Jenny At the Park

Meghan

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.

Senior Photos Preview

Took some senior photos for a friend of the family. Here's what they're looking like so far:





I'm hoping to get warmer weather soon so we can do more fun stuff outside.

Updating my portfolio

I'm updating my portfolio into multiple sections to find a network that I can fall into. I'd like some suggestions as to which are favorites. I want to know what images stand out and also where they sit in categories. I'm looking to do sections of weddings, editorial/news, commercial and portrait work.

These are going to make up a series of galleries for a portfolio site so people can view the works separately.

First off is Wedding shots. I don't have a ton of them so it's tough to really thin them out...

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Next is sort of a jumble. Make your favorite picks and try to give them a category of "commercial", "editorial", etc.

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Ok, that's it for now. These are not ALL of the images I'll be putting into this new portfolio. I'll be tossing more online soon to be rated and categorized. Let me know what you think.

A NEW Direction!

Well, an idea has opened up in my mind lately and I am thinking about really trying to pursue it heavily.


I have always considered working as a wedding photographer for a living. It's a job that is always in demand and I fit many of the requirements of the career. Although it's not the easiest of areas to focus on in photography/photojournalism, it is an area that I would have personal control over in many ways and I would feel comfortable doing things that I want to do.


The tough part for me is getting started and working my way into the immense process of starting my own business. This is obviously no easy task and almost impossible to do alone.


I need to set some short term goals and really push to get this whole thing moving if I really want to make things work. Ugh, pressure.


These images are the types of shots that I would more likely be shooting at weddings. Candid, personal, documentary style images. I'm not one for the huge group shots of the entire family standing there. It's just not my style. I can however get the shots of people interacting. That's what I've done for a while at newspapers.

Both of these were shot with basic flash setups. The top one was more complex and was shot pretty recently this semester. The one just above is from a while back. Pretty much just window light.

I really hope that this will be a new kick to make me get moving. I love shooting stuff, but I have trouble getting going on things until life really picks up and I get results.

long since an update

Well, my internship has all but come to a close. I've got to move back up to CMU tomorrow and I'll then be starting my position back on the college paper as a Senior Photographer.

I'll likely still update this blog, describing little bits about photo that I enjoy. I'll post images that I've taken and hopefully get some actual traffic on here some day!

With that, here is a photo of my father that I just took moments ago. This is with my new lens, a 50mm f/1.8 which is considered a standard lens for portrait work.

Notice that his eyes are about the only thing in focus. The focal plane, or the distance of space that the lens allows to be in focus is very small (around an inch). This makes the person's face softer and more pleasing. Not to say that my father's face isn't pleasing on it's own.

This is a window lit shot. A failsafe in my opinion. If you have a sunny day outside and there's a big window somewhere. Use that thing man! Or woman! There's no way you can get a nice picture out of it. The light is perfectly diffused, easy to get your white balance set up to, and it always makes people look good.

This is a very equipment basic shot. This same picture could be accomplished with a really simple point-and-shoot camera.

Well, off to more packing for the big move.

Basketball portraits

Sometimes I am really glad I got smart and spent my money on a lighting kit. Certain assignments really turn out nicer and show my professionalism when I take pictures with good lighting instead of the weak on-camera-flash that reporters do when they're assigned to take pictures.

I have nothing against reports doing photography, in fact I feel that they should learn it in depth to further their skills as journalists. However, most do not know much about making pictures and their newspapers suffer from it. The Trib (my internship) is one of these newspapers suffering from bad photo work.

I shot headshots of high school basketball players the other day to be used in upcoming stories about games and what athletes contributed. The standard head and shoulders style picture. However, I didn't want to make these images look weak since I'm a photographer by trade and expect quality of myself in every thing I shoot.

The picture above is shot with a single flash, Vivitar 285HV, on top of my camera facing the team. Nothing special, I was far away enough that the flash diffused on it's own and didn't make for an ugly back shadow. The picture to the left is a bit more complex. Shoot through umbrella on the left, and a bare flash on the right for fill. Most of my light was coming from the left. I did cross lighting to keep from creating any shadows on the background (bleachers). This was the only note that the paper gave me about my photo, keep shadows off the background. Easy enough. Shooting with a long lens (I shot at around 80 to 100mm) and with a really wide aperture (f2.8) gave me a shallow depth of field (made the background blurry). The second flash makes sure that the subject isn't getting attached to the background with any really dark areas.

