The greatest photographer you know is... you!

Well, unless you have been living on Mars for this last week – you would know that there was a new all-singing, all-dancing, and all-kickassing app released for all of us iPhone users. The Best Camera app is the brainchild of Chase Jarvis and his creative team. The name comes from his long running campaign that the best camera you have is the one that's with you. Very true.

This app is great. It allows you to capture, edit and then share an image all within the one program. Gone are the days of having to use this app for cross-processing, that app for saturation and this app for applying a cool vignette and finally uploading it with yet another Twitter or Facebook app. So Chase, kudos to you.

I have spent a bit of time playing with the app this weekend and it is pretty cool. It’s not the messiah for me, I still find myself going to my beloved CameraKit for more subjective image editing; but I do like the way Best Camera is a one stop shop for when the creative urge strikes… which will do as my lead in for tonight’s blog post.

This particular topic has been bugging me for a little while; and although I am mostly over it, I thought it was still worth a mention.

You see, I have mentioned before that I follow a few of my peers on Twitter and Facebook. A couple of them like to post silly meaningless images like I do. Sometimes they are a waste of space and sometimes they might be a snap of something strange in the street, a peculiar situation or literally just a pile of poop on the sidewalk. The thing that amazes me though is that just by the mere fact that the image has been uploaded by one of these guys, the world at large seems to be in amazement of the photographic prowess of the person in question. Come on! It’s a pile of crap, literally! Then I read the comments posted by readers next to the image… “no one can photograph poop like you can”, or “wow, that is the most amazing twig in the middle of the road that I have ever seen”. But my favourite is when someone says “you see the most amazing things [insert famous photographers name here]”.

I don’t wanna get too much higher on my soap box so I’ll back off! The fact of the matter is that we all see these sorts of things every day. A totally empty parking garage. A drink can in the middle of the freeway. Yes, a steaming fresh one in the middle of your favourite park. So what’s the difference between you and these photographers? Nothing. Absolutely nothing; except they grabbed their camera (i.e. cell phone) and took advantage of the situation.

I still make an effort to take an interesting snap whenever I can. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know this already. I guess all I am trying to say here is that I encourage you to do the same. Chase says it the best in his intro video for Best Camera when he says “right now, there are 10 amazing shots all around you just waiting to be taken”. He’s right. Does anyone remember the old blog post I wrote about taking five photos in five minutes within five paces? Well, the same rules apply. I’ll admit, sometimes it’s hard. But sometimes it’s really easy. We all carry our mobile phones with us, and 99% of them have cameras. Put them to use. Start to look for interesting things in your everyday surroundings. On the way to work, on the bus, or stuck in traffic like me. Train yourself to be on the lookout. You’ll be surprised how much you’ll see!

Ok, that’s enough of a rant from me for now. Normal programming will resume next week; I’ll try to have a new video for you all. Until then take care… and keep snapping!

Less of the “how” and more of the “why”…

Here we are again, another week has gone. This last week has been full of just about every different aspect of photography that you could imagine… almost. Probably the most stressful part of the week gone was the fashion shoot that we held at our Perth based photography studio, here in Kelmscott.

Overall I am pretty happy with the images and the client was over the moon – so that’s good. A very brief collection of images are shown above.

As you saw in the previous blog posts, I was very eager to try out the new parabolic umbrella that I had just received from the wonderful folks at Paul C. Buff in the Nashville USA. In the days preceding the shoot I had tried a few different scenarios – moving the umbrella from one side of the studio to the other, focussing the beam, this angle and that and I have to say I was a little worried that it wasn’t going to live up to the very large expectations that I had heard of it.

This all went away though once Chloe from Chadwick Models stepped in front of the lens. I remember looking through my somewhat extensive catalogue of fashion magazines; which I often do for inspiration and to nick the odd pose or three, and wondering how the photographers were able to achieve a gorgeously soft full length light that encapsulated the model and at the same time left basically no shadows behind the models except by their feet. I for a long time thought it was achieved by using a strip softbox, so I went a bought one to try it out. It was close, but there was way too much shadow behind the models. Hmmm. Then I saw a video about a fashion shoot and the photographer was using one of the Profoto Parabolic Umbrellas. Problem solved!

After a little bit of finessing I was able to get the light positioned just were I wanted it to produce a lovely full length light. It was amazing too, that despite it’s 7 foot span, it was actually focussing the light so much that I was getting quite a bit of fall off along the top of the backdrop!

