Shooting at Christmas Time

Tis the season for some great shinny and sparkly shoots. No reason for me to invent the wheel though. Here are two great links from the Strobist site to help you get the most out of your shoots this season.

How to Photograph Christmas Lights

"Here's a neat little lighting exercise that has nothing to do with off-camera flash.

When we talk about balancing light around here, it usually means balancing ambient with flash. But getting a good photo of holiday lights involves a different kind of light balancing: Continuous ambient with fading ambient.

You don't need a high-end camera for great results. You can use a very inexpensive digital camera and do just fine. You don't even need flash. It all comes down to what time of the day you shoot. And a couple of other little tricks."


Christmas Morning Lighting Tips

"This is a technique I use a lot for family events (birthdays, Christmas, etc.) when I know where things are going to happen and I just want to light a room.

This is a good, low-pressure, no-risk way to experiment and practice. So the next time you have to light a room for fluid situations and every photo counts, you'll be ready. Or at least slightly less petrified."


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Balancing Flash and Ambient Light

[1/200 sec., f/11, ISO-200, (5) manual off-camera flashes]

It has been far too long since my last post with actual content. Sorry about that. Not only has lots of stuff been going on, just like everyone else, but something I worry about when posting stuff is the fear that people might think I am telling them how to do things. In actuality, it couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m no expert, nor do I make any such pretenses. So let it be stated here and now, through these postings, I am only sharing how I did something – good or bad – and how it worked out – again good and bad. If you really want to know how to do something I have posted here, then read on (with a beverage in hand and chuckle at the ready) and then read somebody else’s blog!

This isn’t the timeliest post, relative to when I had the shoot, but I have a list to work through to catch up again and this is the first. A big deal right now is using flashes or monolights to not overpower the ambient light, but to light the subject and suck some drama out of the ambient conditions. Just look around, it’s everywhere. If you want to really see how it’s done, then leave here right this second and head over to Mr. Mc Nally’s blog.

This post is more about my giving it a go and in a much bigger way than I should have for my first actual required product. Those that have read here before know that for me it translates to testing, testing and more testing. First let me set the scene:

• Season: graduation time for the high school seniors, one of which was mine
• Needed For: graduation party for 10 seniors
• Reason: the Moms had only spent weeks making huge photo collage boards, ordering DVD of these kids lives captured in photos (yes I was doing that too but that is a whole other post), party planning, and generally freaking out when they realized they needed two more items – a huge poster of the 10 kids to be displayed at the party and a photo to put on the party announcements that had to go out right-a-stink’in-way!
• Location: NW USA
• Weather: Rain, wind, cold, crappy, …

Not much to deal with, really. The weather and scheduling all 10 kids to show up at the same time was the worst of it, other than me not having a clue what I was doing. I had a backup indoor location, but wasn’t thrilled about that idea. What I really wanted to do was one of these flash/ambient lighting things that I was seeing everywhere. So here was my process.

Step 1 – Find a Location and a Theme. First I had to think of an idea for the shot. I really wanted to be outside and doing this whole flash/ambient thing that I was seeing everywhere. As long as I was doing that which everyone else in the photography world was doing, why not have all of the kids jumping in the air too! That way I could do everything that has been really overdone these days – two birds with one stone. Perfect.

I needed a setting where the sun could be dropping behind the kids and I could get a good horizon in case I had some great sunset thing going on. The location needed to be close by so all the kids could get there quickly. Those of you that have done anything around sunset know that a mysterious astronomical event occurs when setting these shots up: it takes forever for sunset to approach and then when it does it is over in about 5 minutes. In addition to being close to town, I also didn’t want anything else other than the kids, the horizon and the sky so I had to go hunting. Below is the location I found that I liked. [Shot hand-held with a single flash on the hotshoe.] That would do.

