crazy experiments

I promised to share some of my crazy experiments, so here goes. I'm obsessed with lighting, as all photographers should be. I love to see the behind-the-scenes setup on where the lights are placed, modified... This book Light: Science and Magic especially appealed to the scientist in me. The authors not only talk about how light behaves, they also demonstrate how light interacts with different materials, like metal, glass, skin, etc etc. Glass is especially a tough one, because it is reflective and transparent at the same time. The trick, as it turns out, is to light it from behind, either white with black edges, or black with white edges.

how many shots in a bottle of wine??

Last summer my wife took the kids to visit her parents in Chicago. Home alone, I took out a bottle of Pinot, but I had no one to drink it with. So I shot it.

Take one. 3'x4' softbox camera left to produce a highligh that runs down the side of the bottle. White reflector camera right. Not enough separation especially on the right side, can use a little kicker light.

Take two. Switched to a lighter background (newsprint on cardboard). Shows more depth and separation, but right side still too dark.

Take three. Added kicker light camera right. Better, but the front of the label still has a dark band.

Take four. Added a piece of white paper cut out to the shape of the bottle, and taped to the back of the bottle. Snooted flash from behind point at the cutout. A different look.

 Take five. Snooted flash from behind without the paper cutout. Er, kinda cool, but no.

Take six. Back to black background. Hmm... need to tweak kicker.

Take seven. Kicker only. I like that...

Take eight. Snooted on-axis flash to light the label. Interesting...

Take nine. Silver reflector camera right as kicker.

Take ten. Switched main light to camera right, and used a gold/silver zebra reflector for fill. I like this one the best. With that, I went to bed with a smile...

Setup shot. So I'd remember what I did...

if you want something to look interesting

"If you want something to look interesting, don't light all of it."

This quote comes from Joe McNally's book, The Moment It Clicks. Couldn't agree more. Also applies to "someone" by the way. For Joe, that someone happened to be Mr. Tony Bennett.

This is Mr. Li, a member of the local youth symphony, lit by a 3'x4' softbox, camera left, with the face of the softbox turned away from him to feather the light. Imagine Mr. Li being at the center of the clock, and the camera is at the six o'clock position, the softbox is at about ten or eleven o'clock. If you placed the light at nine o'clock, it will light all of his face, and you won't get the shadow on the nose and cheek. Be sure to shield the lens from the strobe to minimize flare.

"oh, I wish I had my camera with me!"

"Oh, I wish I had my camera with me!" is something I used to say a lot to Kodak moments. You may have as well. Now-a-days with my iPhone, this is no longer the case. I always have a camera on me, even when I go for a ride on my bike. In fact, sometimes when I have both my iPhone and big Nikon on me, I'll pull out the iPhone because it's easier/quicker for a shot. And frankly I've been impressed with what that itty bitty camera can do. The camera app that came with the phone doesn't have too many controls, but I found by tapping on a specific location on the screen, you can set focus and exposure at that location in the scene. There are, of course, lots of camera apps out there that will give you more controls. I kinda like the simplicity of the built-in app. I also like apps such as Instagram that forces you to do a square crop, and then choose from a number of preset processings. I typically go through the different of presets, and one of them would speak to me more than the others. Sometimes I'll use the Photoshop Express app to do slight adjustments, crop/rotate or add artistic borders. Most of time it's straight out of the camera or Instagram. The lack of fancy controls and processing is not necessarily a bad thing. At moderate or low light the shutter tends to be slowish, and you can get really interesting results just from that, like this first image with the road streaking. And a few more Kodak moments, caught on the iPhone. In some cases, drive-by shooting.

when you come upon good light, take it

As photographers, we ought to be obsessed with light. Observe light, see what it's doing to the scene. Is it hard? Soft? Warm? Cool? Where is it coming from? Where is it going? Look at the edges of shadows, are they clearly defined, or are they soft and indistinct? What light brings out texture? How do you light water or glass? How does metal reflect light? Everything is a mirror, you know. When you come upon good light, take it.

