LIGHT PAINTING A STILL LIFE; GUNS IN THE STUDIO; PART 1

With over 30 years in the photography business it’s still sobering to discover that there are still things in this art/science to learn.

It’s interesting that this discovery seems to happen the most in studio photography—where we have control of ALL the variables. This just means that there are more things for us to screw-up on when we choose among the myriad of decisions that go into the photography of any subject! Just some of those decisions include: size of the light(s), type of lights, placement relative to subject and to each other, how to light the background, how to control each light source—volumes have been written about just these variables.

So, with decades of experience, education from some of the legends in photography, having earned my P.P.A. (Professional Photographers of America)  Masters and Craftsman’s degrees for International print competitions and teaching, I had approached the incredibly simple concept of light painting as beneath my involvement.  After all this experience and training I’m about to abandon my huge multi-thousand dollar investment in studio equipment….for a flashlight! 

The concept of light painting is so simple and yet like most art it’s all in the execution.  I’m reminded of what one sage photographer wrote decades ago…”it’s simple, you just put light where you want it and don’t put light where you don’t want it.” Simple!

So, here’s my second attempt at light painting….

f16.0 @ 30sec., ISO 125; Lens @ 168mm

Making it even harder this time I chose Two Black Pistols! Hey, it’s more interesting compositionally with two guns and by using two I can show both sides at the same time.

Even though the lighting is literally in-my-hands, now, all the standard lighting rules still apply, to wit:

• Black objects (just like glass objects) are defined by their specular highlights.
• Those specular highlights are created with the light source(s) striking the subject from the top and/or the sides—the light source never comes from camera position (that would create flat light).

What is very different about light painting is the precision that can be obtained in putting light exactly where you want it.  Because we mostly use large light sources in studio flash photography especially in portraiture—pin point precision is not needed.

When painting these guns I found that my little LED flashlight’s beam was too large and I over lit the muslin material around the gun in front. I carefully tried to just paint the gun.

Here is the set-up and my lighting solution….

The set-up

I did two things….I reduced the size of my beam (I made a snoot out of good-‘ol Cinefoil) and I brought the flashlight in closer to my subjects.

I’m happy with the final result and I did it all within my 30 second exposure (including the background).

In Part 2 I’ll continue with a more difficult subject set-up using a knife and some small support objects.

’Til next week….

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

WHEN A COLOR IMAGE MUST BE CONVERTED TO BLACK & WHITE!

I’ve been creating much of my photographic art in Black & White for over 40 years. My fondest memories are of custom printing B&W prints, in my home darkroom, using Agfa Portriga Rapid, Ilford and Luminous papers, while listening to rock-n-roll music, all night long. 

My criteria for what subjects naturally fall into the B&W category are exactly the same using today’s digital technology as it was when I used film.

The BEST B&W images must have:

1. Directional light (that means shadows)
2. Good Blacks and Whites (with detail)
3. Texture and/or detail
4. A strong center of interest

Note: If there is an absence of color in the original scene then B&W is its Natural medium, but it still must meet the basic criteria above.

This image simply had to be in B&W….

f5.0 @ 1/5000 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 280mm

As I walked up to the scene, from 50 yards away, I knew this was going to be a B&W conversion. This digital conversion was done using Nik’s Silver Efex Pro-2. I started with the “wet rocks” preset and then modified it to my taste in dramatic B&W.

Here’s the original image….

Original Color File

First, always “shoot” in color RAW! You don’t want your camera no matter how good it is (I used a Canon 5D MKII for this image) doing anything in B&W. It will drop too many values when it applies its generic algorithm to convert the color image to B&W. Then you’ve lost control of what you as an artist may want to highlight or suppress in the scene.  Creating a B&W image from your color file is not just about removing colors—it’s about showing your audience your interpretation of the subject.

My original color image simply had too many colors surrounding the skull—there’s some green in the background and the wood posts have too much light brown in them. The color image is just not creepy enough!

The B&W conversion not only removed these bits of distracting reality, but look at all the marvelous detail I pulled out of that skull.

’Til next week…enjoy looking for what will convert to B&W in your own images!

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training Site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client Site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

ONE PRO-PHOTOGRAPHER’S FAVORITE WEDDING VENUE

My wife, Kathi, and I have been doing weddings for over 25 years and as a natural light specialist I would place Nestldown (Los Gatos, Calif.) as one of the top 5 wedding locations in Northern California. Having done hundreds of weddings, my favorites being locations with outdoor areas for both the ceremony and reception, I have to say that most venues make do with what they have without really putting much effort or money into the site to make it special. Most wineries fall into that category—they seem to think that placing white chairs on some lawn is all they need to do to turn their facility into a wedding venue.  Maybe that’s the case because being a winery is their business and weddings are a sideline.

