On being in front of the camera

First of all, apologies for the delay between posts, life got in the way a bit lately in my search for a new car (which if the mechanic gives the OK tomorrow will have ended!) tho I have been out a bit with my camera as well.

Todays topic is about models and modelling and making the photographer aware of what makes a model tick. I don’t know about a lot of other people but while I prefer to be behind the camera, I have spent a lot of time being a model as well. It pays reasonably well, and I have worked on and off for years as a nude model for local art schools and for a local photographer.

These thoughts come specifically from the point of a nude model but here are some things to think about :

Most important thing is to have the room warm, and keep it warm. I used to model for one place that had the heaters on to warm it up and then turned them off once class started, and it was a 2 hr class, so by the end of it I was FREEZING and shivering and miserable.

Breaks are important – depending on the model but I was happy with a break around 45 min – if you are standing a lot then have some really good padding to stand on and make breaks about every 20 min. I can pose for longer if I’m sitting, its a lot less tiring

Don’t insist on really complicated 3D poses ALL THE TIME – I stopped working for a guy who teaches a lot in CHCH cos he was really demanding about difficult poses. If it was discussed with me first what the class was going to be about and had a mutual discussion around posing options and preferences that would have been nice, but to him I was just a piece of meat.

Most places just give you some guidance – sit for this one pls, or stand, move this arm, can you lean a bit here – they let you pick the basic pose and tweak it which is better.

If you have a specific look or pose or ‘thing’ you want to achieve, discuss it with the model (possibly even in advance) and get their input. Some of the most extreme poses can be very difficult to sustain for the time it takes for setup, so be patient about asking for basic shapes to help setup lights etc, and that way they can save some energy for when its really happening

Remember they are a person, not a statue – I once astonished an art teacher one day by answering one of the questions he was asking his students – can’t remember what it was now, but he had basically forgotten I had existed. Being talked about as if you aren’t in the room is a little rude as well – its nice to be included in the discussion, if only a tiny little bit to make you feel welcome

Pay in cash on the night unless its a proper business deal (tax and stuff) I had one guy who paid me in professional prints, but it took him ages to get around to it, so if you do that deal, sort it promptly if you want the model to work for you again

For one on one work, make it clear for a first time or nervous model that a friend is welcomed and encouraged (a chaperone essentially – there are some weirdos out there) – let them bring some music to play – if you have a particular mood or feel for the shoot in mind , let them know and they can bring appropriate music to help them relax and get into it more

Be aware of flash effect and brightness and lights – it can be hard work under all that brightness

Be concious of not getting in the zone too much and forgetting to have a break, especially if you are getting them to do creative posing – I did a fun session using large white wooden cubes of different sizes, but balancing and stretching like that and holding it while you fluff around with lights and stuff and then eventually take the shot can be *very* hard work

If you treat them like a person and involve them and get a synergy going, then I am sure you will get much better images rather than having a bored marionette striking poses.

Boy at the Beach

There was a Kite Day on yesterday, and it was a fantastic day, and I have LOADS of kite pix to work through.  But walking along the beach I found this quite large sandpit/puddle that had been dug with some effort, but was currently abandoned.

So I went back a bit to frame it up, and while doing so a small boy in a blue swimsuit jumped back in and started playing, so I took a couple of shots of him.

Here he is digging away under the water

And here he has noticed me crouching down with the camera pointed at him

So after a few more shots, I looked around to see where the parents might be and thought I spotted them and went up to say hello, explain I had got some shots of the boy and would email them if they had an email address (I have taken to carrying a notepad and a pen in my backpack for such things).  They were very pleased at the offer and commented they had few good photos of him.  They had a P&S and Dad had been taking shots from his height of over 6 foot

I kept my eye on him while we were talking, and noticed him listening and paying attention.  And was lucky enough to get this last shot

A rather cheeky grin

I worked the hardest on these images in Lightroom trying to get them the best I could. I was pleased that I managed to figure out how to bring the blue out in his swimsuit. Its mid day ‘nuclear’ sunlight and it was a bit underexposed, but if you pick the blue colour, up the saturation a little and then play with the luminance (bring it down somewhat) you end up with whats above (if you take it too far the darker blue went purple!)

Obviously its nowhere near as good as if someone who knew what they were doing edited it, but I was pleased with what I achieved, and delighted to have the opportunity to get these shots, I am very pleased with them.