Sometimes people want to know exactly how big your lights are and how far away they are from the subject. Just tell them, "well, it's kinda relative." You see, the sun is anything but small, but it's also really far away.

Someone once said, "Photography is all about the light," to which his friend countered, "Photography is all about the shadows."

Yes.

This one afternoon little Miss K came over for a play date. As the kids were playing in the room, I came upon some magical light. Not sure if I could recreate this in the studio even. The late afternoon sun flowed through the window that was halfway shaded with translucent Hunter Douglas. The other half allowed direct sun to come in, caressing the floor while diffusing reflected light all over the room, bouncing off the walls. The pool of sunlight on the carpet created wonderful catch lights in Miss K's eyes. Oh, there were a couple of skylights up on the ceiling too.  200mm and click. Ahh....

 1/160 sec @ f/2.8, Nikon D700, 200mm

three clicks this way, three clicks that way

Super short tip today. Most modern DSLRs have the aperture and shutter speed dials set to 1/3-stop increments. So remember this,

     "Three clicks is a stop."

When you turn that aperture dial three clicks, you're either opening up or stopping down the aperture by a stop, depending on which way you turn. In default settings, turn the dial to the left on a Nikon to open up. Canon people, turn to the right. Same goes for the shutter speed dial. Now if you're in manual exposure mode, turning either dial changes the exposure, depending on which direction you turn. To keep the exposure the same, simply turn one dial x clicks in one direction, and turn the other dial x clicks in the opposite direction.

Heck, we might even start talking about exposure in number of clicks, as in, "give me 5 clicks more exposure." (as opposed to one and two-thirds of a stop).

Try this: put your camera in manual exposure mode and set the aperture to f/8. Now turn the shutter speed dial so that the meter indicates proper exposure. See which way you turn to cause the indicator to move towards the "+" and "-" directions. Now turn the aperture dial three clicks towards the "+" direction, you should be at f/5.6, and the meter should indicate three "tick marks" from center. Now turn the shutter speed dial in the opposite direction by three clicks. The meter should once again indicate proper exposure as metered.

The good thing about manual exposure mode is that you're in control. The bad thing about it is, you're in control.

Why is it called a stop? Back when Pterosaurs flew in the sky, aperture dials and shutter speed dials had only full mechanical stops. Oh how I miss my aperture rings.

1/200 sec @ f/2.8, Nikon D700

inspiration: david duchemin -- a mentor i never had

Painting with Camera

1/20 sec @ f/32, Nikon D700, 105mm

"Perfection is overrated, and technique without passion is like vision without a voice, it rarely moves the heart." -- David duChemin.

These words are sweeter than the sound of the mockingbird.

are we having fun yet?

 wheee!!

1/200 sec @ f/2.8, Nikon D700, 28mm

Thought I'd post some new work for a change. All this talk on technique, gear, and technology is pointless if you're not having fun. Yep, having fun is a requirement, 'cause if you're not having fun, why bother?

sunny 16

Cumulus Clouds 

1/200 sec @ f/16, ISO 200, Nikon D700, 28mm

When I was 14, my best friend's dad taught us how to use the camera. I don't remember exactly, but from what I recall, he told us to set the aperture to f/11 or f/16 on a sunny day, f/8 on a hazy day, f/5.6 on a cloudy day, and f/4 when it's foggy. I really never asked why.

Then somewhere along the way I read about the "Sunny-16" rule of thumb for exposure, which goes something like this...

      On a sunny day, set your f/stop to 16, and shutter speed to the inverse of your ISO.

For example, if the ISO is set to 200, set your shutter speed to 1/200s, and aperture to f/16. That would produce a good ball-park exposure. And in film (well, negative film anyway) days, ball-park was good enough.

