours.
  • Sharpening.
  • Using black and white.
  • Using shadows.
  • Vignetting slightly, perhaps.
  • Increasing contrast.
  • Increasing Clarity.

And that’s when you can show moodiness.

The above (best seen at full size) were taken during a charity shoot Saturday. A shoot for a mental health charity that concerns itself with depression, suicide, addiction. Hence the long faces on the part of the models, who all volunteered their time, as did the hair stylist and make-up artist.