Portraits Take Time : For Katie

Just hung out with my friend Alan Brusky of Fireleaf Design at the studio. He had asked me if I would help make an image of his sister in law, Katie while she was visiting here in Tampa. I figured this could be pretty cool, and to help a friend.. double bonus!

One of the things that got me excited about this was that Katie had never been into a “photo shoot” before. This would mean that this gives me the option to be able to practice something I love with someone who has had no experience being “talked to” by a photographer. I believe that every photographer out there has a bedside manner. Depending on how that bedside manner is – you’ll survive or fail a portrait session. We’ll talk about that one another time. So.. this would be her first time modeling.. with a stranger. Neat!

So, why am I writing this post? Well its about time, you see. Above you see the very first shot that I made with Katie. To the right – its the very last. When i work with a person in front of a camera I am very quick to explain to them that in order to get a picture thats wonderful, time is involved.

When you tell someone “I suck in front of a camera” – you are usually basing it on a very limited amount of times having your picture taken. Think of it like this: Think Thanksgiving – how many pictures could you have of yourself. Now add Easter.. prob not that many more. July 4.. couple here or there. So, in a smattering of pictures- lets say you get to 100.. you find that most suck, and you take horrible pictures.

Now, compare this to a model. A model can go into a shoot and take several hundred pictures. Do you know how many will be “The One?” Prob a handful – if that. As you get better as a model (and as a Photographer) those numbers get better.. but it takes time to do this.

Now, where Time comes into play. When you start working with someone, it takes time for that person to get used to you. It gets time for that person to find their footing in what they are doing. It takes time for them to figure out what you mean when you say “turn this way”. It takes time for them to relax every time you hit the shutter. However – if your Bedside manner is right.. and you know your gear.. the trust level increases, the person warms up.. and you get to make some good shots.

The next time you shoot with someone, go through the list of images – from start to finish. It’s as if there was a flipbook of comfort in front of you. The best shots more than likely are towards the tail end.

So.. make sure you convey this. Make sure you convey that this is something that will take a little time. When you show the result.. they’ll know it was a great trip.

Photographing Children – Lesson 1: Bend

click on the picture to see a larger one on Flickr

A lot of people don’t know that I actually cut a lot of chops doing children’s pictures. This was one of my favorite things to do- i’m a big fan of kids. This was odd to parents, seeing as they were handing their children to a guy wearing boots, a bandanna, goatee, and earrings.

You’d be surprised at all of the skills that are needed to be able to make a great shot of a child. Those skills translate to many different types of portrait shoots, and the lessons that you can take from them can apply to so many scenarios. Let’s talk about one now: The ability to bend.

Keep Them Going Up Up Up
If you are doing a shoot for yourself – keep in mind that there are very few circumstances where you will see more than one or two pictures from that shoot. Some of the best photographers out there will only show one or two pictures from a shoot from a portfolio point of view. This has a lot to do with our inability to suspend judgement on things. If you put two pictures of a shoot back to back in a series, we will automatically think to ourself “Which one was better, A or B”. When we do that, we are automatically making one of them “Not the best” and one “The Best” of the group. Compound that to a series of pictures in a portfolio, and now you have a bunch of “Not Best” images in your portfolio. This can sabotage the intended feeling you want a user to have when taking a look at your images. When a person is looking at your portfolio, you want their feelings to go up, and stay up. More than one image in a series makes it more like a rollercoaster (Obviously, there are exceptions to this.. but by in large its the practice I think works).

Be Willing to Bend
When you realize that what you are doing here is trying to get the “shot” and not the “shots” you tend to become a little more relaxed about the shoot, and allow yourself to bend a little. Take this for example.. I wanted a shot of my daughter Sabine and my wife Jenn. This was done at 5PM on a Saturday. For us, 5PM is right about the time Sabine can get cranky – she must eat. I wasnt planning on doing a Photo shoot – I was walking into a studio to get a tripod.. but with all the lights setup, I said what the hey.

Pinnacle moment. Do I stop her from eating her lunch, risk getting her ticked off, and miss a shot opportunity? Or, do I wait – let her eat.. and shoot less frames because time was at a minimum.

click on the picture to see a larger one on Flickr

I made a couple of frames on studio, and in between them, she just kept munching away. This kept her happy, and unaware of the lights around her. With her relaxed, I was able to work with Jenn to setup a great shot. There are about 4 or 5 that I was happy with.. but so long as one came up, i’m a happy man.

I Got Your Nose!

One of the harder parts when working with a model in a studio scenario has got to be the posting of the head. The problem that you run into here is twofold. First – its really hard to give someone direction as to where they should turn when they are opposite from you and in a different position. Want a good example of that? Hand someone a piece of paper, and without doing it for them, tell them instructions on how to make a paper airplane (These are the kinds of things I learned in school when I became a teacher).

The second is more id-driven. We don’t want to look like idiots. We KNOW what kind of look we want another person to give to us, but we don’t want to put ourselves in the position of looking foolish. In our ‘photographer’ heads, it’s bad enough that you are being subjected to making a good image because you TOTALLY dont think of yourself as a good photographer, but to put yourself out there even further by looking like a moron? Absolutely NOT! This usually leaves us with a bunch of “Turn right.. no.. the other right.. no.. tilt up.. no i mean turn up.. I mean open your mouth.. um.. ” And lots of valuable time is lost.

Or, you can pinch their nose.

I’m Gonna Try It Once!

About a year and change ago, I started a meetup group called the Tampa Bay Strobist. The idea was to just get together with like minded peeps and go out and just play with lights in a relaxed environment. I figured – if we got 20 people to go out and try some shooting with, hey.. be great.