I was listening to one of my favourite photography podcasts the other day and I remember the photographer saying that his followers wanted to hear less of the “how” and more of the “why”. So, here goes. Why did I use the parabolic umbrella? Well if you want to produce beautifully even wrapping light with minimal shadow this is the puppy for you. Why do I like the umbrella? Despite its size it is not overpowering. I love the catch lights it gives in the subjects eyes. I love how soft it is. I love how the light wraps around my subject.

On this shoot I also used my beloved beauty dish with its grid attachment. It gives a very similar light on the subjects face to the parabolic umbrella but it falls off quite quickly. I really like the way the light from it totally falls off towards the edges of the backdrop. From the images above – you can tell that the ones on the left are from the parabolic umbrella and the ones on the right are from the gridded beauty dish.

Finally – why did I give the images a green cross-processed and de-saturated finish? Well the client and I decided that this finish really suited the same green-and-grey colours in the fabric of her designer garments. I ended up doing a couple of other different sets of tonal effects on the images but these were my favourites. If your looking at an un-calibrated monitor right now you are probably missing the whole effect and are just seeing a grey and green mess... its a shame really, they do look great I assure you!

And to finish; this afternoon I had a really great artistic nude shoot with a local model. It was a little bit different as the theme of the shoot was “anonymity”. Hence in almost every image you can see the models head but it is turned away or in shadow so you can’t really tell who it is. I was inspired by the work of Pascal Baetens and wanted to try and interpret his ideas - which I think we ended up doing fairly well… stay tuned for those images in the coming week or so.

Take care everyone. Bye… for now.

Super Quickie Pre Shoot Update...

This is a super quick pre-shoot update for today’s fashion shoot.

The client has requested that we use a white paper backdrop, but just rolled down to floor level, the model will be standing on the floorboards instead of the paper. I have set up four different lights as shown in the somewhat dodgy iPhone image. All are single light set-ups for simplicity of lighting and shadows on the models. We wanna showcase the designers clothes not how good I am at setting up multiple lights in the studio.

Parabolic Umbrella

Beauty Dish with Grid attachment

Straight bowl reflector for harsh shadows on the backdrop

Ring flash

I’ve made a very quick and VERY low-tech video showing all of these set-ups which I’ll post along with images from the shoot itself later this evening.

Wish me luck!

Playing with the Parabola...

I know what you are thinking – three blog posts in three days… what’s going on?

Well today my 86” Parabolic Light Modifier Umbrella (PLM) showed up from Paul C. Buff all the way in Nashville, Tennessee USA. It only took 72 hours to get here too – well done UPS! The image here should give a little bit of an indication of the sheer size of this beast.

Now, I am a little restricted in my studio space with it's eight and a half foot ceilings but after a little bit of playing around with positioning angles and heights I was able to get a few nice single light set-ups. Shadows can be controlled depending on how close or far the light is from the subject and the angle to which it is positioned. Nice. David Griffin has done a wonderful review of this product on the Studiolighting.net website; some of which reads –

“The light pattern and quality created by the PLM is nothing short of incredible. Paul C. Buff has created something that's amazingly CHEAP, versatile, and even practical! From the smaller 42" PLM to the larger 86" PLM this is THE light mod to own. Imagine this, go out on a non-windy summer day under 12 o'clock devil light… you need to overpower the sun but don't have a flash over 160 watts. Pull out a sandbagged PLM 42" or larger and Get Ta Shootin! In my test I could pretty much overpower the sun with F16, ISO100 at 1/250th with a 100 watt bare bulb flash from about 4.5 feet away or closer! Its safe to say that this is my new favourite light modifier. I'm shocked that it’s not being hailed all over the net. But that's okay I'm a trailblazer anyway - you'll see what I've done with it in my next magazine spread!

The PLM is by far the most revolutionary light modifier I have seen. I without a doubt or restraint challenge everyone to find a more versatile 7ft light modifier for $112.91 or less!!! If you do, send it too me so I can A) review it and B) start using it! As this item quickly goes to the top of my cheap list… I say hey… GET THIS tool… and you know what… GET TA SHOOTIN!”

So there you go; a versatile light modifier that has a multitude of uses, and it's about $5000AUD cheaper than the Profoto alternative. I have a fashion shoot for a client this weekend that I am eager to try this puppy out for! I will be posting images from that shoot so you can see the results of the light produced by the PLM

The last image below shows the cool and rather unique catch lights that the PLM makes in the subjects eyes – which I like very much. I think I am going to be using this thing quite a lot…

How to shoot a fashion show when you're not supposed to be shooting a fashion show...

