Take them there

This weekend I got a chance to shoot the Orange County Music Awards. This was going to be a dark venue with a lot of other photographers. So how do you decide how to shoot a situation like this. Be different. There were about a dozen photographers at the foot of the stage, and while I did get some shoots there I spent most of my time else where. If we were shooting big name stars people would want tight head shoots of the artist taken from the front. Even then there was going to be a lot of the same kind of picture with the only difference being who's camera it came out of. I went for a different look. I wanted to show what it was like to be there. By talking with the stage hands and bands I was able to get some shoots on stage. And by not taking to anyone I was able to get a shot or two from the cat walk. I had a full load of gear with me. Two camera bodies, Nikon D300 (amazing in low light) and a D200. Two SB-800 flashes set to remote to use for band shoots off stage. For lenses I had a 50mm F/1.4 for speed in the low light. I had a 70-200mm F/2.8 for tight shoots of people on stage. I had a Sigma 8mm fisheye and a Sigma 10-20mm ultra wide for area and setting shoots. And just to round things out I had a Nikon 18-200mm VR to be able to work faster by having a zoom. I almost always shoot with two camera bodies to have lens options without having to stop and reach in the bag to get the right lens for a given situation. For this picture I got the blessing to hide behind the drummer during the song. Tip, if you ask toward the end everyone is starting to relax and they have seen you be careful to stay out of the way and act professional your more likely to get them to say yes. Ask right before the curtain goes up when everyone is running around like a chicken with their head cut off and you will get a no. I used the 180 degree fisheye to take in the whole stage. I pulled the hue just a bit red in iphoto as there were a lot of blue stage lights and i wanted the purple contrast.

Digital editing

Saving the throw aways. I am comfortable with my cameras. I can look at a situation and know what I need to do to change the settings on my camera to get the effect I want. I am still not where I want to be when it comes to digital editing. I think it is because the world of digital editing is soooo big. My cameras only has so many buttons and settings and it took a bit but I learned them and now know what my gear can and can not do. I have yet to find the edge of what there is to know about editing. First off there are many good options to choose from when it comes to software. Then there is so many options with in each different software. In truthfulness there are times I would like to forgo the whole new learning curve that is before me and just take the pictures and let someone else deal with the editing. This just isn't an option now that the world has gone digital. Back In high school when I took a photography class half or more of our time was spend it the darkroom, developing negatives or using the enlarger to print pictures. (Side note. As all we shot with was black and white, many of the backgrounds were out of focus nothings. One day we had beautiful stormy sky's and I took a few pictures of the sky's. I started putting that sky in the backgrounds of my other wise boring shots by making a cut out of my subjects to allow me to do a double exposure. At first I got a lot of complements from my teacher because she didn't check what I was doing. After two weeks of pictures of everything having a dramatic sky she cought on.) Back to today. Software is the new darkroom and still needs to be part of what it means to be a photographer. I saw this car and knew if I used my super wide 10-20mm Sigma lens set to 10mm and stood very close to the car the bumper would look like fangs. The problem was the big orange van next to it. I started messing with it in photoshop trying to get rid of the van both to the side of the car and reflecting off the car. As I still have so much to learn it looked like a picture that had been poorly photoshoped. So I started trying different filter effects until I found one I liked. The lesson? Just keep trying and with time knowing how to use your software will open new worlds for you and allow you to do something with what otherwise would have been a throw away picture.

