Archive for the 'Photography' Category
The Daily Photo series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
Once a year, when I visit my dad for the Thanksgiving holiday, I spend some time shooting surfing at Steamer Lane in Santa Cruz, California. The cliffs of Lighthouse Point provide an excellent vantage point for capturing the surfers on film from a wide range of angles. And when the weather cooperates, as it did this past November, you can get some great shots.
- Shutter: 1/2000
- Aperture: f/4
- ISO: 800
- Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM + Canon 1.4x extender (effective 420mm)
Original:
Composition and Processing:
- Lighting is always a challenge here. The waves are backlit by the afternoon sun (a simple fact of being on the west coast), and that provides a nice translucent glow to the wave. But often times the surfer is on the face of the wave and a good 3 stops darker than the crest of the wave. In this case I got lucky and caught the surfer just as he was emerging from the wave and into the sunlight (albeit, not with his board).
- For most sports photography, I turn to the 1D instead of the 1Ds. The faster frame rate and cleaner image at high ISO settings makes it preferable despite the trade off in resolution. Plus, in cases like this, the 1.3x crop sensor adds a little more reach. On this day though, with the swell north of 15 ft at times, another photographer encouraged me to shoot wider and focus more on the wave itself. That is, instead of capturing the tightest possible image of the surfer, set the surfer in the grander context of his surroundings. By shooting wider, I could afford to go with the 1Ds and the lower frame rate, making this shot possible.
- The final shot is much more colorful than the original. What can I say, I like the notion of contrasting the warm sun with the cold water, and processed accordingly. Those colors are actually there in the original, just much more muted. But I decided to overlay a gradient with Lightroom 2’s new graduated filters to exaggerate the effect, and then mucked with the HSL sliders for good measure.
January 05 2009 | Photography | No Comments »
The Daily Photo series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
I had a chance to work with Brigitte before the Thanksgiving holiday this year. We mostly shot out of the home studio and the surrounding area, taking advantage of the natural light until the sun went down before shifting to studio lights and backdrops. Janus Anderson also took part in this shoot — his results can be seen here.
- Shutter: 1/125
- Aperture: f/8
- ISO: 200
- Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
- Lighting: see below
Original:
Composition and Processing:
- Lately I’ve been interested in really simple compositions that isolate the subject against either black or white. And by simple, I mean only the skin and hair are used to identify the subject — everything else is run to black or completely blown out, including clothing (there’s probably a clever term for this, but I don’t know it). I love this look: there are no distractions, everything’s focused on the subject and the expression.
- Of course, simple composition doesn’t necessarily mean simple setup. I wanted really soft light for this, so I positioned two bare Zeus heads on each side of Brigitte and pointed them back in the direction of the camera, bouncing the light off of some white fabric I hung behind me and a couple of 4′ x 8′ sheets of foam core (creating a half circle of reflective material 8′ high). To keep the lights from spilling onto Brigitte, I put 4′ x 8′ black foam core sheets between her and them (effectively creating a 3-side black box for her to stand in.
- This shot isn’t bad in color, but black and white really enhances the texture of the hair and makes the eyes pop. The black background matches and brings out the darker areas of the image, instead of just isolating the subject like it would in color.
January 04 2009 | Photography | No Comments »
The Daily Photo series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
I’ve had a number of opportunities to shoot fireworks this past year, and with each attempt I’ve tried to improve on the overall concept. Conveniently, the city of Austin sets them off a few times a year on Town Lake, and the launch point is about two blocks from my 12th floor balcony.
This image is a massive composite of several images. I’ve included a couple samples of originals, but not all of them.