[1/200 sec., f/14, ISO-100]

Step 2 - Figure out how to light it. Enter my favorite test subjects – the wife and the dog. The wife hates doing this all of the time, but she can be bought and besides this whole photo thing was her idea! The dog will sit for hours and hours and allow me to photograph him. In fact if I have left the background up over night, he really digs sleeping on it.

So off we go to the backyard at dusk, with my hand written notes on how to pull this off. I have since done lots more reading and experimenting and can pull these off just about with my eyes closed, but on this night I was reading my notes about setting the f-stop to this, the shutter to that, and doing this and that to the ISO all the while trying to assess what was happening by looking at a 3” LCD and begging for just one more…one more… In the back of my head I also know that I only have speedlites (at that time) and am going to eventually have to try to evenly lighting 10 kids. Heck, I’ll worry about that part later. So after as many shots as I could beg, maybe 10, I know that maybe, just maybe we can do this.

 

[1/125 sec., f/11, ISO-100, manual off-camera flash]

Step 3 – More people and more light. One flash and a short distance, okay. However, there are lots of things to consider here in addition to the fact that I am going to have 10 kids, in the air, and will probably be at least 30 feet away to get them all in frame.

• I will need a fast shutter for the jump and to control ambient, but I need to watch sync speed.
• I will need a smaller aperture to get everybody in focus – yikes what is this going to do to my flash power?
• I may have to push up the ISO.

Bottom line, I am going to need more light and more practice! Below was the next test where I added another flash and pushed the ISO.

[1/200 sec., f/16, ISO-1000, (2) manual off-camera flashes]

Well, that was kind of fun. Thanks family for allowing more practice. But, who’s up for one more test at the actual location with as many people as I can get?

[1/80 sec., f/10, ISO-400, (2) manual off-camera flashes]

Two problems:
1) nobody else would play along except for me and the wife – thanks dear, you’re the BOMB!
2) as you can see from my settings, I don’t have a clue what I am doing as every setting is different in every test. That’s okay, seriously, no problem, it’ll all work out. I’ll just figure it out while we are there. The bigger problem is nobody is available and the weather sucks so we will probably end up going inside anyway.

The Shoot. The weather cleared, the kids could come and now – holly crap – we actually have to do this thing. It was somebody’s brilliant idea to put the kids in sweatshirts of the colleges they were headed to – I can’t take any credit for that. Oh wait, one more little problem – two of the kids are injured and can’t jump. Oh well, throw that in the “we’ll deal with that later too” pile.

I have a total of 4 flashes, of all different ages, types and power. No problem. I think just to be safe I am going to borrow one more. Hmmm, how am I going to trigger all of these? I have optical slaves for the Vivitars, but that sucks outside. So, after a trip to Radio Shack and Home Depot, here is what I ended up:

I made some DIY dual flash brackets and used some adapters from Radio shack to allow the Pocket Wizards (PW) to fire two flashes each. That got me to this:

• Stand with DIY dual flash bracket, (2) Vivitar 285s, on an umbrella mount, both attached to a single PW.
• Stand with DIY dual flash bracket, Canon 580EX II and Canon 430EX, on an umbrella mount, both attached to a single PW.
• Flash bracket attached to camera with a 430EX and Omni-bounce on the bracket and triggered with an OC cord on the hotshoe.
• PW at camera attached via the PC sync port to trigger the other 4 flashes.
• Camera tethered to the laptop so the Moms could look and see if their kids looked okay and I could just worry about the actual shooting details.

If you look back at the setting for the final shot, you will see that through nothing more than some testing and some really great dumb luck, the camera magically put itself in just about the perfect settings [1/200 sec., f/11, ISO-200, (5) manual off-camera flashes] and this thing came out pretty okay. After some minor processing we put them into a traditional poster-like format, sent them off for printing and in addition to the one for the event, I sold one to each kid for $1,000,000 each and now I have lots more time to just sit and write these blog posts. Perfect – again!

