Patience and Working the Scene

The three children in the scene are cousins.  While watching the children play in the water, I talked to their parents about taking a photo of them playing.

What drew me to this scene, of course, was the children playing; but I quickly noticed that the curvature of the water spray was matched by the curvature of the wall in the background.  I thought this implied circle would make a great composition.

Now, what did I do wrong.  First, I was not patience.  The real photo was the little girl in the foreground and how she was studying the water.  I should have waited until the two cousins moved out the scene—which was right after this photo was taken.  Second, this photo should have been taken at f/8 (very sharp portion of this lens) which would have resulted in a shutter speed of 1/750^th of a second.  The f/8 aperture would have better isolated her by making the foreground and background slightly out-focus and the 1/750^th of second would have frozen the water better—basically, a win, win situation.

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 70mm, f/19 and 1/125^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black and white points, added contrast with a mild curve and added a little vignetting.

Gesture Is King!

Another photo from 2011 and another question about what was I thinking.

Here, I saw this frog character approach this boy and knew that there was about to be a good photo.  I asked the boy’s parents if I could take a photo and they agreed.

Looking over the metadata, I can see that I shot the photo at 38mm rather than 70mm.  Why?  The photo is about the gesture, not getting all of the boy and the frog into the photo.  Next, I see that I used f/11, which I can accept but that forced me to shoot the scene at 1/125^th of a second—too slow to stop the boys hand from blurring.

Thanks to Jay Maisel workshop and a little (very little) knowledge on my part, today I would have had my camera set at ISO 1600 which in turn would have resulted in a shutter speed of 1/1000^th of a second—fast enough shutter speed to stop the boy’s hand.

Lessons learned:  street photography means using ISO of 1,600 or higher unless blur is an important element of the photo and make what drew you to the scene the most important element within your frame.

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 38mm, f/11 and 1/125^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black and white points, added contrast with a mild curve and cropped second image to simulate lens at 70mm (guess on my part!).

Why Did I Do That?

Again, working through photos from 2011, I ran across this one.  I cannot remember a lot about the shot except that I tried various apertures to get the background blur that I wanted.  I also remember moving around so that I could get the out-focus flower in the background.

Looking at the photo now, I cannot help but wonder does it look better with the flower in the background or without it?

Which one do you like best?

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8, f/4 and 1/500^th of a second.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black and white points, added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5:  Removed flower in background in the second image.

Sharpness—Revisited

I interrupt the scheduled post to bring you “Sharpness—Revisited”.

I had several comments regarding last Tuesday’s post that basically said what was I trying to do with this photo.  Well, I was not really trying to do much more than show the amount of sharpness that today’s DSLRs capture right out of the camera.  
I did forgot to mention one thing about the image that I showed—in Lightroom 3, I did use the adjustment brush to reduce the clarity and sharpness of Lauren’s skin (i.e., I had too much details in that area of the photograph to do Lauren justice—she has wonderful skin).

The comments did get me thinking about how people look at photographs and how photographers present photographs.  Tuesday’s post was presented to show only one aspect of digital capture—sharpness of today’s DSLRs.   To me, the difference between a snapshot and a photograph is the photographer putting his/her intent or interpretation into the image.  With that in mind, let’s assume that the image was going to be used by an eye make-up manufacture to promote their product.  What would I do?

I would want to draw even more attention to the eyes.  How?  I would sharpen the eyes, add a little saturation to the iris, add a highlight opposite the catch-light to add depth to the eyes, remove the redness in the whites of the eyes (note, I usually do not brighten the whites because it gives people that "devil-eye look") and finally burn the skin to darken it and thus lighten the eyes.  Not a lot of difference but I think you will agree the revised version draws your attention even more to the eyes and hopefully would help sell more product for the manufacturer.

It is my personal belief that successful photographs almost always have a little piece of the photographer within them.  They are not just a collection of pixels recorded by their camera.  Think about that and let me know what you think!

I have included both versions here so that it will be easier for you to compare them.  Hopefully you will be able to see the added details in the first photo.

Enjoy 

Sharpness

I have been looking over many of my photos of the past year just to try and get some perspective of where I am and possibly where I am going.  While doing this, I was amazed at how much detail that my camera can reveal, especially when using lenses at f/8 through f/13.