- Shutter: 8 seconds (fireworks and background HDR); 30 seconds (bridge light trails)
- Aperture: f/22 (fireworks and bridge light trails); f/22 - f/4 (HDR background)
- ISO: 200 (fireworks and background HDR); 50 (bridge light trails)
- Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM
Original Fireworks Example:
Original HDR Example:
Original Light Trails Example:
Composition and Processing
- The first time I shot fireworks I was happy with the fireworks themselves, but the background felt a little lackluster. I could try reversing the angle, shooting from the bridge or across the river, but the Austin skyline is a bit ugly at the moment with several new buildings under construction. I decided to try and balance the fireworks with another light effect: the light trails from traffic crossing the 1st street bridge. That meant shrinking the size of the fireworks to accomodate the larger scene, which may or may not have been worth it.
- The first component of the shot was the fireworks themselves. I chose two images and processed them individually like the last time. Blending the two together didn’t work because they overlapped and it looked like a mess. So I took one of them and moved it adjacent to the main burst. This had the nice side effect of increasing the overall size of the fireworks themselves.
- The second component was the background, which was a simple HDR composite using five frames and served as the basis for most of the image (the fireworks were painted into this scene in their original position).
- The final component was a blend of about a dozen shots of vehicle light trails on the bridge, using the “difference” blending operation in Photoshop. There weren’t any cars on the bridge during the fireworks themselves– I simply left the camera on the tripod until the streets were re-opened and rattled off about 100 30 second exposures once cars started moving through. The only problem with my plan was that the bridge lighting is actually brighter than the tail lights of most of the cars, and with traffic infrequent and moving quickly across the bridge, I had very little material to work with. Hence the blending of so many images in the hopes of getting something interesting. The end result was painted into the HDR image.
- Ultimately, this image is close to what I wanted for the shot, but fails in a few places:
- The background is still weak and somwewhat distracting. The light trails themselves look interesting and do balance the fireworks a little, but they might have helped frame the scene more if I’d been able to capture them on Cesar Chavez and San Antonio too (the streets running to the right of the building in the middle as well as along the water). Not to mention the road the runs in front of the Long Center across the river.
- The empty water treatment plant in the lower right is too distracting and should probably be removed or at least de-emphasized in the image.
- The fireworks are simply too small for the scene. As interesting as it is to capture this from high up, there may be better angles down on the street that can achieve the same effect (such as the main intersection on the left side of the image, shooting back down Cesar Chavez).
- I didn’t shoot the New Years fireworks, but I may give this another go on the 4th this year. One thing that did occur to me was that the three components that go into the shot don’t actually have to be shot on the same night. In fact, it would be better to shoot the traffic trails during rush hour. And the fireworks, if kept against a black background, don’t even need to be aligned perfectly since there are no other visual cues to identify where they are supposed to be in the scene.
January 03 2009 | Photography | No Comments »
The Daily Photo series focuses on the two or three key creative choices, in terms of composition and processing, that go into creating an image. Specific technical details about the shot have been left out — you won’t hear me talking about tone curve adjustments and whatnot unless it was a key component of the end result.
Last summer the W began construction on a new hotel which, for better or worse, is next door to where I live in downtown Austin. The entire block was initially ringed with covered pedestrian walkways, painted bright white except for a number of promotional images put up on the south facing sidewalk.
The afternoon light in downtown Austin bounces off quite a number of buildings in the area and in some cases snakes down the east-west streets to create some interesting backlighting opportunities. This shot of Stephanie is the first in series we did around the construction walkways, before they became covered in dirt from the construction.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/200
- Aperture: f/1.4
- ISO: 800
- Camera: Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM
Original:
Composition and Processing:
- Models must hate me. Really. They show up with their hair all done up and the first thing I do is ask them to mess it up. Hair can be used to great effect when framing the face though, and in many cases you can get radically different looks (where the model looks almost like a different person), just by moving their hair around a bit. In this case I asked Stephanie to pull her hair forward, then bring the chin up enough that I could just barely see both eyes.
- Despite Stephanie’s wonderful red hair, I had black in white in mind from the start. I was more interested in the tonal differences between her skin and everything else. Plus, blowing out her skin really highlighted the eyes and brought out the texture of the hair.
