On Assignment: 5-Minute Test Shot

As I was heading home from work the other day, I was getting into the elevator at work as my boss and a features photo editor were getting out.

"I am down to one project," I mentioned to them. "You got anything?"

(I like having a few things going at once, in different stages of development. So I am not shy about asking what may be available to stick in the pipeline.)

"I got a food shoot next week," the picture editor said.

It's not a project, but it is a one-shot deal that I can hit with a little advance thinking, so I'll take it. I'd tell you what it is, but it's not cool to give any local competition a heads-up as to what we have in the on-deck circle. But it's a basic food item, which will need a tabletop illustration.

And for the purposes of this post, it really does not matter what it is, anyway. The point is that I spent the rest of the 30-minute drive home figuring out how I wanted to shoot it.

I decided to try out the technique of light painting for the first time. I've seen lots of cool stuff done with it, and this subject could use a little visual dressing up.

Long story short, after dinner I am in the darkened upstairs hall of my house with my camera on a tripod and a Nikon SB-800 speedlight in my hands.

The Nikon SB-800 has a neat "modeling light," which is really about a 100hz stroboscopic flash function. The flashes fire so fast that it effectively turns the flash into a very powerful flashlight that lights up for about a second at a time.

What I wanted to do was to very quickly test this modeling light function to see if it would work for light painting a small object. So I shot a tennis shoe in the dark at f/11 for 30 secs at ASA 200 and played with the strobe, aiming it at the sneaker and firing bursts from a variety of directions during the 30-sec exposures.

The goal here is not to make a great photo. It was to quickly test a "proof-of-concept" to confirm that the flash could be used as a light source for light painting small objects.

I made four frames in about 5 minutes, refining my technique every time. They are represented by the four-shot montage at top. They are in order -1, 2 are at the top; 3, 4 are on the bottom. The first shot was overexposed because (1) I was working without a meter, and (2) a meter would not have been very helpful anyway, given the number of variables in a moving lightsource time exposure.

The idea is to get it reasonably close, and then quickly zero in on what you want.

By the time I had shot fourth frame, I was confident that I could get a nice photo out of the technique by using the SB-800 as a light painting wand. It's surprisingly easy to get a cool, 3-d type of look with just the one small lightsource.

So I put my gear away and began the more difficult process of convincing my 5-year-old that taking a bath would actually be in his best interest for the evening.

(That's rather like presenting an argument before the Supreme Court.)

Getting the technique down enough to prove it will work left me with figuring out just what look I want for the final food shot, and how I will go about getting it.

Which is what I am thinking about right now.

Always think of a big problem as a series of easily solvable smaller problems. Just crank through the little issues, one by one, and the photos will fall into place.

I can't wait to play with the technique at length. And I will post the food picture after it is shot and published.

Next: Shiny, Pretty Things

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Boot Camp Assignment #2: Background Check

Okay, so you've got a headshot under your belt. It's a good start, and I hope it has provided the kick in the pants many of you needed to get up and actually start doing some of this stuff.

The vast majority of you did quite well on the first assignment. And I think most of the misses can be attributed to aiming too high, as far as complexity of the photo was concerned.

The most important lessons to have gleaned from assignment #1 would be:

1) Show up with your best effort. Even on those little, "try-you-on-for-size" assignments.

2) Aim for the headshot sweet spot: Keep it simple enough to look great it runs tiny, but elegant enough to hold as a cover.

3) Don't wait until the last nanosecond to start your assignment. (heh, heh...)

Boot Camp assignment #2 will require just a little advance planning. It will make use of one of my very favorite back-pocket tricks, and I hope that you will find some value in the technique.

But before we get to the background assignment, I would like to give you a little background on finding (and using) a suitable collection of backgrounds. (Can you tell I am writing this after a long day at work?)

When we did the sunset portrait in On Assignment, the idea was to think of a sunset as a unique, custom background delivered to you for free every evening.

