ARE YOU GUILTY OF LIGHTING MALPRACTICE?

Many photographers today, by the looks of all the FLAT studio lighting I see, have become shadow phobic! Why is that? Why are so many photographers lighting people like they're about to photograph a stamp collection by using equi-distance/angle, equal power lights?

People are three dimensional and since the art we produce--the print--is two dimensional we MUST imply the third dimension with the contrast of LIGHT AGAINST SHADOW.

However, all people not being the same, It's our duty to adjust our lighting set-up to make our clients look their best.
That means you must always be prepared to MOVE your main light. I think, in some studios, the lights have been stationary so long that they've taken root! My main light is on WHEELS for a reason.

The fastest and easiest way to learn lighting is, in the studio, using ONE LIGHT and a REFLECTOR, get a friend to sit there, and just go through the lighting patterns. (Google the patterns I mentioned--you'll easily find many examples)
Then, after you've got the patterns down, you fine tune them with a Hair light, Kickers, and background lights.

The following are some tips I've learned the hard way, by photographing all kinds of people, over these past twenty-five years….with gratitude for the personal instruction from Monte Zucker (studio) and Leon Kennamer (natural light).

When we're doing studio sessions, of NORMAL PEOPLE, shape of the face is important but--because most women BELIEVE they need to loose weight, true or not, you had better not put an ounce of weight on them with BROAD LIGHTING or FLAT LIGHTING!

So that means BUTTERFLY lighting (centered, overhead, main light) is not advised for any but the thinnest faces.

Forget about CLAM-SHELL lighting for the same reason--it's just flat-lighting with your lights in a VERTICAL orientation.

Remember, I said NORMAL PEOPLE--if you're photographing professional models you can use ANY of the lighting patterns already mentioned.

So, what does that leave? LOOP LIGHTING, REMBRANDT, and SHORT LIGHTING. These are our MONEY MAKERS!

LOOP LIGHTING is a basic portrait pattern that's good on physically fit men and slender women if their noses are small.

REMBRANDT LIGHTING is great on MEN--it adds character and drama--not so great on women.

SHORT LIGHTING is very useful on men, women, and teens. I use this pattern the most--especially on individuals.

IT'S ESSENTIAL THAT PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS LEARN THIS LIGHTING PATTERN!!

The key to dialing in short-lighting is how much FILL is used on your subject. And by FILL I mean REFLECTOR FILL--I quit using overall studio flash fill about 10-years ago.

The use of flash fill in the studio (AND outside!) is the main reason so many photographers are guilty of LIGHTING MALPRACTICE today!

The basic rule-of-thumb with reflector fill is the heavier the person the less fill I use. I vary the fill level with distance and the reflector surface--WHITE for soft fill up to SILVER for strong fill.

When it comes to gender the woman, in a session with her spouse, gets the BEST LIGHT! We will place her so that she is turned TO the main light--the shadow side of her face is at the camera--THE BASIC SHORT LIGHT PATTERN--and I adjust the fill as mentioned.

In addition I suggest the largest light modifier you can work with in your studio space. You can use your beauty-dish on models but I would not suggest it or ANY HARD LIGHT on normal people.

Ever since we started our studio, 25+years ago, we have steadily been increasing the size of our MAIN LIGHT with ever improving results.

When we got the SEVEN FOOT OCTODOME by PHOTOFLEX we hit the sweet spot. That's when I turned-off the fill light--I don't even need a fill light for groups with this main light!

So those are some of the basics; keep your Main Light on wheels and have fun!

The following are some examples of SHORT LIGHTING in the studio (the easiest to do) and outside using ONLY NATURAL LIGHT and a GOBO to block unwanted light (a bit more difficult).

STUDIO SHORT LIGHT:

f10.0 @ 1/200 ISO 200

Using one light and NO reflector to "cut the face"; lighting the mask of her face away from the camera.

f11.0 @ 1/200 ISO 200

One light with a white reflector, in close on right, just out of camera's view.

NOTE:  Both images above also have hair and background lights.



