Random Goodness: Scenes from New Year’s Eve
When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve 2009 and we started were swept into 2010, I was at a party with some of my dear friends in the West Village. I had my G9 camera with me, but I didn’t take too many images, and to be frank, the ones I did take were nothing to write home about. But today I was getting ready to erase the card and realized that there were some hidden impressionistic gems hidden in the mix. Full disclosure, I didn’t take these images (since I believe the darkish blob of laughter on the right is me) but I felt they were worth sharing.
I love finding stuff unintentional art!
Walking to Work
I’ve been walking to work for the past couple of months (excluding the very snowy days) and have been loving it. In addition to getting about four miles of additional exercise each day, it offers me a chance to wake up and spend some time in the sunlight before cloistering myself into my cube each day. In case it’s not obvious by my Twitter feed there isn’t a lot of work these days so my cube time is starting to weigh on me. Needs fixing, thats for sure.
Walking to work also gives me a chance to shoot (when it’s not too cold). I generally don’t get out my SLR when I’m walking to work, but I use my iPhone a lot. I am loving this shot that I took this morning a scant 25 yards from my front door.
I love love love the visual of a blurred cab driving by. Not sure why exactly, maybe just my love of this city.
Megan at the Races
Here’s a quick shot from October that I finally have gotten around to doing the post-production on. This was taken at a steeplechase race in Virginia. Incidentally I picked the overall winner for the cup race that day – a horse called Bubble Economy. Unfortunately lots of other people bet on that horse as well so my one dollar bet only paid out $4. Still, not a bad return.
Lately I’ve been trying to grab concept and location shots on my iPhone when I don’t have my SLR, and I’ll try to share more of these. In general I’ve been grabbing shots that capture a mood, or feeling that I’d like to recreate in a more professional format at some point later. I had been hoping to do this with my G9, but have found that I’ve been having much more luck with the iPhone. Building a library of these concept or mood shots is on my list of things that I’m trying out for the new year as a foundation for upcoming personal projects.
With a little tweaking to contrast and saturation you can make the iPhone camera do some neat stuff. Once again, while gear is fun, it isn’t always necessary to have the best camera to get interesting shots.
Some Street Shots
On Monday I am going to be shooting a portrait of a partner in my firm for an upcoming publication. I have been given a photo brief from a designer in London which asks for black and white imagery, shot wide with dynamic backgrounds. The problem is that our office is exceedingly dull, and generally I get around that by shooting close and focusing on the individual rather than the office. This, clearly, is why so much of my photography taken in the building looks so similar. So this brief is exciting because it’s a chance for me to go outside of our office for a change. Unfortunately, because my subject will be squeezing in the shoot between meetings, I won’t be able to take her very far from the front door of our office in Times Square.
So this morning I went out and did some scouting for interesting backgrounds for the shots, using pedestrians and tourists as my “models”. After a half and hour or so I pretty much nailed down what I’m going to shoot on Monday. In the process I made some street photography that is working for me today. These were all shot with my favorite lens that I don’t get to use often, my 135mm prime. I love love love this lens and wish I could shoot with it all the time.
Model Mania
Boy, do I need to work on my posing skillz. I was tossed into a studio with three lovely models last Thursday without any thought or prep and kind of panicked. “Yeah, um, well, oh wait, don’t move that looks great….beautiful…”
Sigh. After a while I got comfortable and was able to give some coherent instructions, but without having a goal in mind on the spur of the moment I feel like I should have had been able to do more. Considering that I almost never work with models in this capacity I assume that practice makes perfect. I have to say that working with models is excellent, and after working with real people all the time it’s nice for a change to shoot people who do this for a living and are able to give you something good, no matter how twitchy your instructions are.
Model: Vanessa Rubio
Model: Autumn Stein
I had a great time though, looking forward to more time in the studio. If you want to see more, I put all the images from that session on Flickr.
Hard Light, Soft Fill
Last night in class we were experimenting with some hard light as our main light, and soft light as our fill. One thing that I took away was the idea of layering the light in a different way than seems intuitive. In general, as you’ll see in the samples posted below, I tend to put my fill light directly aimed at the shadows – a not very subtle approach. One of the things I learned last night was to layer the light by placing them at, say 45 degree intervals as opposed to 90.
For example, say I have a hard light at camera left, above the subject. This causes very strong shadows along the side of the subject at camera right. Instead of putting your light all the way over at camera right, 90 degrees from the subject pointing directly at the shadow, put a soft light in front of the subject, essentially layering the light on top of the hard light. This gives you a higher meter reading since you’re combining light, but the hard light over powers the soft light in the key areas, while the soft light gently fills in shadows. It’s a neat technique that is very simple, just slightly counter-intuitive, at least for me.