But sunsets are unpredictable. The serendipity of an unpredictable sunset adds to its beauty, of course. But there are times when you need to know exactly what you are going to get. Sometimes sunsets just don't materialize very well. And many times they might not be appropriate for a particular assignment.

When most people think of setting up lights and shooting in front of a background, they tend to picture a photog in a studio, shooting in front of a big piece of paper. Savage is one of the most popular brands. I'll admit to having gone through quite a bit of "Savage Thunder Grey" in my day, before pretty much swearing off of the stuff.

I have nothing against paper backgrounds, per se. It's just that they are so, well, boring. It just fits right in with that "lighting-is-something-you-do-in-a-studio" ethic that I have come to see as needlessly constricting and expensive. And the background paper itself ain't cheap, either.

About ten years ago, it occurred to me that there were literally hundreds of much more interesting backgrounds within 30 minutes of my house, just waiting to be shot against. Not only were they free, but I didn't even have to find some way to store them when they were not being used.

After realizing that this resource was there for the exploiting, I began to look at many ordinary scenes in completely new ways. I began to shoot snapshots of brick walls, rock walls, old barns, public murals (I love those) and many other interesting, varied, textured surfaces that eventually became my own little private collection of layers of interest for my future photos.

I keep them all in a little folder on my laptop. I give them coded filenames that tell me everything I need to remember about them.

For instance, a filename for a nice, textured building surface photo might be:

N_820CharlesBalt_PU.jpg

There's a lot of info there. First and most important, the "N" stands for "North," which is my favorite direction for the background to be facing. I am in the Northern hemisphere, so a north-facing wall is in shadow anytime of the day (as the sun arcs across the southern sky for me.) You Southern hemisphere folks will perfer the south-facing facades.

East and West facades are most useful in evening and morning, respectively, as they are in shadow during those times. Shadow/shade is useful because the light will be even. And it'll be knocked down a couple of stops, which makes lighting much easier with low-powered flashes. And, if you warm up your flash, the cooler-colored light in the shade on the background provides another layer of color contrast separation in the photo,

Next is "820CharlesBalt," which tells me the address and city. (This address is made-up, for you Baltimore readers. No headstart for you.)

Last is PU, which is short for "public" - easy access. "PR" would mean "private," which is fine, but that is just another permission hoop to jump through. Some backgrounds are worth it, though. And if you ask nicely, most owners are flattered.

This brings up the point of whether or not you have permission to shoot in a city locale. Big cities like New York, Paris, etc., (and even many second-tier cities) have permit requirements for shooting on public streets. While it is another layer of hassle, I do not want to hear anyone moaning that they live in Paris/London/Tokyo/etc., and that this is a huge disagvantage.

You have tons more choices that the rest of us, so quit your whining. Be creative. Use inconspicuous lighting gear. (Maybe have someone hold your small flash instead of using a stand.) Shoot early morning. Head to the suburbs, out of the city proper. Be adaptable to your limitations.

Once you start cataloging all that your city, town or rural environment has to offer you as a thinking, planning photographer, you will likely be amazed at the possibilities. And you will wonder why you hadn't been doing this all along.

So now that you have a cool background or 20, what are you going to do with it?

The easy way is to use one softened light and shoot one or two stops over the ambient. Late even or early morning gets you lower ambient (and easier overpowering) if you need it.

You'll have a few decisions to make. Hard light or soft? Close enough to the background to incorporate the subject's shadow - or not?

And, if you have the ability, one light or two?

This is where that second light can really pay off. Lighting your subject and the background separately can give you loads of control.

To visualize this, (and I actually want you to do that right now) think of the background light first. Place the light right behind your subject. They will conveniently block it from the camera's view, providing they are not Calista Flockhart or one of the 23-lb Olsen twins.

Now, with the light firing just to the cool background you found, you have created a silhouette of your subject. Even here, you have lots of possibilities. Warm colored background light? Cool? Even? Zoomed-in-center-hotspot? You get the idea. And that is before you have started to choose how you will define your subject with the other light.

