Balloon Toss

This was easily the brightest day I have experienced in a long time. In case you were wondering, I added very little contrast to this photo. Most of that is natural. So, with such a huge amount of light, I decided to zone focus.

I have been playing around with zone focusing for a few weeks now, but this was a great day for it. I can set the aperture to f/22 for a very deep depth of field and still have a fairly fast shutter speed. Actually, the depth of field is so deep in this photo, I almost feel like it was composited: nice crisp clouds all the way to the arms in the foreground.

I always wondered how to use that depth of field calculator on my lenses. Once I found out, it has been a very valuable tool. I did not have to focus any of these shots. As long as my subject was more than one meter away, I was safe. So, with metering on manual and focus pre-set, I could just shoot away with nothing more than composing. Get in the zone!

Assuming, from the quality of the photos, she was an experienced photographer, I actually asked how she used her flash to balance the light so beautifully. After a brief exchange, which I still have a hard time processing, I found out she had used a regular, old point-and-shoot camera! How could it be?

Even after knowing it was a compact camera, I could barely believe the photos I was seeing. The sky was so perfectly blue and not overly bright. The faces all looked like there were either reflectors coming up from below or some creative flash lighting. Not so. It must have been the perfect day for lighting!

I do not say that to diminish her skills in any way, but simply to say that having not thought about the lighting at all, those were perfectly lit photos. She was obviously playing with the angle and perspective, though. That much goes 100% to her credit.

Some folks get all the perfect light. I guess it all goes to reemphasize for me that light is what photography is all about. Know how to “read” it, manage it it, and how your equipment reacts to it.

The update came from some friends in China whose young daughter had just successfully undergone heart surgery this morning. Obviously, that is scary, a lot of emotions are involved, and words alone are usually all we get through e-mail updates from friends. Ok, maybe we get some snapshot. This too was a snapshot, but a powerful one. Photography can be so incredibly powerful, if wielded well.

In the photo, a nurse is holding the six year old girl soon after surgery. The nurse and a couple more nurses behind the girl (in the center of the shot) and the mother are all beaming with joy, clearly saying with their expressions that the darkness of their fears has been washed away and the joy of the morning is dawning. The moment is perfect.

The photo is also dynamic. There is a subtle hint of movement in the mom, toward the girl, but the girl is fixed, clear, and the center of the joy. The blurred, far-background nurses make me feel that all else keeps moving, but for the girl and those around her, all time has slowed so they can drink up every joyous mouthfull of this perfect moment.

And it even has vignetting. Too cool. I am sure this is just the “inferior” qualities of the extreme wide angle of a compact camera, but it further brings my focus to the center of the photo.

These folks are not photographers. This photo is a total fluke. Anyone can take a wonderful photo, but we have to strive to capture all of this on purpose. That is a tall order. There is so much of that photo which cannot be made or forced. It has a lot to do with the settings being second nature so that when that moment comes, you do not think about how to capture it, you just capture it.

Anyone can shoot a great photo, but only the fearless can be great.

Of course, you could just buy the unnamed, expensive radio triggers, and they really are worth the $400 or so if you need super reliability and other kinda groovy features, but those kind of folks will not read this anyway! I had given up on my pair of Cactus triggers. I had debated giving them away and just sticking with optical triggering (using the light of a flash to set off another flash wirelessly), but everything changed the past couple days. Here is what happened.

The problem with my Cactus radio triggers (aka “radio slaves”) was pretty simple: I would press the shutter release, and the flash would not fire. I press the test button on the Cactus, and nothing would happen. At first, they were just unreliable, which in time became utterly useless. Just a quick search on Flickr, and you will find loads of folks who love these and hate them (for these same reasons), so I figured I just had a dud pair.

So, I thought it was my battery. I changed that, and they were better for a while, but quickly went downhill again. That was when I discovered how reliable my optical flash triggering was.

I could use the pop-up flash on my camera to trigger my flash just about anywhere (around corners, through bodies, etc), at least, anywhere I had been using my radio wireless triggers. I still did not want the pop-up flash light in my photo, so most often, I deflected almost all the light with folded up paper or maybe just softened it with a coffee filter slid over the flash (high-tech, huh?).

There are two big negatives to this method of wireless flash, though. One, you are usually holding a piece of paper in front of the pop-up flash or holding a coffee filter on. That means you are shooting with one hand and sometimes at awkward angles. I did have the presence of mind to tape the coffee filter on a few times, but even still, it was a common problem.