And the boys name is Flynn

Are Competitions a way of learning and improving?

I went and had a look at the images that won in the recent national Professional Photographer awards. And I was quite disappointed. I would really have liked to have seen the original photo and then the one that was submitted – because I think that it was less about the photography skill and more about the photoshopping skill (or other technique like HDR ).

I didn’t feel like I was looking at photos, I felt like it was art. And as with all art, some of it I liked and some of it completely eluded me (a white background with what looked like a few stalks of dead grass scattered on it had me quite bemused)

So lets take a step back – obviously this highly rarified air of top level photography competition is in no danger from me anytime soon. But as a way of getting feedback and ideas for improvement, are competitions worth while?

Can I expect there to be any consistency in judging things like technical merit and basic rules of composition? Or is it all very much ‘in the eye of the beholder’ and if the person judging doesn’t like cats or orchids or somesuch, then I’m on the back foot regardless?

I’m asking the question because I now feel the need for more advanced critique of my work – more direction to help me improve (or more specific direction)

What do other beginners do when they hit this stage?

FlameOz Fire Dancers!

These guys peform at 10pm when its dark and for various reasons I hadn’t made it down there until tonite. I got there a bit early and it was PACKED with people already but managed to find a spot to set up tripod. I decided to kneel down which got me nice intimate angles but my legs went to sleep on me kneeling on the bricks

I wanted to get some swirly fire images but I quickly got frustrated as it was easy to get those (just set the shutter speed to a longer time) but I wasn’t getting the people in focus.

So I changed tack and went for the performers when they momentarily held a pose and tried to get sharp images of them. I was surprised, I got more keepers than I expected……

This was my best shot of the night

A rather unusual shot - I think someone with a flash lit her up just as I took this

Swirly Swirly Fire

There are more pix up on my FLICKR page

More Buskers

Juggling Fire, and Knives and leaping tall men in a single bound!

Don't catch the shiny pointy end!

Don't wobble, I'm running right at you

Juggling Fire

Check out the rest of the pix on my Flickr page

Acrobat Buskers in town

Every year at this time we have a 10 day Buskers Festival, where buskers and street performers from round the country and the world come to entertain the city.  I work in town right on the edge of Cathedral Square which is a large (and mostly square) paved area in the heart of the city and the buskers perform there all day for this week!

So I scurried down with the camera and tripod to try my luck with shooting this pair of acrobats.  They are Australian and very funy and incredibly strong and flexible.  Here are some of my favourite shots, the rest are up on my Flickr page.

Warming Up the Crowd

Pleading for Help

Loved this guy below – his face was so mobile and expressive, a wonderful subject to shoot and try and capture

For Whom The Bell Tolls

I had an excellent 45 min or so watching these guys.  Lighting was perfect, it was bright but overcast – I haven’t edited the white balance at all on any of these, they have just been cropped and saved as jpeg.

Also an excellent learning experience – I was using the 70-200 lens and I am still finding my feet as far as focussing distances and which F stop to use to get the background blurred.  Looking at the images I took I would be OK going to around F6 or so, and I was around 6-8m away from the subjects, so thats quite a lot of room to play with!

TechTip#5 – Tripod Zen

I was afraid of my tripod when I first got it. In fact I didn’t use it for several months because of that. I don’t really know why I was afraid of it, something to do with the fact it was a piece of hardware I had never used before and wondering where and how I should use it.

Then I went for a photowalk in a forest late last year and took some truly awful handheld shots of trees and plants and stuff. They looked fine until I viewed at 100% and then I saw how unsteady my handholding appeared to be. So I knew I had to use my tripod to get the sharp images I wanted to.

Since then I have been out at least half a dozen times with my camera and tripod, sometimes by myself and sometimes with company, and now it lives in my car all the time, ready to go on another trip

Here is how I learned to love my tripod:

- get it out in a safe controlled environment and set it up (I used my living room and then play with it a bit to get to know how it works
- experiment with leg distances against how tall you are – I know if I let out the top legs mostly fully and the next set down a bit less than that, its almost exactly my kneeling height
- take it with you wherever you go with your camera
- set it up so that the point of the triangle is underneath the lens (if you have it towards you it gets in the way and you will either trip over it or tip the whole lot over)
- when setting it up on sand or dirt or other loose media, push it well down so it has a stable base – keep an eye on your bubble
- use the stabilising bubble on the base to make sure that the legs are stable – less likely to have an accidental tip over
- hang your bag off the hook on the bottom of the central column – adds more stability, keeps the bag out of the way
- tripods make good walking sticks in difficult terrain
- if you have a longer lens that has a space for a tripod ring mount – use it, it will be more stable and take sharper images

Here are the most important things I learned using my tripod

- if you are tracking a moving subject MAKE SURE YOU TIGHTEN THE KNOB BEFORE LETTING GO OF THE CAMERA – instant heart attack as your camera flops forward and down!!!!

