Fun

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I shoot fun photos too. As you should. The other day, I went to a concert, and before the concert, I took a few photos at the Ripley’s Aquarium in Toronto. I used my little Fuji X100 camera, which has a fixed 24mm (35mm equivalent: 35mm) lens.

Jellyfish love?

I shot these at 1600 ISO, f/2. 1/125 second. close to glass. No flash, of course.

The biggest problem was focus. These darn fish move.

I would not want to be one of these little fish.

I suppose the moral of today’s post is: bring a camera everywhere. Try stuff you have not shot before. Use high ISO values if you need. Quality is paramount.

For a shark, food is paramount.

 

 

About EXIF data

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You have read before that I use a utility called EXIFTOOL to read EXIF data embedded in files. And there is much more embedded than you think. One important piece of data: file creation date. Take this, of a funnel cloud over Oakville  few years ago:

Apple INFO thinks;

2009, cool.

But EXIFTOOL gives me the real creation date:

Now in this case, Lightroom would have also given me the right date. But there are many more pieces of information in the EXIF data than Lightroom tells you. Go install EXIFTOOL (search for it) and have fun seeing what hidden gems of information your pictures contain.

 

 

 

 

High Noon

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Just let me dispel that persistent myth that you cannot shoot at high noon. In bright sunlight. Well, you can shoot, but you will get awful pictures.

Nonsense.

Here. Look at this. Talented photographer Tanya Cimera Brown, yesterday, at noon, on what must be the brightest day this year so far. So this is in bright, harsh, horrible, colour-saturation-destroying, full-on sunshine. Straight out of the camera:

The sky is nice, the red-blue-green theme woks, the model is great, the sun provides a nice “shampooey goodness” hair light: what more can we ask for? And that is with a camera that can only sync at 1/160 second. With my 1/250 sec 1Dx I could do even better. With the old 1D I used to have, even better, at 1/300 second.

OK. That’s using a strobe. Can you do it with speedlights? Sure. You may need to go unmodified, to have enough light; and that means off camera. Here: two speedlights, aimed direct at the subject from off camera positions, do this:

And this: two of me, by Tanya, using the same techniques:

All those were also SOOC (Straight out of Camera).

So learn flash already!

For best results, do my Flash in the Plan program: take my course and get the book (for both, go to http://learning.photography); then follow with a hands-on session, and you will know how to do this. It’s not rocket science, but you need to learn the background, understand the constraints, and learn the artistic tips. Then, you can do this too (provided you have a model as beautiful as Tanya, of course):

Because yes, you CAN do great work at high noon. All you need is flashes and skills. And a camera, of course. Show the world what you can do!

 

Distraction

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I am busy with my amateur radios:

As we speak, I am talking to Bill, AK5WB in Texas on 20 metres, using the new antenna above, a 6 band tuned “Butternut” vertical that took me a day or two to set up and tune. But it was worth it.

And I was discussing pixels with Bill. He wondered why Canon went down to just 18 Mpixel from the previous higher pixel counts?

Because it gives you lower noise, which at higher ISOs becomes obvious.

But isn’t it a drawback, having fewer pixels/

Yes, but not as much as you might imagine. Like any log scale—just like power in radio, for instance. Going up from 100 Watt to 130, or down to 70, has no discernible effect. That is, the effect is so small as to be negligible. Not so with noise! Hence the fewer pixels in some top cameras.

73 de VA3MVW!

 

Simple is good

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And that can also apply to black and white photos. These recent business photos prove the point, it seems to me:

Both work very well in B/W:

  • The colour is not distracting (a yellow hallway. a green kitchemn)
  • I can make skin lighter or darker by dragging “Orange” in the B/W slider (HSL section) up or down.
  • I cam make other items lighter and darker too, this separating subject from b/g.

That is why I always send b/w versions of my photos to clients. Properly finished B/W versions, that is.

 

Inexcusable.

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I refer to this story, about a Vancouver wedding photographer who had her Macbook stolen from her car, with wedding photos on it. Not yet backed up.

There is so much wrong with this. Of course I don’t know this photographer, but the story as reported (i.e. if true) gives me no sympathy for her at all.

“No backup yet”? Huh? Her memory card is one, the laptop another, i.e. the laptop is the backup. Why did she wipe the memory cards? I am guessing, to save a few dollars. A very unwise choice; a very false economy. You must never have any photo in only one place. Every hard drive fails. Not if, but when.

She “normally backs up online”? Oh? An all-day wedding probably involves 1000 pictures. And if they are RAW (which they must be for something as important as a wedding) that is 1,000 x 15 MByte, i.e. 15 GBytes. Try uploading that.  So if she does back up online she is backing up small JPG files. Ouch!

In the video, she is holding the camera wrong; an amateur dead giveaway. It looks like she is using a low end camera with a kit lens. According to the news report, she is “relatively new to the profession”, and these were “among her first weddings”.

