Shooting Zombies

Maybe I should have titled this post "How to make halloween photos pop" but that sounds rather boring and somewhat textbook.  Plus Zombies are all the rage these days.  Now if you encounter a real zombie, I would suggest that you run, rather than risk getting caught trying to take a picture.  Can zombie pictures even be seen?  Now I am getting confused with vampires.

How about we move on the the actual subject (finally) of the blog today.  Taking pictures of your kids or significant other in a costume.  How do you get the picture and make them look scary?  If your child is a princess, that is another blog.  If your child or boyfriend, husband, girlfriend, or wife is a vampire, mummy, frankenstein, ghoul, zombie or any other type of creature that goes BUMP in the night, why not take a picture of them that actually looks scary...and cool?

The secret is...lighting.  Shhh don't tell everybody, then all the moms will have pictures of their little creatures with cool effects.  Remember putting a flashlight under your chin for weird effects when you were a kid.  Well, that's creative lighting.  Look at a couple of examples.  Again, you have to look at me as the model.

This is me looking normal.  Well I mean the lighting is normal (although I think I look like George Clooney).  In other words, it is just me, in front of a black background, with a light directly in front of me.  The same effect you would get with a cellphone or small camera with an on-camera flash set on automatic.

Same model, same camera, same room, same backdrop.  What's different?  I turned off the camera flash and put a lamp below me pointing straight up at my chin.  I also got close to the camera and scowled a bit.  Make sure you set your camera for nighttime shooting and turn the flash off.  you will need a fairly strong lamp or light source or you will get blurry pictures, which are sometimes good too for that "ghostly apparition" look.

Here is another one lit from below.  Have the subject move their head around and try different lights and angles.

In this one I was trying to make myself look ghostly.  I desaturated my shirt in Photoshop to lose the color, but the rest of the effect is all lighting.  This effect is achieved by using several light sources, lamps, or flash units work equally well, to put lots of diffused light on me, but not the background.







Play around with lighting when shooting goblins. Remember, the only real difference in any of the above shots was the changes in the lighting.  Stay tuned for more Halloween photo tips.  Coming soon -- How to shoot a jack-o-lantern.



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Make your own backdrop

Have you ever wanted to take a portrait of someone and you want a particular color for the background?  It happens to photographers all the time.  Few professional photographers and no average hobbyist carries 20 different colors of backdrop with them.  Or do they?  If you have a white wall and some ingenuity you can make a background of many colors.  

Let me explain.  

This is a headshot of me.  Pay no attention to how bad I look or the strange expressions on my face in these shots.  I was the only model I could get cheap and on short notice.  The important thing here is the background.

None of the backgrounds were Photoshopped in any way, all the changes are strictly from the lighting.

I am just standing in front of a piece of white foam board clamped to a light stand but a white wall works even better.  A white sheet hung from a wall or draped over a pipe works in a pinch, but be aware that every wrinkle will show.  So this is just plain lighting on me and a flash on the background.  You can use a strong lamp on the background.  Nothing fancy here, but the shot is desirable because I stand out from the background.  It is clean and white.

This is what happens if you turn off the light on the background.  The white wall turns grey.  This is due to the fall-off of the light.  If I sped up the shutter speed or closed my f-stop I could make the background go to black.



But what if you don't want, black, white or grey?

Nothing changed with this photo from the first one except I laid a small piece of blue plastic called a gel, on my background light source.  In my case it was a small flash unit but if you are using a lamp, think about scarves, or a piece of colored plastic used for wrapping presents or kids Easter baskets.  Nothing changed for this shot except that i bent down and put the blue plastic on the flash.






.

The results are limitless, as long as you don't run out of colored scarves or plastic,
here's one in red.

This one is green, but a very light green.  I think you get the idea, now go get your camera and practice.  If you have kids or a spouse, you won't have resort to self-portraits.

















If you have any questions about this technique or would like to know more details, contact me via e-mail, phone call, Facebook, or Twitter.  All the links are on my website.


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Environmental what?

I was at a meeting today of Charlotte business owners.  This is a great group of people with one thing in common.  We are all business owners and we all want more business.  I am the only photographer in the group, which is good because I have all the photographic questions to myself.  On the other hand, it would be nice to have another photog to bounce questions and ideas (or as my wife calls them, hair-brained schemes) off of.  

In the course of today's meeting, it came up several times that there are many ways to promote your business these days and most of them are electronic in nature.  Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or just your  old fashioned website, everybody wants to stand out and draw in customers.  