And using just one light can get you some cool stuff, too. How far above the ambient will you shoot? Or will you let the flash light the background, too? What about a hard-angled, snooted light to bring out the texture of a subject directly against a rough background?

Remember that the ratio of the flash-to-subject distance to the flash-to-background distance will determine how bright the background is, compared to the subject. Total control, even not taking daylight into account. Read through some of the Lighting 101 posts on balancing strobe if you need a refresher.

Want to completely nuke the daylight? Wait twelve hours after your little sunny problem and I assure you that overpowering the ambient will not be a problem.

And night street lighting provides enough light to focus by, while being easy to completely overpower with small flash.

"But Dave, where are the examples? We need some examples!"

Nope.

I am not trotting out five or six good idea just to have you guys ape one of them and not have to think on your own. That's kind of the whole point here.

Heck, I might even shoot this one myself. Haven't decided yet. (I do have so much free time, you know...)

So, Phil Phlashen, here is your assignment:

Need editorial portait of Pat Coolwall.

Will run full page in magazine, so shoot vertical. Photo will run on a left-hand page, so assume that when composing. Please light it.

We have color on the page, so color is highly preferable, but not required. If you shoot black and white, you'd better "wow" us.

Framing can be anything from waist-up to full body. No tight headshots, please, as it will run full page. try for high impact, good lighting, strong engagement between the subject and the viewer. The reader should feel that they know something about Pat after seeing this photo.

As always, if in doubt, keep it simple.

Deadline is 7/16/06, 11:59pm your local time.

Tags are:

strobistbootcamp
background
amateur (or pro)
(your country)

I have set up a during-the-assignment discussion thread, here.

I gave you a lot more info this time. And having seen the headshot process, you should have a good idea of what to expect.

Above all, have fun.

-DH

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Look, Ma! We Got A Discussion Board...

Those of you who have not yet moseyed on over to the Flickr Strobist yakkin' board are missing out.

The discussion board has pretty much morphed into a quasi-site of its own.

As of this posting, there are over 100 discussion threads, including things like the afore-mentioned headshot discussion thread, a thread on those "cheapo" eBay radio synch triggers (which I have not yet tried but apparently are pretty darn ok for the money) and even a thread on a (possible) future Strobist seminar/workshop.

You got questions? Post them there.

Rants? You won't be the first.

Answers? Always appreciated.

And at free, it's worth every penny.

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Headshot Assignment Discussion

First of all, I have to say that I have to say that am floored by the results from the first Boot Camp assignment.

You guys clearly gave this one a lot of thought. (Not doing that is the easist way to screw up a headshot assignment and never get called back to work for a publication again, by the way.)

You can see (most) all of the entries here.

I went through and ticked off a selection of photos that I thought were done particularly well, here.

You'll note that many of the more ambitious versions were not among that group. That is certainly not a knock against them, either. When I was collecting a group to use as examples, I went (mostly) with photos that were clean, simple and would have looked just fine if run very small. (It happens a lot.)

Many of the other photos were more complex. And some were very well executed, by the way. The would have worked very well as full-page covers, or even full- or double-truck inside lede photos. (Some of you guys do like to get ahead of me, I have noticed.)

The dozen that I stuck up top on Strobist were some of the ones that struck me as being very versatile photos. With the exception of the second from the bottom on the left (which I really liked) they all read very well, even though they are repro'd at only about 1 cm square, and have been cropped to squares by a thoughtless machine on Flickr.

It is a testament to this group that a designer could probably not destroy their impact if they tried. (And sometimes, I suspect they do just that...)

I am going to pull up a few examples here, and will link directly to the thumbnails on Flickr to save space. Please leave them up on Flickr, if you would, to avoid future broken links.