Anyways, here are some of the shots from last night (although none of these really illustrate the technique that I’m talking about – but I definitely want to spend some time playing that that idea.
Admittedly the blue gel on the soft fill is a bit strong and a bit overexposed for what I was doing – I had a little too much power on the pack, even while bleeding the pack with a second head. Also, it’s a bit 80s for my taste. I do like what I was able to do with the church-basement-esque vinyl divider wall. Something worth experimenting with more in the future.
And then, just for fun, 2 second, hand-held long exposure using the hot light.
More Classwork
This week, edge lights and ring flash. Mostly stuff I already knew, but having someone explain the details and finer points, always helpful. Plus, as I’ve mentioned before, I love being around other photographers and talking about photography outside my bubble – almost as important to me as the classwork, although I’m learning a lot from Clay.
Here are a few of the shots I like from last night:
More From My Lighting Class
I have been having a lot of fun at my lighting class – there is so much to learn. Last week we broke out into groups earlier than before and I was kind of disorganized with my group as far as breaking up the time appropriately. I guess I was having a hard time getting my head around the idea of making good final images and was more focused on learning how to use the lights. As our instructor said, we’ll be creating sketches mostly, rather than finished art.
Each of us took a turn at setting up the lights in a particular way, and then we shot. The above shot is one of the instances when one of my classmates was shooting. My shots were ok, but not overly exciting. I fell prey to one of my biggest faults in photography – shooting too fast and missing some details. One of the shots I made had placement of the background light nearly parallel to the background paper, which showed the texture of the paper seamless. Clay mentioned that a sure sign of an amateur photog is seeing texture in the background paper. Good to know.
For the next class I’m going to spend more time building an image and will hopefully have something more interesting to show.
iPhlog
I came across iPhlog yesterday, which is a photoblog by Ryan Donnell from my home-state of PA. I love the soft-focus Polariod-eque atmospheric quality of the photos he’s making with his iPhone: iPhone + Photos + Blog = The iPhlog. No cropping, no High Pass Filter, no Levels. Just think of it like a sketch pad…a really expensive sketch pad.
Self Portrait At Work with Poster
Alternate title: “I’m Too Busy To Play With My New Camera and I Am Therefore Grumpy”
Poster in the background is a beautiful photo of Zhang Ziyi by Davis Factor for Corbis. As a side note, Corbis used to send out these awesome posters as promos but their rep told me recently that they stopped because of environmental concerns. Damn it people, we need to stop wasting resources elsewhere so that I can start getting free, large format posters again….
Fette Sau and Beer
On Friday night I joined some friends at a BBQ joint in Brooklyn called Fette Sau (Fat Sow for the who’s at home). It’s an amazing place with tons of great food, dozens of varieties of rare and interesting bourbons, and of course lots of beer. The first time I went to Fette Sau we were drinking beer by the gallon – this time we were a little more responsible and drank it by the half gallon. The food is incredible and the beer selection is interesting and drinkable – one thing I find with places that stock out-of-the-ordinary beers is that most of what they stock are syrupy microbrews that are either too sweet or too bitter for my taste. Try the Bluepoint Toasted Lager at Fette Sau….it’s kickass.
While I generally don’t like to haul my giant SLR with me out to the bars for risk of theft I’d been itching to do some shooting so I ended up taking it with me on Friday, and was able to capture some neat images of the growler and the mason-jar glasses. By the time we ordered food I’d lost the great natural light so no images of brisket and ribs and sausage…of course we devoured the food so ravenously that there wasn’t much time to make pictures of it.
And speaking of the problems with taking a large camera every where I go:Â I will hopefully have solved this issue by ordering a new toy. It should arrive later this week and I have high hopes. Readers of photoblogs in general will probably have a pretty good guess at what I’ve ordered…I’ll keep you posted.
Hardcopy
In the digital world of Flickr and the plethora of online photography applications, we don’t often think about making actual prints. Hell, Polaroid has even stopped making film. In my staff photographer position, 90% of my work goes straight into printed publications, but rarely do we have a need for actual photography prints. I find this interesting, especially because prints where the basis of my interest in photography until I started shooting professionally. When I was a kid running around with small point and shoot, having the film developed was the unveiling, the moment when I found out if I’d actually made any good photographs.
This continued on a grander scale in college when I was developing and printing my own photographs. For the first time I was holding 8×10 prints in my hands – what a magnificent feeling. Seeing your work on such a scale, on heavy, glossy paper which gives even ordinary photos a sense of gravitas, is one of the things that first pulled me into serious photography as an adult. The same goes for the darkroom – these sour odors and the rituals of developing film in cannisters and loading negatives onto the enlarger while maintaining light purity made me feel important, made the work seem more important, perhaps than it was at the time.
