Another Flash Tutorial

I do not own a flash. It is one of the items on my wishlist for this year and I do intend to get one sooner or later. For the moment though, when I need to use one, I need to borrow it. Thankfully, my boss is also a fan of photography, and has one on hand that she has lent to me before (for the last wedding that I had to shoot). With another wedding around the corner, I needed to borrow it again and needed to get used to using it again.

The flash in question is a very very nice one, but the exact specifications are not actually all that important for this blog. What is important to know is that the flash fits into the hotshoe of the camera and has the ability to tilt upwards by 90 degrees and 45 degrees to either side. It is something that I absolutely love about the flash and something that I am definitely going to try to find in whichever flash I end up buying.

Why is this so important then? First of all, having a flash that fits into your hotshoe is very useful when doing photo shoots outside of a studio. When you are in a studio, you can arrange the lighting in any way that you like through the use of umbrellas, reflectors and more powerful lights than a flash can provide. When you are out and shooting, however, you do not always have these available to you. The on-camera flash is too harsh for most situations and, since you cannot adjust where it points, it often ends up only illuminating what is in front of you and not providing sufficient ambient light. This can, of course, be made up for by adjusting the shutter speed and exposure, but when the images are being taken with a hand-held camera rather than a tripod, it can be difficult to perfect. This is why having a flash that fits onto your hotshoe can be useful. Of course, being able to use it off-camera (which this one can do) would also be useful, I imagine, but I have yet to experiment with that, and for the moment will only be talking about using it on a hotshoe. Having a stronger flash on your hotshoe, which can be adjusted in terms of brightness, can have diffusers attached to it and can tilt gives you a lot more flexibility in the images that you can take and make.

The tilt is the other big advantage to having a hotshoe flash. This flexibility is less important when using a flash off-camera, since you can point the flash in any direction that you choose. But, when the flash is attached to your camera, you cannot point the flash in a different direction to the one that the camera is facing unless it has a tilt function. And the tilt function makes a huge difference. By tilting the flash, you can bounce the light that the flash provides to illuminate your subject in the best possible way. I have taken some images to illustrate the point.

In the above image, the first two shots were taken with the flash, a shutter speed of 1/50, an aperture of f/8 and had an ISO of 400. The final image was taken without flash. It was taken with a shutter speed of 1/25, a fairly low one and good for handheld photography, the lowest aperture that my lens would allow for (f/4.5) and an ISO of 3200. All shots are directly from the camera and have not been edited except to put them together in this "collage".

The first image was taken with the flash pointing directly at the guitar. You will notice that the shadows in the centre are dark, the light in the centre is very stark compared to the shadows, the light reflecting off the string and the left side of the guitar is very bright, and you can see the shadows underneath the strings because of the angle that the photo was taken at. If you look to the upper right corner, you will also notice that it is completely in shadow.

In the second image, I had tilted the flash 45 degrees to the left. You will notice that the shadows in the centre are a lot more muted. There are still shadows, but they are less obtrusive and the light in the centre is less bright and less stark because of it. The strings are brighter, but not as reflective and there are no longer any shadows underneath them. The light itself is better distributed throughout the image and if you look at the upper right hand corner of this image, you will notice that it is white (as it should be).

In the third image, you will notice that the photo is not well lit in general, even at a fairly low aperture and shutter speed. However, there are noticable details. The colouring is a lot yellower in the image and the shadows are also distinct, especially when compared to the second image. There are no stark contrasts, however, and everything is fairly muted. 

The third image clearly needs more or better lighting, which the flash provided in both of the photos to the left of it. The second image might be a little too well lit. Shadows do provide interest to images, and there are hardly any in this image. Adding a little contrast would take it a long way. The first image is better in terms of the interest that the shadows provide, but may be a bit too stark and is far from ideal for most situations. I would likely end up brightening it to some extent in post-editing.

The same can be seen in the next images.

None of these are perfect photos, none of them were meant to be perfect. But they do show the usefulness of tilting your flash and bouncing light on a subject. It can have great results if you know how to use it, and it is something that I am still learning how to use. But I can already see a big difference in the photographs that have been taken while I used it. It is something that I look forward to learning more about!