The "Screw the Assignment, I Like My Photo" award goes to:


I love this photo. It ain't a headshot. But I can empathize with a dad who comes up with the surpise gift of a nice shot of himself and his daughter. I'd rather have one of those than a well-exectuted blog/website/photoschool/sort-of assignment. :) If you continue the series, I wanna see you work in color some, too.

The "Creative Avoidance of Submitting Just One Photo" award goes to:


For a trio of photos which look like they could have been done by the late Richard Avedon himself.

This person actually used film - four-by-five film - and the tonal range on these were outstanding. Click on it to get to larger sizes for its true impact.

I know I said that we were gonna try to do these in color. But my reasoning behind that was that I did not want you guys to be able to fix your color-balancing screw-ups by just de-saturating down to black and white. This photo was no color cop out.

The "Inside Lede Disguised as a Headshot" award goes to:


This photo would look great at a half page, or spread across two pages. I'm trying to start you guys simple enough to bring everyone along, and some of you guys are way ahead of the pack. I'll be expecting great things from those same people when the assignments get tricker...

The "How Dare Your Run This one Small" award goes to:


This picture needs space to read, but it is worth the space. This was one that could have been bumped to a cover, but would not read well if run very small (see up top.) You'd want to cover yourself with something simpler (with respect to the partially hidden face) so you would not piss off the designer by hitting too far above what the assignment called for.

The "You Did Say This Was For an Arthouse Magazine, Right?" award goes to:



Who would likely also get called back for a second assignment - provided they backed this up with some more standard headshots in case it needed to run like, well, a headshot...

The "I'd Really Rather Be Shooting CD Covers" award goes to:


Which makes me hope he/she has not used up his/her one good idea for this genre. They may need another idea for a subsequent assignment...

The "Can We Bring the Dog, Too?" award goes to:


For their off-the-scale cute photo with the dog. If the assignment is for Dog World Magazine, you're in. Otherwise...

And the one that stood out (to me, anyway) as the most versatile photo was:


This would work just fine as a headshot. It reads fine at 1 cm x 1 cm (see up top.) It would work well as an inside portrait at just about any size. It could hold as a cover.

This picture says, "I know you just hired me for a headshot, but I can do it all."

It is the equivalent of the restrained, yet tantalizing, good night kiss at the end of the first date.

Darn near irresistible, for a second assignement callback.

All that said, I would very much like to post and comment on every single picture that was entered. But I would also like to get, say, 6-7 hours' sleep every night, too.

We had nearly 200 total entries (I looked through all of the URL-posted, "mine is not in the pool" entries, too) and I am barely treading water (as far as time goes) with this blog, family time and work as it is. So this is what I hope is just the beginning of the after-action discussion.

And I very much hope that you will continue it here.

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Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls

Wow.

It's headshot heaven over at Flickr's Strobist Group. True to form, the procrastinators are coming through in spades at the 11th hour.

Take a look at the group's effort thus far if you haven't, and see what a broad and hard-working bunch you guys are. I am heartened to see such an enthusiastic response and am looking forward to the follow-up discussion and the more challenging assignments.

Remember to drop them in before midnight tonight. And don't forget the tags.

There are quite a few headshots in there without the necessary tags. I hope these are dupes from people who have already entered their first choice. Please take a moment to check your photo.

A reminder - the tags for this asignment are:

• strobistbootcamp (one word)
• headshot (one word)
• pro (or amateur)
• (your country)
• (any additional tags you would like)

EDIT: Someone in the discussion section brought up a good point. Please remember to post some info in the comment section (of your own photo) of just how you lit the headshot, too. That is, uh, sort of the point here...)

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Off The Rack: Bicycling, July 2006

Between assignments I tend to hang out at libraries, bookstores and any place else I might find a decent magazine rack.

It's a constantly renewed source of visual stimulation. I live in the suburbs of Baltimore, MD, so I do not have nearly the magazine diversity someone who lives in, say, New York City might get. But there is still a good new crop of ideas to file away every month.

