Advanced Techniques

Advanced: Blending

Posted by Ivy

Oops…I forgot to upload my Blending select last week.

I’ve been accidentally blending for a long time now, since I like shooting with slow shutter speeds, so, of course, as soon as I tried to intentionally use the technique, I ran into some problems. I knew a lot of other people were going to turn in selects from bike polo, so I was reluctant to fall back on our final project subject, but none of my outtakes (there were a lot; I shot in four different places (apologies to Charles, who had to go through all of those while grading)) were as good as what I took during polo.

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Pete Abram (left) races past Columbia Bike Polo members Chris Williams (back left) and Tim Donahoe (back right) on April 22, 2009, as an unidentified member (right) attempts to catch up to the group. Abram crashed his bike earlier that night and injured his arm, but made a makeshift bandage for his wound and continued to play.

Advanced: Multiple Flash select

Posted by Ivy

After careful scrutiny, we determined that the photo I wanted to turn in as a select was in fact a single-flash shot. Oh well.

Here’s the one I actually turned in. I wish it were more of an action shot, but the moment is still a nice one:

20090415__mf_ashei_0343_lrColumbia Bike Polo team members Nicholas Charles Jacob (right) and Pete Abram (center) assist new teammate Ryan Heath (left) after Heath crashed his bike during a game on April 15. The team practices on the roof of the Hitt Street Parking Garage.

Advanced: Multiple Flash + Final Project take one

Posted by Ivy

Something that often gets me into trouble when I’m photographing: I believe very much in the idea that luck plays a huge part in making good images. I actually wouldn’t want it any other way. True, I want control over my images (otherwise I wouldn’t be spending two extra years in school learning all about it), but I like surprising myself when I go back and look through a take. This mostly applies to content and composition decisions, and not so much the technical side of things (this I would prefer to manage closely), but it’s also fun to play around with different apertures and shutter speeds (and flash ratios…) and see what works best. The benefit of this approach is it’s all the more satisfying–well, in my experience. I can’t speak for everyone–when you do get it just right. The cost is it’s not the most practical way to work, and it doesn’t guarantee you a good image.

I suspect this general attitude towards photography is why I was so overwhelmed in the studio at first (what? I have a say in EVERYTHING? nothing’s left to chance? nothing at all? oh geez…). It’s probably also why, of all the different photo subjects out there, I like shooting sports best. People/objects are always moving around, which means instant variability that must be accounted for. Yay!

Tonight I went with Mito (Calin and Lesley, our other group members, were also there) to work on the Multiple Flash assignment and to get some images for our final project. The Columbia Bike Polo team (its members will be familiar faces with everybody in Advanced by the end of the semester, given how much our group has already made pictures of them) holds its evening practices up on the roof of the Hitt Street parking garage; thanks to the wonders of Daylight Savings Time, we were photographing in about three different light situations as the sun started to go down, twilight set in, and evening finall fell. It was ridiculous trying to use multiple flash while the sun was still bright, since the flash Mito was holding just wouldn’t respond to the one on my camera; it thought that the light from the sun was just fine for photo-taking. This was not helped by the on-camera flash being Canon, and the others being Nikon.

We thought things would get easier once it got dark, but were still getting mostly single-flash images, as the Nikon was still refusing to go off. Calin finally solved the problem by switching the trigger settings to Auto (instead of Manual), and after that we were pretty golden with the multiple light sources. It took some messing around to get the lighting ratio just right (we ended up using 4:1), especially since, during the whole flash-not-going-off deal, I was using a much more powerful beam from the on-camera flash than I should have had to.

Also, a HUGE thank-you goes to Mito for being a human flash-stand all night!

Here are some of the 400+ images- there are quite a few that I can probably fix in Photoshop later on, but for now, these are the ones that were okay as is:

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I think I’m turning this one in as a select:

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Advanced: Fill and Balance

Posted by Ivy

I fell madly in love with balance flash for this assignment, to the detriment of my potential fill flash skills. Both of the techniques are excellent solutions to photo lighting problems, but I have been driven crazy by blown-out skies and shadowed foregrounds for long enough that mastering balance definitely took priority for me. Fortunately, neither fill nor balance is particularly hard to control, so I’m pretty sure that I can get more of a hang on fill in the weeks to come.

That said, I’m not completely happy with my select because it’s weak in terms of composition, and because Akyra, the girl who works in the Tiger Team Store trailer, was wearing dark clothing that did not stand out so well from the dark interior surroundings. Crap.  (And, as always, the color loses its saturation when I upload to WordPress. How do I get around that? Help, please…)

On the plus side, though, I am getting much more comfortable using my flash, bouncing it around, and learning when to dial up and down. Success is slow, but I’ll take it.

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Akyra Davis (left), a senior at the University of Missouri, works a shift the Tiger Team Store trailer during an MU baseball game against Oklahoma on April 4, 2009. The trailer is located outside of Taylor Stadium, and offers fans the chance to buy Mizzou gear before heading to the game.