What area of photography do you want to learn more about?

How To Act

I was reading a post yesterday from one of the blogs that I follow, and it was talking about people who don't want to have their photos taken. Now, I can understand that to a point. I really can. I am sometimes really not in the mood to have my photo taken at all. But there are times and places where it should be acceptable, and there are ways to handle it without offending the photographer or making them angry.

I commented on Kimberly Gauthier's post yesterday with one of the experiences that I'd had with a person who did not want to have their photo taken who I thought had reacted very very badly. But I experienced worse today, and I thought that I would share the experience.

I tend to take photos of anything I see. I understand that people don't particularly like to have their photographs taken, and I tend not to take too many of other people unless they are at events or doing something exceptional. I am not a big street photographer, because I understand that people don't like to have their photos taken, and I am shy and tend to avoid confrontation.

Tonight I was at a game of bowls. I was playing this week, so I did not have much time to find a subject for a photo. Not wanting to take of the people playing, I saw a drink lying in the grass. So I lay down in the grass and took a photo of it. Next thing I know, the owner of the drink has approached me and starts shouting at me for taking a photo of his drink. Now, I would understand perfectly if this was a photo of  him that he was concerned about. That would make perfect sense to me. I can equally understand if I was in the way of his game or was somehow distracting him. I ensured that I was not on the pitch, not in the way and, aside from taking a quick snap, was not being a nuisance. And yet he was so rude about it, that I almost burst into tears. I was horrified. I hate confrontation, but particularly so when I feel it is undeserved.

Now, had the guy approached me and spoken to me nicely, told me that I was distracting or that I was in the way somehow, I would have understood slightly better. Not much, because I don't think taking a photograph of a bottle in the grass when  you are 100m away on the other side of the green is cause for panic. It was not like I touched the drink or anything. I just saw it, saw that the light was good and decided to go for it. But I still would not have walked away feeling angry and hurt.

There are ways to react to not wanting a photograph taken and there are ways not to. Being rude is not going to get you anywhere. Shouting is only going to cause anger and resentment. Understanding and explaining, those help a lot. If you are kind about it and ask nicely, you are more likely to get a positive response from the photographer rather than a defensive one.

Flickr: Pros and Cons for Photographers

In my last post, I wrote about the pros and cons of using Facebook for photo sharing. Today, I am going to look at the pros and cons of another very popular photo sharing site – Flickr.

Flickr is aimed specifically at photographers, which means that the sole purpose of the site is for photo sharing. What is awesome about this is that it provides you with a network of photographers, all sharing their own work. This means that you have a website filled with photographers of varying levels with different amounts of experience and worldly knowledge. You will find beginners, amateurs, pros and everything in between. You will have the opportunity to have your work perused by the best and receive compliments and constructive criticism on your work. What an awesome opportunity as a photographer! In addition, Flickr tends to maintain the quality of photographs better than Facebook does. With Flickr, you have always been able to choose what quality you want to upload your photographs with, even if it means that it will take longer and use more bandwidth.

Though Flickr does not provide pages as Facebook does, it provides other benefits that Facebook doesn’t offer. One can create sets, galleries and can share their photos in other groups’ sets and galleries. You can also choose to add more information about the photograph than Facebook offers. If you keep your EXIF data intact, you can choose to share it, which will share information about how and where the photograph was taken – which camera, shutter speed, aperture and ISO were used for example.

But now to the negatives, and there are always one or two of those. A big reason why Facebook is so popular is because it is a social networking site – you connect with friends, friends of friends, friends who used to be friends, people who like to think of themselves as friends, etc. With Flickr, it is difficult to find those friends. Because it is a photo sharing site, those joining in tend to be limited to photographers, and if you do not have a wide net of photographer friends already, it makes finding friends and people to comment and critique a little more difficult. You can, of course, still add photographs to groups and get critiques in that way, but it certainly leads to less exposure than you would have available to you with Facebook and some other social media sites.

