Shooting Drama

Just because 99% of the mind numbing head-shots you see are about as exciting as watching paint dry, there is no reason portrait photography can’t be unique and dramatic.  Photography is meant to be exciting, creative and fun.  Not the typical “sit on this stool, tilt your head to the left and give me your best cheesy smile” routine.  That’s when you go from being a photographer to one of those people.  Don’t get me wrong, those photos do have their place and time – but once you’ve had that shot done you need to get more creative.

I am by no means the Francis Ford Coppola of portraits.  Hell, I just began trying them a few weeks ago – but I find the real and natural shots to be the best ones.  I don’t let my kids strike a pose, but rather catch them off guard to get their natural look.  And for Goddess’ sake, if you need to pose someone, do it in a more dramatic way.

For this shot, I chose to have the natural unsoftened sun off to his right to cast harsh shadows, deep blue sky that would turn deep black in B&W, low angle with a wide lens, and framed so there would be space for some creative text.  OK, my text wasn’t that freaking creative, but I knew when I was setting this up that I wanted something above his head.

Subtle things really make a difference.  Be creative.  Now stop reading and start doing!

Natural Light Shooting

To make shooting even more confusing for me (while starting to learn strobist shooting at the same time) is shooting in natural lighting.  There are so many varieties of natural light – set by time of day, overcast sky, rain, shadows or what have you.  So, I will begin to post my experiments into natural light to see what kind of affect it has on my shooting.

Bright Daylight

It’s funny – but some people think shooting the bright sun is the best time to take photos.  It’s actually the worst for portraits.    Without the help of flash (yes, flash in bright in daylight) or reflectors, bright daytime sun casts hard shadows and can easily over-expose skin, wash out skies, etc.  But sometimes you just can’t avoid shooting in the bright sun.

The photo above was taken with the sun high in the sky with no clouds and no shade.  But the moment was perfect, so I quickly adjusted the exposure and aperture to get the skin somewhat balanced.  But as you can see, the shadows are very hard.  To soften this more, the use of a reflector to the bottom right of the model would have reduced all the shadows and dark spots.  Sadly, I didn’t have one with me, but the shot worked.

Rainy Day = Soft Shadows

Overcast / Rain

These days provide some exceptional lighting for portraits.  Better than you can do with flash and diffusers – and best of all, free. This shot to the right was taken on a rainy afternoon – at about the same time of day as the one at the top.  But notice that the rain and clouds diffused the shadows to almost non-existent.  There was no flash or reflector here – just the naturally diffused sunlight.

The Magic Hour

The best natural light (in my book) is dusk.  Why not dawn?  Too damned early in the morning.  But dusk sunlight is very diffused – and best of all – very golden.  I am hoping to get some good examples of that up on my stream soon.  I thought I had some to show for examples, but sadly I don’t.  The ones I have taken at sunset seem to be B&W for some reason.  Maybe I’ll get my daughter out tomorrow to try again at dusk.  I’ll update this post when I do.

Carl Zeiss 85mm f/1.4

My newest debate is what will be the perfect portrait lens.  I loved the 50mm on the D80 – but it’s a much more wide lens on the D700.  So, I am digging for a great, sharp lens that will be the golden lens for me.  I’ve narrowed my hunt to the 85mm prime.  Now, for the maker…

Carl Zeiss

One of the ultimate names as far as lenses go.  My research is showing that this is an exceptional lens on the D700 (and I assume on the D3 / D3x / D700x / etc).  I’ve read on a dozen sites that the bokeh isn’t great on this one  - but have read on a dozen more sites that it has the best bokeh.  I’ve also read that this lens is exceptionally sharp, but wide-open tends to be a little soft.  Shooting portraits from a tri-pod, no brainer – bring it to f/2 and be crisp and sharp.

Why a tripod?  Because this baby is manual focus.  That’s not a big deal to me as I love using manual focus and really enjoy that challenge.  For some people, it’s a show-stopper.  Having to do something manually on their $3000?  How uncivilized! For me, it’s a nice retro throwback.

I have read some amazing things on this lens and very happy with what I have found.  But there is a lens that may be as good, and some claim better due to AF qualities.

Nikon 85mm f/1.4

Nikon

Here’s the dilemma.  Nikon makes a superb 85mm f/1.4 prime.  It has the added benefit of AF and is also built solid like a tank.  These lenses are within $100 of each other so it’s a matter of which ones shoots better.  People who have shot both say there is a much higher percentage of keepers from the Nikon – due to the AF.  But that’s no fault of the lens.

What I need to figure out is what lens is tack-sharp in the greatest range of shots (indoor / outdoor / street / portrait)?  I’ve found a few sites that rent them both, so that may be my next step.

If you have feedback on either of these, please share!

Ashley - Strobe Camera Left

This is an exploration into the mind-numbing voodoo they call flash. As of last night, I have only tried this one time – yes one – so you get to learn from my mistakes and watch as I figure this out (hopefully).  But be forewarned – I utterly suck at this strobist stuff, so these next few posts will be me learning, out loud.  I will post some good stuff, I hope – and most likely a shitload of pictures that look like total ass.  It’s all part of the process.

Research

Step 1 for me was joining the Flickr groups, Nikon CLS and Strobist.com.  I firmly believe in researching what I want to do before I try it out.  OK, not firmly.  Half the time I jump in with both feet before I realize I don’t own a life preserver.  But I should always begin with research.  Anyhow, these two groups have some excellent examples of shots done with various lighting setups that have really good results.  I spent quite a bit of time searching images (that’s read, stealing ideas from their comments and EXIF) and reading threads in both groups.  Knowing nothing about lighting other than sticking up the flash and pointing it at the object you want bright and shiny, this was a logical start for me.

Setting Up

Next, I had to figure out how to get my light and camera to play nice.  When I first pulled the SB-600 off the camera, it gave me the middle finger and told me to piss off.  Harsh.  I knew I wanted to have my flash off-camera and I wanted to control how much light came out of it, but that was about all I knew.  I had to learn to take control.  Reading through the manual (imagine that) I found the steps I needed to get my Nikon SB-600 Speedlight to be a slave to my Nikon D700.  Here’s a rundown for this shot:

On the SB-600

1. On your SB-600 – get into the CLS mode by pressing the zoom and the minus (-) sign.
2. Scroll until you find the CLS icon and then press MODE to change it to ON.
3. Hit the power button and your ready.

On the D700

1. On the D700 – press the MENU button
2. Scroll down to the edit menu
3. Select Bracketing/Flash
4. Select menu e3 (Flash control for built-in flash)
5. Go down to Commander Mode (C with a lightening bolt)
6. I then changed Built-in Flash to “–” meaning it will not fire.
7. I changed Group A to mode M (manual) and the power to 1/128.
8. Then I set my channel to match my flash (3 in this case).

From there, I jammed the Gary Fong LightSphere diffuser on top of my flash and set it on the table next to my daughter (to her dismay), off to her right and slightly below chin-height, about 3 feet away.  Fired a few shots, realizing I was blinding the poor child.  Rather than paying for a seeing eye dog and retinal surgery, I grabbed the SB-600 and I adjusted the zoom on there and set it to 50mm and toned down that power.

The next shoot I took (with her rubbing her blinded eye) is the one I posted.

What I Learned

That’s easy – I learned I suck wind at lighting and have a lot more reading to do.  But I learned the more I played with it, the more I was starting to understand about distance, power, etc.  I’ll be spending a lot more time in the coming months with light.  Learning to bounce it, diffuse it, angle it and basically whip it into submission.

Any pointers you care to share would be greatly appreciated.