Make pictures in op-shops. Great props, backgrounds, and the staff are always friendly. This was a Red Cross Shop, in Newtown, Sydney, AU.
Photography of the Age: A book review
The hardcover book is about as big, and as heavy, as a typical phonebook.
This isn’t a book. It’s a manual.
A blow-by-blow, day-to-day account of a day in the life of an Age photographer, lumped with some history, some gear talk, and a glossery.
Photography of the Age, by Kathleen Whelan, is the kind of book you need to lift with your knees. You could bludgenon an intruder with it. But what you should do with it is read it over and over until you wear the pages thin.
I was lucky to be given a signed copy, by a friend for Christmas. Thanks, @markjesser!
Photographers — you’ve got to get this book. Simple as that.
It encapsulates everything about working in a news photographer at The Age in Melbourne in chapters such as:
- The context of an image
- Legal and ethical constraints
- Use of new technologies
- The layout of the paper
- The press photographer’s job
Then it profiles a whole bunch of past and present Age photographers, showing their work, unearthing their processes, camera settings, approach to jobs, gear, and so on.
The photography is fantastic. The content is comprehensive.
But it’s very much a photographers’ book. I showed mine to several non-newspaper-reading people that didn’t really appreciate photography. They just shrugged and said “it’s okay”. So, I doubt the book will inspire people to pick up photography.
But — If you are a photographer, I guarantee it will inspire you to make better pictures.
This really is a look inside an organisation that affords its photographers two of the rarest things in the industry: Some time and resources. The pixels contained in this page a compelling proof that time + resources + highly-trained, creative photographers = iconic, amazing results.
But — and this is possibly my biggest gripe with the book — it’s written in a pretty melancholy tone.
The blurb on the back opens with: “Are newspapers dead?” and finishes with “Kathleen Whelan has recorded for posterity the Golden Age of Newspaper Photography … an age we may never see the likes of again”.
Fills your heart with joy, doesn’t it? And you haven’t even had a chance to open the book yet.
But photographers, don’t be put off by this. Keep reading and you’ll find a treasure trove of resources, learning and facinating stories.
It’s a great book. Get it. Read it. Learn from it. Then, like the photographers of The Age, go work your butt off and produce your own body of awesome images.
A photographer’s profile in the book.
A spread of images.
The easiest way to buy it is to Google the title and author’s name.
Ben
Cows and cameras …
Cows have taught me a lot about photography.
In fact, out of all the thumbless creatures on this planet, they’re perhaps the subjects that reveals most about the photographer.
In other words, if you want to know what a photographer is like with people, send them to photograph anything that goes “moo”.
Cows are better judges of character than most humans. As you approach, they calmly stop chewing their feed and look at you, observe you, consider you, then respond to you.
It’s as simple as this: If you’re likeable, they’ll stay. If you’re aggressive, agitated, rushed, nervous, loud, irratable, or, worst of all, insincere, they’ll stand up and move away.
They don’t pass judgement. They don’t scorn or look down their noses. They just decide, then and there, whether or not you are the kind of person they want to be around.
Early on as a newspaper photographer, I wasn’t the kind of person cows liked. Rushed between photo jobs, erratic and stressed about hitting deadline, cows took one look at me and literally grabbed their calves and bolted to the other end of the paddock.
For a while, I dreaded illustrating farm stories. I was terrified I couldn’t deliver the shots.
And the cows could smell my fear.
So I asked for help from a farmer.
“Mate, I grew up on the beach. The only cows I saw as a kid were on the sides of milk cartons. What should I do?”
After he stopped laughing at me (which took a while), he told me just to be honest.
“I am,” I replied. “I’m telling you, aren’t I?”
“Don’t tell me. Tell the cows,” he said.
So I shrugged and talked to his cows. “Hey ladies. I’m Ben and I’m scared you’re going to run away. Could I take your photo please?” I took a deep breath and waited.