The quality of the photographs may be better than Facebook, but the layout of the page is still very much social media-like, which tends to turn away a number of the professionals and also makes it a very informal setting for photographs. While this can benefit a photographer, particularly when starting out and looking for advice, it can also deter people from adding their photographs because the quality of the site seems to bring down the quality of your own photographs.

Another aspect that makes Flickr not so great are the pure number of photographs that come up. Every photographer must have their photographs up for the world to see, every photographer thinks they are the best, and a lot of photographers may try to put other people down to prove this. This has a number of repercussions. First of all, it can lead to your photographs being lost in the stream of things. Your photographs may be amazing, but they will be lost in amidst the okay, mediocre and downright bad. In addition, you may find that the criticism that your photographs receive amount to no more than trolling on the part of a photographer who thinks they are better than everyone else. You may find that the comments lack the constructive and just focus on the negative. You should be prepared for brutality. You are likely to find it at some point.

There are benefits of course to using a photo sharing site like Flickr, which is aimed at a specific photographic audience. But you should expect there to be downfalls too. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it. It just means that you should be prepared.

Facebook: Pros & Cons for Photographers

All photographers want to get their photographs out there, to get exposure and gain popularity. One of the best ways to do this is through a photo sharing site. But there are so many sites out there! Which one should you pick? Every photo sharing site has their own benefits and downfalls, and it’s good to know about these before choosing which site to upload your photographs to. You don’t want to be caught off-guard by privacy settings, low quality images or copyrighting. So I am going to look at just a few of the benefits and downfalls of uploading images to specific photo sharing sites.

First and foremost, let’s have a look at Facebook. As a photographer, Facebook can be a great tool for displaying your images and getting exposure. As the most popular social networking site out there (at the moment), Facebook will provide you with a wide audience to show your work to and it is easy to get feedback on that work. In addition, you can divide your private and professional self by creating a photography page for yourself. This means that, while you can post hundreds of photographs on your personal account for people to see, you can also post your most professional photographs to your photography page and have the best separated from the rest. It is a form of advertising yourself which works out well, particularly if you decide to spend some cash and invest in photography adverts on Facebook as well. This can lead to a lot of business that you would not have received otherwise and can certainly be worthwhile.

On the other hand, Facebook does have its downfalls. Many of you may have heard about the mass of people leaving Facebook due to their privacy settings. Some of you may even be those people who left in the mass exodus. The privacy settings that affect your profile also affect your photographs. While Facebook providing others with access to your personal details may sound far more significant than hundreds and thousands of people having access to your photographs (hell, that almost sounds good!) it also means that your photographs are being exposed to people who may use them for their own personal use. This brings the issue of copyright into question, and you will quickly find that Facebook’s copyright protocols leave a lot to be desired. And then, let’s look at the photographs themselves. Though Facebook has recently introduced a new function, allowing you to upload high resolution photographs, for a long while the photographs that you were uploading were compressed to be very low quality. While this is fine for showing off photos from the party last night, for professional photographers it is not ideal. A lot of detail is lost in the process, and your photographs will not come out the way that you pictured them. There are ways around this, but most people do not know these methods. Hell, even though I know that they are out there, I hardly know about these methods!

Facebook may be the most popular photo sharing site at the moment, but that certainly does not mean that it is the best. Personally, I still upload my photographs using Facebook for the exposure, but it is not my only method of uploading pictures. At least I know and understand the risks and problems, and even use them in some cases! Part of the reason why I continue to use Facebook is that it can provide low-res and low-quality versions of my photographs, giving me the exposure that I want, and I can then provide links to better quality versions or, if requested, provide better quality prints of the photographs. If someone wants to steal an image, it then means that they are taking a low-quality image, one that I would not be too concerned about. It is the high-res and good quality ones that I truly cherish.

Check back soon for the pros and cons of using other photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Twitter and Google Plus.

Rant

There is nothing that annoys me more in terms of photography than people taking the photographer for granted.

I was at a dinner party last night and it was a wonderful party and a wonderful reason for me to bring my camera out. I haven't been taking too many random photos recently, and I felt like doing a bit of photography. In any case, we were sitting around the dinner table and my camera was beside me, and my friend decided to say to the rest of the guests: "Please excuse Lara. She loves taking photos of everything." Which was absolutely fine, and very true and one of the guests responded by saying that she didn't mind as long as the photos were good. To which my friend replied, "They will be. She has a very nice camera."