Just a quickie again tonight… this evening my friend Jonathan and I headed out to see the Morrison show at Perth Fashion Festival. We bought tickets and thought we would just show up and take some photos like we did on Sunday gone. Not so.

First we had to get past the girl on the door; kind of the assistant organiser (she actually reminded us of Anne Hathaway’s character in “The Devil wears Prada"!) then we were faced with the “security guard” who looked more like he should be in a Benny Hill movie (showing my age??) and then the event co-ordinator herself came out to talk to us. We were told on no uncertain terms that there was no room and we would not be able to shoot. Great.

Anyway we got inside finally and discovered we must have got the last 2 tickets on sale as we were right up in the far corner of the room and the view was mediocre at best. Nonetheless I was determined to take some images come hell or being thrown out so these images are the result. I realise they are far from perfect but they tell a story… kinda…

Oh, and BTW once the show got underway there was more than enough room to fit about 4 more photographers on the shooting platform - yet instead I had to sit up in the top corner of the room taking mediocre shots when Jonathan and I could have been on the shooting platform taking awesome shots. Go figure.

PS – please do have a look at the image gallery on my website – www.timography.net. Once again I was blown away at just how clean the images are that the D700 took – I was at ISO2000 and I challenge you to find a bit of chroma noise. The images are just so squeaky clean. Love it. Seriously love it.

No time to scratch one's self... and some new stuff...

Holy cow – I know I say it like every blog post – but geez it’s been a busy couple of weeks! Clients, shoots, new equipment, new software, new studio accessories, physiotherapists, more clients, more shoots, post production coming out of my… well, you know what.

So am I forgiven for not posting a new blog entry for a week or two? To summarise the last couple of weeks; my new Nikon D700 arrived freshly packed from those good guys at B&H Photo in New York. I am still getting to grips with it but it is awesome, but we already knew that right. I still love my old Fuji’s but the D700 is a welcome addition. This also meant that I had to look for some new tethered shooting software. I have been using Fujifilm’s Hyperutility Software in the studio and I have become very attached (pun intended) to the idea of shooting tethered in the studio. It is invaluable for a number of reasons. Once you have tried it you will not go back.

So anyway, I had to find a new alternative. I found it in the shape of Phase One’s newly revised Capture One Pro 4.8 software. It’s amazing. But more on that later…

Today saw me and a very good friend at the Perth Fashion Festival 2009 – Style Oasis fashion parades. Together we had applied for media accreditation but due to the "overwhelming number of applicants we were unsuccessful." That didn’t mean that we couldn’t still show up with our cameras though!

Having been busy with clients lately I was eager to try out the D700 at a fashion show that was actually properly lit for photography, unlike the downright awful lighting at this years EveryWoman Expo, as I covered back in this blog post. And I can safely say I was gobsmacked by the results! I spent the whole show in ISO1600, f/3.2 and the shutter speed was hovering around the 500^th to 1000^th of a second range. Autofocus was set to AFS-C in Dynamic 51 point 3D Tracking mode. Wow. Oh yeah, I have the release mode set on the camera so that the shutter will not fire unless the subject is in focus. An invaluable feature that is essential in a fashion catwalk show when the models are pacing up and down the catwalk at a great rate of knots. I found out today that some Canon cameras do not have that feature… that’s too bad!

So yeah, apart from a few exceptions where the models walked directly in front of one of the overhead spot lights, the D700’s metering was pretty spot on. This was also partly my fault as I did not realise until halfway through the first show that I had the cameras metering in evaluative 3D Matrix metering mode (where the camera samples the entire scene to obtain an “acceptable” exposure) instead of centre-weighted. After I made the switch I noticed much fewer images were being blown out.

So, all in all it was a successful outing. I hope you all realised that the images I have posted in this blog entry are from today's fashion shows. I have tickets to see the Morrison show tomorrow evening so stay tuned to more images from Perth Fashion Festival 2009. I have placed a couple of image galleries on my website here. Have a look and don't forget to have a look around the rest of our Perth Based Photography website while you are at it! (shameless google plug there...)

And to finish this weeks blog post, I have made a short video which gives a quick overview of the aforementioned Capture One Pro 4.8 software. As I say in the video, it is just a brief summary of the features of the package and not a full-blown instructional video as I do not know the software well enough at this point to do so… but here’s the video anyway.

Well, I hope you liked it and the video told a little bit of a story.

Ok, I’m outta here. It’s getting really late and it’s going to be a super busy week again (déjà vu?) so take care everyone and keep taking pictures!