The cows stopped chewing and looked at me. Stared at me. But for once, none of them moved.
I lifted the camera and clicked the shutter.
“See –” said the farmer, a bit smugly.
I talked to that herd of cows for about half-an-hour after that, snapping pictures of the farmer and his animals. I don’t remember what I told them, but I’ve never forgotten what I learned that day.
And I still talk to cows to this day.
Ben
When I can’t sleep, I either worry, or write …
I love that moment right before you fall asleep.
You know, those minutes just before sleep when your conscious is about to give in under your subconscious’s warm blanket of thoughts and feelings of a day well spent.
In that translucent haze, you often run through what you did in that day, and, even if you didn’t get done everything you hoped, everything gets washed over with a feeling of contentment, security and gratefulness.
I can roughly summarise it into three thoughts.
You did these things well.
I enjoyed these parts of my day.
I’m so glad these people/things are in my life.
This pretty much sums up the last things that goes through my mind before sleep takes me every night.
Every night. Except last night.
And I say last night, because it’s about 12.10am in the morning as I write this, about 20 minutes after I was jolted out of my groggy daily review by one wayward question.
What if I don’t get done?
I’ve got a few things I’d like to get done before I shuffle off this planet — what if I don’t finish them? Worse — what if I don’t start some of them?
Write a book. Or books.
Travel overseas.
Learn to skateboard.
Be a mentor. Be a dad.
Speak Italian.
Get my dog to come when I call him. Right away. Even when there’s kids at the park, too.
Be married for like 50 or 60 years.
Learn to play guitar songs by ear.
Make a photograph so poignant people cry when they see it.
Balance work/life.
How on earth am I supposed to sleep soundly with a to-do list THIS LONG?
Maybe I should focus on all the good things I’ve got going on for a minute.
Married to Laura. BEST THING EVER. (Even trumps Star Wars.)
Great cat and great dog.
Get along with and are in constant contact with family — parents, grandparents, siblings — very lucky, here.
Landed the dream job teaching photography to awesome students, in classroom and online all around Australia. And shooting personal projects or client work when I can.
Star Wars.
More superhero movies now than ever before in history.
Yep. I’m a lucky, lucky bastard, I think as I put my head back down on the pillow.
But I still can’t sleep. I’m restless.
So I think about some other things I’ve done.
Scored a cadetship to be a newspaper reporter.
Switched careers and became a newspaper photographer despite the fears and discouragement of many.
Won a couple of awards for Best News photographs.
Wrote and photographed a five page feature story in the weekend section once.
Sent leukaemia packing (and stay out, pal).
Went back to the Children’s Hospital and donated my photography skills shooting Mothers’ Day portraits.
Shot the front page of The Daily Telegraph.
I’ve done okay, I reason with myself. But I’m more panicked than ever. I’m not coping with the idea of running out of time with “unfinished business”.
But, for now, I’m feeling tired. Hopefully that’ll be enough to help me sleep.
Ben
Meet Grant. The guy who convinced me to become a photographer. —–>
Full story on Benhasacat.
How to shoot a sports portrait in minutes
Shot for http://ift.tt/M24X8m
Two types of speed were the most important factors in making this picture.
The film speed (the ISO, in case you haven’t shot much film) and the speed in which I could physically pound the shutter button to get this job done.
It was their last training session before their grand final, so Coach told me not to muck around.
Which was fine by me, the light was dropping so fast that I didn’t want to muck around either.
When I’m under pressure I always like to nail down things down one at a time.
1) Work out what’s going on. Combine the instructions on the job sheet with what the talent is telling you. (You wouldn’t believe how often the two differ.)
2) Make a compromise and make friends. There is ALWAYS a point where what YOU want to do and what THEY want to do meet to produce a kick-ass picture. Burning people for the sake of your vision might get you a nice picture … but pretty soon your reputation will precede you and nobody is gonna want you let you take their picture.