In my opinion, and again, if the facts are as reported, she has no business shooting weddings until she learns more. Weddings are very, very demanding. The most difficult photography. You need mad skills. Experience. In areas like fashion, food, product, event, portrait, and journalism. You also need high-end equipment, cameras, lenses. Spares for all that equipment. Flashes. Cameras that always save each picture to two cards at the same time (I would not touch a wedding without that!).

If you ever think “why is this photographer so expensive”… it’s because that photographer does things properly, so you do not end up the way these newlyweds did.

 

It’s not rocket science.

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Photography is not rocket science., But it IS a skill that needs to be learned, and if you want to do it well, just like a rocket scientist, you need to dedicate time to learning.

Followers of this blog know that I have a particular style; and my style is what I would call the dramatic portrait. Darker, saturated colours. I.e. like this:

…rather than like this:

So. Which one is right? Both. Either. Neither. Whichever you like.

My personal answer is very clear: the first, for me. I don’t suppose I have to explain again: expose for the background, -2 stops as a target; THEN worry about flash. Read the flash book (buy it today at http://learning.photography) and take a course from me to learn how to do this like an expert.

But look at the girl. Isn’t that a great picture of a tween? Silly, unable to be serious… during a recent shoot,  two girls and a set of grandparents turned up; I offered to take their picture, and did. Why do people not have pictures of their children like this? Surely not to save a few dollars…?

The two friends together:

And the girls themselves? When they’re all grown up, wouldn’t they want better pictures of their onetime bff than the iphone selfies they have (and will inevitably lose!) hundreds of? Please, have a pro do some cool pictures of your children. or learn how to do it yourself. Buy the book, take a course, and never look back.

And now back to regular programming.

 

Size matters.

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This time, I mean size of files. A student just wrote to ask:

 

“I have taken photos for some friends and used Lightroom for editing and exporting.  I did not shoot in RAW- still learning.  My SOOC images are substantially larger than my exported JPEG files.  For instance, one file is 6.72 MB but comes out 800KB once run through Lightroom.  I am exporting at a quality of 80, length and width of 4×6 and resolution of 300ppi.  My friend has asked me for larger files.  I am under the impression that larger files don’t necessarily mean better images, but perhaps I am wrong? Is this downsizing normal? I have never had any issues with print quality as long as I size in a 4×6 inch ratio and set 300ppi as my resolution.  Am I doing something wrong in exporting that is causing such a dramatic drop in file size?”

 

This is perfectly normal. A 7MB JPG (or a 14 MB RAW) will indeed be about 800 kB at those settings. Yes, your new JPG is smaller:

  • 300 ppi x 6″ = 1800 pixels wide, which is about one quarter of the actual size of the file.
  • 80% is going to result in a much smaller size than 100%: compression is the entire point of JPG files.

So if the original file is 6MB, then a quarter of that is 1.5MB, and with extra compression, 800 kB seems a perfectly normal file size: as expected.

Indeed, a larger file means better image quality. This is always the case; whether it is noticeably better is another question, of course.

I tend to think in pixels, Saying “1200 pixels long” is easier than saying “4 inches at 300 ppi”, and it means the same. You can specify either way, but I always prefer the simplest.

Finally: you tell me you are shooting a wedding soon. You should be shooting RAW. What is there to learn? Just select RAW as the filetype instead of JPG. Done. If you use Lightroom to finish your pictures, it will know the RAW format your camera produces: done. Simple.

And yes, sometimes things that appear simple are simple.

 

The State of Photojournalism…

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…is not great.

My Israel trip is off, alas. Funding did not succeed.

Many people feel passionate about proper press coverage of the conflict in Israel/Gaza, and complain (justifiably, I feel) about the current coverage. Alas, it appears that this passion does not extend to helping fund proper coverage. I received pledges for around $550 of the $8500 needed.

And alas, self funding is the only way. Newspapers and other news outlets do not pay—a national daily would offer me maybe $600 for the entire story, as an exclusive. That doesn’t even pay for half the airfare, let alone any of the other costs. Governments, NGOs, etc: none of them will pay. All my photojournalist friends and acquaintances do the same: do it at their own expense; shoot weddings to cover the expense; hope to get some of it back eventually. I too was going to do this as a volunteer: all I want to cover is flight, food, place to stay, guide/fixer, etc.

And photography is the way to clarify the reality of a situation. Thoughtful photography that opens eyes. When we say “a picture tells 1,000 words”, it may be a cliché, but it is true. It is a crying shame that photojournalism is falling by the wayside.

Those of you who did pledge: I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You have not been/will not be charged anything now, of course.

And everyone: plan “B” is in the making. So stand by… I am determined to keep working on this. And I am glad I tried. Rather than just wondering why there’s no good coverage that helps you understand why Israel does the things it does, I want to go out and provide some of that.

 

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Yesterday’s post about corporate portraits: I have decided to do a special for the rest of this month. See http://learning.photography/collections/corporate-photography for the details… and have a pro headshot made now.