So much more has been learned since then and I can’t seem to do anything anymore but shoot these types of shots. The next few upcoming posts will deal with how to set these up for real – you’ll want to ignore those if you operate on dumb luck like me!

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Website has left the building...

Well, the old website had a great ride and I very much appreciate that for all those years that it was alive and well, and looking different each time I had a new thought enter my head - which is quite rare - it never cost me a penny to post or host.

Now I guess it is time for me to either move hosts and actually pay for it to live or scrap the website entirely. I may look into adding a slideshow here and skip the whole two location identity thing. I will hold off on announcing what my plans are so you all have reason to return here, beside of course all of the great, current content and frequent postings.

[UPDATE: As is apparent just under the goofy header, I have found some code and appropriately hacked it to get what I was looking for insofar as a slideshow on this blog.  I wish the photos were a little bigger and I am still working on that.  What I do like about it is that is loads quickly and there are no links.  So, no more web site, but new, worthy images will be added to the slideshow.]

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Maternity and Newborn

[Photo info: Maternity session, Jan 2009, 75mm, f/5, 1/15 sec., ISO-640, existing available light]

Big gap since posting last – sorry about that. Partial responsibility for that is how busy this summer has been. A bigger reason for the lack of posting is the format I selected when starting this project. Not that I didn’t or don’t want to discuss overall growth as a photographer, rather the part about catching up to present day. I would much rather discuss current projects, but I need to work through a few more posts on historic stuff. This one however is a good one to get revitalized on though as I began re-thinking all of my lighting choices at this point.

I had gone from no added light to as much as I could get, or more realistically as much as I could afford. I haven’t used the continuous lights in a millennium and so this amounted to 4 flashes and speedlites.

(BTW: my apologies for incorrectly referring to my speedlites as speedlights in previous posts. I am so much smarter now – can’t you tell?)

[Photo info: Maternity session, March 2009, 47mm, f/6.3, 1/40 sec., ISO-640, existing available light + reflector]

Every shot I did used to include a minimum 30-45 minute set up of flashes, stands, cables, optical triggers, etc. I can’t say that I have given that up, but I can say that I am doing a better job of using existing light and adding to it when needed rather than blocking out the light I have and trying to rely on strictly artificial light.

I spend lots of any free time I can wiggle out of a normal day reading everything photog blogish and in my mind I am constructing a beautiful studio. One of the key features I have built into this imagined studio is a wall of north facing natural light. Well I have no studio, but my wife/manager has accidentally done some really nice things to our home that double as really nice studio characteristics and I often turn our living room and dining room into temporary studios. Note, this is not the most professional venue for a budding photographer and their clients, but using my standard logic of “Hey, I do this stuff for free”, I figure my clients can deal with walking into my house and seeing one section of empty space and a pile of furniture I have recently created in some far off corner.

So for this progression of three photo sessions (7 months, 9 months and newborn 1 month) we used our converted home studio and mostly natural light arriving through sheer curtains and east facing windows.

I can say that after these sessions I had a completely new respect for available light and I was changed forever – or at least until I break down and acquire more lights (which I did by the way…future posts.)

[Photo info: Newborn session, April 2009, 75mm, f/8, 1/13 sec., ISO-400, existing available light + moonlight w/ 24”x36” softbox + speedlite]

Here are a few of the technicals and some set up information for how I do these types of sessions.

Pre Planning
Discuss with the client what types of clothes to bring for the session. I typically have already worked out what I am going for in my head and I know the look I want. Share these thoughts with your client and come up with ideas for what to bring.

Arrange for someone else to be with you during the session – the husband or boyfriend, your assistant, or whatever. My wife is a great help with setting up shots, wardrobe ideas and seeing things that I miss so I try to have her at every shot I can.

Plan your set ups and desired wardrobe in advance so you can quickly move from one to the next. Being 9 months pregnant isn’t something I have firsthand knowledge of, but it sure doesn’t look comfortable so keep the session moving for the comfort of your client.

