Love and Newtonian Optics

It was great to catch up with the nephew in Auckland, but the real reason for my visit was to attend and shoot my sister-in-law's wedding.

Unfortunately Auckland turned on some really dreary conditions all week, and we had to do the whole thing indoors. I stuck to two set-ups: Shoot-through umbrella for key and orbis for fill during the ceremony and for some group shots, and then just went with on-camera flash and a longer lens for candids during the reception.

Just before we sat down to eat though, the downpour eased to a mere shower, and I dragged Jane and Joe out to get this shot, complete with rainbow.



No time to really worry about posing or composition, let alone lighting, other than on-camera flash set to E-TTL. In post, I lowered the exposure on the background just a little, and slightly upped the saturation on that rainbow, but apart from that, this shot was just about having faith and being ready for something good to happen.

Bit like marriage, really.

An Officer and a Gentleman and a Nephew

I was so looking forward to last week in Auckland. A wedding to shoot, a meeting with the writing team at Shortland Street, and a few hours shooting in the helicopter hangar at Whenuapai with my nephew the Naval Observer.



That's him in there, looking very much like The Stig. I should say I made him pose like this, he's not usually such glamourpuss.

But the day of my Shortland Street meeting, I had good reason to suspect I was coming down with a nasty case of shingles. I immediately found a doctor, convinced him my sister-in-law's wedding was important enough for me to need the anti viral meds justin case my fears were confirmed, and navigated via my google phone (I could do a whole blog entry about that wonderful little device) to the Shortland Street production offices. It was at this point that I noticed I had my basic camera kit with me, but not the stands and extra strobes I had planned to shoot Christiaan and his helo with. No time to dash back to the city, so it was onto the motorway and out to the airbase.



The Kaman SG 2H Sea Sprite is New Zealand's most sophisticated bit of flying hardware. Maverick Air to Surface missiles, homing torpedoes... it's got everything but a working cigarette lighter, and I'm sure the M60 machine gun could do a nice job of lighting up your stogie. My nephew, Sub Lt Christiaan Robertson is the airborne tactical officer. That means he's in charge of all this stuff, the rest of the Sea Sprite crew and their mission. You'd think he'd be all Joe Cool about this, and he'd have a right to be, but he really is the nicest - well it's still hard to think of him as anything but a big kid.

Anyhow, after bitching about leaving 3 flashes, my 2m stand, umbrella and tripod behind, I sucked it up and told myself that if the pros can make do with just 2 strobes, so could I. Hell, I hear some of them even get by with natural light. So we got to work.





It was a blast catching up with Christiaan, and we only just scratched the surface of what I'd like to do up there. But this was primarily a social visit, and the officers' mess called...





A couple of beers later, it was time to grab my Google phone and navigate my way back into the city. I'm indebted to my nephew and No. 6 Squadron, RNZAF Whenuapai for their time and access to their very cool hardware. Let's do it again Neph. I salute you!

Luck Has Nothing To Do With It

Following my recce shoot of the Smith Gallery, I went back to create the shot I had in mind, this time all in camera, no photoshop/HDR-buggery. Just so you have an idea of the challenge involved, here's a picture exposed just for the beautiful ceiling:



Lovely up there, but it's the only light source in the room, and the height means the light falloff makes for dingy walls and floor lower down. The job called for several lights, carefully placed to avoid hot spots, shadows and reflections. I wanted the dress in the foreground to be a focus for the shot, but bare flash just didn't do it any justice, so I warmed it up with CTO and Yellow gels, and a little fill from the floor. Strobist details are on the flickr page if you're interested. Anyway, five flash guns, two radio triggers, three optical triggers, three light stands, one tripod and a wireless camera remote in play, and this was the final result:



I'm happy with this. I could have done it faster. With a litte more faffing around and perhaps some more equipment, I might have been able to do something a little subtler with the walls, but once upon a time I wouldn't have had a clue how to do any of this. The only thing I miss is the lovely violet colour of the base the mannequin was on, but that was a bit of a photoshop artefact anyway. I'm glad I did the recce shoot to create what I wanted with Photoshop and come up with a plan on how to achieve it, but I'm fairly confident that I could probably have pulled this off straight away anyway. That's growth, and I must give due thanks to David Hobby and his Strobist blog for all the great lessons.