Despite all this, I never develop film or make my own prints, mainly because I never shoot film. Everything is digital and in a lot of ways I miss that ritual of creation and the ability to hold prints in my hands. Recently I made photos of an engagement party for some friends, and afterwards I sent my files to Adorama for prints. When I picked up the photos yesterday, I felt that old feeling of satisfaction at being able to physically hold my work in my hands. The 80+ photos (printed snapshot size at 4×6) came in a manilla envelope, which felt, as I tucked it into my jacket pocket, like a heavy envelope of payoff money, mob style. Those snapshots of an event seemed so much more important because I was holding them physically in my hands.
Of course, making prints of all my work seems like a frivolous expense. Not to mention, where does one store thousands of prints in a New York City apartment? But none the less, I think that I miss prints enough that I’m going to do more, find a way. While digital is the future, and we should embrace it as the industry changes, I have to remember to go back and hold my art in my hands.
Real People
I am envious of the big name photographers.
Duh.
No, seriously. I wish I was in a position where I could shoot beautiful and handsome models all day long, models who are being paid to be there, models who know how to act natural, and understand how to pose, and of course, understand what they have to do to look beautiful on film.
Of course I don’t begrudge other photographers their success. My audience thus far has been corporate, and these days this means “real people” and not models. Frequently I get lucky and one out of, say, ten subjects looks great on film. This isn’t to say that they are ugly in person…it’s just that some people look amazing on film.
And yes, before you start bleating about how it’s my job to make people look good: yes, that is my job and yes, I understand that making ugly people look good is why not any schmo with an SLR can do what I do.
Or wait, is it really my job to make people look good? Not so much. My job is to make great photographs. This leads to an internal conflict with me. I tend to want to make people happy with my photography – I want the subjects to like me because I made them look good. This may be holding back my development as a photographer. Perhaps I’m spending too much time trying to make the subjects look good and not enough time trying to make great photographs.
I’m at the stage now where my technical knowledge is strong enough that I can light tough situations and get the safe shot. And I realize that nine times out of ten I got for the safe shot. I need to start taking some risks, risks like making a shot where the subjects don’t necessarily look perfect and the lighting isn’t perfect…in short I need to get more creative.
I’m not concerned – the sort of photography I’d like to be doing is something that I am always developing. A year ago I was worried that I didn’t have a distinctive style. Now I see that my style is starting to peek it’s head out. It’s perhaps not as solid and marketable as I want it to be, but I’m getting there. I still have a long way to go before I’m shooting models every day, but who knows, when I do get to that point, will I really want to be shooting models? Thus far I’ve made a some amazing images of “real people”. Maybe one of these days I’ll get out of my head, stop thinking about what the other photographers in the world are doing, and bolster my confidence to start taking some risks.
Shooting hot chicks would be cool too.
Details
When I shoot a portrait, I love shooting a closeup of something in the room where the portrait is shot, or some detail of the subject’s clothing, and then pairing it up with the portrait image. I think it makes the portrait have much more impact. In this way, two or more photos can have more meaning that a stand alone shot. Perhaps it’s my graphic design background, always looking to frame images in a meaningful way.
I was browsing around Dan Winter’s site and came across this portrait of Mr. Rogers which illustrates this idea perfectly.
In case you don’t already know, Winters is currently one of the photo-blog darlings – he’s the guy that every photog, editor, and blogger gushes over – with good reason. His work is tiiiight. Unfortunately, his website is not so much. What is with photographers and their shitty concept of website design?
Here’s one of my portrait of Dr. Girlfriend, which I love, using the same principal.
Power of B&W
Converting a color photo to black and white is a pretty standard way to turn a mediocre photo into a good photo. We’ve all done this in an attempt to hide bad light, rough color, or to make a grainy photo work. But there are many other reasons to shoot color and convert to black and white. With three channels worth of of data (R-G-B) you can get much more depth to your images when you combine those three into one channel for grayscale. And then of course there are situations where there simply isn’t enough ambient light to make good color photography.
Grainy black and white photos can work. The trick is to make a conscious decision to that you’re shooting for black and white, as opposed to using it as a catch-all technique for when you take crappy pictures. On Friday night my Dr. Girlfriend and I went out with a few of her friends for a pre-birthday dinner for her, and afterwards we stopped into a West Village bar to have a few drinks and to play some pool. I was able to get some fun shots of the ladies playing, despite the fact that the place was lit with just a very yellow overhead light.
The only post production on these photos was converting the RGB raw files to grayscale, and some minor tweaks with the curves.
I love the abstract quality of this one – it’s someone playing pool, but the shapes make it a really interesting composition.
The depth of field makes this one.
