Saturday In The Park

Ok, actually it was Wednesday, not Saturday. But I was always a fan of the band Chicago and their tune "Saturday In The Park" was one of my favorites. But I digress...

My most precious little buddy, my little grandson Hudson, came for a visit this week. He's now 15 months old and quite mobile. And although most of my photography over the last several months has concentrated on the use of off camera flash, I knew before he ever arrived that highly mobile little people and careful and accurate use of off camera flash just don't go together that well. So now it was really time to go back to natural light.



Any time Hudson comes to visit I try to set aside one block of time just for pictures. So we scheduled a pre-sunset shoot in a local park. Once we arrived, one of the first things to attract his attention was this squirrel that, while careful to maintain his distance, wasn't in too much of a hurry to get away. No doubt somewhat tamed by the constant human traffic in the park, he would let Hudson get to within 5 feet or so before leaping away about 10 feet, waiting for Hudson to catch up, then repeating the whole sequence again. Hudson must have chased him around for 15 minutes.



I guess the squirrel eventually got tired of the game because he finally climbed this tree. Not to be robbed of his play time, Hudson camped out at the base of the squirrel's hide out for several minutes trying to talk him back down for more fun and games.



One of the key pieces of information you need at your finger tips to plan an outdoor natural light shoot is knowledge of the position of the sun at any given time of day. I use a tool provided on-line by the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration that will let you overlay a closeup satellite image of any place on the earth with information and diagrams to show the position/angle of sunrise, sunset and current time for any date/time you wish to select. I was already familiar with the layout of the park and using the NOAA solar calculator, I knew precisely what time I wanted to start shooting and where in the park would be the ideal location to get a beautiful, warm, back lit setting for shooting Hudson.



At the end of the day though, all of the photographic technical mumbo jumbo fades in to complete insignificance every time I look at these pictures. He's gone back to Kansas now and these are all I have left to keep him close until I see him again. When I look at that little face smiling back at me from my desktop wallpaper or hanging in a picture frame on my wall, all I remember is how much I love and miss him.
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Hit The Beach!

Matthew and Mary Catherine are related to me somehow (by marriage, not blood). I just can't think of what you call your wife's sister's husband's grandchildren. Matthew just graduated from high school and Mary Catherine is entering the 11th grade. But we first made their accquanintance when they were very small children - maybe 4 to 5 years old. My wife's brother-in-law would rent a beach house for a week each summer and we would spend a few days together with them.

They are visiting this week and my sister-in-law asked if I would shoot some beach pictures to compliment the beach portraits they had made when they were very young. I had asked Matt to strike that pose with his arms around Mary Catherine. But before doing so, he mockingly wrapped his big hands around Mary Catherine's neck, which sent her into a giggle fit. Once he did get his arms wrapped around her, neither one was very comfortable with the pose so we didn't shoot more than a couple but I did manage to get this one while she was still laughing. Although the framing on the right isn't ideal, I just really like the playful spirit they both are displaying here.



In the end, my sister-in-law opted for these two individual shots of each of them, and they will be produced as 16X20 prints and go on the wall to either side of the childhood shot taken of the two of them together on the beach many years ago.



These were lit with a single Canon 430EX II flash in a shoot through umbrella to camera left. The flash was fired with a Cybersync radio trigger. The trick on this type of shot is getting the flash and surrounding abmient lighting balanced and I was very pleased with this and all the other shots we got this evening.
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So You Think You Can Dance

A family friend teaches ballet at a local community center. After seeing some of my recent work, she asked if I would shoot portraits of her students as part of their spring recital activities. Of course I agreed - especially since it seemed like a perfect excuse and opportunity to acquire some new gear.

I wanted more power, faster recycle times, and a larger light surface than I could get with my little speedlight flashes. So for this event I invested in a Paul C. Buff Alien Bee AB800 flash head, their 47" Octabox, which is an 8-sided octagonal shaped softbox, and a nice, neutral gray tie-dyed backdrop and stand.

The setup used four lights. The big AB800/Octabox combination was 45 degrees to camera left for the key light. Front fill was provided by a Canon 430EX II speedlight fired into a 4x6 foot white styrofoam panel just out of view to camera right. Another Canon flash fired into a silver reflective umbrella from the rear right provided the edge/rim illumination. And finally, a 3rd speedlight with a Honl speed grid lit the backdrop.



I shot the first group of 20 students on one evening, and the second group of 20 a couple nights later. They ranged from age 3 all the way up to the late teens.

The first night was a real lesson in humility and learning to shoot under any circumstances. We were shooting in the community center basketball gym. But I arrived at 2:30 in the afternoon on a very hot day to a facility with no air conditioning. The temperature inside was easily in the mid-90s. By the time I spent an hour getting all set up, I was a soaking, sopping mess. I had sweat running down my head and face in buckets and my clothes looked as if I'd been doused with a fire hose.

It wasn't a very professional image to present to the moms and kids when they came in but we had to press ahead and get the shots. Next time I'll think ahead to such circumstances and be sure to at least have a towel and fresh shirt handy to change into before the client sees me.

