Continuing education

What a month. With over 20 years in the photography business, I still find that there is so much to learn.  Especially now with digital innovations changing the industry on what sometimes feels like a daily basis.

This last month I took my annual trip to the WPPI conference in Las Vegas. Check out their site at  http://www.wppionline.com/ . A pretty intimate conference, just me and 14,000 of my closests friends.  When I first started attending these events, there were around 800 attendees.  It is great to see so many photographers from around the world that recognize the importance of continuing education to improve their photographic and business skills. The advantage to having so many attendees is that the organizers are able to support having many excellent instructors talking on a wide range of topics and a photographic specific trade show that is huge. I don't think there is any product in the market that is not represented at the trade show.

Since I've been back, I have taken much of what I learned at WPPI and added to my own course, Portraiture Framework. The course is an intermediate level program that is design to help students learn to create portraits of a consistent level and quality.  It then covers the development of a personal style based on techniques learned in the course.  The course is ten weeks longs and starts on April 13, 2010. It will be held at Focal Point in Vancouver. Log on to http://www.focalpoint.bc.ca/ to get more details and to register.  The course size is limited so don't wait too long.

Warm Winter

What an unsual winter we have had his year.  Last year this time we had tons of snow, this year, spring like temperatures in the middle of February.  Not great for the Olympics but I'm sure enjoying the sunshine.

Last week we made a trip to the cabin to enjoy some snow games and skating.  Guess what, no snow there either. But the lake was still frozen and we had sunshine most of the time. Not bad.  The ice on the lake was still 2 feet thick so walking on it was no problem. One night it rained and in the morning we woke up to some very interesting photographic opportunities. The rain left puddles of water on the lake creating a random patchwork of highly reflective areas surrounded by white.

The first image is my favourite. I wanted to create the effect that the cyclist looking like another puddle. To acheive the effect I backlite him against the sun to create a sillouette.

 The image is called Ice Cycle.

This next image is also  a favourite from the weekend.

Enjoy

Only show your best

Editing, probably one of the least loved aspects of photography. When the shoot is over and you have several hundred images to sift through, it can often feel like a chore just to get busy and get it done. Many photographers completely skip this step, showing off all the images they took.

Last week I did a session for my son. He has a profesional actor and he often models for me when I want to do some photographic experimenting. He has also worked with me on many assignments and knows how I work. He knows my rule that nobody sees their images until I have edited them.

There are many reasons for this rule.

1. I will take many exposures of the same images just to get the right expresion. I want to edit out the expresions that are not flattering to the subject.
2. I want to insure that all images with technical problems are removed of fixed.
3. The first impression and the last impression are what people will remeber about their session. Regardless of how much fun they had during the session, what they will mostly remember was if you were ready to go when they were, and how the images looked when they were presented. Therfore, only present the best from the session.
4. People tend to focus on the negative.
5. You are the profesional. Your client is counting on your opinion to help them select the best images. Showing them the "bad" images will undermine their confidence in you.

When it comes to personal images, the same thing holds true.  Make sure to edit them dwn right away.  You will be more likely to make prints from them and they will be ready to show when you want to show them.

My clients are usuall very excited after a session and are anxious to see their images. My son is no exeption. I ad to fight him off while I edited the picture, I decided to run an experiment.  I left a few of the images in that I would have otherwise deleted. True to form, he focused on the bad ones. He agreed that there were several very good images in the bunch but what about those ones. So once again, lesson learned!

Edit Your Images!

Carson Graham Cats

Some Production images of Cats put on by Carson Graham High School.  I had the pleasure of photographing the production last week during the final rehersal. The excitement level was high and they produced an amazing show.  My congratulations to their instructor Ms. Clark and their Musical director Mr. Ennis.

Congratulations to everyone involved and I look foward to next years show.

Happy New Year

Here we are at Janary 2nd, 2010.  I hope Santa was good to everyone and brought you all kinds of happiness over the Christmas break.  This new year is promising to b a busy one with lots of growth.  I will be continuing to make posts to this blog to help eveyone become better photographers. I have also started a weekly photo tip that is emailed out.  If you are interested in getting it, just send me an email at lengrinke@photolen.ca and I will add you to the list. Be sure to indicate that you want me to do this in the body of your email.

I wish everybody the very best in the new year and happy shooting.

Rainy Wedding

Fall in Vancouver means rain.  A fall wedding in Vanocover means a mountain of challenges for a photographer.  Last weekend it happened.  A rainy Saturday wedding.  But, with the help of a very kind Minister who let us use her church as a studio and the basic off camera techniques we have been talking about in the last two entries, we were able to pull it off.

This first image was taken with a single strobe and a reflector.  The strobe was on the Brides left (your right) and was aimed into a 32" umbrella. A white reflector was to the brides right (your left) to fill in the shadow.  The background was lite with ambient light and balanced to the strobe light by dragging the shutter.  Lightroom was used to desaturate the photograph and to put a vignette around the image.

This Second image was taken using exactly the same technique except without the desaturation.

Of course its alway fun to see what you can do with the light that exists.  I am always on the lookout for interest light pockets.  One part of the church was an art gallery with spot lights intended to light the artwork. To create this image I positioned the bride so that the lights would shine on the dress and bring out the detail in its design. I then had the bride look up to the light to create a pleasing light pattern on her face.  Lightroom was used to desaturate the image and put a vignette around the edge.

Examples of hand held stobe photography

In my last entry, I discussed the lighting equipement that I used for location photography.  In this post, I am going to show some examples of the results that I get from it.

In this image, I used two strobes in 32" reflective umbbrellas. The flashes were set on manual.  The main (or key light) was placed to the subject's right. A white reflector was placed to the subject's left. I am very particular on how I set up the key light. It is crucial to the success of this type of portrait. Firstly, set the height of the light. It needs to be high enough to create shadow under the nose and chin yet low enough to light up the eye sockets and put a catch light in the eyes. Next, ensure that the light is pointing in the right direction: any light is brighter (or hotter) in the center than it is at the edges.  You DO NOT want the brightest part of the light hitting your subject directly.  Instead, feather the light across your subject so that the brightest part of the light actually passes in front of them.  This will give the light a softer feel and a more natural wrap-around effect. Next step is the placement of the reflector.  For this type of portrait I prefer to use a white reflector to avoid having speculars in the shadow of the face. The reflector should be slightly in front of your subjct and around the same height as your key or main light. The reflector bounces the light from the center of your stobe back into the shadow side of our subject. To control the brightness of the shadow, move the reflector closer (for brighter) or farther away ( for darker).  The second light is placed on the same side of the subject as the main light but it is high and behind the subject.  I will usually colapse the umbrella around the flash to give it some directional control.  This light will give some life to the hair and separate the subject from the background. (If the subject has no hair, you may not want to use this light.)

I set my exposre to around f4 on the highlight side of the subject.  I control the exposure on the shadow side visually using the reflector.  The exposure from the hair light will be the same as the main light is the subject has dark hair.  I the subject has light hair, I will set the output at one stop less than the key light.  The background light is just the ambeint light and is controled by changing the shutter speed.  I then make a test shot and adjust the exposures to get the final effect.

This shot was made in exactly the same way. The only difference is that it was taken outdoors. The versatility of this setup is wonderful. Once it has been practiced a couple of times, it becomes very easy to repeat, making it a great starting point for a location portrait.