- I expected to crop this shot more tightly later, but it wasn’t until I was done processing that I decided to push it into the upper right corner. I liked the north-south lines created by her face and neck, and this positioning emphasized that. The hair is a little squarish going into the corner, but not too bad.
- When Stephanie posted this to her flickr account, one viewer asked about the catchlight in her eye (particularly since this is a natural light shot). It’s actually the entire sky, right after sundown, framed on four sides by the awning above her head, the two buildings on each side of second street, and the fence one block away. Not exactly planned for, but an added bonus nonetheless.
January 02 2009 | Photography | No Comments »
These guys played on the pool deck of the new AMLI building in downtown Austin during SXSW (part of the Texas Garage Event in the parking garage of the structure). There’s really not much difference between the original and the final, so let’s look more at the composition and lighting choices.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/250
- Aperture: f/4.0
- ISO: 400
- Camera: Canon EOS 1D Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 14mm f/2.8L II USM
- Lighting: Canon 580EX II connected via off camera shoe and held in left hand.
Original:
Composition and Processing
- Normally I’d try to shoot live music without a flash, but this stage was really really dark. On camera flash would have been far too harsh, and there was no room to set up a strobe on a stand, nevermind any sort of umbrella or softbox to diffuse the light a bit. Fortunately, the organizers of the event set up this giant white reflector over the stage (I imagine it also helped shade the stage during the day and protected them from rain too). I used an off camera shoe cable to connect a 580EX flash to the camera, then held it in one hand above my head (pointed at the concave canopy) while I took the shot. That distance was enough to keep the hard light off the musicians, while the light reflected off what was effectively a 10′ wide umbrella.
- I wasn’t thrilled about the position of the band members in the photo, but my main interest was in trying to capture the angle of the bass as it bent away from the camera. 14mm is the widest lens I have, but I really should have used the 1Ds instead of the 1D to exagerate the effect more (the 1D has a 1.3x crop sensor, whereas the 1D is full frame.) As it is, the bass doesn’t quite take over the shot like I want it to.
September 24 2008 | Photography | No Comments »
One of the very first studio lighting shoots I did was courtesy of Trey Ratcliff, and the setting was his office in downtown Austin. Another photographer and friend of his, Andrea, agreed to be the model for the afternoon.
Trey’s office had a nice brick wall on one side. The bricks themselves weren’t very interesting, but I figured they’d be perfect to try some texture experiments with later in Photoshop.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/250
- Aperture: f/11
- ISO: 100
- Camera: Canon EOS 1ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM
- Lighting: One AB camera left in a 42″ umbrella; another camera right also in a 42″ umbrella (and further back, acting as fill).
Original:
Setup (from a similar shot, except the light positioning is reversed; that’s Trey shooting):
Composition and Processing
- The background was processed on a separate layer. I didn’t actually apply a texture to it, just used some of the more funky effects from Nik Color Efx to generate the colors. I’ve said it before, but one of the big advantages of plug-ins like Nik is the ability to rapidly test a diverse set of effects, particularly if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. In this case I settled on something that fit the Andrea’s color tones (shirt/skin), while still providing some range in brick color relative to the original.
- For Andrea, I used Nik’s Glamour filter, which gave her a a softer look (and a bit of a glow). It would have been easy to go overboard here, but since I’d increased the contrast on the background (to show off the texture more), making her too soft would have been noticeable to the eye. In the final result I think both are complimentary (i.e. the higher contrast background makes the softer subject stand out, but the texture of the wall also draws the eye a little relative to the subject).
- I had some issues with the mask and getting an edge that worked well with the glamour filter. After a while I got impatient with it and moved on, but if you look closely (or maybe not so closely), you can see a minor halo on some parts of her.
September 16 2008 | Photography | 2 Comments »
Every month or two a group of local photographers get together to shoot at an interesting venue in Austin. The emphasis is off camera flash techniques, and the group maintains a regular forum on flickr called, appropriately, Strobist Austin.