And two (the really big downside), I am limited by the recycle rate on my pop-up flash. My “big” speedlight/flash can fire very quickly and many times in a row, but that little pop-up hangs after one or two shots and needs to recycle or recharge. And when you are doing a shoot with people (portraits, family, group, etc), and you see that perfect opportunity a half second after you  just fired…well, you miss it if you have to wait on that pop-up flash.

Having an optically triggered flash is still a great idea, but when that is a pop-up doing the triggering, you are greatly limited. If you had two or more speedlights, the “triggerer” either itself radio triggered or mounted on the camera, and the second flash triggered optically, you would be set. And that is where I am headed, but the pop-up flash just about killed my family shoot (see the last entry), and I had to find something different.

Re-enter: the Cactus triggers.

I took the Cactus trigger set and my flash down to buy batteries and test them out to make sure that was the problem. Oh, I have a little confession to make: as I was messing around with the idea of putting them back into action, I noticed the transmitter light was dim…i.e. it had a battery in it too and it was going dead. I should have known it had a battery too, but it just never registered in my head. I had figured it was using the camera’s power. I should have realized it had a battery because you can trigger it even when it is not attached to the camera. Not too quick on that one.

Anyway, turns out my brand new receiver battery was dead, because I had left it to “on” the last time I used it…at least, I assume that is why it is dead with almost no use, even though it was not receiving anything…unless that transmitter button is getting pressed accidentally in the bag…hmm. I digress, but an important digression for your information’s sake, don’t you think?

Lesson 1: turn them off when finished and possibly keep that test button from accidental “testing”.

Anyway, I replaced the dead receiver and the dying transmitter batteries, and the triggers (no-so-miraculously) worked flawlessly. One more thing, though: when I put the dying transmitter battery back in, it would still trigger the flash, but if I pressed it fast, several times in a row, it would miss a few of the clicks. With two fresh batteries, it would trigger the flash as fast as I could click the little test button. BINGO!

Lesson 2: if your Cactus triggers are not firing 100%, try fresh batteries in both transmitter and receiver.

So, once I realized it was just an issue of dead batteries, I bought some spares and put them to a field test. I am referring to the shoot I set up to fix the horrible flop of a shoot a couple days earlier. Flop shoot = pop-up flash triggered. Looking back at the photos from the second shoot, they never missed a beat; there was the flash in every photo, even when firing three or four quick shots when the family was in action.

So, for all those times I have hinted on this blog that my little Cactus radio triggers were less than wonderful, I take it back. That was probably the best $40 I  have ever spent on camera gear. If you are interested, just run over to Midwest Photo Exchange (where the cool, off-camera flash kind of folk go) and search for “cactus”. And do yourself a favor: pay $15 more for a V4 set, instead of the V2s set, which I have. You may not know it, but there are several very practical, little updates that make them much more useful in the field.

Come on, stop dreaming about $1,500 cameras and ungodly-expensive lenses, and drop $50 to make just about any flash (even that stol borrowed one from your dad’s camera bag) transform your photos from plane-jane to rockin’-awesome.

My current humbling experience all started a few days ago with a wonderful meal and talk with a photographer friend of mine. It was not him, but just watching some of the videos he has produced recently really reminded me what a two-bit punk hack I am. It was not the technique, but how he captured the power of the story.

Then today, I shot a very “ok” family portrait session. That is “ok”, as in, I do not want to say more of what I really think. The harsh sunlight made things tough, not only for lighting, but for the quickly wilting subjects. Excuses aside, though, I really want to know what happened. How do I improve? What can I learn here?

One of the key problems was a lack of familiarity with my lighting equipment. Well, more accurately, I was so focused on trying to balance the flash with the blaring ambient, I totally lost connection with the subject. I did not direct them. I did not let them know what they should do. And, to top it all off, I was not really even paying attention to them when I put the camera up to my face (or before then either).

Ok. How to fix it, though? What are some keys to making it different, and I mean small practical things?

Limit location/scene. In an attempt to give the mother a wide choice of background, poses, and set-ups (for lack of a better word), which she expressly stated she wanted, I ended up magnifying my difficulty at getting the lighting right. What I should have done is pick one or two spots, the ones I knew would end up best in the end, and spend more time there. Then, after the lighting was set right, I would be free to interact and catch that nice moment.

Be the director. To help them be at ease and to have confidence in me, I must direct. If I notice somebody is not smiling, find a way to get that out of them (well, if you need a smile, which this photo was certainly expected to have). If they are all just standing straight, hands to their sides, in the classic boring pose (because the photographer did not know what better to do), I need to help position them, pose them, suggest movement, or whatever.

