Interpreting Reality

With photography, I don't ever claim to capture reality. Instead I interpret it. I'm presenting to you what I see in the scene before me - and sometimes, what I want to see. The degree of manipulation that goes into making photographs has been the subject of debate ever since its origins. I'm on the side that says the minute you decide where to point your camera, you've started editing the wide reality before you.

So here's an example from the other night when I went out to shoot the aurora.  I drove up to a dark, south-facing spot on the Otago Peninsula and as soon as I turned my truck lights off, this is pretty much what I saw:



Darkness. Not the most impressive aurora, just a barely discernible green glow above the cloud on the horizon but I knew my camera would reveal more with a longer exposure. Here's a stitched panoramic shot of the scene with the aperture wide and about a 30 second exposure:



There was a very red moon out that night, providing just enough detail on the ground to give a little foreground interest and depth to the picture. But I'm not happy with it. In my head, the sky was much more blue, there was more ground detail and contrast. So I wanted to apply a bunch of global adjustments in Lightroom: Saturation and vibrance, sauturation in the blues and aquas, clarity and lighter shadows.

Then I added a few local adjustments on the ground: mainly more clarity and contrast - until I arrived at something more like the picture I had in my head:



Not reality, but my interpretation of it.

Last week, interpreting the scene really helped dig me out of an embarrassing hole. I did a quick commercial shoot in a business. All was well back in the office until I realised in my key shot, I'd positioned myself where an unfortunate piece of foreground material appeared prominently in the crotch of one of my subjects. I won't show you the picture. I'll just say Photoshop's content aware fill and some painstaking cloning came to the rescue. The client thought the pictures were great.

I don't mind admitting I'm not perfect. But I try to make my pictures a perfect representation of what's in my head.

Over delivering

I like to over deliver where I can.  That's not just to make my customers happy. It's also to make sure their needs are truly met. Often I'll be hired by someone who isn't the real end user for pictures, so I try to think of what a layout editor or web designer might need from a set of photos and deliver them with the options they might need.

Last week I had a chance to get out from my desk at Destination Content and do a little stills shoot for a new commercial client. The job involved getting some shots at one of their customers, a local joinery business. The job was really just to get one shot that depicted the business, so a hero shot of one of the employees in action seemed to be in order and my client agreed. Since this was to be the first of a series of shoots, I wanted to make sure I was on the right path and invited her onto location.



I picked a well-lit part of the workshop to create the shot, but thought the background needed a little lift.



So I hid a couple of flashes to push a little light onto the back wall and up into the roof. Then I got Michael to get to work sanding the window frame, hitting him with a little key light from the left. I like how the frame reaches out to us, adding a little depth to the shot. My client seemed pretty pleased with what I was doing and headed back to headquarters, but I wasn't done.




After the action shots were sorted, I thought I'd mooch around a little to see what caught my eye. It didn't take long to find three things I thought were needed to really tell the story of the joinery business: some raw materials, some tools, and some finished products. So I went to it. The ambient light was perfectly adequate for this part of the job.

                

The planes above were shot with the Canon 24mm 1.4 EF II lens and it's my favourite piece of glass at the moment. Sharp, great colour and great shallow depth of field effects. I recently shot some video on it in the evening and it made the most beautiful bokeh out of the city lights. I might write a little more on that lens later.

I made sure I had some landscape and portrait options to deliver, as well as some with gutter and text space, just so my client had everything a designer might ask for. Now I'm greatly looking forward to the next assignment.

Under Construction

Much as I love painstaking preparation and setup for shots, most of the time, there just isn't that luxury. You have to previsualise and construct your shot quickly.

Yesterday I went out to do a quick portrait of Justin Macready for Placemakers' Under Construction Magazine. Justin's a busy owner-operator so we didn't have long. He'd already spent some time trying to set up our shot on a building site with some timber framing for the background. Unfortunately that fell through, so it was out to the timber yard for the job.