Here is a crop of Laura’s eye.  Could you get much sharper and reveal any more detail?

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 85mm f/1.4, f/9.5 and 1/250^th of a second with Elinchrom Quadra with beauty dish attached

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black and white points, added contrast with a mild curve.

Oilfield Worker

I am fascinated with ordinary working people.  I am currently working on a body of work of such people.  Based upon my start, this may be a very long venture.

In November, I was hired to photograph men working on a workover drilling rig for an oilfield equipment company.  After the shoot, I asked a few of the men to pose for me.

I was really impressed with this young man during the shoot.  When he was not working, his nose was in a school book.  I asked him about it and he said:  “I screwed up in school.  Didn’t work at it.  Didn’t learn much.  Don’t want to work like this the rest of my life, so, I got to learn what they were trying to teach me in school if I want to have a better life.”

Well said.

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 85mm f/1.4, f/8 and 1/125^th of a second with Elinchrom Ranger Quadra head with 17” beauty dish attached.

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3: Set black point, and added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5: Used nik Color Efex filters Detail Enhancer, Tonal Contrast and B&W to bring out details within subjects hair and clothing and dodged and burned various areas of photo.

Am I Misusing HDR?

Let me start by saying that I have been a fan of HDR for a long time.  However, I am not generally a fan of the over-the-top HDR look that some HDR photos have.  It’s just too surreal for me.

I believe that over the past few years I have misused HDR.  Instead of using it just to adequately capture a dynamic range outside the range of my camera, I have often used it to capture more details within a scene.  This point was recently driven home to me when after a portrait shoot, I shot a few urban scenes.  Without thinking, I composed the scene, set my tripod up and banged out seven shots with a range of +3 EVs to -3 EVs.  I processed the images in nik HDR Pro (my favorite HDR processing program) and upon first look, was reasonably happy with the results.

I then started studying the processed HDR image and, to my surprise, I saw that many of the details that I wanted in the photo were just not there.  I know that RC Concepcion in his book “The HDR Book” says that after you process the image in an HDR software, you then need to further process it in Photoshop to bring-out your artistic intent.

I would much rather shoot photos than process photos.  Sitting at the computer is not that much fun for me.  So, I thought “what sort of result could I get from processing just one of the images and using nik Color Efex Pro to enhance the details?”  For this processing I selected the exposure that had some highlights blown-out, but had details in the shadows.

The first photo is the one processed using nik HDR Pro and the seven exposures.  The second photo was processed only using nik Color Efex Pro’s Detail Enhancement and Tonal Control filters.  I was surprised at how well nik Color Efex  Pro 4 was able to recapture some of the blow-out highlights.

Conclusion:  if you do not like processing images but still want a lot of details use nik Color Efex Pro 4 or Topaz Adjust or Detail to bring them out, not HDR processing. 

Enjoy.

Blaze and Pepper Update

Thank you Cindi! 
I have been trying to get a decent updated photo of Da’ Girls for several weeks without ANY success.  Think about trying to do a portrait of two puppies together—Mission Impossible.  One goes one way and the other goes other way—that’s the play-by-play for such a shoot.   I must admit I was getting a little discouraged by the experience.  Then I read Cindi’s post and my life had meaning again. 
I shot each of the girls separately and then combined the shots in Photoshop CS5.  Since I did not have an assistant and was both cameraman and treat-distributor, I used Auto-Area AutoFocus, which automatically focused the camera to the closest subject in the viewfinder.  Overall, I think it did a good job in keeping Da'Girsl in focus.  Combining the two phots was very simple since both of the shots were shot on a white background and with consistent lighting and camera settings. 
Blaze (left) is currently about 5 pounds and Pepper (right) is about 5 pounds 9 ounces.  The only problem that I had with the images was that Pepper stood a little closer to the camera and therefore appeared even bigger than she is relative to her sister.  I adjusted Pepper’s position and size to more closely match Blaze’s. 
I was not happy with our hair stylist for the shoot.  I wanted an elegant, sophisticated look but I got more of a punk-rock look.  And, even though I paid handsomely in treats, I think that the Da' Girls gave me there “driver’s license” pose rather than the elegant, sophisticated look that I wanted.  I guess that I will need to give them better directions next outing—and yes, there will be a “next” outing. 
Enjoy  
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 48m, f/16 and 1/180^th of a second with two Elinchrom 500BxRi Monolights at an angle to the subject (see lighting diagram). 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Used white balance eye drop to make both backgrounds a consistent white, set black point, and added contrast with a mild curve. 
Photoshop CS5:  Combined two images, cleaned up background and used nik Color Efex filters Detail Enhancer and Tonal Contrast to bring out details within Blaze and Pepper.