Best thing about this shoot was that the players were really cooperative. They got into place fast, stood there still, didn't goof off, and things moved quickly. The group shot was so easy. The photographer for the school had to do a group shot so he did all the posing for me. I just sat back and waited, told the team to wait before moving, then took my photo from the same spot. Easy!

Friendly Old People

Not much of an exciting assignment, but you're going to get them so I might as well put it up here. Took pictures of this lady today. She will turn 105 years old on Saturday. Although she was slightly deaf, she was still very talkative and it was great to just chat with her.

Her photo was taken very simply with a single strobe and a shoot through umbrella on the right. Remind you of something? It should. I don't practice stuff like this for nothing. This set up and shoot took a maximum of maybe 10 minutes. I chatted her up while she waited and explained what I was doing and why. She probably didn't understand, but it always puts subjects at ease when you pull out tons of equipment. They feel intimidated by getting photographed.

Sadly I didn't have a lot more to do today, so this was about all I shot. However, if I had something else, this wouldn't have been much of a problem to shoot since I made it a short session because of experience with my lights.

Halloween Lights

This was a quick one. This guy, Tom, had been slowly massing up a very decorative Halloween lawn display.

I was told to go get a picture of him for the paper to sort of show what his lawn looked like. Well I didn't want to make it over complicated, but of course... I did.

Big things that happened: one flash didn't want to work as a slave unit with my radio remotes. They're cheap remotes and now I know why. They like to malfunction at the slightest whim. So I had to pull out the backup cord to be sure to get the shot to work. Well the nights are getting cold here in Michigan and it's really starting to show. My flashes didn't want to fire too quickly what with the batteries being nicely cooled to a temp around 35 degrees.

This guy wasn't patient so I had to move fast and set up while he did whatever he wanted around the yard. Gladly he didn't mind chatting with me and I just wanted him to stand there. I set up a shoot through umbrella to the right of the frame and a bare flash to the left. Basic cross lighting. The umbrella was much closer to him than the other fill light so it was a big weaker around 1/16th which is one of my favorite shooting powers since the recharge is fast. The other flash was around 1/4 or so. I can't remember for sure.

I think the actual photo process took about 2 minutes. However, waiting for the sun to set, but not too much took about 20 minutes of watching the sky while I set up, and still, I missed the good yellows in the sky. The hard part was getting the flashes to want to sync up right so I could actually test my light on my trusty stand-in model, my hand. Yes, with a wide angle lens you can always use your hand to check what the light will look like on your subject. It's nice, and funny to look at in review back at your desk.

This was a simple portrait. I used the ambient light at about a one second exposure (pretty long) to really fill in the glow of the lights and the sky. The aperture was up high to let the flashes fire off correctly without blowing things out. It's not the best photo since his expression isn't good and he for no reason wouldn't really look AT me, but no biggie. It does it's job.

Busted

I haven’t updated mostly just because my latest assignments haven’t been very eventful. I’ve been getting a lot of the same stuff (soccer, football, festivals, etc).

This post may seem a bit redundant from the previous post since I talked about shooting portraits of people, but I want to really make a point about something that most beginners, myself included, don’t seem to get through their heads.

Your equipment isn’t truly what makes you take amazing photographs. I understand that having a higher resolution camera, an extra flash, some nice expensive light stands, blah, blah, blah can do amazing things to change your shooting, but that’s not “IT”.

The pictures in this post were all taken with one to two flashes. The second flash isn’t extremely necessary. You could even change locations to a spot near a window for a “free light”. Then, using your one flash as a fill light, create the same affect as a two flash set up.

My setup shot is just to give an idea of the minimal equipment that I’m using. Most portraits should be simple so that you keep the person in the picture as the actual subject.

Lighting is easy and fun, experiment with things that will be lit like a person (like this sculpture I did last year) and just keep moving lights around to see what happens.

Oh, and my backgrounds were basic. One was a blanket stretched over a wide chair back. The other was a painting canvas, unpainted.

First Image:
This was with one flash, shooting through the white umbrella above. Blue blanket background behind it which was fleece so it ate light. Since I shot at a higher shutter speed, the ambient (light from the room) didn't get picked up by the camera.

