Meet Grant. The guy who convinced me to become a photographer. —–>

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How to photograph people in a black room.

Dear Lord, I was thinking, what did I do to deserve this?

I’m standing in a black room with black 10-metre walls, a black ceiling, a black floor, holding an eight-year-old camera that starts to blow smoke when set to anything higher than ISO 800.

Somewhere, in all this darkness, is a Page Three picture of an artist and his latest work.

The job sheet says: Go to art gallery, photograph artist and work.

At my disposal is a 16-35mm wide lens on my camera, a flash transmitter and a flash.

And a whole lot of blackness.

And a very patient artist.

I’m wishing (for like the 1000th time in what feels like as many months) that Canon Australia would send that promised (and seemingly fictional) second flash.

But after whispering a dozen Hail Marys only to find that an another flash still hadn’t materialised in my pocket, I got to work scheming ways to stretch the output of my single light source.

I start popping test shots and immediately hate the results.

The flash just smashes into the artist and his artwork with the subtly of a brick.

It looks crap. More like a Page Three-Hundred photo than a Page Three photo.

Keeping my chin up, I beg the gallery tech to turn a spotlight or two onto the artwork, which improves things a lot, but also makes things harder.

See, now the artwork looks good, but the spotlights are a constant, soft, low-powered light compared to the brutal, quick hard pop of the flash.

Even at the flash’s lowest power, it still nukes all the quality out of the spotlights and ruins the good work they were doing for the artwork.

I’ve got to get the flash away from the artwork somehow.

So, flash is on low power, shutter speed is around a respectable 1/80th and my aperture is fairly wide open, maybe f4 or larger.

I tackle the too-bright-flash problem first. Turn the power down low, back it up a bit from the subject, and use my notebook to shield the light away from the artwork and guide it on to my artist.

After a few test pops, I get the flash under control by shrinking my aperture to f5.6.

Artist looks good, but artwork is now almost black. What to do?

Only one thing I can do … I just start dropping my shutter speed, taking test shots until the artwork looks like it’s exposed nicely.

At about 1/10th of a second, I’m there. Which is a bit slower than you want usually go when hand-holding a camera, but with a few deep breaths and steady hands, a sharp shot is quite achievable.

ISO for the shoot was 500.

FYI – when shooting at low shutter speeds, adding flash into the mix helps freeze your subject sharp, so when I’m hand-holding at crazy slow shutter speeds, I’m usually adding in flash to help myself out and cheat a bit of sharpness.

Am I totally happy with the pic? Not entirely. I’d love to have a second light kicking back toward’s the artist’s shoulders, adding a bit of separation.

But, you do the best with the gear you’ve been allocated, and since the picture made it to Page Three the next day, they must have been happy with the shot back at the office.

Want to know more? Let me help.

Cheers,

Ben

How you can shoot the back page photograph

 This back-page photo took about two minutes to make.

The blokes walked into frame, struck their poses, smiled, and … click, click, I was done.

Yeah, right!
I wish it were that easy.
Technically, the actual shoot did barely take two minutes, but the photo was planned, set up and practiced almost 40 minutes earlier.
Why?
Well, experience has taught me that sports people on training nights are a mix of busy/preoccupied/hectic/shy/running late/etc, so, I always like to have at least a Plan B up my sleeve, ready to execute.
Plan A – if you are interested – is whatever might happen that could be better than Plan B.
So, once I set up Plan B, I prepare my camera for Plan A and wait … you never know when something might happen to a star player right before your lens – it’s worth being ready.
So, I arrive and am told there will be a delay with the players. Which is no problem, because I’ve got plenty of work to do setting up.
I’m really impressed by the sky, and want to include it in the shot so I guess an aperture (maybe f4) and then find a shutter speed that makes the sky look great.
At ISO 500, I’m looking at about 1/30th of a second at f4. Which is about as slow as you want to go on the shutter when handholding with a wide lens.
Then I do something you might think is strange.
I crank the ISO up to about 1600. (You’ll see why in a sec.)
Now I’m at 1/100th at f4, and the sky looks exactly the same as it did a moment ago.
Next, I have to build the flash for fill. I dial in a really low power, like 1/128th. Put my left hand where I want the talents’ heads to be and take a picture. Look at it. My hand looks a bit dark. Sky looks great, though. Increase flash power to 1/32. Take a test picture. Hand looks too bright. Sky still looks great. Drop flash power to 1/64. Now my hand looks good. And so does the sky.

I spend a second wondering how I’d like the players to stand. Get that sorted in my head while I dial some Plan A settings into my spare camera, you know, just in case something happens.