Nestldown is not a sideline. It’s been meticulously crafted and expertly maintained as a wedding and events venue. Most importantly it’s been designed with a style and unique look that you only see in major motion picture productions of fantasy weddings. It has the look of a set, but it’s not a facade, it’s a real fantasy…

f5.6 @ 1/125 Sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 35mm

Done in their fantasy garden with that adorable cottage in the background you can see why I like this place!

Then moving her to the front door…

f5.6 @ 1/45 sec., SIO 400; Lens @ 24mm

You do need a relatively short bride to do this—the cottage is not a full size structure.

Note: My shutter speed is getting lower even at 400 ISO since the sun is behind the cottage leaving its front in open shade which enabled me to maintain nice detail in her dress. This was done in mid-August at 1:15pm.

Then the Groom’s portrait….

f5.6 @ 1/60 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 48mm

Keeping him out of the direct sun, as well, using the sky light as my source, using the negative fill from the trees on camera left (Subtractive Lighting at it’s best).

Note: When the bride and groom are NOT seeing each other before the ceremony, especially in a location like this, you should start photographing at least 2-hours before the ceremony to capture their individual portraits and still have time to do them with their attendants and family groups separately.

The challenging processional stairs….

f5.6 @ 1/30 sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 38mm

The stairs down to the outdoor chapel are obviously not wheel chair accessible—Nestledown will provide golf-cart transport for those not able to do the stairs.

f5.6 @ 1/45sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 35mm

It’s now 3:35 pm and I’ve set my ISO to 800, added flash fill and I’m dragging my shutter (using a slow shutter speed) to “drag-in” the low ambient light in the background.

f5.6 @ 1/20 sec, ISO 800; Lens @ 24mm

The outdoor “chapel” by the pond—it’s now 3:49pm and my shutter speed is dropping again.

After the ceremony and all the family groups…

f5.6 @ 1//45 sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 42mm

You must take the bride and groom up into that gorgeous forrest of big trees—It’s 4:22pm and with ISO 800 I have just enough light.

Then back up to the site’s main level….

f9.5 @ 1/250 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 120mm

Now we’re back in direct sunlight! I had to get them on that little bridge—Love the reflection in the pond—before the reception.

For smaller receptions their rustic hall is great…

f4.8 @ 1/45 sec., SIo 800; Lens @ 20mm

Like a cathedral with a redwoods view this building is really nice. Back to ISO 800 and a low shutter speed and still light outside.

 f5.6 @ 1/8 sec., Iso 400; Lens @ 20mm

Using flash fill, with a slow shutter speed, from the balcony for their first dance.

The Last Portrait of the day…

f4.8 @ 1/4 sec., ISO 1600; Lens @ 24mm

A time exposure with flash-fill @ 1600 ISO; had to use flash since they were back-lit. I still didn’t show all the great locations here for photography. They also have a small train, an English Cab and a tree house as well!  Nestldown is a truly special location.

’Til next week…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY IN LOW LIGHT INTERIORS

Extreme action in poorly lit interiors is always a challenge in photography, and unfortunately, most dojos (martial arts studios) I’ve had the pleasure to document photographically were caves when it came to ambient light.  If you’ve read many of my blogs you know that I’m a really, really, really firm advocate of natural light whenever possible—especially in portraiture. But, when it comes to interiors, where there’s any action, if you don’t have the light, as a professional, you must create the light to get the job done. 

As soon as I walked into this room with its dark wood paneling I knew I’d have to use flash to avoid the black hole look and to stop some action. Many years of wedding photography has taught me that flash as the only source of light for interiors is horrible—it’s too harsh and your background goes dark so you lose depth.

So, to show depth in the scene and stop action we “drag the shutter” during the flash exposure. This simply means we use a longer shutter speed than is usually used for flash photography—we usually use the fastest shutter speed that will sync with the flash. With a longer shutter speed we are literally dragging in more of the room’s ambient light. 