SHORT NATURAL LIGHT OUTDOORS:

f5.0 @1/125 ISO 400

Here, Jasmine is in an alley aligned west/east. The sun is setting on camera LEFT and is reflecting off a tall building on camera RIGHT. We blocked the sunlight on the left with a large BLACK GOBO creating a nice shadow side on her face AND by removing the much brighter sunlight (2-stops brighter than the reflected light on the right) I could open my lens and slow my shutter enough to record the dim light in the doorway behind her.

f4.5 @ 1/250 ISO 400

Nick is a big athletic guy so I wanted to trim him some with some short light which was in "short supply" in this very open park! So, I leaned him into a small tree for it's GOBO EFFECT creating a nice shadow on the side of his face nearest my camera. The key to making this work is finding a tree with a small canopy.

Since he must be very close to the tree for it to make a shadow on his face the tree can't have a big over hanging canopy or it will block the light and eliminate my nice deep background at the same time.

Author:  Jerry W Venz, Certified PPA Master Photographer

A Favorite Senior Session: Kristin and her horse Vannity

Kristin's mom called about a High School Senior session for her daughter.  While we were discussing the theme for the session I found out that Kristin was a horse owner.  I, of course, suggested we expand the session beyond mere portraits to some storytelling.   This was not going to be a girly, go to the beauty parlor, prom queen gown, session.  Kristin wanted the natural, Idaho cow-girl look.  I was jazzed!  When I found out that her horse, Vannity, was aging and not well I knew this was going to be an important session for their family history on multiple levels.

Here are a few images from the session with some techie information...

At the closed end of their barn we opened the large barn door to create this great directional light provided by the sunless open sky. This is basically like window light--it's just a very large window.

The other end of the barn was covered, but, open on the sides and they had stacked hundreds of hay bales in a stair-stepped pattern.  Again, great directional, sun free, natural light with a great place for Kristin to sit.

We went outside to use the late light.  It was about an hour before sunset by now--and because of the horse's condition we had to do some portraits of just her.

Should you have any questions just add a comment or drop me a note…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, Certified PPA Master Photographer

Great Portraits and Bokeh

Conventional wisdom on the forums is that you Must use apertures of f1.2, f1.4, or at least f2.8 to get good Bokeh.  Well, yes, using those apertures will yield great Bokeh when conditions are right. But, these same Bokeh fanatics lead people to believe that you can’t get good Bokeh at any other apertures or that you must own an 85mm f1.2 or f1.4 or the 50mm f1.2 or f1.4 lens to achieve the best results. 

I am here to tell you they are wrong on ALL counts. But, first let me clarify my priorities when doing Portraits:

1st Priority – Use the proper f-stop for the subject; depends on how much depth-of-field is needed.
2nd Priority – Is to blur out the background with good Bokeh.

What 25 years of doing portraits professionally has taught me is that I must deliver a successful portrait session EVERY time, so I do not take chances with depth-of-field.

To that end, this is my rational:
1)    The pose on an individual determines the f-stop.
a.    With the subject turned in a 2/3 view of the face my f-stop if f4.0 to f4.5 – if you do this very useful pose at f2.8 (don’t even think about f1.2 or f1.4) you will often loose focus on the subject’s far eye.
b.    If you pose your subject flat to the camera with them looking squarely into the camera—probably the worst pose for most people, since it will add weight to the face and body—sure you can open up and use a wider aperture like 2.8 or wider, but then, in most cases, you’re then sacrificing your subject on the altar of Bokeh!

2)    How many layers of people you have determines the f-stop with group portraits.
a.    One layer f4.5 to f5.0
b.    Two layers f6.3
c.    Three layers f7.1
d.    Four layers f8.0 or more

These apertures are based on the depth-of-field I know I get when using my portrait lens (the 70-200 f2.8) because as you can see from my most used focal lengths I rarely go below 135mm even for groups.  That’s because most people look better, especially in groups, when using a telephoto lens, due to compression distortion.