Fast forward a year and the group’s swelled to over 340. My buddy Kathy Porupski runs the group (some local photogs freaked about me having a group and cutting into their ‘business’ – I didn’t even know Meetup was a business) . One of the things she does is every month, she has a Shoot Out. Bunch of Photographers get out there and bring their gear and practice on willing models for a few hours, then get back together at a pizza place and chimp.

As everyone is scrambling about to get their speedlights ready (they were like 50 people.. 6-8 groups in different locations), I wondered to myself. “It’s 7PM. Sun’s not going to go down for another hour.. maybe more. Why shoot with Flash at all?”

As everyone dilligently worked their units to the ready, I saw my buddy Stephanie posing for some people by a car someone brought. People shot from the sidewalk of the car, which clipped both the wheels and Stephanies feet. Not only that, it was shooting into a series of cars across the street – each of them newer and less interesting than this one. The shops on that side of the street were covered with paper on the windows as they are all closed.

Instead of shooting against that, I went to the street and talked to the photographers there about changing their angle. I postulated, if they shot from -this- vantage point they may be able to get some of the wall colors, and make it a little “old Havana” ish (I mean, it’s Ybor, right?). Hey.. with so much sun out, you could even try for a little HDR and mix in some portraiture.

Truth be told, I didnt know if that part was going to work. That generally doesnt stop me – and totally shouldn’t stop you. If you’re out there, and you’re shooting brackets (which I think you should be), you owe it to yourself to blend techniques together. Normally everyone poo poos HDR in people, but I have to say it’s growing on me. A lot.

Keep open minded.. Only go for the gear that you -need- for a shoot. If it doesn’t call for a light, don’t use one. Experiment. Those are the meditations i’d love to leave you with for the weekend.

Thanks for stopping in guys, I really do appreciate it.

How much Shoot Should You Show if you Should Share Shoots :)

I can’t tell you how long I sat there trying for my best “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck” moment at the title. That said, I think this is something that is often overlooked when you’re out there shooting, and totally something that is worth you spending a few moments thinking about.

I remember hearing once that the best Photographers out there are the best editors (it may have been a McNally-ism, or a Scott Kelby-ism but I need to check that) and I think theres a lot of validity to that statement. When I go out to try something for a shoot, there are some times when I come back with a TON of images to review. Because I came back with so many images, there’s this immediate need that I have to rank/sort/pick and create a quick gallery of all of the images I think are “Keepers”

Here’s the rub: Your “Keepers” aren’t necessarily your “show-ers”

Making Images With Sara
The images that you see above are from a shoot I did with Sara, my friend Jeff Leimbach’s daughter while out in Kauai for a DLWS workshop. Sara, amazing at the camera, was more than willing to pose for me while I tried dumb idea after dumb idea. Cool part about this was that she was really good with the camera (and wanting to get into modeling). This means that I got a bunch of cool keeper shots for Sara.

If I put together a gallery of many of them and show them, I run a risk of having someone see a GREAT image, then see a so so image. Then see a good image… then see a decent image.. then see a bad one.. or see a decent one. The takeaway for that person? “Those were some pretty decent images”

Now.. if I limited the shots to three or four of em- and those shots knocked you on your butt.. you’d leave with a completely different opinion!

That’s what the focus here is. Edit very very tightly. Leave a person with a great feeling by making sure you’re only showing a smaller amount, and you’d be amazed as to the impression that leaves on your public.

The HDR Star Wars Incident

Click on the picture to see it bigger, or see it in Flickr

note: This is a repost of a guest blog post that I did on the shoot over at Scott Kelby’s Blog. After chatting with Frederick Van on Twitter, I thought “Wow.. i’ve never really told the story on my blog. So, here it goes:

I was chatting with Scott a couple of days ago about my experiences at the Star Wars Celebration that just happened in Orlando, FL – and he thought it a good idea to share them here on the blog. I was happy to oblige! [NOTE: RC is being kind here. I absolutely loved his images, and the story behind them, and I begged him to do a post about it---Scott].

I walked into this opportunity not really being a Star Wars fan. I’d seen the second half of the movies as a kid, but never really got around to watching the three prequels. For the most part, I don’t watch a lot of movies, so it wasn’t something that I felt I was missing out on.

Check out the rest of the story by clicking on the link below…

Give yourself a little license to play

You can click on the image and see a larger version of it in Flickr. It’s cool..

If there’s one thing that totally stood out for me today, is to never underestimate the power of just playing around. I think that often times I’m usually trying to execute (i’ll share more on that later), than play. I think that makes getting different ideas a little harder.

Take this picture for example. I went into it with no real pre-conceived ideas of what I wanted to do with it. Truthfully, I was just looking to let out some steam, and playing with pictures is one of those things I do for that. (Aside from Call of Duty). I started playing around and about an hour later, I got this.

I turned it into my Twitter background (www.twitter.com/aboutrc), but to be frank, I don’t really know if I even like it! However, in the process of playing with this image, I just stopped thinking about dotting the lines in the projects. In the process of that, my head wandered into “wouldnt it be nice if I would just..” land.

The moment that happened, i came up with two awesome ideas. I stopped, wrote them down in my notebook, and went back to playing with the image. It’s one of those moments where you’re too close and you cant see the forest for the trees.

Sometimes you just need to step back and let your brain play a little. I actually think I like this picture more because of what it gave me than what it is. Funny, huh.

Manual Versus Automated Camera Methods for HDR

Reading around the web, I came upon a series of sites that talk about HDR Photography technique and how the use of the Manual mode of the camera will yield the best results.  Now, while this could yield great results for some people, and I think its a great way to have control over ALL of the elements of a picture, I think that the idea can cause a bit of confusion.  I figure it’s probably best to do this with an example.

Take it To the Bridge
Let’s say you’re just getting into your camera for HDR work.  You get the entire Shutter/Aperture combination for your work but now you’re in the exploration phase of HDR.