And leaving the ISO and shutter speed where they are, on a hazy day you'd open up a little bit to f/8 to let in more light. Still more on a cloudy day to f/5.6. And so on. Kinda makes sense huh.

Try this: on sunny day, set your camera's aperture to f/16, and point the camera to the blue sky, and see if it suggests a shutter speed that's (roughly) the same number as your ISO setting. Worked for the clouds pic above!

bits and pieces

"256" on my abacus

Today's special is a 3-course dinner. You have two choices for appetizer, two choices for entree, and two choices for dessert. How many different combinations can you get?

2 x 2 x 2 = 8.

Now if we have 8-bits to represent different shades of gray, how many of them can we have? Well, each bit can either be 1 or 0, so two choices for each bit.

2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 = 256.

24-bit color? No problem. 8 bits for the Red Channel, 8 bits for the Green Channel, and 8 bits for the Blue Channel. Quick, whip out that abacus. 16,777,216 colors. Man, that's a lot of colors. Not enough to represent all the colors in the world. Nope.

When you see 32-bit color, there's usually 8 bits dedicated to the Alpha channel to control transparency or opacity, so you can do fancy layer stuff in Photoshop, for example.

What about CMYK? That's for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, for laying down ink on paper. That's another discussion.

Sometimes instead of using 8 bits per channel, we could have 16-bits for each color channel in the super-duper modes.  For example, when you shoot RAW, the camera may use 10 or 12 bits to record each channel. Adobe Camera Raw, for example, in Lightroom or Photoshop uses 16 bits per channel for processing. Your monitors can't display all those colors, but after the fancy adjustments, the image is converted back to 8-bits per channel so you can see the result on the screen.

How do they convert color images to grayscale or black-and-white? Fancy math. For example, you can take 30% of the red, 59% of the green, and 11% of the blue, stir well and get a standard luminance value for the gray image. When you convert the mode from RGB to Grayscale in Photoshop or GIMP, this is probably what's done behind the scene. And arguably one of the worst in terms of contrast. There are literally infinite number of ways of black-n-white conversion, but the idea is the same, and you can map different RGB colors to different shades of gray. If you ever play with Grayscale Mix sliders in Lightroom or Camera Raw, this is what happens. (Incidentally, in RGB mode, when the three values are the same, you'll get a shade of gray.)

That, boys and girls, is some of the bits and pieces.

auto pilot

Portland, 2010

Nikon FE, 35mm, expired Kodak T-Max 100 film

Every morning as I get in the car this is what I go through

• Unlock door
• Open door
• Place right foot inside car
• Sit down in the driver seat
• Bring left foot in
• Close door
• Place key in ignition
• Turn key past 2 clicks until engine starts
• Reach over left shoulder for the seat belt
• ...

You get the point. I suspect if you drive regularly this is rather automatic. You probably put the car in Park, turn off the engine, unbuckle and remove the key in one fell swoop. Now, is it possible to become as proficient with your camera gear and techniques?

what's with the f/numbers anyway?

Ever wonder why the aperture numbers are like that? Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, we had aperture rings on lenses, and they had full-stop markings like 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22 on them. The bigger the number, the smaller the opening. Seems backwards, doesn't it? Well, if you must know, it's because these numbers are in the denominator of the formula for the area of the aperture opening. You know, even though 4 is larger than 2, 1/4 is smaller than 1/2 ?

 

(Consumption of this article may be harmful to your health. Reader discretion is advised.)

flash tips: in the blink of an eye

Remember: that itty-bitty flash will not light up the Grand Canyon.

Unlike with natural light, it is difficult to see the effects of flash before the picture is taken.  You can't meter it the same way with natural light. It seems to have a mind of its own sometimes. It's just, in a word, frustrating! I hope this short article will shed some, ahem, you know what...

Contrary to the beliefs of many a tourist, that tiny flash on the camera will not light up the Grand Canyon.  No, Sir.  So when you take a photo with flash, there's the portion in the scene that's lit by the flash, and the rest comes from ambient light. Balancing the two is the fun part.