It is a common misconception that a number of people have that the camera is everything. While my camera is good, it's not what makes the photographs that I take good. I like to think that I have an eye for a good photo and wait for good moments to take photos. I also have a steady hand and know which apertures and shutter speeds to use for which situations. This means that it is more than just the camera that is good. It's the photographer as well and people have a tendency to forget this fact.

Another thing that annoyed me was that one of the friends of this friend that was having the dinner party then asked to play around with my camera. I agreed rather reluctantly, but without showing any reluctance, and the girl then complained that she had to stand back because my lens didn't have a zoom and what a stupid lens it was because she couldn't zoom out. Nevermind that it is one of my favourite lenses and the best for the light that was provided in the room, nevermind that I offered to let her use the kit lens that was in my bag. No, this girl didn't want to change anything, but wanted to complain because the lens wasn't to her satisfaction.

I should now mention that while there are people who annoy me when it comes to my photography, there are also those who astound me (in a good way). There are people like my friend Jestine, who has been encouraging me to start standing up for myself when it comes to photography and charging when I should and refusing to take jobs that don't come with pay unless they are jobs that I actually want to take. There are also people like Mike and Vicky, who try to insist on paying me for the wedding shots that I did even though I have already informed them that I will not be charging them, since they were my first wedding shoot and since the camera died halfway through their wedding. No matter, they still pester me occasionally to give them my banking details, which I will refuse to do because I think that there are times when charging is appropriate and there are times when it is not, and my first wedding shoot is not something that I want to charge for.

In any case, these were just a couple of things that I wanted to get off my chest and I am rather glad that I have now. Rant over.

Picking and Choosing

Last week, I promised that I would take a look at building a portfolio. As this is something that I am doing myself at the moment, I am learning as I go along, but I thought that I would share in some of the wisdom that I have found.

Your portfolio is one of the most important aspects of being a professional photographer. It is the sole embodiment of your work. Your prospective clients will not really care about how much you have grown from your humble beginnings, learning to play with your camera and getting to know the ins and outs of the trade. What they will care about is the polished professional before them, and your portfolio will show them the professional that you are.

Your portfolio will show what kind of photographer you are and where your artistic vision lies. No two photographers are the same, the same way that no two people are the same. Two photographers will look at the same scene and take the same photograph, but from a different angle, a different perspective. You want to show your angle and perspective towards life in your portfolio. This means that, while you should value the opinions of those around you and which photographs they think are your best and should be included, you should also value your own opinion. It is you who will be taking the photographs, and it is your slant on life that will come out in the photographs that you take for these prospective clients. They should know what it is that they are getting. This may lead to clients not agreeing with the way that you take photographs - your clients will have a specific idea in mind for what they want, and if you do not meet that criteria, do not try to change yourself to suit their needs. Other clients will come along, and they will often be a better fit. rather wait for the clients who will appreciate your work than attempt to change your style for those who don't. What you will likely find if you try to change is that your photographs will be an uncomfortable mixture of your artistic vision and your client's, leading to something that neither of you is particularly happy with.

So, which photographs should you include and how many should you include in your portfolio? I have taken thousands of photos in the course of the last year alone! I have taken photos of every kind of situation, of every event that I have attended, of each of my friends, of every place that I have travelled, and I have favourites from each of the sessions that I have taken. How can I wittle these down to a few that will show off my depth and my range? Well, most likely you won't want to. You will likely want to decide on a specialisation and stick with it. Are you going to be an events photographer, taking pictures at weddings and parties? Then pick a few of your best from those kinds of events. Are you going to be a photo journalist? Pick some pics of the rallies and gatherings that  you have attended. A shot of a couple in love is not going to convince an editor to hire you, and a photo of a riot is not going to convince an engaged couple to hire you either. If you intend to dabble in the different areas, you may want to consider having a variety of portfolios to show for specific meetings.