Pinewood Derby

Before I go into today’s photo, I would like to give a big shout-out to the fathers and mothers who work with the cub-scout troop of St. Vincent de Paul school.  They do a great job with the boys.

Now to the Pinewood Derby details. 

At the school, the troop has a shop where all the boys and their adult supporters can go to make the cars for the Pinewood Derby.  The shop has bandsaws, drum sanders and drill presses to help make the cars.  In short, everything that you might need to build a super Pinewood Derby car is there.

As to the track, it looks like something from NASA—polished aluminum with each line individual tested for speed.  The track is supported with a state-of-art computer system that electronically determines the exact time for each car and post it to a screen (car’s and scout’s name, time and equivalent miles per hour).  Pretty cool stuff!

Today’s photo is of the first and second place cars in the Bear den.  These two cars blew everyone else off the track.  Although the Orange Speed (which was built by none other than Cole James Patrick) beat the other car in this heat, the Orange Speed lost the gold medal by 0.002 of a second for the three heats.

In hindsight I probably should have used a higher ISO and shutter speed.  I think that a shutter speed of about 1/1,000^th of a second would have done a much better job of stopping the action.

Congratulations Cole—Great Job!

Enjoy 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 1,600, Nikon 28-300mm f/5.6 at 70mm, f/5.6 and 1/350^th of a second with Nikon SB800 attached to camera

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black point and added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5: Dodged and burned image and sharpened cars using high pass method.

An Evening at the Beach #4

Here Sarah is not posing for me; rather, she is talking to Doug about how he wants her to look.  To me this photo is totally about the light—the golden light on Sarah’s face and the cool blue light on the water. 
I only took one shot of this scene.  I should have definitely worked it.  I think the photo would have been much better if I had moved about four feet to my right and thus shot her almost looking at me.  I think that I would have also liked the shot even more if I had shot somewhat down on Sarah.  Shooting down on her would have brought out more blue in the background and probably would have isolated here more against the background. 
Enjoy  
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, ISO 200, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 75mm, f/6.7 and 1/350^th of a second 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve and increased the saturation of blues and cyans.

An Evening at the Beach #3

Not a lot to say about this photo except that I used some of the same techniques that used in last Friday’s post—although, I did not have an orange gel on my flash which made Lauren’s face look more natural.  Rather than incorporating the sun in the frame, I used Lauren to hide it.  I wanted to maximize the edge lighting on her hair and shoulders. 
Enjoy. 
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm, f/4.8 and 1/750^th of a second. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve and cropped image to 4:5 ratio.

An Evening at the Beach #2

In this photo of Sarah, I wanted to include the setting sun, the fast falloff of light from right to left and yet get some light on Sarah’s face.  
I underexposed the ambient light reading by about four stops and then just splashed some light on Sarah’s face by using a Nikon SB800 with a snoot and an orange gel (to simulate the light of the sunset).  I should have changed my white balance to K3500 to bring out more of the blues in the sky and to reduce the orange on Sarah's face. 
Because of the bright light from the setting sun, I was using such a fast shutter speed that my SB800 was forced to be in high-speed synch mode, which greatly reduces the range of the flash.  The flash was on my camera and I set it to TTL mode.  I must admit, I really do not understand all the decisions my camera and flash make when the flash is set to TTL mode so, for me, it's a hit or miss proposition every time I use TTL.
Enjoy.
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm, f/3.3 and 1/750^th of a second with Nikon SB800 with orange gel attached shot in high-speed synch mode. 
Post Processing: 
Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve and cropped to 4:5 ratio. 
Photoshop CS5:  Dodged and burned various parts of photo, added curves adjustment for contrast and used various nik Colorefex Pro filters.