Shooting in the dark

From time to time I am asked to shoot something without a flash in a very dark environment. Last night I shoot a Good Friday service for my church. They didn't want any flashes as they didn't want to disrupted anyone while they were worshiping. So what are the tricks? To get it out of the way a newer camera with high ISO helps. I shot with a Nikon D300 that goes up to 6400 ISO. At the high it gets a bit grainy but a grainy picture beats a blurry picture any day. I shot slower then that for most of the time, around 3200 or 1200. The second help is a lens that has a wide aperture. I used a 50mm F/1.8, 18-200mm VR, and a 70-200mm F/2.8. That's all well and good but what if you have a perfectly fine camera that is a year or two old (low ISO) and just your kit lens? The worlds cheapest mono pod helps. I don't remember were I saw this, but go to the hardware store and get a 1/4" bolt and a washer. The bolt screws into the tripod mount on your camera. You then tie a bit of string to the bolt and leave enough to reach the floor plus a little. The bottom end is tied to the washer. This gives you something to stand on. After standing on the washer hold the camera up till the string is tight and you have a 10 cent mono pod. This helps you hold the camera still when taking longer exposure shoots on the dark. Next trick is wait for the still moments. Most of the time a speaker or musician will have little moments when they hold still. If you are ready and waiting for those moments you can fire off a picture just as they stop. Also shoot in RAW. RAW files have a bit more information than you can see. If you shoot in RAW and then lighten the picture in your computer you will have an extra stop of light waiting for you in your computer. Lastly don't try to take the pictures you would with your flash. Let the picture show how dark it was and don't be afraid of a little moment in you shoot. This picture makes it look lighter than it was. I couldn't see to read and so I was working my camera from memory. People that had to walk out were using their cell phone for light. I used the VR lens at 18mm and wanted to have the people visible, so I set the metering to the middle setting as the speaker had a spot on him and would have made the picture too dark if I had set it to center spot metering, and waited for him to hold still. I framed with the last row of chairs.

Micro photography

There are a number of ways to take close up pictures. The first is to get a lens that is made just for micro work. This is a great option but cost a lot. The next is to get micro filters. These are filters that go on the front of your lens and work like holding a magnifying glass in front of your eye. The plus is this is a cheaper way to get the effect. The down side is you have a very small area in the center that is in focus. The third way is with micro rings. These are rings that mount between the camera and the lens. The upside is you get to use the expensive quality lenses you already have. The down side is you lose auto focus and the view finder gets very dark. It gets dark for two reasons. The first is the extra distance between the lens and the camera body means the light coming through the lens is spread out to create a bigger image. If you thing back to using a microscope you will recall a very bright light below the slide. The second reason it gets dark is I close the aperture way down. This lets in less light but widens the area in focus. In micro photography the area in focus can be measured in Millimeters or less. This makes getting a shot in focus hard because your view finder is to dark to see through and the camera won't auto focus. Or you may end up with one tiny area in focus with everything else out of focus. By closing the aperture you make the area in focus a little bigger. This is a picture you want to use a flash for. However if you are an inch away from your subject the on camera flash would work. I use one of more SB-800 speedlights off camera set next to the object to get enough light. For focus I use a flash light or the modeling light on the flash and move the camera in and out instead of playing with the focus ring. Take a lot to shots and the review on your computer to learn what works well for your camera and style.

Open your aperture

An aperture works like the iris in your eye opening and closing to let in more or less light. In your camera it also controls your depth of field. Your depth of field is the area that will be in focus. Many older lenses had guides on them showing you what would be in focus at what aperture. Without getting into the physics of why, the smaller you make your aperture (bigger number) the larger the area that will be in focus. The wider you make you aperture (smaller number) the narrower the area that will be in focus. This is all well and good but how does this help you take better pictures? One way is to help get rid of distractions. If your subject is looking lovely and giving you a great smile but standing in front of a very visually busy back ground you will end up with a picture that doesn't hold the eye on the subject but is just a bunch of shapes and colors. Sometimes you want everything in focus. In that case you will need to close the aperture. The downside is the smaller the aperture the less light that will reach the CCD or CMOS sensor and the longer you have to keep the shutter open. The long you keep the shutter open, the more likely you are to get a blurry picture. Mid day with lots of light you can close the aperture with out having the shutter open to long, but as it gets darker you may need to use a tripod. For this photo I wanted to get a picture of the flowers as a detail picture, but I wanted to not just have a flower picture but a flower picture that was of this couples wedding. What I didn't want was a picture that had everything in focus. I selected the aperture priority on the camera and set it wide. That allowed me to keep the flowers in focus and yet tell the viewer were the picture was taken. So next time your out shooting switch over to aperture priority and control what you want people to focus on by controlling the size of you aperture.