Here’s the technique I used on the Japanese Martial Art of Kendo….

f4.8 @ 1/30th sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 24mm

Here’s what’s happening: The instant you snap the shutter the flash goes off stopping the action and creating all the highlights in the scene—the brightest images of the bamboo swords and those cool highlights on their chrome face guards for example. But, because we are forcing the shutter to stay open longer than the flash duration we get the secondary images of any fast moving elements in the scene.  In addition that longer shutter is also providing more exposure for the rest of the room—so, the background is not pitch black.

What I like about this technique is that you can show motion but still have sharpness at the same time…

f4.8 @ 1/30th sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 28mm

Here’s how you set-up the exposure:

1. Meter the room’s light level to establish your base exposure—I use an incident, hand held, light meter. I use the ISO to get me to a shutter speed I like. In this case I wanted 1/30 sec. and at ISO 400 my f-stop was f4.8, giving me adequate depth-of-field.
2. With my camera in Manual Mode to use my settings I put the flash in Auto set to f5.6—to allow for flash fall-off because I’m bouncing the flash off the ceiling with a flash defuser (the Gary Fong unit).
3. Fine tune your flash exposure if your subject distance changes by:
• While leaving the camera’s f-stop at f4.8 I’ll raise the flash to f8.0 for more flash effect or f4.0 for less flash effect.
• and/or I’ll tilt my flash more or less (it’s usually tilted at 45°) flash effect.
4. Shutter speed selection is a matter of taste. For really fast action like these martial artists I like 1/30th sec. because while I get nice action blur of their swords, arms and legs, their heads are still sharp.

See how sharp this guys eyes are….

f5.6 @ 1/30th sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 133mm

If you go to 1/15th sec., or shower then the action images start getting too abstract for my taste.

Wedding photographers have been using this technique for many decades and it works great for the reception events like the bouquet toss, garter toss, (just don’t drag it too long for these events) and the rock-n-roll dance action for something different….

Let me know if you have questions…’Til next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

ISOLATING THE SUBJECT IN RODEO PHOTOGRAPHY

I’ve been doing extreme action photography for over 40 years. Examples include many motor-sports such as formula race cars, Grand Prix motorcycles, motocross, top full dragsters, funny cars and drag bikes, WWII fighters and bombers. Some of the non-mototized sports have been BMX, hang gliders and sailboats. But, by far, the most challenging has been rodeo photography.  Why?  It’s not all that fast especially when compared to motor-sports—true.

There are two facets that make it difficult:

1.  The action is chaotic.  Because there are animals involved that the riders have no control over you never really know what they are going to do or exactly what direction they may go.  In contrast with motorsports I always knew exactly where my subjects were going and because they were on a closed course I knew about when they’d come by me again; that’s organized action.

2.  Rodeos are in stadiums which means there are fences and, worse, grandstands all around the subjects making a mess of my backgrounds.  This makes it very difficult to isolate the subject from the clutter of the fences, grandstand supports and a very colorful crowd of hundreds of people in those stands.

So, there are two ways to isolate the subject in stadium rodeo photography—you do it up front with your camera position….

f5.0 @ 1/2500 sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 120mm

This method of isolation is just camera elevation. Easy if you have enough lens and you’re at the top of the grandstand. That way you can shoot down on your subjects getting just the stadium dirt as a background. Not all that easy because if the horse or bull get too close to your side of the stadium then the fence on your side will intrude on your subject. And, if they are too far past the center of the stadium then your background will be the other fence and those ugly grandstands.

That’s when you get this kind of image…

 f5.0 @ 1/2500 sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 165mm

As you can see my bronc buster is pretty well lost in that colorful cloud of people behind him. Now the only way to isolate him is “in post”.

Here’s where I thank the “Great Cosmic Muffin” for Photoshop and layers, and my wife Kathi for her skill and patience in using those layers!

The first and hardest step is separating our bronc and cowboy, by using Photoshop’s Magnetic Lasso, to create a new layer that is independent from the background so that we can apply a gaussian blur to just the background.

Background Blur Added

It’s better and there is separation by softness, but there’s till too much color to really make him stand out from the crowd.  So, as a final step I had Kathi apply a sepia tone to the background layer…

Sepia Tone Added to Background

Now he’s really popping off the background! That’s all there is to it! You either plan and prepare—using lens choice and camera position—to take advantage when your subjects hit that magic spot in the stadium or you spend hours in Photoshop afterwords…usually both!

I suppose it’s all in what you as the artist will settle for as a final image…I don’t settle.

’Til next week….let me know if you have questions.