That is exactly why I don’t use the 85mm or much worse the 50mm lens for portraits due to the extension distortion it creates when you move closer to fill the frame properly.

People never look good when subjected to extension distortion, but more on this topic in a future blog on lens choice for portraits.

The following image pairs show dramatically how the focal length affects Bokeh at the same f-stop.
Note:  The distance from the subjects to the background was the same; the only change was the distance of camera to subject to equalize the size of the subject in the frame.

Below are some of our typical portraits using my preferred focal length and f-stop combinations and the effect on background Bokeh.

If you should have questions please don't hesitate to leave a comment.
Author:  Jerry W. Venz

The Exposure Triangle - Part 2

Making sense of all that complicated photo jargon, Part 2!

Photography Skills 101
By Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer

Last month I went over the first part of the exposure triangle, the shutter speed.  I explained that it could reveal, at very short and very long exposures, many things our eyes could not see.  If the shutter speed at it’s best, reveals much, I often use the camera’s aperture (or f-stop) to hide or obscure what is around my subject. But first, lets talk about what your camera’s aperture is and how it works.  Well, it’s a total rip-off of your eyes’ iris!  You know, the little black holes in the center of the eyes that gets so huge when your hippie friends used to smoke…or, how about when your eye doctor puts the drops in your eyes to dilate them?  Remember how sensitive your eyes became to light? That’s because he took your eyes off Auto and put them into the Manual, wide-open, mode. Thank God for THAT Auto mode! When working properly the iris in our eyes are constantly and smoothly, closing or opening, adjusting to lighting levels around us without us so much as breaking a sweat.  OK, maybe some of us need to break-out the sunglasses sometimes—kinda like putting a neutral density filter (to cut down the light) on your camera’s lens.  See we have more in common with our cameras than you thought!

Your camera’s aperture, like the iris in your eyes, is another way to control the amount of light that reaches the film or the camera’s sensor. The smaller the aperture’s opening the less light will pass through your camera’s shutter and onto the sensor or film.  And, the larger the opening…..you probably guessed that one, right? Just to make something so simple complicated, some engineer decided to call these apertures: f-stops (don’t ask) and attached numbers to them! But, not content with the fractions being used for the shutter speeds they decided to use decimals for the f-stops!  That’s how we ended up with the most confusing and hardest part of the exposure triangle to teach.  So, here are the standard f-stops starting with the LARGEST opening and going down, smaller with each step (even thought the numbers are getting bigger), allowing half as much light in with each step. 

The lens widest aperture in this example is f 2.8, followed by f 4.0, f 5.6, f 8.0, f 11, f 16, and f 22.

If your lens is at f 2.8, the aperture is wide open allowing the most light possible through to the shutter.  As we adjust the lens to the higher numbers the aperture gets smaller allowing less light to the shutter. Got that? Well, you don’t have to like it, but if you can just understand how to control this part of the exposure triangle, you can create images that the human eye could never see. For example, one of the side effects, created by a large aperture, like the aforementioned f 2.8, is my favorite effect when doing portraits of people outside. It’s called shallow depth-of-field in my world.  Depth-of-field in an image is simply how much is apparently in focus in front of and behind the subject you focused on.  So, what’s so hot about that you say? With depth-of-field control I can direct you to where I want you to look first in a photograph by controlling what’s in focus and what’s out-of-focus.

Here’s how it works.  When the aperture is at f 2.8 you get the least amount in focus in an image (often only inches).  When the aperture is at the higher numbers, like f 22, you get the most that the lens can produce in focus—like hundreds of feet to infinity!  The bottom line is what do YOU, as a photographer, want to show the viewer? Often showing our audience everything in focus shows too much—that’s what our eyes do—you can reveal more often by showing less.  It really depends on what the subject is.  Is it the Grand Canyon or the lizard on a rock, on the rim, of the Grand Canyon?  You can decide this when you control the depth-of-field.  The f-stop is the only thing in the exposure triangle that controls depth-of-field.

For you visual types (you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t), here are three images I set-up to illustrate depth-of-field at different apertures.