Wide Open Spaces (and wide closed ones)

There's nothing like a paying gig to justify some expensive gear. I've been wanting the Canon 10-22mm EF-S 3.5-4.5 lens for some time now, and finally stumped up the cash for one last week.

I've been pretty pleased with my EF-S 18-55mm lens, but this baby just gets more in the picture, which is particularly useful for the shots I'm doing for the Otago Settlers Museum. Some of the galleries are magnificent spaces, and it takes a really wide angle of view to portray that.



I love what it let me do with this recce shot of the Smith Gallery, showing pretty much of the room and that cool vaulted ceiling. To be honest, this shot wasn't totally achieved in camera. It is one single frame, but the wide exposure range meant I had to combine separate exposures for the ceiling, walls and floor and create a High Dynamic Range picture with the Photomatix application. I also dodged the foreground dress in a little to brighten it up.

I plan to go back soon and achieve this look by lighting the place. A tricky job, but I love the challenges assignments like this present. The new lens also let me tackle some exterior shots of the museum. It's housed in two long historic buildings that come together in an angle. Close up, it's hard to fit it all into one shot and if you get back further, you have to contend with busy traffic and lots of difficult foreground clutter like large trees and lamp posts.



The lens is nice and sharp, and I really like the colour response. I was worried about shooting blue skies without a CPL filter to darken the blues, but I like what I got here - although to be honest, I like to saturate my colours a lot in post. Just a personal preference.



This final shot is pretty juiced. Fill light, saturation and clarity adjustments in Lightroom, followed by lens distortion adjustments in Photoshop. Again, the dynamic range of the natural light forced me to lighten the shadows in post. It's kinda cartoon-graphic like, but I sort of like it anyway. Like I said, I love what this new lens lets me do.



It's not about expensive gear but boy, does it help sometimes.

More Ink

Some of my work has just appeared in the science section of the Sunday Star Times. It's the story of Dr. Paul Trotman's documentery Donated To Science. They used a portrait I shot of Paul at home in a section banner and one of the shots I took during filming in the dissection room. You can check out the online version here. My previous posts on shooting with Paul are here and here.

Most important of all, you should tune in or set your recorder to catch Paul's film. It was shot by the very talented Stephen Downes. For a documentary about cutting up dead people, it's beautiful. TV3, 9.30 pm Wednesday 18 November (that's tomorrow, for the chronologically challenged).

Pixietown Gothic

I always knew that if I hung around Museums for long enough, something interesting would happen. On the strength of my Gasworks Museum pictures, I recently picked up a little work shooting promotional material for the Otago Settlers Museum.

The first assignment was to show the brand new storage area, which is going to be open for the public to explore this weekend. My first thought was to try for a long perspective shot, showing rows of shelves stacked with miscellaneous exotica, something reminiscent of the closing scene from the first Indiana Jones movie. But then my eyes settled on Humpty.



Humpty and friends are part of the old Pixietown display. I've always found these things a little sinister myself. They're just a bit too lifelike for comfort and when the museum folks told me some of them had real human teeth, well that did it. I decided to try for something out of The Twilight Zone.



It took a while to play around with the mix of flashes and room lighting, and Humpty kept threatening to run away with the picture. After all, the shot is supposed to be about the space, so with that in mind, I slowly built my picture up, flash by flash.





My key was behind me and to the right. Some shots used a rim light behind Humpty and to the left - I even kept it in shot for a few frames. I like it, but think flash-in-shot is what HDR is to 2009, selective colour was to 2008, and what the starburst filter was to the 70's - stylish, but faddish. The soldier on the left needed a snooted flash all of his own, but the last addition really nailed it for me - a flash behind Humpty on the ground, setting up those rays of light on the floor.



Looking back, I'd have snooted my key a little to keep it off the floor and help those light rays a little, and gelled the floor flash to match the ambient fluoro lighting at the back of the room. But the client's happy, and after this little job, so am I. There are several more exhibits and events to shoot for the museum, requiring different approaches, so stay tuned.