- put your release plate knob on the other side of the head tightening knob/lever (I accidentally released my camera a couple of times when trying to do it by feel)

- put the tightening knob/lever on the left side of the camera – that way you can move it while holding and shooting with the right hand – where the shutter button seems to be.

Other tips I have heard about but not used myself:

- portable sand bags to pack around the legs for added stability in difficult terrain
- some people advise the sandbags or a hand to rest on the top of a really long lens
- you can extend the legs but keep them together and use like a monopod

Colour Management and Monitor Calibration

I started researching this topic over the Xmas hols – as I was getting frustrated with the limitations of working with only one monitor.  I have a venerable old CRT which works fine but is only 19″ and its hard when you are trying to view and edit a lot of photos, there isn’t enough space and it gets all scrunched and annoying.  Partly one of the reasons I haven’t posted any of my shots for a while *sigh*

So I started looking at monitor options and stumbled across this whole arcane world of colour management.  This appears to mean setting your monitor and any related colour output devices (like a printer) so that a few certain things happen:

1:  that the colours on the image viewed are as accurate as possible
2: when you (somehow mysteriously) link your colour management profile to your printer it prints out exactly what you see on the screen

I am not particularly bothered about printing images at this stage, I am a long way off having any worthy of the cost, and I don’t have a decent photo printer to do the job at the moment.  But it would be nice to know that the images I am viewing and editing are as correct as possible.

However I also know that the majority of the people who view the images I upload to Flickr or here are probably viewing them on an standard grade monitor with no calibration.

My problem is that the technology behind different grades of monitor panels means you have to buy an expensive IPS one to get the best performance.  But according to reviews I have seen you can still spend $500 NZD or more and still not get the best option!

There is an amazingly informative (and quite daunting) sticky post about it here http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=39226  (if it doesnt open to the correct forum its the first post in the Video Cards and Graphics discussion)  It tells you all about the different panel technology and why, if you want to do ‘proper’ image editing with a calibrated monitor, you need to get an IPS one (or a good wide gamut in the other options)

Other than the initial cost of a monitor – the cheapest IPS I can get in NZ is $500+ – there are only a few of the range available in NZ, so thats a big limitation.  And then there is the cost of the monitor calibration kit – you need a hardware device paired with software

Spyder 3 Pro Monitor Calibration Kit

The Spyder product is the one I see mentioned most often and is available in NZ but you are looking at $200+ for the Pro unit.  And apparently because the LCD panels degrade over time you really do need to *buy* the thing, because you should check your calibration once a month or so *flails wildy!!!*

And now Im stuck!  I could get just a standard 22″ monitor for about $300 and just go with it.

But should I go for the IPS monitor for the bit extra? I can probably borrow a calibration kit for the inital one and hang on as long as possible til I can afford my own.

I don’t know if its really worth the extra money. And I don’t really have it right now, but I’m getting really frustrated with working on my single smallish monitor.  And I post most of my pix to the web anyway.  Am I being too anal about this?

This Dell 2209WA monitor is the one lots of people rave about – its available in NZ and they just dropped the price by $50!

What to do????

Test post with Scribefire

I just found out about this widget that works with Firefox that you can post to your blog with, instead of using the webpage.  So this is a test post

Testing image insert

And a test image works!  However it doesnt allow you any image settings

Try another one another way – Flickr option doesnt work.  OK it is working for now, lets try publishing it  – categories are easy, previous tags not stored.

Post Holiday Blues

Sorry there hasn’t been much in the way of photos – I took quite a few in the holidays but went back to work last week. It was much busier than I expected and I did not have the energy to dedicate to sorting and editing all my pix.

And I have very bad sleep habits while Im on holiday which means readjusting to waking up several hours earlier takes longer, and I am *not* a morning person! And I’m really starting to suffer from the limitation of only one monitor which isnt helping the enthusiasm level.

Hoping normal transmission will resume shortly