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com

WHY ENGAGEMENT SESSIONS ARE A MUST DO BEFORE THE WEDDING

My wife, Kathi, and I have been photographing weddings forever 30 years. Of those hundreds of weddings I can count on one hand the couples that did not get engagement sessions; it was usually due to the couple being out-of-state or a last minute booking. When we did not do an engagement session it always felt like we were photographing strangers! That’s not how we like to begin photography of a couple on one of the most important photographic events of their lives. When we do engagement sessions we discover how the couple relates to each other in front of our camera and we see their personal comfort level when doing mushy stuff in pubic! 

We like mushy, romantic, photography….

f8.0 @ 1/60 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 170mm

On a technical note one way I make our couples more comfortable in front of my camera is that I’m not in their faces with my camera—I’m backed off 20 to 30 feet using my telephoto lens (usually @ 200mm). In addition to relaxing them the telephoto lens makes them look better and it knocks the background out-of-focus creating a nice, soft, painted look behind them.

f8.0 @ 1/60 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 145mm

Meanwhile, Kathi is nearby, off to the side, ready to assist the couple getting comfortable with the pose that she set-up. Kathi will show them where to put their hands, which way to tilt their heads and make any clothing adjustments to make them look great before I make any exposures.

We always do individual portraits….

f5.6 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 200mm

Their individual portraits are really important because we will be doing lots of individual portraits of the bride and groom on their wedding day and we need to know in advance, what THEY think is their “best side” for portraits. There is nothing more frustrating than doing a beautiful set of bridals to find out it’s the side the bride hates about her self, doing engagement sessions avoids that.

f5.6 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 200mm

When we do these individual portraits we have the couple’s other half standing right beside me as I take the images. You can tell by their expressions that they are responding to each other!

Then we have some more fun…

f8.0 @ 160 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 200mm

The engagement session is so important that we insist on giving them this session (they can’t refuse a gift!) even if they’ve already had one done by another professional.

The results of our engagement session validates their decision in choosing us as their wedding photographers; and their wedding photography proves it!

Here’s this bride on her wedding day…

Wedding Day - Bride

Next week I’ll talk about wedding images…’Til then…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com 

PHOTOGRAPHY OF THE BIZARRE JOSHUA TREE

While visiting my son in Palmdale, California, he encouraged me to go into the open desert just behind their housing development and check out the Joshua trees that dominate the landscape. I went out there not expecting much since it was about 1pm (usually not a good time of day for natural light photography), but the sun was low in the sky on that early March day creating nice directional light. Once I saw this field of bizarre trees I immediately went back to my car and got out my camera.  What attracted me was how dramatically different each tree was—they don’t grow symmetrically with the orderly pattern of most trees—they’re chaotic and freaky looking! I like that.

Well, I guess that’s the case since these things aren’t really trees—they’re plants. Actually they’re giant Yuccas in the Agave family. They grow uniquely in the desert southwest of the US and mostly in California’s Mojave high desert. Here’s one of the taller ones….

f11.0 @ 1/200 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 35mm

The Joshua trees typically grow to about 20 feet taking 60 years to mature and can live more than 500 years.

Here’s a detail image…

f16.0 @ 1/500 sec., ISO 400; Lens 15mm

Taken at about 1pm I shot through one of the spiky tufts to get the sun star and nice sky as a background. That dark drooping tendril is the core of the Joshua tree’s flower—at this point all the trees had dropped their flowers.

Here’s a stand of the trees…

f13.0 @ 1/400 sec., ISO 400; Lens 15mm

With their flowers gone leaving that proboscis behind these things look insect like. Using my 15mm fisheye, moving in close, and converting to Black & White I enhanced their bizarre look.

How’s this for Bizarre?…..

f16.0 @ 1/400 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 70mm

Some were apparently dying and their state of decay was compositionally interesting. This limb looked like an ancient fossilized animal. 

This is part of the field I explored…

Car for scale

Using my car for scale gives you an idea of their size. These trees were so much fun to photograph that I came back out after 7pm for sunset lighting.

Had a nice sunset!….

f11.0 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 800; Lens @ 45mm

The Joshua tree has been around for a long time, but their habitat is pretty small and if it gets much hotter and drier in the Mojave they will not survive as a species. The largest Joshua tree on record was 80 feet tall and was estimated to be about 1000 years old.  The Mojave Desert wouldn’t look the same without these spiky icons inhabiting its landscape.

’Til next week…

Author:  Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Training site: http://www.LightAtTheEdge.com

Client site: http://www.TheStorytellersUsa.com