Get closer

Many pictures that I see could be improved by having the camera closer to whatever was being shot. Look at some of your own work and see if this isn't true. There is usually a eye grabbing thing in the picture but that maybe lost by empty sky, carpet below and any number of other things that take away from the main subject. Whatever it is your shooting try getting closer. It also helps if you have a micro or wide angle lens. If you do use a wide angle lens when shooting people be aware that they may look distorted. This will add to the picture if you are taking a funny shot but will hurt the picture if you were shooting a bride who now looks clownish. When shooting weddings I most often shot with two camera bodies. A Nikon D300 and a Nikon D200. I do this for two reasons. One is so I don't have to slow down as much to change lenses. The other is so should I ever have an equipment issue I can keep shooting with out missing a thing. One of the lenses I often have on one of the cameras is the Sigma 70-200mm F/2.8 EX hsm. This is a great lens to use in low light and also zoom in on something I see with out having to run over to get the shot. I use it to get closer when i can't. Is that a tear in the grooms eye? I can zoom in close while staying out of the way and not become a distraction to the wedding guests. This picture was taken at this little guys adoption party. He had just been given a cupcake and was going in for the kill. I had my Sigma 10-20mm EX hsm lens set wide and my SB-800 flash on the camera but set to bounce off the ceiling . As he went in for his first bite I swung the camera in in such a way as to get his attention and took the picture about 10 inches way from him. There is a lot of distortion being that close to him with a super wide lens but the moment allowed for that look and made it more fun. even still I need to crop it to make for a better picture.

Motion

Sometimes you want a picture were time is stopped and every drop of water is frozen in mid air. Sometimes you don't. As a quick and dirty rule , if it is moving fast, stop it. The pictures of a bullet leaving a gun are cool because you have never seen that with the naked eye. On the other hand if you have something moving slow or even stopped you may want to add movement to it. How? By slowing down the shutter and maybe moving the camera or the lens. How I took the first picture. Things were winding down, the Bride was off some were and the groom was sitting alone. If I had walked up and snapped a picture with the flash and had the camera on automatic this would have been a throw away picture. Think back to weddings you have been to. Every relative with a camera walks up to the couples table at some point and takes a picture. The area was lit by candles and heat lamps so I knew I would get a very red/orange picture if I didn't use my flash. That was OK with me, but I knew I still wouldn't have anything special. So I decided to zoom while taking the picture. I have a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens which would help take out some of the moment that my hands would give to the picture as the VR stands for vibration reduction. I have my camera bodies set up so that the command button disables the flash. I stepped in front of him just like the 99 friends and family that had taken the same picture over the last few minutes but pushed the flash disable button as I fired which makes the camera take a longer exposure. Just before I took the picture I started to zoom the lens in. If you wait till you hear the shutter you will be too late. What I got as a dark "Bond, James Bond" moment. What was happening was a guy who was starting to feel a bit over it after having had his picture taken so many times.
The other picture was taken at the end of an engagement shoot. We were down at the Huntington Beach pier and had already used the setting sun to get the planed photos. The couple sat down and I wanted something different. Important side note. Always get your planed safe shoots first, then take chances with the art shoots. I once again disabled my flash and held on to the lens zoom barrel as I turned the camera. It took more than one shot as I couldn't keep my eye to the camera and I would sometimes have a foot or something else in the center. The same rule works for this picture. The couple were holding still and it was a quiet moment, but to make it different I added moment. I thing this picture works because it shows them having a quiet tender moment in a world that is always moving and going crazy.

The all mighty rule of thirds

If you have ever spent five minutes in a photography 101 calls you have heard of the rule of thirds. If for some reason you haven't read on. This next part is lifted straight off of wikipedia.

"The rule of thirds is a compositional rule of thumb in photography and other visual arts such as painting and design.^[1] The rule states that an image can be divided into nine equal parts by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines. The four points formed by the intersections of these lines can be used to align features in the photograph. Proponents of this technique claim that aligning a photograph with these points creates more tension, energy and interest in the photo than simply centering the feature would.