An Evening at the Beach

Over the holidays, a group photographed Lauren (pictured here) and Sarah down at Galveston beach.   As always, both ladies were beautiful and a joy to photograph.

At sunset, the light was great.  Here, I tried to underexpose the ambient light by about two stops and then just splash some light on Lauren’s face by using a Nikon SB800 with a snoot and an orange gel (to simulate the light of the sunset).  I also made sure that my flash was dialed down by about a stop.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 at 200mm, f/4 and 1/125^th of a second

Post Processing:

Lightroom 3:  Set black point, added contrast with a mild curve.

Photoshop CS5:  Dodged and burned various parts of photo and saturated background color.

Jay Maisel Workshop #16—Lessons Learned

 A lot of people have asked me what lessons I learned in Jay’s workshop.   I learned many, but to me, the most important ones were:

1.  Ultimately photographs are about:  light, color and gesture.  As the artist, I must decide which one is the most important and then work the scene to produce a photo that extracts the element(s) that are important.

2.  Gesture is not limited to just people.  Everything has gesture.  Gesture, in essence, is what makes something unique.  Something worth photographing—texture, smoothness, position within its surroundings, etc.  And gesture always trumps light and color.  If I get the gesture right, light and color will just be supporting actors within the photo.

3.   I am responsible for every pixel within my frame.  It is up to me to select what will be within the photo and what will be outside the photo.  I must take care to make sure that the photo is framed as I want it.

4.  You must work the scene.  I was standing in front of one of Jay’s photos that I really like when Jay walked up. 
Jay: “I remember that one.  I took three shots and this one is my final shot.”
Me:  In three shots, you got that.
Jay:  Yes.  I went there and fired off three shots and that is what I got.  Of course I had been to that location fifty different times, tried for what you see here and I got NOTHING!

5.  You must be your own severest critic.  If you are your own severest critic you will always be looking for that next “portfolio shot”, that next “totally different look”, etc.

Today’s shot is about two things:  the gesture of the beams under the FDR Expressway and working the situation.  The photo was taken early one morning while I was out walking.  I loved the way that the early morning light showed-off the texture, the rhythm and the complexity of the beams.  Because of the dynamic range of the scene I knew that I would have to resort to HDR, so I shot three shots (-2, 0 and +2 EV).  I took four different sets of shots and then moved on.  In hindsight, I realize that there was much more to this scene than I appreciated at the time.  I should have worked the scene much longer and harder.  The photograph is nice but it is not a game changer.  I should have not settled for anything less than a game changer.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Not important

Post Processing:  Not important

Jay Maisel Workshop #15

Jay did not officially critic this photo.  He did, however, look at it on my computer while I was reviewing my shots from the day.  Jay wanted to know why I did not include this one in my selection for the day.  I told him that I was not sure that people would see what I saw in the image.  At which, he said “%@#*! them” !  Jay liked how the image raised questions:  what is going-on? why so much white? who are these guys? 
Anybody have any answers to his question? 
Enjoy. 
Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 170mm, ISO 1,600, f/8 and 1/90^th of a second. 
Post Processing:  None!

Jay Maisel Workshop #14

Jay:  OK, what’s the story here?

Me:  Again, this is at Bryant Park.  I saw this man sitting there lost in his thoughts.  He looked so dignified that I wanted to have a portrait of him lost in his thoughts.  So, I asked if I could take his photo.  I took a couple shots but was not happy with what I was getting.  The background was very distracting.  I moved to my left in order to minimize the distractions.  His expression did not change throughout my ventures.

Jay:  That’s what you did but you did not answer the question “what’s the story here?”

Me:  His name is Lucas.  He has three grown daughters that he reared by himself—his wife died in childbirth with the youngest.  He has worked two to three jobs most of his life.  He is 77 years old and his daughters have told him that he has to stop working and start living.  He said that he thought that he had been living for 77 years.  He did not know what to do.

Jay:  Even though you do not know what the story is, you know that there is a story.  You also want to know the story.  Did you offer him any of your thoughts?