And of course the lovely Dr. Girlfriend is a great addition to any photo I make.
Letter of the Law
One of the challenges of my firm’s brand, is their strict rules about icon usage with photography. Often we have a client who has designed (or asks us to design) an icon to represent an idea or a service line, and then asks us to include it on top of a photo on the cover of their brochure or other collateral. The problem is, the Brand Police say that you can only use a photo OR an icon on a cover, and you can’t put an icon on top of a photo.
I was asked to make a photo of a globe (shocker) for the cover of a recent publication on clean technology, and the client provided me with a nifty set of four circular icons (designed in our UK office) which he wanted to include on the cover. Given the Brand restrictions, it’s a tough call. I sat down and thought about it, and then decided the best way to not put the icons ON the photo, was to put them IN the photo.
I designed a wall-paper-style poster, using the icons as a pattern. I tiled together a mock-up, before ordering a large-format print, which turned out to be a good idea. As I was doing the test shoot, I realized that seeing the icon through the clear globe was too distracting, so I taped a circle of solid color behind the globe, which did the trick nicely. I then added a solid circle to the large format print, for a seamless look. It took some futzing with white foamcore to knock out some ugly reflections on the sides of the globe but overall, because of my test shots, the final shot didn’t take more than a half hour.
Technically, I haven’t included icons on my photo, they are a background element in the photo itself. I’ve fulfilled the letter of the law, but not necessarily the spirit. I’m waiting to hear from they who must be obeyed if my little gamble has paid off. The client loves it, but the Brand Police have final say…
I would love to shoot all of the executives on the project in front of my icon wallpaper, but I doubt I’ll be able to get everyone involved into New York for the portraits…would be cool as hell though.
The Importance of Crop
Last weekend a friend of Dr.Girlfriend’s was in town, and she brought along her two little boys. One night we had them over to our place, which caused some stress when the youngest immediately walked over to my lovely HD TV and put his hands flat on the screen. And a bit more stress when he picked up the remote and whacked the screen. Luckily there was no damage to the TV, although I have a few more gray hairs.
Anyway, while they were here I ended up taking some quick shots with the intention of converting them to black and white since it was low light and I was forced to shoot with a high ISO. Overall there was nothing real exciting, but I did grab another interesting shot of the older kid eating some ice cream with his father and brother. When I was doing the post processing, I initially did a vertical crop (see above) which is fairly ominous, and is very dark. The kid is peering out around a scary looking male heard
Then later I did a horizontal crop version and got a completely looking result. When you can see the younger brother in the background, the photo becomes much more playful. It’s still dark, but it suddenly becomes a family scene, rather than something more dire.
This just goes to show the power of the crop – it can change the whole mode of the photo.
Miniature University
I wanted to post a couple of quick samples of the stuff that I’ve been working on lately – the most interesting has been for part of the tax practice at my firm. Pretty neat stuff – the creative director built the structures and hand painted all the little people. It was a great shoot, all lit with just the modeling lights on my Hensels – even at the lowest settings the strobes were too hot to make use of my 135/f2.0. Ideally I would have used a macro lens for some of this stuff, but since I didn’t have one the 135mm had to do. Overall I think they came out pretty good.
Ringlight Test
I bought myself an ABR800 as the next addition to my personal studio lighting set up and I’m very excited. I haven’t gotten to do much playing around with it, but grabbed a few shots of a coworker and am very pleased with the results.
This sucker is powerful. As you can see, my subject got a little squinty, although I think most of that is due to the fact that I had the modeling lights pumped since I was shooting in an otherwise unlit room. One thing I need to remember with a ringflash is the fact that your subject is staring right at the lights the whole time. When my firm hired David Sacks last summer he used a ringflash (probably a Profoto) and I got caught looking at it a few times and had that ring burned on my retina’s for a long time.
When used by itself, the ABR800 performs exactly like the more expensive models. You get perfect, flat fill with an even shadow around the whole subject. When I had him stand right next to the background you get that shadow halo (a fad that comes and goes in fashion photography). I have a lot of ideas of how to use it in conjunction with other lights. I’m really jazzed, now all I need is some studio time. And some models. And a stylist…and…and…
Relative Good Fortune
I was able to squeeze an hour of still life shooting in this evening and spent some time trying to improve on the salt still life that I started last night, move on to the next in the series, pepper, and even had some time to mess around with some fortune cookies that have been sitting uneaten in a basket, leftovers from some long ago takeout order. Overall my experiments went pretty well, although I didn’t get a better salt picture. I’m finding that a lot of what I’m doing is very saturated, which in some instances is good, in others, not so good. It was great to get some time to work on my personal projects. I wish I had a studio or a spare room so I wouldn’t have to set up and take down everything every time. But that’s Manhattan living…