3) Tell them you’ll call them when you’re ready. Sort your picture, get it practiced, and know that it’s going to work BEFORE you get the talent in. I wanted to use my 70-200mm lens to compress that background and tasty sunset, so I knew I wanted a shutter speed about 1/200th, so I wouldn’t get a blurry result from camera shake.
An aperture of f4 is my usual starting point as it it is a bit forgiving on a Canon 1D Mark IV’s eccentric autofocus, so, with those values locked in Manual, I just walked the ISO up until the ambient light looked good.
4) Dial those settings into your back-up/other camera. (I did so to my other Mark IV with the wide lens on it.)
All that done, you’re ready, and you haven’t wasted anyone’s time.
I asked Coach to please send over talent, and grabbed a bystander to hold my flash just out of frame on camera-right. I think the flash was actually on E-TTL high-speed sync for once — and it popped the right amount of light on the players.
Perfect.
I ripped through plenty of frames in landscape and portrait orientations, and varied the shutter speed on a couple to quite slow and quite fast to either brighten or darken the background ambient light so the sub-editors would have a few options.
I then ran in close and ripped through a bunch of frames on my wide-angle lens, just in case, but, this was my favourite of the bunch.
I dunno if I helped them win the grand final, but by being calm and fast, I doubt I hurt their chances.
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
[A note on this post: I wrote this a while ago for an audience that mostly included enthusiast-and-beyond-level photographers working far away from here. But after I reread it recently, I thought it could be worthwhile sharing here. Please let me know what you think in the comments. –> Ben.]
You think you’re ready to be a newspaper photographer?
I’ll bet you’re wrong.
I’m not being a pessimist … you and your camera just aren’t ready yet.
So what if your portraits are amazing?
Who cares if your lighting is inspired?
Who give a crap if your sports photography moves the viewer to tears?
So, you can shoot video, have a flair for storytelling and a nose for news?
You’re tertiary-qualified and have won awards for your work? Snore!
You might be the NEXT BIG THING about to happen to photography, but you still aren’t good enough to work beside me.
You aren’t ready.
You’re missing something.
[Note: Got your attention? Good! The intent of this orignally was to prove to that being a great photographer had very little to do with producing technically brilliant pictures, that’s a base requirement. A “great” photographer needs to be much more than technically proficient.]
Those above-mentioned things are all way down on the list of qualifications my editor looks for in a photographer.
My boss expects more from his photographers than incredible pixels.
In news, it’s a bare requirement that you’re pictures are amazing, that you’re understanding of lighting is perfect, that you know a 400mm lens better than the back of you hand.
There’s about seven other staff photographers at my newspaper – an eclectic mix of men and women, aged from young to old – and the one thing they have in common is they all rock at photography.
Armed with a couple of cameras – a 16-35mm, a 70-200mm, and a few flashes – every day we file pictures that inform, entertain and engage.
Just like all other news photographers.
Newspapers have shed staff dramatically in the past few years, and many of those who produced the very best in pixels didn’t escape the knife.
Those of us still in the job have to prove ourselves again and again, assignment after assignment, just to stay employed.
The kind of above-and-beyond commitment and dedication that used to earn you respect and admiration in the newsroom is now the baseline.
You show up, give 120 per cent, forget about your lunch-break and work a few hours overtime just to keep up with the rest of the photographers.
So, how do you get ahead with your camera?
You don’t.
You get ahead by being the best person you can be.
By being a fighter. A survivor. And a nice guy, too.
A fighter makes front page pictures out of virtually nothing.
A survivor doesn’t believe in reshoots. They somehow always find a way to make strangers who aren’t models look great in rubbish light.
And a nice guy can encounter with anyone, from editors to members of the public, and leave them satisfied and smiling.
Forget your 70-200mm – “you” are the best tool in your camera bag.
The brief for us every day is this: Deliver awesome pictures and video in crappy conditions with very little time and even less gear. There’s no valid excuses for stuff ups and usually only a nod of praise for a job well done.