I am a big believer (obviously) in good photography on websites.  Nothing turns me off more than to look at a website with poor, grainy pictures that were obviously taken with a cheap point-and-shoot or with a cell phone.  Maybe it's just me but I would think a few dollars spent on high quality photos would pay dividends quickly when people visit your site.  I was asked many times what type of photography I do and the answer that always makes them turn their head like a dog hearing a high pitched noise is when I say environmental portraits.  What's that, they always ask.  

An environmental portrait is a portrait of a business owner, or worker in their everyday work environment, doing their everyday tasks.  It looks good to see the person in their "natural" environment and lends legitimacy to what they are doing and also how they are doing it.  The public thinks a person knows how to do the job better simply by seeing a photo of them doing it.  A picture of a plumber fixing a sink, or standing beside their truck gets much higher scores from focus groups than the same plumber in a standard headshot in front of a standard backdrop.

Here are a couple of environmental portraits that demonstrate the concept.


click any picture for a larger image.

This is Chris, a massage therapist, he's the owner of "Knead to Relax" I had shot a number of photos of Chris and the massage room but none of them were looking any good to me.  I said to him, "how about you jump up on the massage table".  He did and I liked this much better than the standard headshots and the pictures of just the room and the table that we had been doing.

This is Steve, the owner of Pandemic Printworks.  I took this shot at his grand opening as he was demonstrating how to screen print tee shirts.  Nothing special about the composition, but, it shows the owner, doing what he does best.  The colors pop, the machinery is cool, and there is a great place for a logo right in the center of the picture.




If you're looking for a way to promote your business, think about moving away from the old fashioned 8 X 10 glossy headshot framed on the wall and look to your environment for some answers.


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Through the lens

In this case I'm talking about a Tamron 18-270 zoom.  I acquired this lens from a friend that bought it for his wife.  She quickly found the major flaw for the casual shooter.  This lens is heavy.  If you mount this monster to your average DSLR it becomes very "lens heavy".  This is not a problem for me, but the average hobbyist may not like it. 

On to the performance.  I love this lens.  It has quickly become my go to glass for events.  I can easily take wide crowd shots or zoom in on the action. 

I took this picture of Senator Marco Rubio the other day at a rally.  I was probably 100 feet from the stage and this is cropped only slightly. 

Same rally, I was standing in the same spot.  This is pulled all the way back to 18mm to show the crowd and the venue.

It's not a do-all lens and it has some drawbacks.  It's not full frame so if you have a FX sensor it's not for you.  It is slow - at f 3.5-6.3 you are somewhat limited.  On the plus side, it focuses fast and smoothly, zooms quietly and smoothly, and just feels substantial.  The vibration control works well.  I haven't noticed much "softness" even in close zooms.

Here is a test I did with a tripod and a coffee can.  This is totally straight out of the camera with no post processing.  this is at 18mm.

The only thing that moved for this shot was the zoom.  This is 270mm.













So if you are looking for a DX lens that can do it all...well that may not exist, but, the Tamron 18-270 does a pretty good job.  Street price is about $650 which is not bad for all that glass.  If you don't need something quite so extreme, then look at a 28-80 which can be had for a lot less money. 


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Little things mean a lot

I was taking pictures today of a room in my aunt's home.  We had done quite a bit of work and i wanted some good pictures for family and friends to see how good her house looks now.  In the course of looking at the pictures later I realized that, as always, some of the pictures were better than others.  This room was hard to shoot for several reasons. 

The biggest problem is a giant 12 foot wide by 6 foot high picture window.  I didn't want to close the blinds because I wanted to get some of the outdoors into the room.  The light was great but there was too much of it and it overpowered the shot.  If I stopped down to tame the window, then the room was too dark.  The on camera flash made too many harsh shadows in all the wrong places.  One other problem was the small amount here and there of clutter.  Each table and the desk had a few pieces of paper and scissors, and old mail etc...strewn about. 

With a small amount of de-cluttering, and help from my talented wife in artfully placing a few plants, pillows, magazines and throw blankets here and there, the room looked magazine ready.  Add a few off-camera flash units to light the corners and the finished product turned out good.  What's the moral of the story?  If you are shooting a room spend the time to look hard around, move clutter, dust and vacuum if you need to.  Think about lighting, shadows and color.  Even with a cellphone or point-and-shoot camera, the room can look a lot better with a little thought and some staging beforehand.   

Here are a couple before and after shots of the room.  The changes are subtle but important.

Click on any picture for a larger image.

Not bad, but the window is way too bright and there is some clutter on the table.  A lamp is out of place and some of the shelves are cluttered.