Set Ups

1st shot:
Painted wall background approximately 6 feet behind model
East facing natural light coming through sheer curtains at right
42” collapsible white reflector at left for fill













2nd shot:
East facing natural light coming through sheer curtains behind model
42” collapsible white reflector at right for fill















3rd shot:
Black background approximately 8 feet behind models
East facing natural light coming through sheer curtains at right
150 w/s monolight with 24”x36” softbox at left – 2-3’ from model
Canon 580EX II speedlight off-camera, but adjacent to camera for fill











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Seamless black … of course

[Photo info: Project photo, Dec 2008, 85mm, f/10, 1/160 sec., ISO-100]

As mentioned last time, this is a time to get some staples practiced and figured out. First it was the white background and this time black.

First a little set up on how we got this gig, if you will. My manager, who I have mentioned several times so far and you will have to look back to figure out who that is if you are new to this story, was reading the newspaper last December when she came across those letters you have all read before that non-profit organizations post. In this case it was a letter from a girl at our local home for unwed mothers. All that this one young lady wanted for Christmas was a picture of her daughter and her. That is the wrong thing for my manager to read. It wasn’t more than a few hours and not only were we scheduled to take this young lady’s portrait, but we were set up to do the same for all 12 of the girls there.

I went to an initial meeting with the director of the program and packed along my point & shoot and a tape measure. We walked around looking for where we might be able to set up that was away from everyone else and we discussed what we both were thinking for the style of the pictures. It was agreed that some black & whites, using a soft focus, with the girls on black was what we both thought would work. At that point I began my normal ritual of testing and testing and testing until our scheduled shoot date.

[Photo info: Project photo, Dec 2008, 105mm, f/10, 1/160 sec., ISO-100]

Our date arrived, I packed up and transported every piece of equipment I owned and we headed for the shoot. After about 30 minutes to move furniture, set up the background and lights, and do a couple lighting tests what became about a 3 hour procession of girls and their children began. I had asked the director to see if the girls could wear mostly single colored, dark shirts and have their child in something plain and white. The first girl arrived in a teal sweatshirt with some logo broadly displayed across the chest and these whacky multi-colored and printed sweatpants. After she explained that she didn’t have any other clothes, we quickly switched her spot in the schedule and my wife flew back home to grab some items we could use to drape the girls in if needed. That right there was a very valuable lesson for me and items such as this now like in my road kit.

Sometime after the session, while speaking with the director of the program, I found out that she herself was a little worried about how this was going to go. Apparently these girls are very closely guarded and can even be a little rough with visitors and definitely each other. This completely blew me away because the girls we saw were amazing. They took my minimal direction in completely stride without any complaints and while we were set up to shoot one mother/daughter at a time, after each session the peanut gallery behind me grew and by the end of the night every girl that had already had her picture taken was in there giving support and direction of their own to the one in front of the camera. It was the most amazing photo session I had had to date and is something I will not soon forget.

[Photo info: Project photo, Dec 2008, 65mm, f/9, 1/160 sec., ISO-100]

We prepared 8” x 10” prints for each of the girls and also delivered electronic files for the organization to use at their fundraiser. Once again, and as I mentioned before, photo releases are very, very important. The organization took charge of this and while releases were obtained from all girls or their families, since most were under 18, for the fundraiser, out of the 12 girls, I was only able to get a release from about four or five of them.

Set Up
Insofar as the setup, it was fairly simple:

• Background stand supporting some old black curtains about 8 feet behind the girls

• Black velvet placed on the floor, under the girls

• A little ambient fluorescent light – not by choice, but some things are out of your control

• Two speedlights back by the camera, placed at 30-45 degrees left and right with a 2:1 ratio

•(For the belly shots of the two pregnant girls I gridded the key light and used a 42” flag attached to my carbon-based light stand to block the fluorescent light)

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