TTL flash: a light conversation

Nikon SB-800 with Microwave Popcorn Snoot

Delux Butter Version with built-in barn doors

A light conversation between the camera and the TTL flash

Camera: "Light Infantry, initiate preflash sequence."
TTL flash: "Yes, Sir!  Initiating preflash sequence."

(Flash sends out a series of short flashes, hits the subjects in the scene, light bounces back Through The Lens, hence the name, hits the TTL sensor, onboard computer figures out the flash power required to properly expose the subject...)

Camera: "Give me Photon Blaster at 200%"
TTL flash: "Roger that.  200%"

(First shutter curtain opens, flash fires, second shutter closes.)

Mission accomplished at the speed of light. Sorta. Pun fully intended.

shoot what you love

If there's a piece of advice among my most cherished, it would be "shoot what you love." I've heard this in various forms, from Chase, from Ed, from David...  I met Chase at one of his lectures. When I told him, "I have no intention of quitting my day job," this is what he wrote: "shoot what you love."

bursting technique

San Antonio, 1/10 sec @ f/4.5, Nikon D70

What do you do when the shutter speed gets below what you're comfortable handholding the camera, and you don't have a tripod with you?  Well, you could brace yourself against some object, like a flag pole or a wall, or place the camera on a bench or a short wall, and use the self-timer so you don't introduce more camera motion when you press the shutter. Or use Joe McNally's super-duper hand-over-shoulder-left-eye-dominant technique. I know there are photographers who can handhold down to like 1/4 sec or slower--more power to them.  I have a tremor in my left hand so I won't even try.

making an exposure is like filling a bucket

If you use a garden hose to fill a bucket with water, it might take a little while. With a fire hose, it'll take considerably less time to fill the same bucket.

In making an exposure, a certain amount of light is allowed to reach the sensor/film by some combination of aperture and shutter speed.  Think of size of the aperture as the hose size, and relate shutter speed to the amount of time it takes to fill the bucket. With a small aperture opening, it takes longer to let in a certain amount of light (slower shutter speed).  On the other hand, with a larger aperture opening, it'll take less time to let in the same amount of light ( i.e., a faster shutter speed).

If you switch to an aperture that's twice as big, it will take only half the time.  If you use an aperture that's half as big, it will take twice as long. Pretty straight-forward, isn't it? This give-n-take relationship is sometimes called reciprocity.  For example, for an exposure f/5.6 at 1/60s, we could get the same exposure by using f/8 at 1/30s. (The aperture opening at f/8 is half as big as f/5.6)

inspiration: troy wayrynen

A number of years ago I had the opportunity to photograph a theatrical production by a local company. I had never shot any stage performance before.  A friend of mine was a reporter at the Columbian newspaper, so he referred me to the Photo Editor at the paper, Troy Wayrynen.  Troy gave us some good advice, and over the years I've become friends with Troy as I would update him my progress/struggles in photography from time to time. One thing I appreciate about Troy, aside from being a wonderful photographer, is that he would always take the time to look at my images and give me great advice and encouragement.  Of course whenever I see his photos in the paper, I'd feel like a grasshopper all over again. I have so much respect for photojournalists as they are master storytellers through their photographs, often on short notice.

Here are some advices from Troy:

   "...immerse yourself in it to the fullest commitment you can."

   "Find out what you like about the process and master it."

   "Learn about lighting and explore all aspects of it. Be willing to experiment, whether it's PHOTOSHOP or a different technique at the moment of capture. Don't be afraid to fail (it's the best way to learn)."

   "Network with others and get their feedback."

   "Carry a camera as often as you can."

You can see more of Troy's work at picturesbytroy.

a histogram is just a bar graph

You're in a room with a bunch of people, and you ask them their birth month. 4 people were born in January, 7 were born in February, etc etc. So you make a bar graph of the answers you gather.