The application of the rule of thirds to photographs is considered by many to make them more aesthetically pleasing and professional-looking. The rule of thirds can be applied by lining up subjects with the guiding lines, placing the horizon on the top or bottom line instead of the center, or allowing linear features in the photograph to flow from section to section. In addition, many photographers recommend treating any "rule" of composition as more of a guideline, since pleasing photographs can often be made while ignoring one or more such rules."

Why it works is not the point of writing this, but it works. You pictures will look better if you try to follow this simple rule. If you look at the other pictures I have posted you will find that something always lands on one of the thirds. In the pictures above the brides face lands right were the horizontal and vertical rule of thirds meet. In the other picture the pier and the point were the hill starts to rise is the point were they meet.

Were are you shooting from?

90 whatever percent of all pictures are taken from a camera that is between 5 foot and 6 foot above the ground. Or eye level. One of the ways to make your shoots stand out is to take them from a different vantage point. Ether get higher or get lower. After I shoot my first engagement shot I thought I had done a great job. I had met the couple an hour before sunset when the light was nice and warm (warmer light = a bit more yellow or orange often looks good in pictures of people) I had gotten pictures I was happy with and the couple was happy with and in truth I was asking the pro what he thought of the pictures probably more to show what a good job I had done. He looked at the pictures for a moment or two then told me that they were all shot from the same perspective. I am 6'3" and the couple were a little shorter than I so all the shoots were taken from my eye leave slightly down. The framing and exposure were fine but there was something not quite pro about my shots. Being in California you see a movie star from time to time and I am always shocked by how short most of them are. Arnold looks tough on screen but he isn't that big of a guy. I was once with a group bolling when Seth Green came in. I was sitting and I was still taller than he was standing. So why do we think these people are taller? Because the photographer had the good since to crouch when shooting. I was at a skate park when I saw a young kid jumping off a half pipe. I asked him if he would be OK jumping over me if I was to lay down on the top of the half pipe. I used my Sigma 10-20mm lens because I was going to be so close to what I was shooting. So that the camera would not hesitate to focus when I wanted it to shoot I pre-focused for what I thought would be the right distance and turned on my flash because I wanted to shoot with the kid back lit by the sun. The kid is only about 3.5 feet in the air but because I am on the ground with the wide angle lens he looks higher. The picture posted earlier of the guy smoking I was also crouching as I wanted a blank background and there were the lights of the party behind him. If I just shot from my natural eye level there would have been too many distractions. So next time you go to take a picture of your child/cat/dog don't shot down instead get on the floor and shoot across.

Camera settings

I do almost all my work in camera. That is why the title, "off the green box". Most people leave their camera set to the automatic, or green box and miss most of what their camera can do. I was in a park next to a stranger when we both saw the same sunset. We both took our pictures then showed each other what we had shot, and I got the comment I often get. Why don't my pictures look like yours? Well he was on the green box. I shoot probably 80% of my shots on the vivid setting in my camera. This gives just a bit more color and contrast. This is not the setting to use with someone who has any skin issues as it often makes them more noticeable. This is the setting you want out doors when you want a bit more color in the sky and trees etc... I rarely use the second vivid setting because the colors tend to look a bit too heavy handed. Much like makeup, a bit is nice, a lot is bad. However there are times when I want all the color I can get. The picture I posted has the vivid turned up to the first setting to make the most of the sunset. I metered the camera down a bit so I would have a "black and color" picture. If I had used the cameras metering with out changing it I would have lost some of the color in the sky and added detail to the bottom of the picture that would have been a distraction. By shooting the picture darker I made the ugly weeds that the kids were standing on disappear into blackness. How do you get a picture darker? Faster shutter speed or smaller aperture. I used the exposure compensation button and turned it down a stop as this still used the cameras metering and is quick and easy.