The Final Frontier

Space. Not the inky infinite, starry space. I'm talking the domestic variety. Rooms and stuff.

When a family member of mine decided to put her house on the market, I offered to shoot some interiors. A good realtor with a point-and shoot can do a fairly decent job these days, but I thought with a little practice, I might just be able to add a little sizzle and the chance to practice lighting spaces instead of just objects was a learning experience I couldn't resist.



It wasn't going to be hard. The property was designed by my dear departed father-in-law, and it's a cracker, built to make full use of the sun for light and passive solar heating, and with top quality fixtures and fittings. All I really needed to do was to add a little extra light in the dark corners, and where windows were in shot, try to balance the light with the ambient exterior. It's amazing what a difference a bit of extra directional light can make to a picture of a room.






The first thing was to de-clutter the rooms a little, just clear the benches and shelf tops. Then it was a fairly simple matter of adding one, two or three flashes to create a nice even light, and help the colours pop a little. I went for a daylight look since we're going into summer, but it would have been easy to light the log burner and gel the flashes to get a warmer evening feel.

If you look carefully at the shadows, you can pretty well figure out where I had my flashes placed. I think my favourite shot is the kithen. I love that shiny stainless steel, and my rellies have pretty nice taste in colour.



It'll be sad to see the property leave the family, but if it gets a good price, I'll be happy. It's been a great first exercise in lighting spaces, and one I'm going to need for my next assignment. Now that's an exciting project. Check back soon.

Opinion Seesaws

Remember my Skate Art post from exactly a month ago? Look it up in the archive bar on the right if you can't. Well, there's a continuing story there. More playground equipment has been installed around our fair city, and it's been making front page news. I've been interviewed and my shot of the mystery playground slide has featured in the Otago Daily Times online and print versions. You can read all about it here: http://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/78904/opinion-seesaws-origin-dunedin039s-039guerrilla-art039

Does that make me a photojournalist? I dunno, but it feels like start of a crime wave worthy of a Batman character.

Nobody Is Paying Me To Say This (But I Wish They Would)

I've been using Photoshop for a few years and find it a pretty powerful tool. So when I heard about Adobe Lightroom and the repeated buzzword "workflow", I kind of thought "Over-hyped Photoshop lite". But having tried it out, I have to say it's a pretty good bit of kit for amateur or pro photographers. From RAW processsing through local and global adjustment, to creating web galleries, it packs plenty of muscle. And if you process a lot of pictures, like I ended up doing with my conference candids, you'll appreciate what it can do for your "workflow".

Of course, it neccessitated doubling my RAM to get it to run properly on my laptop and just like Photoshop, there are features you'll find invaluable that you didn't even suspect it had. Like some very cool composition helper layers like various thirds and golden spirals. The good news is that there are some fantastic free webinars at creativetechs.com. If you don't mind surfing in live at 7:00 am NZ time, you get an hour of great instruction for free. If that's too early for you, you can always pay for the downloaded recording. Check them out here: http://creativetechs.com/training/

Things Change, Old Cock

Here's another thing I love about photography: its ability to express metaphors. You can take this shot as a metaphor for my life if you like, or you could just take it as a picture of a tin rooster on somebody's roof (Miller's flat, Central Otago).

Whichever you decide, I haven't been shooting many pictures in the last couple of weeks. I've been concentrating more on trying to sell a few, processing shots and getting the galleries of the conference candids up for people to browse and hopefully purchase. I've had one order so far, which isn't exactly going to make me rich, but the site is getting hits so that's encouraging. This photography thing could actually start to pay off some day.

Then there's the rehab on my knees, which is progressing nicely. Last week I checked out a new mountain bike trail without taking a single picture. Actually that's not true. I took my kit on my back, and I did get my camera phone out for a reference shot, but the SLR stayed stowed for the whole ride. Of course I plan to go back and get some action shots some time - if my new gig writing scripts for a local soap opera allows. As if that wasn't enough, the lovely Mrs C and I are also contemplating a possible shift in our domestic arrangements.