Blessedly, the second night's shooting was done in a nice, air conditioned ball room.
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Loving The Light

I had commented earlier on taking advantage of an overcast sky to turn it into a giant softbox. The gist of the post was that I was becoming somewhat consumed with the pursuit of flash lighting equipment and techniques and I needed to refocus on some of the fundamentals of natural light.

I had to have that lesson reinforced again this weekend when I discovered that I had lost my remote flash trigger, a small but absolutely indispensable piece of gear for shooting photos with off-camera flash. It is a small radio transmitter that sits in the camera's hot shoe where a flash would usually be attached and sends a firing signal to a receiver that is attached to a remote flash unit several feet, or even several yards away on a light stand.

Consequently, I was forced to spend the weekend with my grandson looking for natural light shooting opportunities. This one presented itself when we pulled up into the driveway of my son's in-laws with little Hudson in tow. They have a beautiful yard, full of greenery and trees. The sun was about 1 hour from settings and the interplay of light and shade immediately caught my eye as we got out of the vehicle.



After visiting for a few minutes, I sat Hudson in this pretty little shady spot with some sun-lit backdrop and a bit of backlight coming through the overhead trees. My intent was to get some close up head and shoulder shots of him, but their family dog Daisy decided she wanted to be included in the shoot.

And who can resist a cute baby with a dog?
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Silence and Solitude

I've visited the Jessie Rogers Memorial Cemetery on a couple of occasions, exploring the photographic potential. There are actually several possibilities here for some nice location/outdoor portraits. I went back today with my light gear, intending to shoot some self-portraits to test out some of the various shooting angles and lighting possibilities.

But I discovered that shooting self-portraits outdoors on a humid Florida day isn't very much fun. After running back and forth to the camera a few times, I was a sweat-soaked, dripping mess.

Fortunately, this beautiful marble sculpture was nearby and sitting in just the perfect spot for some great interplay of ambient and strobe light.

It was an overcast day and the sky above and behind the statue was fairly wide open, with the cloud-shrouded sun providing a very subtle glow to the top and back. Immediately behind my back at the shooting position was a high brick wall, behind which were some fairly thick woods. So the front of the statue was in shadow with a normally exposed background ambient. Knocking the ambient down another stop or so put the sculpture face in to an even darker shadow.

I then brought the exposure of the sculpture face up by placing a speedlight in a 28" Westcott Apollo softbox and set it directly on the ground about 3 feet from the sculpture to camera left.
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Light Science and Magic

"Why" you may be asking yourself, "is he posting a picture of a spatula?"

The answer lies in the title of this post, which happens to be the title of a book I've heard tell of for quite awhile but only got around to reading this weekend. I'm referring to what is apparently a classic in the photographic literature, "Light Science and Magic", now in it's third edition and available from Amazon.com.

I'm really starting to get the hang of lighting people. I need to stretch my creative vision some but I'm pretty confident and comfortable now that I can pull of a reasonably good portrait under normal conditions.

What has eluded me has been photographing things rather than people. I've always said that I don't have much interest in shooting objects. But some of that ambivalence is due to the fact that I really had no concept on how to light them. So whenever I try it, I end up just doing a lot of guessing, coupled with trial and error. This does not make for a very enjoyable photography experience.

I've always read rave reviews about this book and finally plunked down for it. I read through the first several chapters in one setting. After wards I decided to take a quick attempt at one of the exercises for photographing shiny metal objects - one of the subjects that gives most photographers fits.

Using the principals explained in Light Science and Magic, I set this shot up on my bedroom floor with one light and had it in the camera and ready to upload in about 5 minutes. The last time I tried to shoot something shiny like this, I must have taken 50 frames in one hour and never did get something even close to usable.

This one wouldn't get me an A at the Parson's School of Design but I was very pleased with the result on a first attempt and the ease with which I was able to achieve it.

Next chapter...Glass.
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All Growed Up

The youngest child is graduating from college in a few weeks. God, do I feel old!

He made his last trip home for the semester this week and I took the opportunity to get a quick head and shoulders shot of him to include in the graduation announcements.

Looks like a very typical sort of outdoor shot with a soft, diffused light from the front and the sun providing highlights on the rear quarter. Except in this case, he wanted to be shot in front of our grape fines, even though they are still void of leaves from the winter. And that meant facing toward the sun rather than away from it.

To rectify the situation and give us acceptable quality of lighting, I had my wife standing to the left of him holding a large diffuser up between him and the sun. It was late in the day and there were a few clouds hanging about that periodically softened the sunlight, but the use of the diffuser guaranteed that we had an acceptable soft light source for his face.

Then I placed a gridded flash to his rear right and set it at about 1 stop above the ambient light level that I was shooting at. I probably could have more closely approximated sunlight by adding a CTO gel. But I think the effect is still quite convincing.

He actually showed me a nifty little Photoshop technique to produce this bit of desaturated/pastel color look. After doing all of the other typical retouches like contrast, color, etc, I added a Black and White adjustment layer. With the B&W adjustment layer in place, I played with the color channel sliders to darken the shirt abit and cranked the red up some to give that classic red filter appearance to the skin. Finally, I turned the opacity of the B&W layer down to about 70%, allowing a touch of the underlying colors to show through.

I really like the overall effect, which gives a little more contemporary look for a subject his age.
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