Advanced: Audio Slideshow

Posted by Ivy

As part of this week’s assignment, we had to find an audio slideshow that was either a) stellar in all ways or b) pretty good, but could use some improvement. I started browsing around on the Boston Globe website, spent way more time than I probably should have watching the various multimedia projects, and found these three that I liked:

The first one, So Percussion, is somewhat weak in terms of photographs (tooooo much repetition, among other things), but I did like the idea of using still images rather than video to present the subject. It lets you focus a little more on the audio, which is in itself fascinating (this is so bad, but it reminds me of the opening minute or so from the Dhoom 2 soundtrack. Except better).

The audio in Dream Chase Farm, however, is a little overwhelming–at least in terms of some of the ambient sounds. I understand why you would want the sound of horses whuffling (is that a word? does this sound even have a name?), but the levels are so high that it sounds like Cujo is breathing down your neck. The interviews and incorporation of racetrack audio are well done, as are most of the images (there seems to be a little self-indulgence going on with the inclusion of some photos, but there are enough good ones as to even the scales). Overall, the whole thing could probably be edited down to about thirty seconds shorter without losing the overall storyline…so this is my example of a “slideshow with potential yet to be realized”

My favorite audio slideshow, though, was The Old Men and the Sea, by John Tlumacki. First, the images (all of them) are excellent. There’s so much variety and color, and every angle Tlumacki’s shooting from is a compelling one that draws a viewer right in. Paired with (correct-levels) ambient sound and strong sound bites (I love the Bahstun accents)–not to mention the catchy little song at the beginning and end–the photos do a great job telling the story. True, it’s a pretty straightforward features piece, and not a in-depth news package (for something more along those lines, I like Ed Kashi’s Iraqi Kurdistan), but I almost have an even higher standard for features than for, say, hardcore issue reporting since they aren’t as intense in terms of content material, and the photographer likely has a little more access flexibility, etc etc etc.

Advanced: Color Correction

Posted by Ivy

Before anything else is said in this post, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the wait staff of the Artisan for putting up with me and my camera on three separate occasions (twice in one day).  I had staked out the café as my tungsten source early on, and had messed up my first take by, quite simply, taking terribly out-of-focus pictures and not having control over the flash. So I went back, and tried again, and produced some photos that I do like…but I forgot to follow all of the instructions for shooting, and never changed my white balance during the session. OH MY GOD. This was extremely annoying.

But because I like the pictures, I’m including them here (images have been toned and color balanced):

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Anyway, after realizing that I had messed up Take Number Two, I went back to the Artisan to make up for my previous errors. And even though I controlled the flash a little bit better this time, the one picture I really like is also the one that uses mixed lighting. Sheesh. I can’t win. (It is, however, kind of neat to see the shift from tungsten at the counter to fluorescent in the kitchen. Plus, no crazy reflections on the metal!)

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I ended up using a select from my fluorescent take–I went to Sub Shop (which felt almost like cheating because it’s so damn close to the J-School) and took some images of the girl working the counter. ONCE AGAIN, I forgot to set the white balance correctly, and took more than half of the images with the green gel on the flash…and daylight white balance. Whoops. Fortunately, I realized my mistake and changed the settings before the take was over. I don’t think this photo is as visually compelling as the others were, but I did get the balance part and all the technical stuff right…so it’s the winner. 20090318_cc_ashei_201_edit_lrGwen Douglas reads the day’s comics while waiting for customers to arrive at Sub Shop in Columbia, MO . Douglas, who has worked at Sub Shop since Halloween of 2008, describes her job as “easygoing.”

Advanced: Single Flash

Posted by Ivy

Well.

Single flash is hard. My outtakes from this were definitely something else- I was getting all kind of crazy effects (that I didn’t really want), and half of the images are strangely focused–partially because the sensor on my camera is a little messed up, and partially because focus was one of about seven variables I was trying to keep track of at all times. Meanwhile, I was still trying to get good content, and, of course, the images that had such potential for content were all wrong in terms of the technical parts, and the ones that were technically better had poor content. Yeesh.

I also got kicked out of not one, but TWO locations when I was trying to complete this assignment–one flower store downtown told me that I could shoot up front as much as I wanted, but I wasn’t allowed to go back to where the employees were making the flower arrangements (maybe they thought I would give away their trade secrets or something), and, when I headed out for my last take, I was informed that I couldn’t take pictures inside Mizzou Market without upper-level permission. This seems silly to me, since the Market is part of the university, which is public, but oh well.

The funny thing about shooting with flash is that, despite how frustrating it is to get the exposure and everything just right, I actually like messing around with the controls and not really knowing exactly how the image is going to look after I hit the shutter button. It makes it a little more satisfying when I do finally hit upon the right combination.

Here are my selects:

Direct

Jared Hammon (left) enjoys a late-night ice cream at Sparky’s in downtown Columbia with wife Jenny (right) and children Jordan and Abby (not pictured). The Hammons do not often eat at Sparky’s, except for Jared, who is “here a lot,” according to Abby.

20090311_ss_ashei_0017_lrThis was picked almost entirely for the interaction element, and the fact that their hands are in near unison. Her face is just too blown out for me to really like the image (plus, it’s not perfectly focused). I tried some bounce for this, too, which had some sweet space-age effects when I bounced off the floor–it was like an alien light tunnel was opening underneath the family.