For the March gathering, 45 photographers descended on Vicci with five models in tow. Vicci has a fairly interesting and diverse interior, so we rotated groups of photographers and models around the site in an effort to keep everyone’s shots from being identical. Still, there’s only so much you can do with that many people (subsequent get togethers have had a better subject to shooter ratio).
I wasn’t too happy with this particular set up — the colors were all wrong, the outfit was weak and the background stunk. Michelle was a trooper though, and everyone did their best to make the most of it (did I mention the 4 or 5 strobes? Complete overkill). To be fair, these gatherings are supposed to be learning experiences, so the goal wasn’t necessarily to get a great shot as much as to deepen our knowledge of lighting.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/125
- Aperture: f/5.6
- ISO: 100
- Camera: Canon EOS 1ds Mark III
- Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
- Lighting: 60″ softlighter camera right, SB800 camera right (further right than the softlighter and aimed more at the background), SB800 camera left as fill, plus one more strobe camera left and on background (I think, going mostly from memory on this and the fact three of the lights show up in the reflection from her eye).
Original:
Composition and Processing
- We each had only a few minutes to shoot in each setup, so I thought up a few compositions in advance. There was a curtain hanging on the wall behind the couch she was sitting on (the couch you can’t see), and I thought we could do something interesting with it draped partly around her. Except that when we set the shot up I discovered it was tacked to the wall in a million places, allowing about as much movement as you see here. So I had her pull it as tight as she could, framing her face with the material on one side and her arms top/bottom.
- I didn’t expect to crop so close afterward, but it really focused the attention on her face and, conveniently, got rid of most of the yellow dress. I often do off-center compostions like this, but I’d normally move it to the opposite corner (upper left) because her head is turned slightly down and to the (camera) right. Sometimes its better to go against your normal instincts.
- I tried a number of other colors for the dress, but couldn’t find anything that matched the curtain better.
- Her arms and face are blown out intentionally. I like that look when I use Nik’s bleach bypass effect. The original image was so monotone, it needed something, and the composition itself wasn’t strong enough to carry it otherwise. I do like the final color for the curtain, although that’s due as much to the bleach bypass effect as the color balance I did afterward to cool it off (lots of blue).
The rest of the Vicci shoot can be seen here.
September 14 2008 | Photography | No Comments »
Here’s another shot from the ATT Crit in Austin earlier in the summer. This is during the final race, after the sun had already gone down. There simply wasn’t enough light to work with, even at the extremes: max ISO, almost wide open, slow shutter speed. Not exactly ideal for a sports event.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/60
- Aperture: f/2.0
- ISO: 6400
- Camera: Canon EOS 1d mIII
- Lens: Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM
Original:
Composition and Processing
- Due to the shutter limitations, I had been trying panning shots. But after a while I kind of got bored with that and decided to reverse things: blurred subject and static background. I liked the way these fans had lined up on the construction barricade across the street, and thought the extra light from the walkway would help highlight the riders. I could have taken this shot against a simpler background, but having the fans in there made the shot less one-dimensional.
- The motion blur itself was a bit tricky: I needed just the right amount of blur to imply motion, but not so much you couldn’t identify what it was. On top of that, I didn’t want to obscure the fans too much. 1/60 turned out to be the right shutter speed, but it took a lot of shots to get a lone cyclist in just the right position in the frame.
- I tilted the shot to the right to increase the feeling of action and speed (downhill, essentially). That’s a pretty straigtforward technique. Fortunately I had enough room to do it without losing too much of the cyclist.
September 12 2008 | Photography | No Comments »
This shot was taken with the help of Christopher Fergusen of Definitive Images. It’s the image I use for kevingliner.com.