Well, there may be more things, but every other “should-a” I can think of really falls into one of those two. Honestly, I really think I am going to call them up, let them know I have some “ok” shots, but nothing really nice, and I would be more than willing to set up another shoot in the next couple days.

And for the cold-hearted motivation, as if I were not already motivated enough to want to make this right, I found out during the shoot they will be printing this photo with some printer in the US to show as an example to other families here in town of that printer’s services. In other words, if I can really excel in this shoot, my work would be displayed before a wide(r) audience, and I would be first in line to provide photographic services for their family and group photos. I am not terribly concerned about that (because I live and work in a different country anyway), but it would be throwing away an excellent opportunity.

So, to add on the title of this post a little bit, it is good to be humbled, especially publicly. That reveals the weak areas of our photography and, if publicly so, gives us great motivation to improve.

Feel free to leave your own comments below. And please, leave some negative comments. Positive comments are only good for buffering the hard stuff.

Looking for the Time Card

This was her favorite. Good thing, because I like to start strong. She liked the action, watching this guy hunt for his time card. She also likes (foreshadowing her dislikes) that he does not know I am there, primarily because she does not want think about a photographer in the scene, but to just be a part of the scene.

She also liked the framing. When she mentioned it, I realized the door looked very distorted. My mind started thinking through if it was barrel distortion because of the lens or just a strange angle that caused it, and then how to fix it. She liked it precisely because it was curved. It was not interesting if straight. Ok. I will leave it.

Punching In

I was personally waiting to see if the hand was too hard to notice, if a glace would pass right over it, but she did not have any problem there. She did not want to be this close in, though. She wanted to see the person checking in, not the hand only. She felt the focus was the clock and not the people. It made her feel like this person knows the photographer is right there, and it took her out of the story.

Talking Before the Shift

This was my personal favorite, but not my wife’s. Actually…the more I look, the less I like this one…do not know why. Again, she felt these two were almost posing. They know the photographer is there and are not natural. Interesting comment. It is totally natural. They knew I was there, yes, but were just talking. I do not know what other think, but I still find the comment interesting, because often the truth does not matter, the perception of what is going on is truth to the viewer.

Heading into the Factory

Her only complaint here was she wanted to see more people. Just one person did not cut it. I liked the lonliness of it…it is the midnight shift, after all, but I could not convince her.

Midnight Means Going Home for Many

Again, she wanted more people. I did too, for this one, but they left one by one, so there was little I could do. She did not dig the foreground parked motorcycle.

Standing Guard Till Morning Comes

Again, she felt like these two guys were almost posing. Again, they knew I was there, but I am pretty sure they did not know I was taking a photo. She (nor I) was very fond of the lack of action or their stance or whatever you want to call it instead of pose. They walked out and walked in. I thought I was going to get something else, but it just did not happen.

Overall, this story could be much stronger if I hit the shift change a few nights in a row. All these reflect about 20 minutes outside, with a good 15 minutes sitting around waiting for the shift change bell and some movement to happen. It was a helpful experiment for me, though, and is one more step in developing those story telling muscles.

I complained yesterday about not having many chances to tell a story. Then, I came to the conclusion that stories are all around us, and I just have to recognize them and decide to record and retell them (using whatever medium I think best…though that is usually in  photos for me). Today, a great story opportunity hit, and I am going to take it on. I am trying to think through what I want to do with the story: how to tell it, what medium, what will I need to prepare, and so on. See…I told you I barely know what I am doing. I am very much shooting from the hip.

I found out my Thai visa runs out tomorrow. Our plan when the visa ran out was for me to head north to the Burma (or Myanmar, if you so prefer) border, walk across the bridge, walk back, and get a new Thai visa on re-entry…though the hole in that grand scheme, obviously, is that we forgot WHEN I needed to do so. Minor detail.

Anyway, when all those facts ran through my head, especially having just written a photoblog entry about not having story topics, I realized I had the perfect topic right in front of me. First, I have a really good relationship with the subject: I trust me pretty well. Second, since I will be traveling alone and not dragging the family to the border and back (they all have Thai passports, lucky dogs), I have no other commitments, at least for the duration of the trip. So, I have the “in” and I have the time. Let’s rock and roll!

I do not want to just shoot a card full of photos, then throw then all together in a slideshow, and tack on some nifty cultural music. I want to stretch my creative boundaries. I have long had the idea of mixing photos and video, but never really put it into practice. This day-long visa run is a perfect opportunity to play with the idea a bit so I can get used to it: find the difficulties, explore creative possibilities, map out the barriers to a different medium.