So why do we do it? And why would you even want to consider a career in news photography?
Well, for me, there’s nothing like the thrill of walking into any story, any situation, any light, with two lenses and two flashes and producing a front-page picture.
News photography is the ultimate proof that it’s not your gear that makes the picture, it’s your brain, and your ability to connect with people.
Understand that, and you’ll get a job beside me anyday.
[Note: Sorry it was a long one. Hope you liked it. Please write to me here with your thoughts. –> Ben.]
How to turn your iPhone into a stunning light.
Photographer Chase Jarvis is no jackass.
When he says “The best camera is the one you have with you,” you should listen.
Some news photographers might sniff at this, but, an iPhone camera ready in your hand always – ALWAYS – trumps a Nikon D800 that’s been left locked in your car.
I’d encourage you to take that thinking a little bit further and apply it to your lighting.
Sure, at The Border Mail we have access to a whole bunch of speedlight flashes, reflectors, studio strobes, even the odd LED panel.
My personal at-home camera kit includes four speedlights, but lately, I’ve found I’ve rarely taken more than one flash with me when I’ve gone out shooting.
In fact, The last few times I’ve gone out after dusk I’ve not carried one flash with me.
Why? Because I’ve found my iPhone’s LED flash is … wait for it … WICKED!
Since IOS 7 dropped, turning that crappy on-camera flash into a constant light has been easier than ever. Just swipe up, then hit the flashlight button.
If your iPhone still runs an older IOS, you can either download and use a flashlight app, or, boot up your camera, flick it into video mode, then turn on the flash.
Ta-daaaah!
An instant, quality, off-camera constant light for video or stills.
For the quick grab here of my mate and fellow colleague Mark Jesser (@MarkJesser) working hard up on the barbecue grill, I lit him with my iPhone from camera right. The bit of fill on his face came from the bounce off the barbecue light. I shot it on an Olympus OM-D EM-5.
I can’t wait to try this with four or five iPhones and really see what sort of light I can craft out of these little LED monsters.
What do you reckon? Ask me a question.
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!
Cheers, Ben.
How to photograph Anzac Day
For the past decade, I haven’t attended an Anzac Day without my camera.
Ever since I got my newspaper cadetship when I was 18, I’ve photographed at least one Anzac Day service a year, probably more.
One year, way back when, I shot a dawn service in Batemans Bay, then a morning march and service at Tomakin, then Batemans Bay’s main parade and service, then caught the end of an event in Moruya.
Four minutes silence and probably 1000 frames.
By the end of that day, and all the Anzac Days that followed it, you might forgive me for thinking that all the parades and the services are basically the same.
Marching, cheering, wreath laying, standing solemnly.
Different town. Maybe different weather. But all basically the same.
Seen one, seen them all, right?
No way.
Anzac Day is one of my favourite events to photograph, and while there are certain photos you need to capture (crowd, mayor, guest speaker, march, diggers, etc) there’s so many other one-off moments to try and land on your camera’s sensor.
Take the above photo of a mayor about to lay a wreath. I shot it at Myrtleford a couple of years ago, and it was a gamble.
I saw the gate, I saw the sun, and knew there was a picture there … if the mayor happened to walk a certain way to the Cenotaph. There was maybe a one-in-five chance he would walk my way.
Running my cameras in aperture priority with a flash in the hotshoe dialled down 2/3 of a stop, maybe more, just to fill in shadows, I squished myself and my wide 16mm lens, in behind the gate, hit the exposure lock button with my crosshairs on the sky, then moved my crosshairs to the gate and half pressed the shutter button.
Popped a test shot and saw that the sun looked like a big bright blob.
Changed to a small aperture, f16, and tried again. Now the sun looked like the sun (with a star pattern-shape).
Then I waited with camera to my eye. And hoped. And prayed Canon’s sometimes drunk flash metering system wouldn’t throw me a spanner.
