Matt's Face!

I played with a portrait I took of my friend Matt when I was taking pictures of he and his pregnant wife a little while back.

This was mostly just a lighting test, but I like the subtle funny expression on his face. It's pretty "Matt" to me.



The second picture is more or less just playing with post processing. I cranked up the sharpness and contrast to get this sort of "pop" out of the image. It's sort of just a fun thing to do.

Portraits

If you haven't been to Strobist yet, you're nuts. Go there every day.

I say this because I use things every day that I learned at that site.

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First Day:

First real portrait for the paper the other day. Real quick. I made it quick. Most photographers don't get much time to take a portrait of people. Lucky for me, the subjects (homecoming court at a high school) were already together and posing for the secretary's at the school, bonus!

I didn't want to take forever since these kids had to be back at class in about 10 minutes. Goodness knows they would hate it if I made them late for class.

I'm pretty fast with my flashes so I let the kids relax while I set up a quick shoot through white umbrella on my left and clamped a hair light flash on the right, kind of behind them.

Do you notice that light coming in on the right side? I do, and I like it. It's better than having all of their faces shaded on one side. It would have looked a lot better if I had made them move forward more and stuck a flash directly behind all of them. That would have made some good rim light.

The reason I used the umbrella for the main light is that it is nice and soft, and soft light is nice to people's faces. If you want to bring the wrinkles out in someone's face, then by all means, use hard light. However, if you're trying to make people look nice and smooth and lovely, softer light.

This is pretty basic for a portrait. One light can be used, but the second really helps. If you're planning on doing more portrait work or maybe moving toward commercial photo instead of journalism, then you might think about getting a second, or third, flash.

It's nothing special, but it's something that will make it and is lit well enough to give some shape to the people. I wish I'd have gotten more daring and found a better background, but I was trying to get it done so they didn't have to sit for so long.

I definitely enjoyed the fact that they were pre-posed for me. I probably would have spent way too long trying to get them to stand correctly.

Next post will be about yet another festival and another soccer game. Be ready for some complaining from me on that one.

Fish Boil Assignment

First off I want to apologize for the extreme length of my posts so far. I promise I’ll try to make smaller posts and link to articles or something when I learn that a bit more.

Assignment Number Two:

(email)

Lucas,

There is a fish boil dinner at the local marina on Friday. Sometime around 5:30 is the dinner time rush for them we think.

Get us roughly 2-3 photos covering the following:

People cooking

People serving

People eating food

Maybe something incorporating the live music

Don’t forget caption information.

Turn in right after coverage.

Thanks,

Photo Dept.

This one is a subject that I’ve covered before. At my college paper (*ah cough plug your friends ah cough*) I’ve shot a similar type of assignment for the college.

There are only a few minor problems that arise during these sorts of assignments. Again, I say minor because eventually you should be able to spot them before they show up, and then adapt.

First, how do I make an image of someone eating be something interesting to look at? Well, best thing to do is bite the bullet and find a family with small children. Kids are usually always more likely to be animated than Grandma and Grandpa. It’s tough to photograph kids at times, but usually if you’re patient you’ll always walk away with good images.

Second, there are so many people, how do I get permission and the like? Well, my best approach to this is to actually talk to your subject before you shoot them. If people are waiting in line for food, like at a register, or at a buffet, just stop someone and tell them who you are, where you’re from, and ask if you can take pictures of them while they get their food. I tend to reiterate at this point that they need only to ignore me and I’ll do all the work. When they’re done getting their food, just ask them for their names and a small interview if need be.

I believe I’ll be making a post later about the importance of getting used to approaching people for photography.

Third is something that is dependent upon what the venue is of the event. As the last post talked about, lighting is important. It sets the mood. I really like to find a place to use off camera flash at some point in my assignment. All you could ever learn about off camera work can be found at Strobist. It’s cheaper than you think. Buy a flash that has the ability to be set to a manual power output, and a sync cable. Just don’t point it directly at people a lot. Harsh light and all.

The image at the left was done by holding above and to the right of the subject. I wanted it to hit both the guitarist and the rest of the tent that he was in. Using a TTL cable, a pocket wizard, or a sync cord is an easy way to do this, but note that I'm not just burning the guy from on camera. I'm diffusing it into the room. Oh, and if you can "rear sync" your flash as much as possible. It really makes your flash lit images better.

No assignment is the same. All together, your images need to tell the story. If you can’t look at your shots and get the general story from your images, you’ve got to do better. That’s your job plain and simple, write the story with your camera. Usually in one image. Tough yes, but hard work pays off.