Me:  No.  I think he knows what to do.  He just needed someone to listen to him for a few minutes.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 150mm, ISO 2,200, f/5.6 and 1/350^th of a second.

Post Processing:  None!

Jay Maisel Workshop #13

Jay:  Where did you find this much green in New York City?

Me:  Bryant Park

Jay: Three things make this photo successful.  One, the harmony of the colors.  Two, the soft lighting on her.  And, three, her very pleasant and warm look.  Her eyes are engaging the viewer.  Nice, but I am not sure that I would consider this to be street photography.

Me:  I refer to this type of shot as street portraits because I often move the subject and do some directing.  She was setting in a chair and I just moved the chair to face another direction so that I would have the ivy as my background. 

Jay:  I like the term.  But, I am not sure what criteria I would use to judge it.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 120mm, ISO 1,600, f/5.6 and 1/500^th of a second.

Post Processing:  None!

Jay Maisel Workshop #12

Jay: Really good concept, but you did not hit it out-of-the-park.  If the subject is man crawling out of a hole, then the man must be tack-sharp (which this one is not) and the background elements should be slightly out-of-focus—thus making the man the SUBJECT!  Great perspective—street level.  What the hell were you doing lying on the sidewalk. 
Me:  Yes. 
Jay:  If you are going to go to that trouble, then bring me back a real winner, not this want-to-be idea on paper! 

At this point, Jay talked at some length about working the subject.  He said that a great concept poorly executed produces another bad photo.  You must constantly refine your idea so that you distill it down to only the elements that you consider “the story.”  That may mean that you give up on it today and go back tomorrow—but, you go back until you get what you are seeing in your mind. 

While Jay was talking about refining your photo, my mind wondered to a Joe McNally seminar that I attended with Steve Schuencke.  Joe was working with a female model and the images that were flashing up on the screen were good, but, he keep working it, and finally, a photo flashed up and you hear a collective “wow” from the attendees.  On the way home from the seminar, the only think that Steve and I talked about was Joe working the image. 

Enjoy. 

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 300mm, ISO 1,600, f/11 and 1/180^th of a second. 

Post Processing:  None!

Jay Maisel Workshop #11

Jay like this photo because it zeroed into what was important—her suspicious eying me—yet still provided adequate context as to what was going-on.  Jay did say that this might have been a time where he would have opened-up the lens to f/5.6 to blur as much as possible around her eye. The lady’s name is Juda and she is an camera-woman who works with independent film makers in New York.  We talked before I took any photos of her.  She gave me permission to photograph her, but did not want me to interrupt the filming that she was doing.  So, I tried to stay as far away from her as possible during my shots.

I wanted the photo to be totally about how she was eying me.

Enjoy.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/3.5-5.6 at 180mm, ISO 1,000, f/8 and 1/180^th of a second.

Post Processing:  None!

Happy Thanksgiving

As always, the Patrick’s have a lot to be thankful for—our wonderful son and special daughter, our three great grandchildren, Cole, Chloe and Cameron, our many friends and our good health.

Janice and I are also thankful this year for our newest members of our family—Blaze and Pepper.  They have been with us a little over a week but they have firmly cemented themselves as members of the family—all 2 pounds 3 ounces of Pepper and all 2 pounds 5 ounces of Blaze.

All three of our grandchildren have played at the base of our kitchen table so it is only fitting that Blaze and Pepper also do so.  Da’Girls are a real joy.  Although we have papers saying that Pepper is 100% toy poodle, I know that she is really 50% toy poodle and 50% turkey.  She is everywhere and into everything.  Blaze on the other hand is Miss Sweetie, most of the time.   Of course there are times that Blaze thinks that she has to act like her sister.  Janice and I have spent many hours playing with them and watching them run around our house.

In the photo, Pepper is on the left and Blaze, who has a little white on her chest and the tips of both of her back feet, is on the right.

Enjoy and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 at 50mm, ISO 1,600, f/6.7 and 1/30^th of a second with a Nikon SB800 using a LumQuest 20/80 attached.

Post Processing:

Lightroom:  Set black and white point, added contrast.