Then, I wait.
“Shouldn’t be long,” I’m assured.
10 minutes pass and light bleeds from the sky. To compensate, I drop my shutter a click of two.
Another 10 minutes, and the sky gets darker. Another couple of clicks slower in shutter speed to compensate.
“They’re on their way.”
“Thank you.”
Almost 10 minutes later, I’m down to about 1/50th of a second at IS0 1600 at f4, and my players make it into position.
Test shot. Sky and flash exposure still looks the same as it did 30 minutes ago.
“Smile, gentlemen. Look tough.”

Thanks to over-cranking the ISO , all I’ve had to do to cheat more light out of the sky almost 40 minutes later is wiggle my shutter dial a few clicks.
If I’d picked a lower (and what most photographers would argue a better) ISO speed, I’d have be in a mad scramble trying to pull this shot off in the time allowed with the talent.

What do you reckon? Ask me anything, here.

Shot for www.bordermail.com.au

Cheers,

Ben

How to photograph the supernatural

It’s not everyday you get to photograph a medium.

On arrival, I half expected to meet a mysterious woman cloaked in silk, smoke and mirrors, surrounded by all sorts of spiritual gadgets.

Instead, I ended up in a typical lounge/dining room, with okay window light, a couple of small crystal balls and a down-to-earth person called Val.

It felt exactly like a thousand other photo shoots, with a thousand other people — except this time, she could talk to dead people.

Cool, huh!

Expecting a fascinating answer, I asked Val what she saw when she gazed into the crystal balls.

“Nothing,” she responded.

Uh-huh?

“Your boss asked if I had one because it would look good in the photo, but I don’t actually use one when I’m working.”

She went on to say, that there were mediums who used tools, and there were mediums who didn’t — just like there were photographers who used a lot of gear, and others who only brought along the bare essentials.

As I was standing there with only a camera and a 16-33mm lens around my neck and one flash in my pocket, I could see what she was getting at.

So, while Val got to work polishing a crystal ball, I scouted for a location.

Outside? I saw it on the way in … nothing jumped out at me.

Inside? It was a house with bedrooms … nothing that screamed “supernatural”.

But there was a nice window, which was something.

Val hopped in front, and I underexposed the scene until the window looked nice.

Then, holding my flash in my left hand, I moved it high on camera left and got Val to tell me when the face of the flash (the bit where the light comes out) was pointed at her. The flash was in manual mode, set on a mild output. If it lit Val’s face too brightly, I could shrink my aperture (by choosing a larger f number) to tone it down. If that in turn made the background too dark, I could slow my shutter speed to let more ambient light in.

Remember: Your aperture dial is like a volume knob for your flash, and your shutter dial controls the ambient (non-flash) light in the photo.

It took a bit of wiggling with the camera to keep the white hot-spots off Val’s eyes in the picture, but once we found the right spot through trial and error, it wasn’t long before we arrived at a photo we liked.

Like it? Dislike it? Let me know in the comments, please, and don’t be afraid to ask me anything!

Shot for The Border Mail.

Cheers, Ben.

How make your flash work twice as hard

I usually roll with two flash units in my camera bag. Sometimes, when I’m feeling fancy (or more likely, very lucky) I carry three. Which is a nice number of lights to work with when you’re shooting off-camera strobes.

Lots of options, lots of power, lots of versatility.

But lately, I’ve been stuck with one flash.
Yep, just one.
The new Canon 600 unit paired with the new Canon radio trigger. It’s a sweet rig – reliable, easy, way better than the old system – but … I’m now a one-light bandit.

Which, I’m surprised to say, has been refreshingly awesome.

Take the shot above.
With several flashes, you’d pump one zoomed flash from camera right onto the talent’s face, run another zoomed flash from really high on camera left onto the talent’s back, and run your last flash on low power from in front somewhere, wafting soft fill light into the mix.
Tweak power and aperture to taste … and done.

So, knowing the three-flash look I wanted, I set out to achieve that with one flash.
I hung the flash high on the wall out of frame on camera left, using a gorillapod and a bit of wire that protruded from the building.
I had the shutter at 1/250th and a starting point for aperture at maybe f5.6. ISO at 100.
Turned the flash up to about 1/8th power and took a test shot. Too hot on the talent’s hair.
Adjusted aperture and took a test shot. And again. Now at F10. Hair looks good but face too dark.

Asked the talent to keep pulling the newspaper she was holding closer to her face to illuminate it with reflected the flash’s blast as I took test shots.

After a bit of trial and error, we got it.

Here’s the photo with the Border Mail article.
Want to ask me a question? Click here.