This is pretty dramatic, but still enough light. Note the eye showing on the right side. That's important. A total profile with no visible features on the side of the face opposite the light looks strange. Unless you're going for that really moody shot.


Second Image:
This isn't much different from the last one except that I used what's called a "reflector" to reflect (shocking, I know) light from the umbrella onto the other side of the face. This lightens the shadows just a bit, while keeping the background dark. Still one light, but now two with the reflector. By the way, reflector was the canvas board. Costly? No.






Third Image:
Now comes the second light. Notice how it makes the head pop from the background. That light on the hair is called... hair light (not exactly Latin).

Reflector was still used on the right side.









Fourth Image:
Ok, change of lighting. This is two lights. First, yet again shot through white umbrella on the left. Second light is behind and below the subject, firing up at the background to throw a faint halo on the wall/blanket.

This is old-school light. My grandfather used to use this in the studio that he owned way back. Were he not retired, he'd still be doing it. My point? Classics never die. Unless they're drummers in Spinal Tap.



Fifth Image: (Almost done I promise)
This is no different from the above, except that there's a background change. I had to adjust the metering since the white background reflects (gasp! a photo product int he shot) light more efficiently than the blanket.

The halo is more noticeable. Apparently white backgrounds are all the rage as of late. People are going nuts with having blown out white backgrounds.




Sixth Image:
Ok, this one is just for fun. My model got all high and mighty on me and started acting all "Paris Hilton".

Thus ends the small studio set ups. I'm definitely not the leading expert on this stuff. You can make a visit to studiolighting.net for a really good site on what else but stuido lighting.

Not the Pulp

It's a big world out there. And strangely I think there might be enough room for all of us.

Strange as it may sound. There are many niches for photographers to snuggle into and make a penny. I mean, look at all the stock photo sites out there. I have no experience in stock photography, but I hear that it's changed a great deal lately. There's a great post about it at Strobist. We are in demand, but there's always a catch.

Some of the basic stuff you can do from your own home (most photo can be done from home) isn't too tough. A flash or two, a good background and some tricks.

Macro studio product shots

This stuff is pretty simple. I just shot this about 10 minutes ago with two flashes. No umbrellas, no reflectors, no fancy backgrounds. Just knowledge of shutter speed, aperture, and my manual flashes.

This isn't really stock photography until you start taking pictures of things that don't have any sort of orientation to a company. This picture obviously contains an item that is copy written/trademarked by movie peoples. It's the lighting and the cleanliness that matters for this example. There are a million ways to light a little thing and make it look like it could be in an ad.

This is the same kind of shot in many ways as the helmet above. Still has that silly Motorola and probably Verizon title in there that'd get me in trouble if I tried to sell the picture.

But if I ever need to sell this phone on eBay... Oh, man! But I digest.

Getting yourself to learn small subject photography can net you some small amounts of money if you play your cards right.

Check out this to get an idea of things that don't have any preordained association. This is also a great example of a journalist taking pictures that could probably pretty easily be used as stock photos instead. The cake still has the same lighting fundamentals.

Portraits of all kinds

I frequently ask friends' bands if I can photograph them while they play. Then, if they want the pictures I offer them an extremely low price for said images. Usually I'm losing out on this deal because I'm making no money, but taking pictures in which you have real subjects doing real things is always nice.

These are more candid portraits, but they're still worthy of making a profit if a band sees your images somewhere and needs some album art. Hell, at the least you get to meet some bands! Be warned, this sounds better than it does. Band photography is a pretty sought after job and I'm pretty sure there are a lot of people out there taking great shots and making nothing from it.

Personal portraits. Plain and simple really. People hire you to take pictures of them and their loved ones and you collect money for performing said photography. A lot of portraits can be taken on location, but if you've got a nice house with a clean well lit living room, you've got yourself a nice location (not everyone wants to have their picture taken in front of a fake backdrop.

So where does this all come into the photojournalism student/beginner? Well I can tell you from experience that to the layman, a photographer is a photographer no matter what their career. I've been asked to take portraits of people's kids even though I have no real experience in photographing children (they're fussy as I found out). And it's not illegal to maintain a small stock photography career on the side. Although it can eat up a lot of your time.

What I'm getting at is that a photographer is a photographer. You know a piece of machinery pretty darn well and you can use it in a lot of conditions. It's up to you how you want to use your knowledge. Practice like crazy and you'll find your favorite things.

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.