Next month I will wrap-it-up with the third part of the exposure triangle: the ISO or film speed and how the three parts work together. If you missed Part 1 you can view it on the Informer’s website or on our blog.

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, Published in the Eagle Informer 2011

Working in "M"

What’s the Difference between and Amateur and a Professional Photographer?

Do you need a reason to set your camera to “M”?  Try these:
-    As a professional you should be the author of your images.
-    As an artist you must be the master of your tools.
-    To be regarded as an expert you must be able to tell how and why you created a given image.
-    Most important to you is the ability to recreate any photographic effect or style or technique, on demand, at any time, in the future; or to apply a given technique to a different subject in the future.

The only way you can know how to do these things at a moments notice with consistent quality, is to know the effect of all the various combinations of shutter speeds and f-stops at various ISO settings.  When does cool looking “grain” turn into unacceptable “noise” in Your camera—and at what degree of enlargement does that happen?  You need to know this. Why? Because a client, when you least expect it, may say, “Great image, make me a 50” print of that!” Photoshop is a marvelous tool, but it can’t fix everything.  If you used too high an ISO for your camera, that 50” wall print could look like crap.

If you used the wrong f-stop and did not get the depth-of-field you needed on that group photo you’re out of luck. The problem with the auto modes is that the camera does not know what it’s being pointed at; it does not know what the subject is.  Therefore, it can’t know the best f-stop/shutter speed for that subject.  Nor can it pick the best ISO because it does not know how large you’re going to print the image…heck You may not know that at this point!  And that’s just what happens when you throw the dice using the camera’s auto modes including auto-white balance. 

As professionals we need to immediately decide when we walk into any given setting what shutter speed/f-stop combination we’re going to use and why. Nothing new here, it’s always been that way.  Do you know with out thinking what to change when you are following that bride and groom from inside the church to bright sunlight outside the church?  Or what you need to do when the sun keeps popping in and out of the clouds during an environmental session. You should. If you look back in our film days we did all this with no preview screen on our cameras—we had to know the results before we got to see them! These days you also need to know the effect a given f-stop will produce with various digital cameras—because the depth-of-field of a given f-stop is different on cameras with different size sensors!  I’ll put it another way…Using exactly the same lens and f-stop on a digital camera with an APS-C-size sensor will have a lot less depth-of-field than a camera with a “full size” 35mm type sensor.  Do you know what your camera is using?  You need to know these things!

Here are some examples for you:

In ANY auto mode your camera connote be trusted to make a proper exposure of snow.  That's because its reflective metering system will always try to make it 18% gray--so, you'll get grey snow.

My camera wanted to expose this @ f11.0, 1/400 sec, ISO 400.  So, I opened up a couple stops to expose this at: f7.1, 1/400 sec., ISO 400

To photography my outdoor snow set at twilight using the Christmas lights as my predominant light source: I picked ISO 400 as my baseline to minimize noise--you don't let your camera pick ISO because IT certainly does not know it's own noise limitations!  Then I picked f10.0 for really good depth-of-field.  That then gave me a shutter speed of 2-seconds as measured with my, hand held, incident light meter. And because the incident light  meter measures the light fallen onto your subject instead of the light reflected off your subject, as your camera's reflective meter does, it's not affected by the very dark (the wood) or the very light (snow) features in this scene.

So, this is why photographers should use the big brain (the one that has a neck!) instead of their camera's little rat-like brain that tries to make the whole world grey!

Book Review for: W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance: The Life and Work of an American Photographer

Book Review for:
W. Eugene Smith: Shadow and Substance: The Life and Work of an American Photographer
Book Author: Jim Hughes

This book tells us how this great artist, shaped by tragic family history, wounded physically and mentally by war, brutally attacked--his cameras destroyed--trying to tell the story of voiceless victims, deformed by the mercury poisoning created by one corporation, had to continuously fight the corporate management, at LIFE magazine, for the creative freedom to show the world HIS unique photo-stories of the human condition.