In terms of how many  photos to whittle your portfolio down to, there is no guaranteed formula. How many photos you have will depend on how many great photos you have taken, to be honest. You obviously don't want to have your clients sifting through your pics for hours on end, but you also don't want them to be finished in a minute. Pick a couple of photographs from different sessions. I limit myself to having no more than 5 from each session, and try to cut it down to less than that even. Choose photographs that show variety and skill - choose photographs that show different poses, different lighting, different situations and different settings. You don't want to pick photographs that look exactly the same in each session, otherwise it tends to be too repetitive. Choose only your best photographs, and ask around to see which photos others think are your best as well. As I said earlier, you will want to have some photographs that you choose yourself to show your own unique style, but you will also want public opinion on  your side, so while there can be a couple of  your own favourites thrown in, having some photos that others think are your best will also help you along.

A final piece of advice that I read from blogger and photographer, Scott Bourne, is that when you create your  portfolio, you should be sure not to put what  you consider to be your best images in the front. Many people think that prospective clients will only look at the first few pages and decide from there whether they will hire the photographer or not, but this is often not the case. Often, people will turn to the middle of the book and flip through from there, taking note of only a few photos that catch their eye from time to time. You therefore want to spread the best of your work throughout your portfolio,  keeping some at the front, some in the middle and some at the end to ensure that your clients see the best of your work no matter where they start.

I hope this helps someone out there in the process of putting their portfolio together. I know that the advice that I have learned has certainly help me put mine together and I look forward to showing it off once my site is up and running and my first wedding shoot has been done! Let me know if you have any further advice for people trying to build up their own portfolios.

Spring Fever

Earlier this week, I came home from work in a not-so-great mood. You know that saying: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting to get different results"? Yeah. That was me. Anyway, I came home from work feeling more than a little down, and opened my car door, and something wafted in with the breeze. Something that lifted my spirits completely. Something that made not only my day, but my week. Do you know what that something was? Jasmine. The epitome of Spring. And it is certainly here. So this afternoon, when I came home from work, I decided to go hunting for the source of the wondrous scent. And sadly, I did not find it. But I did manage to get some great pics of the Spring flowers in my garden while I was searching, so I thought that I would share some of them :)














To make this a little more educational and not so focussed on just my gloating about the weather taking an upturn when most of my Northern-hemisphere friends are about to take a turn for the worse, I thought that I would explain how I go about taking flower shots












I like to get up close and personal when shooting flowers. I like to be able to see the details on the leaves, to see the curves of the petals and the interesting shapes that they make. I like the asymmetry of the placement and I like to take from interesting angles. I tried to shoot with a number of different lenses today, actually trying every single one in my bag to see which I liked most. I think that I ended up liking my 50mm and my 28-80mm most actually, my two first lenses. I found that the 50mm was a good length to shoot at, while my 28-80 allowed me to get a little closer when need be. Sunset is, of course, a good time to be shooting since it casts good light over the flowers, even when you are hidden from most of the sunlight by a on one side, a house on the other and a giant fence on a third, all of which are trying to block your light.












In any case, it's not all about me. Let me know what you think!!

*Edit: The pictures are coming up funny in the blog post. I don't have time to fix it right now, but will try to have it fixed tomorrow.

Mentoring

Everyone needs a role model - someone to look up to, to admire and to aspire towards. For some people these role models are celebrities, for others they are close family members. As photographers we should really have some of both. We should follow the work of famed photographers and see how it is done. However, to really see how photographers work, you need to follow one closely - closer than you could follow a famous photographer from halfway across the world. You need someone to go to shoots with, to watch in action, to get advice from in a close and personal rather than an informal way. What you need, I would say, is a mentor.

Please note that this is all based on my own ideas and opinions, and there is no guarantee that any of it will work. Please also note that this is not the way to go about finding an apprenticeship or becoming an assistant to a photographer. This is merely to find a mentor who you can turn to when you have questions and who you can learn from. Finding

I have had two kinds of "mentors". One was a friend, and I use this term broadly since we only met once and do not know each other particularly well, who I met in Korea. He was studying photography at the time and was as close to an expert as I could find. Whenever I had a question, I turned to him, and he was happy to help. But I do not consider our relationship to be close and personal and I was never able to follow him on the job, so I do not consider him to be one of my serious mentors. I merely think that he helped me stand on my own two feet and get my photography off the ground.