This is something I have done out of habit for twenty years or so. But it occurred to me that some of you might not have thought of this in the same way. So I am going to start including a few of these on Strobist.

The first Off The Rack example is from Bicycling Magazine's July 2006 cover, which was shot by Patrik Giardino. Please take a few minutes to check out this guy's website. He is really cranking some powerful and elegant light in his sports/lifestyle genre of photography.

Before I get into the particulars of this one, I want to back up and go into some detail on why trolling the mags can be so beneficial.

First of all, if you have been working your way through Lighting 101 and On Assignment, you should have a pretty good handle on reverse-engineering light. This is one skill you can really improve by regularly scanning the magazine racks.

Better yet, what you are seeing is a distillation of visual ideas that has risen to the top of the barrel by virtue of the cover photo selection process at each individual magazine.

I would remind you that magazine covers are not the end-all, as far as photos go. They tend to be quick-read, iconic images. Their primary purpose is to try to grab the reader's attention in about a tenth of a second. But much of that stopping power can frequently be attributed to killer light, so they are worth studying.

And the web being what it is, it is easy to look at the cover photog's credit, jot down their name, and be cruising their portfolio in five minutes to get even more inspiration.

Notice that I said inspiration.

This is not about ripping off cover shots. It is about constantly seeing how other photographers have solved visual problems - and training your mind to think in a way that will give you that same ability.

Take Bicycling Magazine, for example. They have to come up with a stopper, vertical, room-left-for-type photo of a person on a bike every month. How's that for working hard to stay out of a rut?

Even worse, how would you like to be the art director for "Oprah" magazine? Same format, every month. Portrait, every month.

Same person on the cover, every month.

Hey, don't get me wrong. I like Oprah. But after about 6 months of choosing photos of her for the every single cover of that magazine, I would begin to feel an itch on the roof of my mouth that only the cold steel of a gun barrel could scratch.

Okay, let's take a look at this Bicycling Magazine example, and see what we can glean from it.

The first thing I like to do, assuming a photo has grabbed my attention, is to imagine that I am in the process of taking it. That facilitates the reverse engineering process and also helps me to try to imagine what curve balls the photog had to overcome.

All right, let's look at the light. Regular readers will notice a familiar lighting pattern. If you remember, I used a stripped down version of that in a cover photo for Varsity a couple of months ago. It's two hard lights, one on each side (and behind) the subject.

Since the lights are hard, you could do this with small strobes. No light-sucking softboxes or umbrellas here. So this idea is very applicable to us cheapskate SB-types.

So, now you have your aiming-back-at-the-camera cross lights set up. How do we control glare? We snoot them, of course.

But doing this kind of thing is tricky enough for many people when the subject is standing still, right? And this biker is not just cruising down the street. He is hauling butt.

How would you handle this?

If I am looking to get this photo, I would set up some sort of small marker on the road. Probably in the photo, but it would not appear in the final crop.

This is a simple little technique that gives a shooter an immense amount of control and predictability. And I'd bet dollars to donuts that Giardino used some version of this trick.

Now, we have a small pebble put in the road, right in the sweet spot of the light. Focus on it. Then we have the bike racer do about a bazillion runs right through the chute, and fire right when the front wheel gets to the pebble. (I'd time it for the front wheel to compensate for the lag time of my old, tired brain and trigger finger. You'd have to check out your screen on the back of your camera and adjust, most likely.)

The pebble gives us perfect timing, light and focus - every time. No autofocus needed. The guy also gets shot just as he gets into the sweet spot of the light. The only remaining variable is where the guy's feet are on the pedals when we shoot. I'd be looking for one of the feet moving through the power portion of the cycle - just coming around the top. Just like the magazine chose.

That last variable is solved by repetition. That's why you use multiple runs. Lots of them. If you have everything else nailed down, the repetition will give you choices on pedal location and facial expression. Nail down what you can control, and shoot through what you can't. It really works.