Smith's stunning B&W images, masterfully illuminated with, directional, natural light, giving his images strong shadows on his subjects and often deep dark vignettes, were hand printed by Smith like Gothic paintings.
His dramatic prints evoke the tenebrism of the baroque master painter Caravaggio--see "The Calling of Saint Matthew".

Imbedded with the Marines, Smith's WWII images of the invasion of Iwo Jima are legendary.  One in particular, caught with perfect timing, shows a Marine demolition squad blowing-up a Japanese bunker.  The huge explosion in a landscape already resembling  something only Dante could imagine, with the small cluster of Marines doing their duck-and-cover in the foreground, is awesome and horrifying in it's terrible beauty.   This image made the cover of LIFE magazine as one of the few times where the photograph WAS the cover--no other text was on that cover except the LIFE masthead and the date and issue price.  I am proud to own that issue of LIFE.

It's no wonder that when asked what other photographer he admired Ansel Adams mentioned W. Eugene Smith's name before any others saying how impressed he was at Smith's ability to capture the decisive moment.

The influence of Smith's work, more than any other photographer, is why I shifted my professional photography from things to people. That influence is also why I only use natural light when outside or when inside, I prefer window light, much like the Dutch painter Vermeer did 300 years ago.

This style of photography is fast disappearing in this digital age. I urge serious photographers to study Smith's images and read this story of an artist whose passion would permit no compromises to his vision.

You can see many of his images with the simple GOOGLE of his name. Then go to TIME/LIFE or MAGNUM PHOTO and enjoy the best B&W storytelling images ever made!

Jerry W. Venz 

My Favorite Sales Tools

Too many photographers think that a particular software is all they need to make great sales! That's like thinking the right camera will make them a great photographer!

We learned--these last 15+years with Jerry Deck and Sondra Ayers of BuzzworthySuccess.com--that sales begins with the seeds we plant WAY before the phone rings:

Your website--great images and NOT putting your price list on the web!!

Your business cards--with great images--custom high-end cards that don't say vista print on the back!

These are a few of our "Let Me Send You" pieces.  The off-set press materials (life cycle information and wedding brochure) are printed at H&H Color Labs, and 4x9 Rack and Business Cards are printed at AmericasPrinter.com and all of the pieces were designed in house by my wife, Kathi.

Here is a new business card tri-fold we have recently added, printed at Marathon Press and the layout designed in house by my wife, Kathi.

The WORDS you use places value on what you sell.  We CREATE IMAGES--they aren't SHOTS.  And we don't SHOOT kids, families, and certainly not horses! We sell WALL DECOR or at least WALL PRINTS not Photos and certainly not SHEETS!

IN PERSON SALES PRESENTATIONS--don't sabotage your sales by doing them ONLINE!

The tool you use for presentations ( we call this their PREMIERE ) depends on the size of your sales room. When we had a larger room we used projection and now that we have a smaller room we're using a 50" TV and the results have been better sales because:

Placed all around this room are our most important sales tools--OUR FINISHED PRODUCTS. Directly above the 50" TV is a 50" CANVAS WRAP ( of an adorable group of five sisters ), plus FOUR more prints in 30x40" or 24x36" all framed or in STAND-OUT MOUNTS placed around the room. There are 14 prints on display in different styles and finishes--with NOTHING SMALLER on the wall than 16x20''.

Then, we DO NOT hand them our price list until AFTER they have viewed their premiere slideshow and have picked their favorites( they already know our price range and  "what most of our clients spend" from previous conversations--to avoid sticker shock!) and are ready to start selecting final images. 

Then we hand them our price list and remind them that our special "discounted" COLLECTIONS are ONLY AVAILABLE TODAY.
In addition we offer them a special "discount" on A-LA-CARTE wall prints on this day as well. Narrowing down favorites to the final selection before you give them a price list of collections will help them narrow down images according to their budget or type of wall portraits or wall collections they are looking for. 

These are some of the TOOLS that not only MAKE US MONEY, but puts great images on our client's walls.

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Jerry Venz M.Photog., CPP