I had a very clear idea what I wanted to do composition-wise for this shot, and I needed something that would fit the layout and simple color scheme I had planned for my home page. I tried repeatedly to take this as a self portrait, but the act of walking back and forth to the camera (which sat on a tripod) to evaluate each image was time consuming and somewhat futile: even if I could recognize the slight adjustments I needed to make, having stood up and walked away from where I sat made it very difficult to re-create the pose and adjust accordingly.
So I called up Christopher and asked him to lend a hand. He made a couple minor adjustments to the lighting, but left the camera where it was on the tripod and tweaked the pose (more on that below).
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/250
- Aperture: f/9
- ISO: 200
- Camera: Canon EOS 1ds Mark III
- Lens: Cnaon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM (at 68mm)
- Lighting: Zeus head in 60″ softlighter camera right (at about 45 degrees from subject); 4′x8′ black foamcore left of subject; Second zeus head with 7″ reflector blowing out background and flagged with some black foil to prevent spill onto the subject (although enough came off the background to overexpose the bench).
Original:
Composition and Processing
- Anyone who does studio work should really spend some time on the other side of the lens. It’s amazing how awkward an otherwise comfortable looking pose can be. I’m actually sitting on the very edge of the bench and my pants are pulled down as far as possible because they were sliding up too much off my feet in this posture. My neck is craned up and forward. And my shirt, which was drooping down loose as I leaned forward, is clipped behind my back with several gel holder clamps. All those little things were Christopher’s doing.
- I obviously had to clean up the scene to make the edges all white and blow out the floor. But the more interesting question with shots like this is what to do with the shadows. You can always wipe them out entirely, but I think that makes things look like they’re floating. It doesn’t take much to ground the shot though — in this case, just a little bit of shading where the feet and the bench legs meet the floor.
- I mucked around with color balance a lot but wasnt’ really happy with any result — part of the problem was the sunburn on my face, but in general nothing really jumped out as appropriate. I ultimately used Nik Color Efx’s bleach bypass filter and did a 50% blend with the original.
- I prefer off-center compositions, and this particular one had the requirement of also framing (on one side) the menu items that would appear below it (hence my choice of a long bench, but sitting at one end of it).
September 08 2008 | Photography | No Comments »
Here’s another shot from the ATT Crit early this summer (the previous one can be found here). This one’s from the men’s race and was a little later in the day, creating some exposure challenges.
Exposure
- Shutter: 1/320
- Aperture: f/2.8
- ISO: 3200
- Camera: Canon EOS 1ds mIII
- Lens: Canon EF 16-35 f/2.8L II USM (at 16mm)
Original:
Composition and Processing
- I wanted something that exaggerated the long line of riders as they swept by, making it look almost as if they trailed off into the horizon. I chose a slightly off center shot to make sure foreground riders didn’t obscure the riders in the rear, but stayed close enough to close the gaps in the tail. I really wanted to be as wide angle as possible, which meant making a choice between the 1d (1.3x crop) to get the high frame rate (10 fps) and 1ds (no crop, so wider angle, but only 5 fps). I settled on the 1ds: composition trumps shot opportunity, in this case. Shoot smarter.
- The shutter speed is actually a little high for a typical motion blur shot, but I wanted to insure most of the riders were relatively sharp. The only motion blur I needed was on the lead rider to show speed; I think the eye naturally applies that to the whole chain because the riders are sort of connected visually anyway. Considering the angle of the camera and how close I was to the lead rider (you can see my own foot in the scene), the higher shutter was the right choice.
- This might have worked in color, but I didn’t like the way the noise looked, even after cleaned up, at ISO 3200. And the riders didn’t quite separate from the background enough. As I’ve done on occasion in other shots, I used Nik Color Efx infrared filter to convert the image to black and white. I certainly could have gotten this look with other black and white plug-ins or just using channels, but this was faster and occurred in the context of a lot of other filters (black and white or otherwise). Being able to creatively explore a lot of options quickly is one of the biggest advantages to Nik’s product.
August 19 2008 | Photography | No Comments »
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