Bounce

Dryer’s Shoes employee Kristal Allen (left) models a pair of sandals as co-worker Victoria Paul (right) looks on. During lulls between customers, the two often test out the store’s merchandise.

If you look closely at the background, I actually got a little bit of fill in the window (unintentionally, but I’ll take it. Yay!). I tried bouncing the flash off of all kinds of things in the store (I wish one of the shots bounced off a white patent leather shoe had turned out; that would have been neat)…this was just basic off-the-ceiling. I’m kind of bothered by the less-than-clean background in the shoe store, but a more shallow DOF would have blurred out Victoria, and then the interaction would have been gone. Le sigh.

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So, that was my first attempt with flash…I give it a “Meh.” On to the wonderful world of tungsten and f-light!

Classsmate Portrait: Video

Posted by Ivy

As part two of the epic classmate project adventure, we had to set up video lighting (from constant sources, as opposed to strobe), shoot about thirty seconds of footage, and then edit everything using FinalCut Express.

It was MUCH easier to set up the lighting for this than for the SLR camera part, which was a relief. I think I prefer using constant sourcing. As an added bonus, I thought I’d overexposed a little bit, but after the computer capture was finished, the lighting turned out pretty on point.

Although I like the lighting setup, I messed up the audio controls, and recorded in stereo where I should have used mono (my microphone was on mute, and I didn’t realize it until after the fact). The result is a strange echo effect…argh

Anyway, here’s Matt talking about one of the (tastier) strange things he’s eaten (I had to edit out the beginning, where he mentions eating dog, cat, and donkey, but I’m guessing those didn’t taste as good as the coconut concoction) :

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdqX_QtVoNw]

The facial expressions are just plain awesome.

Metal and Glass

Posted by Ivy

Studio time, part deux: this time around, we were learning to work with the way light plays off metal and glass objects. I felt much more comfortable using the equipment (phew), and Daisuke was an enormous help with both setting everything up to get the right ‘look,’ and patiently moving around both the tiny mirror and the dark card to get the right shadows and highlights.

I started thinking about this assignment in very extravagant terms (I really wanted to get a saucepan, put two bananas in it, and then light them on fire using rubber cement (recreating the flambé part of making bananas foster), but I think I’ll save this for later), but in the end just brought a banjo into the studio. I borrowed my mom’s banjo a couple years ago, fully intending to learn to play it, but things like Senior Year of College got in the way, so the most I can actually do is name the strings and play the opening notes from “Dueling Banjos” (of Deliverance fame) . Still, I think it’s an underrated instrument with a great sound, and, best of all for this assignment, it has a surprising amount of metal parts.

The lighting setup for this was ridiculous, and I haven’t made the diagram yet, but here is a photo (taken by Daisuke) of the basic lineup:

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In addition to the crazy reflector setup at the bottom, Daisuke was sitting between the camera and the setup, holding a small mirror in one hand (to bring out the lower metal highlights even more), and a cut-to-size black card in the other (to darken the square metal tailpiece). It took forever to get the tailpiece to look right- we actually started out brightening it completely, but that looked strange and blown out, so we had to move on to the dark card option.

This is the first image:

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We tried a reflector to brighten the left side, but that wasn’t strong enough, so we added a whole ‘nother light, and set up the gold reflector underneath instead:

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Which was all well and good (the wooden rim is so pretty!!), but the tailpiece looked out of place. We tried using a dark card, but it was too big, and darkened the entire instrument:

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The final select was shot at f/9.0, ISO 100, shutter speed 1/125.

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I wish it weren’t so reflective on the wooden rim (well, the left side, at least), and I think we could have cut an arc out of a dark card and made a gobo to fix this, but otherwise, I very much like how it turned out.

Fun fact: Steve Martin plays the banjo.

Some good banjo songs (outside of the bluegrass realm): “Take It Easy” (Eagles), “I’m Shipping Up To Boston” (Dropkick Murphys- it’s part of the soundtrack of The Departed), and “Unwell” (matchbox20- I don’t remember anything that came off their last album- except this song. Because it has a banjo). Also, there’s apparently a cover version of “Baba O’Reilly” that uses a banjo, and I really need to find this. Let me know if you do!

Final Select: Classmate Portrait

Posted by Ivy

Well, despite the advice of others, I couldn’t bring myself to use the tungsten-setting photo…the skin tones were (surprise!) kind of blue, and that was more than a little odd. So I ended up cropping one of the black spot ones, and turned that in as a select. I’m not completely satisfied with the way it turned out; I could have done a20090217_cmp_ashei__0089_lr wayyyy better job of lighting Matt’s hair, and his face is a liiiiiittle too shadowed…I also think stopping up one or two would have made a huge difference, as I shot this at 1/45 of a second (sheesh…).

But anyway, I suppose you have to start somewhere when working in the studio, and I’m much less overwhelmed by all of the technical stuff that I was a week ago. We’ll see how it all turns out with Metal and Glass next assignment.