I met my second mentor by pure coincidence. A friend had asked me to take some shots at an event that the University was holding, and they had asked him to take some videos. Paul Mills is a professional cameraman, and has been one for most of his life. Though he is now technically retired, he still takes on projects on the side, and in his spare time he does photography with his Canon 7D. He bumped into me early in the morning and we got onto discussing cameras and lenses, and he let me borrow one of his. From then on a friendship was formed based on photography, and this friendship quickly grew into a mentorship as he began to offer me advice, to let me borrow and test lenses, to critique my photos when asked and to be there for me, night and day, whenever I had a question that needed answering. Paul Mills has become my photography hero!

Finding your own photography hero may not be quite as easy. I found mine by pure coincidence, but it often takes a lot of work and a lot of putting yourself out there and taking the chance of being turned down. Many photographers do not have the time or the patience to take on mentoring or apprenticeships, while others may appreciate the attention or find it flattering, particularly if they are on the cusp of professionalism themselves.

I would recommend attending photography workshops or classes and starting to associate yourself with photographers. Photographers who are involved in these kinds of workshops usually do so because they enjoy teaching and helping others with their photography. It will immediately put you in touch with photographers who you know want to help, and could become possible mentors. Become a part of your local community and make it obvious that you are a beginner photographer who has questions and is willing to listen to constructive criticism.

In terms of approaching the photographers themselves, I would recommend approaching them on a one-to-one basis, being friendly and open and starting out slowly. Do not immediately jump in and say "I want you to mentor me." Do this and you are unlikely to find many photographers jumping at the opportunity. Think about the friendships that you have formed in the past. Did you jump in upon meeting the person and say "I want to be your friend." Of course not. You got to know each other first and the friendship developed because you discovered things that you have in common. In terms of looking for a mentor, you already know that you have one thing in common - photography - but you need to test the waters first, make sure that your personalities are compatible. I can imagine nothing worse than ending up with a mentor with a short temper, or one who I butt heads with when it comes to what we look for when we take photographs. You need to find someone you get along with. Ask if you could perhaps discuss photography over a cup of coffee, on you. That way you will get to know each other and see if it is a good fit before jumping into the deep end and ending up with a mentor that you do not respect or appreciate, or who does not respect or appreciate you.

I would also highly recommend building a portfolio before you approach anyone, as a number of photographers will expect you to have one. Even if it isn't expected, it looks a lot more professional to approach a photographer with something to show them rather than approaching them with just a question or idea in mind. Imagine having someone who doesn't know you walk up to you and say "I need help with my photography. Can you help?" Sure, you can help. But what is it that they need help with? Is it their technique? Is it their eye? Is it merely that they need to gain some experience and confidence? You can't tell unless they give you something to work with.

Building your portfolio is going to be the subject of my next post, so please check back later in the week to learn more on how to go about building a professional portfolio.

Bad Photography - Bad Photographer

I think that my interest in photography has actually ruined other people's photography for me. At least, it has certainly ruined other people's bad photography.

Take the exhibit that I went to this afternoon. Had I gone there with no photographical knowledge, I may have found the photographs appealing, I might have been drawn to them with oohs and ahs. Instead, today I looked at the photos and was completely unimpressed. What I saw was photographs that were out of focus or where the focus was on the wrong aspect of the photograph. One of the photos that everyone else was oohing and ahing over, I took one look at and walked away from. The lighting was wonderful, everything else was out of focus. I looked at every single single photo and knew that I could have taken the same photo or something better.

While this made me sad about my diminishing love of bad photography, it also made me happy. People were buying these photographs for between R850-R1250! Surely this means that I could do the same?

I think I have made a decision. Next year, I am going to have an exhibition and a stall at fest to display my photography. If people are willing to pay R850 for bad photography, surely they will do the same for the good (or even the mediocre) stuff. Now to find out how to get started...