Change in the weather or just the usual load of old cock? I dunno. You decide.

Its Still Not About The Gear but...

...here's my little DIY softbox. The diffusion material is a disposable pillow protector, the sides are made from black corflute, a corrugated plastic material which I lined with aluminium foil. The diffusion surface is about 1/2 an A4 in area. For the mk II version I'll at least double that but this is nice and portable and just softens the shadows, especially when close to the subject.

The last day of my ECANZ conference shoot featured an afternoon on ice at our local skating rink. Delegates could try their hand at curling or shooting ice hockey pucks, fortified by a little of the 'amber bead'. For speed I shot with my 580EXII flash bare on camera and set to ETTL exposure control.



Then it was on to the highlight of the weekend, the costume dinner at Larnach Castle. I haven't been into the grounds in years, so couldn't resist the opportunity to get some exteriors, especially as evening started to fall and the nearly-full moon rose over the building. The night was bitterly cold though, so I wasn't going to stick around out there. Besides, all the fun was inside.





I decided to try and get everyone as they entered the venue. Since it was a Braveheart-themed costume event, I figured everyone would be happy to pause for a shot of their costumes, and I was right. I found a spot at the bottom of the stairs and shot away with my softbox in hand. It didn't exactly give me beauty-dish results, especially at the 3 metres or so I was from my subjects, but you can see from the shadow on the wall that it was having a little of the desired softening effect.



If I get the opportunity to do something like this again, I'd pop another flash somewhere above for a bit of rim lighting, maybe set up a shoot-through umbrella to my left instead of the softbox, and even paint up in the background with another gelled flash. Some rim, maybe gelled for contrast, could really make these shots sing.

The meal dispensed with (Nobody wants pictures of themselves eating), there was just enough ambient coming from the stage lights for me to shoot candids with my nifty fifty 1.8 and my highest ISO setting. The images are a little noisy, but considering the event and ultimate use, I can live with that. The bonus is that I got to see some of my muso friends in action with the legendary Dunedin guitarist Jim Taylor. Some say he's the love child of Pete Townshend and Keith Richards. Others know he's old enough to be their dad but whatever the case, he's a Rock God. Gotta shoot some more musos soon.





It's been fun, trying to photograph a large function, to mix in with a crowd and capture some of the spirit of the event. Our next conference isn't until next year, but I'll be putting my experience to work before that on something that really matters... a family wedding. Stay tuned.

It's Not Just About The Gear

...So here's my DIY snoot and grid that enabled me to shoot unobtrusively at the ECANZ Conference opening. Those are ordinary black plastic party straws, stuck together with a hot glue gun. The snoot is some closed-cell foam from an exercise mat and some velcro strips. I also have velcro strips on my flashes for attaching light modifiers just like this. This baby restricts the beam of light nicely, not just lighting a small part of the frame, but going close to unseen by most onlookers.

The second social event of the conference was a cocktail and dinner function in the Atrium of the Otago museum. I got a few shots at the start with my nifty fifty to make the most of the fading natural light.



As the outside light faded I wanted to catch a little of it to use as a backdrop for some portraits, but I needed to mix in a little flash. To take the edge off the shadows and make people look as good as I could, instead of the snoot I popped a little DIY softbox onto my flash. It meant approaching people to look down the barrel for me, but by now everyone was pretty relaxed about my presence and I got some really nice results.



Once the twilight had gone, I decided to shoot candids, wildlife-style with a long lens and the snoot again.



Then the evening's entertainment began, a demonstration of highland dancing.



Once the Highland fling had been flung, people were free to wander some of the museum, so I popped the softbox on again, got close and shot a few more groups having fun and exploring the exhibits.








Despite my trepidations about interacting with people a little more, I started to really enjoy this part of the evening, working more closely with them and starting to get some good shots of them enjoying themselves. By the time I'd had a look at the day's shots and burned some for display at the hotel the next morning, it was the next morning - 2 am in fact, but I was buzzing and really looking forward to covering the next event, a costume dinner up at Larnach Castle. That evening would not disappoint.