It was a blazing hot day and 1.00. There wasn't much open shade with a nice background, so I quickly settled on this pile of timber and planned to have Justin with his back to the sun.  First shot to gauge the exposure:


Shooting towards the sun, I'd get some good highlights on Justin's head and shoulders, but I'd need to fill the shadows in his face.  I dialed down the exposure a bit and popped my tripod bag into position with a bare flash on a lightstand just on my left, the flash set to half power.  Bang. In the zone straight away. Time to get Justin out of his office and do this thing.








I was more happy enough with bare bulb rather than softening the shadows with an umbrella, it's just a more blokey look and just as importantly, it was fast. One shot, and I was done - but I did get a looser one, just for safety. It's a cover shot, so there's going to be text down the left hand side. Never hurts to give your photo editor or graphic artist some options, even when the brief is tight.

Let The Good Times Roll

OK, Completely off topic here, but this is me and my good friends in Bluestone, kicking off the New Year just the way we like. Like photography, I came to music late in life. I never played an instrument or sang in a band until my late 20's. Seeing me nowadays, some would say my record is still clean. Happy 2013 everyone, may it bring you good things.


 

Calendar Girls

This picture has been getting a lot of eyeballs around town lately. One of mine from late last year.

 

It's from the Fortune Theatre's 2012 catalog shoot, and was about as much fun to shoot as it looks. Calendar Girls is on now and I'm thrilled to say it's a sellout for the Fortune.  Interestingly, the models in one of the posters around town have been... supplemented by some articles of clothing...

 

As tweeted by @dearcolleen.

I think I'm kind of flattered.

Normal Service Will Be Resumed As Soon As Possible

Wow, its been a busy year and looks like the end is going to be even busier. That's the reason I've posted so little lately.

 

I've shot a lot of video, but have had a bit more still work lately, including some really fun stuff of the exhibits at Toitu Otago Settlers Museum. This one is Mrs Richard Hudson's dress. Hudson of Cadbury, Fry Hudson fame. Looking at the size of it, she sure didn't eat a lot of her husband's biscuits. Great fun trying to bring out the texture in these 19th century dresses and minimise the background distractions.  I'll be posting more from this shoot and others soon, I promise.

Just got off the phone booking a new gig that could see my year end with a real bang. Who knew "Red Bull" was also a type of explosive? Stay tuned.

Staying Open On The Road

The harder I work lately, the harder I have to work to maintain my creativity. One thing I find essential in creativity is remaining open to new possibilities, and believing that there's a great shot to be had everywhere, you just need to learn to see it... hence the name of this blog. Here's a handy example from my recent shoot in Adelaide, South Australia.

There I was, slightly sleep deprived, on a long bus ride, getting candid shots of a conference group (more from that shoot in future...). Nothing too taxing, just stills and video coverage of the event. After covering the winery visit, I was ready to snooze all the way back to town, but I was feeling I hadn't really stretched myself creatively lately, so looked for an opportunity to get some exercise. Waiting for the rest of the party to board the bus, I wandered across the car park to a patch of weeds, set my shutter to expose around a second or so, and played with shutter drag, panning and tilting to create some abstracts. Not that I was expecting any keepers, I just wanted to open myself up to possibilities again. Maybe I'd find a creative lead to chase later.

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Looking at these, there are some things I like and will maybe play with later - trying to refine the mix of camera movement and stillness to get an interesting mix of patterns and colour. But the real value of this exercise was just to remind me that opportunities are everywhere, even at the side of the road. You don't have to boss the camera hard to find them, you have to boss yourself.

So when our driver stopped the bus later to tell the party that there was a good chance we'd see Koalas in the trees, I decided not to snooze, got out with everybody else, and to my surprise, there was a mother and baby, in perfect pose for a cute shot.



My Aussie mates laughed at me for posting this, especially the ones from wildlife and film backgrounds who know this is about as interesting as Koalas get. They sleep 22 hours a day, have wicked claws so aren't as cuddly as they seem, and have a habit of crapping or peeing on you from above.  Sometimes though, cute is enough, and now I've got a great Aussie icon picture in my collection. A cliche for sure, but one that endures. And I wouldn't have got it if I'd stayed and snoozed on the bus.  Stay open!