Almost the same shot just a few minutes later.  I took a step or two back, tamed the window light a little bit by using a smaller aperture.  My wife moved the lamp, added a candy dish and some pillows.

 Same as the other view.  This is before the "tweaking"

 After the "tweaking" notice the subtle changes.














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What's Your Exposure?

I'm thinking about long shutter speeds.  What can a shutter speed do for your creativity?  Think about it.  Any time you want to stop motion or "freeze" action you use a fast shutter speed.  Some cameras can go as low as 1/8000 of a second.  Mine goes to 1/5000.  I remember my first SLR only went to 1/500 and I thought that was pretty fast.  If a fast shutter speed stops motion then a slow or long shutter speed would show the action.  The way a camera shows action by use of a slow shutter speed is with blur.  If you are taking picture of a runner or a waterfall and you use a speed of 1/10 of a second then you will get a picture where the runner or the water is blurred.  Assuming you use a tripod then the rest of the shot will be clear.  More about this type of photography in another post.  Today I am concentrating on holding the shutter open and taking pictures of light, at night or in the dark.  The main thing that people like to shoot in this manner is fireworks.  Almost all cameras today have a "fireworks" mode that turns off the flash and holds the shutter open for a longer time than usual.

Click on any picture for a larger image.

Here is an example. This was shot, hand-held, at about a 10 second exposure.  The key is to hold the camera as still as possible. 

This shot was an accident.  I was going to take a picture of our Christmas tree and meant to set the exposure at 1/20 of a second.  Instead I set it on 20 seconds.  When I realized my mistake, I just held the camera, but my shake caused the light trails from the lights.  My daughter loves this one so much, I gave her a 20 X 30 print of it.

This is our fireplace.  The camera was on a tripod and the exposure was about 10 seconds.  I love the trails that the embers make as they pop out of the fire.

This one was on purpose.  I put the camera on a tripod and using a zoom lens, I opened the shutter and with it open, I simply zoomed from 18 to 270 mm.  It took several tries but I think this is pretty cool.

















Keep trying "crazy" things.  Most phones have apps available that will allow you to do all kinds of effects and most point-and-shoot cameras have a fireworks setting.  Read your manual and try a few things.  Who knows, your "accidents" may turn out to be your best shots yet.


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Before and After

Before and after...I'm talking about Photoshop.  Photoshop is the darkroom of our time.  I used to spend hours in my darkroom trying to figure out ways to change things in a photograph.  Need the shadows to be darker or lighter?  Need more light, or less, in one place or another?  Need a tree removed from a landscape?  We used to do all these things and more, in the darkroom, by means of dodging, burning, cropping.  We would retouch negatives and take out blemishes and dust spots by using soft pencils and erasers.  

Today's equivalent of the darkroom, on steroids, is Photoshop.  Just the name Photoshop has taken on an almost generic quality.  Like Kleenex to mean any tissue, or if you are old enough, Kodak to mean any camera.  Photoshop is a program developed and sold by Adobe, but people use the term to mean any post processing.  It is even used as a verb, "it's OK, I'll just Photoshop it out later"  While processing hundreds of files is always the thing that pros complain about, I actually like doing it.  Seeing the potential in a shot, making a good shot great or a bad shot better.  

I take pride in presenting a shot that doesn't looked like it has been "Photoshopped".  Maybe it has something to do with all those hours, I used to spend in the darkroom.

Here are a couple of before and after shots that may be interesting.

click on any picture for a larger image

This is a nice shot of the happy couple at a wedding.  I liked the expressions on their faces, but the venue was a little dark and shadowy, and there are a lot of distractions in the background.  I also took the picture with them too close to the back wall so the shadows are too prominent.  I hated the light on the wall over the bride's head as well

Here is the exact same shot.  All I did was remove the background distractions in Photoshop and add a light vignette.  All you see now is the lovely bride and handsome groom.














click any picture for a larger image

This is a shot of Father Michael of Holy Trinity Church in Charlotte.  I took it in a classroom in the church with the standard fluorescent lighting in a quick 3 second, snapshot style.  Not too flattering and the pose is awkward.

This is the same shot as above.  I converted it to black and white then removed the name tag from his coat and the pen from his pocket.  I also cropped it to enhance the subject and lose some of the extraneous background, which I darkened slightly. 














I always enjoy these "before and after" kind of things and I will make it a point to post more in the future.  In the meantime, if you have questions about Photoshop or composition in general or just about anything, feel free to comment, or E-mail me.



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