The photo is also shot at a low angle, which makes the biker look that much more powerful and gives the designer a nice, clean, blue background to set type against.

Presto: Killer, three-dimensional biker photo.

And, BTW, sorry about the bad copy shot. This being the last days of June, the July Bicycling issue is yesterday's news. I had seen it a couple of weeks ago when I got the idea to start reverse-engineering some magazine covers. And by the time I got a chance to actually do it I had to scrounge at the library to find a copy. So it was a quick grab with no lights or glass cover.

Now go check out Giardino's website and see what else he is up to.

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Lighting 101: Two of My Favorite (if a Little Unusual) Light Mods

Photo by Strobist reader James Madelin

While we are on the subject of the quality of light, here are two of my favorite light modifiers for creating interesting light for portraits. I use them a lot—both individually and combined with each other.

The first is a ring flash adapter. A ring flash is a donut-shaped flash, with your lens sticking into what would be the hole of the donut. This allows the light to come from all around the lens axis, which does a couple of things.

First, it makes smooth, shadowless light (on the subject at least). Second, it creates a unique, signature shadow on any wall or backdrop that might be directly behind the subject.

You have probably seen that look before in fashion and or modern portrait photography. Now you know how it was done.

Real, professional ring flashes are… very expensive. But you can turn your garden-variety speedlight into a ring flash for a lot less with something called a ring flash adapter. Essentially, these are very sophisticated reflectors that bend light around your lens before releasing it.

My favorite of the ring flash adapters is something called an Orbis (seen above). I like it because it is the only model of ring flash adapter on the market which (a) can be used with nearly any hot-shoe style flash, and (b) has a better quality of light than the others.

I use it a lot, both by itself and in combination with other lights. It was invented by James Madelin, a long-time reader of this site. As such, he has set up a tutorial/special offer page where Strobist readers get free shipping and 10% off, here. (Thanks, James!)

In the montage above, shot by Strobist reader Ed McGowan, you can see how a ring flash adapter can quickly give a cool look/theme to a series of portraits. It's a unique vibe, which works well on its own. But I tend to also use a ring flash in conjunction with other lights. (More on that in a minute.)


Little Bitty Soft Box

A soft box is simply a box that emits light. They usually run from 2x2 feet to as big as 4x6 feet. But filling a box that big is a lot to ask in terms of power when using speedlights.

So another of my most-used light modifiers is a tiny (as in 8x9 inches) version of a soft box, which happens to be very useful for lighting portraits from up close. That's it above, providing the light for a self-portrait. (As you can see, I like to experiment with my light mods…)

But these things are super useful. Take this photo, for example. The small soft box is being held just out of the frame to the left, and is what is responsible for the great quality of light sculpting his face.

Soft boxes of this size also fold down to almost nothing (8x9", and maybe half an inch deep) so they pack great. They are also very inexpensive. My favorite tiny box is the LumiQuest Soft Box III (AKA SB-III). I use the crap out of this mod—especially for close-in portraiture.


Just Like a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup

Often when I photograph people, I am working quickly and with very lightweight gear. And I frequently use the Orbis and the Soft Box III in combination. These last two photos are all good examples of that.

Seen above, I photographed poet Linda Joy Burke using a flash with an SB-III as my "key" (or "main") light off to the left. For fill light, to get that very controlled intensity of shadow, I used a second flash with an Orbis Ring flash Adapter.

Ditto this portrait of blogger Siany Meades, shot in London. Same combo, same general light locations, actually. This was shot in a shaded courtyard but the light(s) gave me the ability to create a little sultry late-afternoon style light.
__________


So, lots of cool toys and gear to think about to get your mind spinning. But now, let's take a moment to learn about balancing the light from your flash with the existing ambient light.

For most people, this will be when you start to really see the control you get from learning to use your small flash like a professional…


Next: Balancing Flash and Ambient, Pt. 1

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