You're in a room with a bunch of pixels, and you ask what their gray values are. 0 is black, 255 is white, and all the grays in between. So you make another bar graph.  Except this time the bars are thin, and there are no gaps between them or the graph will go off the screen.

No, they didn't invent this for digital photography :)

(Color histograms slightly more complicated, but that's another blog post...)

"i'm a photographer."

Let's get this one out of the way.  You're a photographer.  Yes, repeat after me, "I'm a photographer."  If you love this craft and you make images with a camera, you're a photographer.  Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  You don't need to be winning awards or getting paid to be a photographer.  You don't need to know all the full stop aperture numbers to be a photographer.  Or be Spiderman, although Peter Parker is a photographer.  ("I'm Peter Parker.  I'm a photographer.")    I've encountered photographers who had a little trouble identifying themselves as such.  Saying so is the easy part; learning the craft is the hard part.

There, there.

my journey

I was 14, I needed a hobby. "Hey, Dad, I'm thinking about taking up photography." Old man said, "OK," drove me to the camera store and bought me a brand new Nikon FE, an SB-15, two lenses and a tripod. Just like that.

My buddy's Dad moonlighted at the local newspaper as a photographer. He showed us how to work the camera. We used to roam the city in search of subjects. Sunrise, sunset. Used import cars. Whatever.

"Hey, how about taking pictures of lightning?"
"Great idea."

Up the roof we went, umbrella in one hand, and cable release in the other. The thought of being struck by lightning never crossed our minds. Somehow the pictures never turned out the way we wanted. They were all white.

"Wanna try to take pictures of trailing headlights?"
"Yeah!"

We'd set up the tripod in the middle of the crosswalk. Boy did we get some extra bright headlights...

Those were the days living dangerously.

Fast forward a few years, I decided to study digital imaging in graduate school because of my interest in photography, and because I would be able to show the results to my mother. "Look, Ma! Gaussian Blur..."  I worked on projects in medical imaging, computer animation, facial expression analysis and face recognition.  I can tell you exactly how Gaussian filters work, or the difference between bi-linear and bi-cubic interpolation.  But I won't.  For a number of years I was a professional student--they paid me to go to school.

When I got out of school, I landed a job at Kodak Research Labs.  What an awesome place!  I was surrounded by all kinds of experts in imaging and photography.  You show them a picture, and they'd hold it up to their nose and say, "Yep, there's too much magenta and the focus is a little soft..."

Photography sorta took the backseat until years later when my kids were born. So cute yet so stinky... I wanted to capture every little expression. First studio shots were done with a borrowed strobe and a bed sheet as the backdrop. I devoured books and magazines and blogs... bought DVDs and attended workshops... joined online forums and organizations... Exposure finally made sense. Got my head around strobes and off-camera flash. I always have a camera on me, even if it's just the iPhone. Through photography I was able to meet some amazing people, in cyberspace as well as real life.  I hope to feature some of them here too. I've improved a bit since I was a teenager, but there's yet so much to learn.  Ah...  such is the journey.

why breadcrumbs?

Joe said photography is a journey without a destination. It's not about "getting there," but for the joy of the here and now. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a noob, we're all on this journey together. Those before us have left breadcrumbs to point the way. My hope with this blog is to share some of these breadcrumbs I've picked up, in roughly three categories.

Photography.  These include tips and tricks on photography, perhaps a rule of thumb or something like Sunny 16. I'll definitely include some of my crazy experiments, and some "now you try it" too. 

Digital Imaging.  These relate to imaging, image processing and perhaps color science, you know, histograms, color spaces, monitor calibration, etc.

Inspirations.  Ah yes. Inspirations come in many forms. I hope to share some of my sources of inspiration. Many of these are photographers of course, but there are others as well.

This is not meant to be a complete course on photography or digital imaging; there are many other sites devoted to those topics. Just little nuggets here and there, I hope you find them useful.

1/1000 sec at f/2.8, iso 200