Keep in mind I’m shooting into the sun, and that sun is pouring in through my viewfinder, piercing through my sunnies and scorching itself into the back of my eyeball.
(If I had this shot over, I’d have used my camera’s liveview.)
Eventually, I heard them announce the mayor’s name on the loudspeakers, then a sillouete flashed into my frame and I squeezed the button.
Click.
Got up and ran to the Cenotaph to shoot another bunch of shots of the mayor with my other camera with the 70-200 attached.
Only after that do I spare a second to review my shot, which I hope you’ll agree, was well worth the hassle.
Canon 1D Mk IV with 16-35mm lens @ 16mm, 1/300th, f16 and ISO 400.
Want to know more? Please ask me anything here.
Cheers, Ben.
Shot for The Border Mail.
How I (mostly) beat my fear of food photography
I can’t do this, I can’t do this.
This would repeat over and over in my brain whenever I was assigned to photograph food, and, for years, I couldn’t shake the doubt.
I’d just fumble my way through the photos, stressing and sweating, reeling off frames, hoping that somewhere, in the hundreds of pictures, my editor would find one he didn’t completely hate.
It’s fair to say that food photography scared the heck out of me.
So I did what any sane photographer would do.
I tried to shoot as much of it as I could.
I’d beg, borrow and swap on to any food-related assignment I could, hoping that if I shot enough frames, A) the fear would eventually go away, and B) someday, my food photos might not totally suck.
And boy did I spend some frames on food jobs. Like, 400-500 pictures of a single plate of food.
I’d shoot available light, strobe light, constant light, reflectors, candles, high ISO, low ISO, handheld, tripod, shallow depth-of-field, deep depth-of-field, long lens, wide lens, prime lens, and even fisheye.
I’d shoot until the food was cold and my camera was too hot to hold.
Frantic, I’d rush back to the office, plug in my memory card and restart the hysteria, again, lost in a sea of mediocre pixels.
Then, my mate Grant happenned.
“Just tell it’s story,” said the curly-haired oracle.
Huh?
“Find it’s story,” he insisted. “Is it a light dish, or dense and dark? Is it warm winter food? A bright summery dish? Does it have hero ingredients, or is it an ensemble of flavours?
"Look at it or ask the chef questions. Then you’ll know what to do.”
For this food photo above, the chef told me it was a complex and mix of roast vegetables. It looked so precise, clean and cool, that I popped it on a rustic board near a window and overexposed my shot until the plate went white and the food looked really bright.
For the photo of the chef, I found a spot in the restaurant where the natural light looked cool. I popped a flash up on a stand, then locked the exposure so the bright parts of the frame had detail, then called the chef in to sit down.
He was busy preparing food in the kitchen so I did as much work as I could do without him before I bothered him. He sat down, and I moved the flash to camera left so it would fill his face.
I did a test shot, adjusted the flash, tested again, adjusted the flash, and tested one last time.
With the light looking nice, I got to work cajoling a nice smile out of the chef.
Do I still get nervous before a food shoot? Heck yes.
But thanks to Grant, I can troubleshoot my way through the cold sweats.
If you’d like to see more of Grant, visit his tumblr at www.ggtakespics.tumblr.com or on twitter @ggtakespics.
I shot this recently for The Border Mail’s Fresh lift-out, which prints on Fridays.
If you’d like to know more, please ask.
Ben.
How to shoot into sunset to add drama
Four blokes, three cricket bats, a cute kid and a bit of sunshine.
What more could a photographer ever ask for?
Well, maybe a bit more time. The sun was dropping fast and I really had to hustle to get this shot done.
So while my mouth was moving, hustling the talent onto the oval, my fingers were dancing over my Canon ID Mk IV, locking in some pretty standard settings for shooting into the sun.
First, I tackled the ambient light … that being the light your flash won’t touch.
Got my shutter speed up to it’s highest native sync speed (For me, that was *1/250th).
Then, I got my ISO low (I was at 160).