Lighting

Get the flash off your camera! If you want your pictures to look different you need to do something different. One of the ways I try to give my pictures a different look is to take the flash off my camera so that I can use it to add depth to my subject. With Nikon cameras this is easy. On many of their cameras but not the D50, D40 and D40x you can use the wireless flash flash command in the menu. I saw this guy smoking a cigar at a wedding and set up my gear by taking the SB-800 off the D200 and setting it to remote. I then set my camera to master and walked over to him and another fellow he was talking to. I asked the friend to hold the flash and then waited for the guy to exhale. By lighting from the side you can see though some of the smoke and his face has depth to it. If you don't have the amazing SB-800 or SB-600 that allow you to control them from in your camera you can use any flash that can be set to slave. Just turn you on camera flash way down so that it is just enough to trigger the slave. Its best to take a test shoot or to to get you settings right or you will need to take several shoots of the subject which might not go over well. You look like more of a pro if you can just walk up and take one shoot and walk away.
Another way to get the look is to use a flash cord that fits on your hotshoe and the bottom of you flash. This allows your camera to still talk to you flash but you can hold the flash off to the side.

Weddings

One of the things I most enjoy shooting is weddings. With wedding you can't spend ten minutes moving lights around and getting everything just right. You have to make do with the light you have, the back drop you have and the flower girl having a melt down and running back and forth in front of your camera. Why would I enjoy that? Just the way God made me. I got my EMT license
the day I turned 18 and worked on an ambulance and in an emergency room for a couple years. I loved the job. You never knew what you would see next and you just had to man up and be ready to fix "it" no matter what "it" was. In the same way I never know just what the people, weather, setting, and light will be when I show up for a wedding, but it becomes my job to take great shots anyways. The picture posted was taken at a wedding just South of Salvang in a winery. The light was poor for photography but great to the eye. It was outside with lots of candles and few lights. I was shooting with another photographer that night and so we were having to work around each other. This shot was taken as the couple was posing for the other photographer. The shadow on the right is someone who was standing in between the couple and myself. Her arm was out when I shot so I had to crouch to shoot under the arm. On a side note I am 6'3" so I am often crouching as I find the pictures look better if I don't shoot down at people. I used the available light and a nikon VR lens so I could make use of the very warm candle light and not get a picture that looks like a point and shoot. I often try to make use of the available light as I like the look better, but the pictures don't aways work so what to do? I have the option button on my cameras set to disable the flash. That way I can take a picture with a flash to make sure I get the something then without slowing down to take my eye away from the camera body I push and hold the option button and take the second picture. So to sum up. It was dark and not my turn to shoot with someone standing in the way, but I saw the moment with the light on a stucco wall in the background, crouched, framed, disabled the flash with the option button and fired.

To better pictures

Why another blog? At this point in my life I feel like I was able to awake things long forgotten from my days of running around with a camera in high school. A while back I was loaned a DSLR (canon rebel) by a friend to use during my sisters wedding. Afterwards I remembered that I really like photography. I had shot a lot in high school and early college, but then I met my wife, got married started a business, had three kids... So after getting better pictures than I thought I was going to get having not touched a camera in years I started looking into buying one myself. The first thing was deciding on canon or nikon. I know there are other makes out there and they are used by some fine photographers but most pros shoot one of those two and they have the most lens and other options. To keep a month or so of research and reading short what I came to was Nikon seemed to have the edge bang for the buck if you are going to spend less money. Canon has fine equipment on the high end with there L lens and Mark bodies but your looking at at least a grand a lens even used and the bodies start at 3 grand or more. To me it seemed Nikon offered better gear in my lower price range. So I bought a used D50 that had the 18-55mm kit lens. In the next few months I added lens and bodies and sold and traded etc... As of this writing I have two bodies. A D300 and a D200 both with the battery grips. On the wide side I have a Sigma 8mm fisheye and the Sigma 10-20mm. Zooms I have the Sigma 18-50mm F/2.8, Nikkor 18-200mm VR and 24-120mm VR, Sigma 70-200mm F/2.8 with a 2x teleconverter. In fixed lens I have a Nikon 50mm F/1.8 and a Sigma 500mm F/4.5. Lighting I have three Nikon SB-800 speedlights and some portable umbrellas.
I have yet to learn much of anything about how to use photoshop so most of what you see on my site (www.norling.smugmug.com) is right out the camera. As I learn more I want to pass it along. I plan on posting pictures and describing how I got that effect in camera. Why off the green box? Too many people leave their camera set on the little green box that is the automatic setting. If you do this you are not making uses of most of what your camera can do.