Then, I picked an aperture as a starting point (I went with about f4).
And took a test photo.
Too bright, increase your f number. (For me, I got lucky, and it looked pretty balanced.)
Second, I sorted out my flash exposure. I like to work manual, so I guessed an output of probably 1/8th or ¼th, and recruited the cute little kid to hold the flash pointed in the middle of the four blokes.
Took another test picture. Flash exposure looked a bit hot on the blokes.
At this point, I had a few options. I could turn down the power of the flash. I could ask the kid to take a step away from the blokes. Or, I could increase my f number and shrink my aperture a bit. All would dull down the flash exposure.
I opted for the easiest adjustment, moved my thumb a bit and shifted my camera to f5, which was where we ended up for this picture.
I shot several variations, some with the blokes blocking the sun from the camera (which left them beautifully rim lit), but I liked this look the best. It’s nice when, every now and again, your flash plays second fiddle to the best light source of all, the sun.
Here’s the story that ran for the newspaper.
(* I know, I know, the Canon ID IV technically syncs at 1/300th of a second. But I’ve found I can only achieve that specific shutter speed when I use a Canon-branded off-camera trigger. I was shooting a Cactus trigger, so my shutter speed choices were 1/250th or 1/320th.)
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.
How to make a photograph against the odds
Ah, the joys of shooting a fruit farming story outside of fruit season.
And it was raining, cold, and our talent (the guy I was photographing) prefered not to go outside.
(And the headache starts to build …)
Okay, think Ben, think.
Okay, those crates look cool, imposing, and the repetition is nice.
But their isn’t much light. What little light there is, it’s nice, but there isn’t much.
Fortunately, our talent is standing still.
“Stand here, sir, relax, and rest your hand here. Feel okay? Yes? Great!” I said.
Fumble ISO up to maybe 1000, perhaps more.
Drag the shutter down to a 1/20th, maybe lower. Aperture at whatever.
Click. Check screen. Looks okay, but our talent needs pop.
The lovely reporter with me holds a flash set on on a very low manual power (maybe 1/32) out of frame on camera left aimed at the talent’s face.
Click.
A bit bright.
Shrink aperture by a little.
Click again.
He looks good and sharp thanks to the flash, but now there’s a gross shadow cast onto the crates.
If this were a tight shot, I could just dial the flash power down and walk it in even closer to the talent to control that icky shadow, but, I want the wide-angle look, so …
… I grab my remaining flash and Gorillapod, and literally ram the ensemble into the crates beyond the right of the frame, and angle the flash back towards our talent.
Set it to a small power. Take a test shot.
No shadow.
I dial a bit more power into that same flash.
Nice.
I’ve scored a nice rim light that makes the talent pop even more from the background.
Not a bad result from where we could have ended up: a cold farmer standing among some wet empty fruit trees.
How to photograph a kick boxer
You might be shocked to here this: I’m not the toughest bloke you’ll meet.
But this shadow boxer might be, so it was important my portrait of him for the Border Mail looked tough as nails.
I stood the boxer in the middle of the ring, and used two flashes to sandwich him with light.
Imagine two flashes about three metres apart, pointed at each other. The boxer then stood right in the middle and faced the camera.
Light sandwich.
One flash was mounted to the top rope of the ring with a mixture of Gorrilapod and gaff tape and the other was held by a mate of the boxer. Manual output, power at about 1/16th.
I used my 70-200mm lens, zoomed to about 150mm, flicked the autofocus point over the boxer’s head, and the autofocus mode to continuous so his eyes would stay sharp even if he moved about a bit.
A few test frames later, the shutter speed was 1/200th to kill out the ambient light, and an aperture of about f9 exposed the flash nicely.
Then, I just asked the boxer to punch air and I shot away. At one point, I asked the mate with the flash to come a bit closer to camera, to light the boxer’s face from the front a bit more, but, in the end, I liked this shot more.
Questions, comments? Feel free to hit me up.
Ben