I know I need to storyboard a little, and though I am not always able to storyboard since I often have no idea where the story is going to take me, tomorrow is fairly predictable. I have thought through some kinds of video shots I want. I have also thought through (a little) how I want to combine the photos and video, but honestly have not thought much further than that.

I have to admit, I usually hit the scene, see what story unfolds, shoot it, and then go back and let the story tell itself. This one, I ought to think through a little more…though, I have this nasty feeling I will end up coming up with ideas as the day progresses.

As for transitions and other video effects, one thing I do know is that I am not going to spend a lot of time making this a blockbuster or even a well executed documentary. I basically will want to paste the videos together, almost back to back. I will clip the ends a little, but I think I might even build my transitions in manually by sliding something black up in front of the camera or some such. Corny, but this cannot turn into a time waster (it would simply never get done, if so). This is just a creative experiment.

I will be using my trusy SLR camera, and our family compact (point-and-shoot) camera. I might even try out a fun idea I had last week for the QingMing Festival, but did not have the opportunity to use: filming with the compact camera while shooting with my SLR. If I hold them together, as in, physically touching, the film records the sound of the SLR shutter. That could be a great sound effect, built right into the video, where I could freeze the film and insert the photo taken. We will see how it works.

This will be fun. And yes, I will definitely post the video when I finish it up, but more than likely, you will hear more about it before it is done anyway. I will be posting to @CooperStrange on Twitter throughout tomorrow if you are interested in keeping up while I am out on the move. Woohoo. I get to tell a story and let flow some creative juices!

If you have a normal flash mount (just found out Sony uses their own “standard”…punks), you can easily buy a little optical trigger for no more than $15. You slide that baby on the bottom of your flash, and then when any other flash goes off, it will trigger that flash. So, the pop up flash will trigger it, or hey, I have even used my point and shoot flash to set off my speedlight!

But that is not the end.

Rarely do I actually want the pop up flash to show up in the photo. If portraits with a long lens or maybe on a bright day, I might just shoot the pop up flash straight, but usually, I want to redirect or soften it somehow. I carry a couple of those flat coffee filters in my bag: lifesavers. I cut the small end off and can slide it over my pop up flash, softening the light. Napkins work too.

A few weeks ago, I did not want to soften, but to almost totally mute the pop up flash. Oh, side note, those optical triggers are pretty good. I have never had a problem getting them to “see” the flash even with all this muting and redirecting going on. Anyway, I did not want any pop up flash, so I taped normal paper, folded a couple times, so it would hang just in front of the flash. Some light still got through, but most was bounced backwards (and into my eyes! …dang!).

Sometimes, I will just put my hand in front and redirect it off to the side. That will add a little red to the photo (your hand is full of blood, you know), but sometimes that is actually nice, but usually not a problem when you have another flash firing. If you want to keep it white, just use a business card or some such.

I love optical slaves (optical triggers, whatever…slave is the more standard term, but I find it a little non-obvious). You do not need line of sight to set those off. As long as enough flash is bouncing around so they can see it, you are ok. Cheapo and wireless. You cannot beat that.

I took the camera out to Big Lake with us Saturday and saw some really good shots, yet somehow, I took no shots. There is going to have to be a shift for me to do more shooting. I don’t have extra time on the weekends to go out and shoot like I would like to. So, I’m thinking that as I go and do the many things that have to be done I need to set in my mind that I’m going to have to slow down and take some shots. There was a town that we passed through that was like we just stepped out of Texas and into Old Mexico. The building architecture shifted. Would have been some great shots, but alas, I was in too big a hurry to get home.

Yes, one solution may be to slow down the pace of your life so that when you do see opportunities, you can stop to take them. That is really a big change, though. It is hard to completely change the pace of your life just to shoot more. I cannot tell you how many picturesque little towns I have driven right through…crying for the lost opportunity.

Part of my solution has been to keep my camera with me at all times. I <strong>rarely</strong> would have time to stop and capture the essence of a town. However, I <strong>often</strong> have time to take a few shots of this or that. That is a five minute change as opposed to a one hour change in plans…much more workable.

Sure, I think it would be good for the soul to stop every once in a while. Break the schedule (if the wife permits, hehe). Savor the moment. Life is too short to always drive through, but I have to be honest that such a big change would be hard to practically implement.

Another part of my solution has been to combine a photwalk with a normal fun walk with the boy. He likes going out and just seeing things, and that is exactly what I would like to photograph: stuff, life, people, places, neighborhoods, etc. So, for the past few weeks, we have been going out on Saturday morning walks. He is in the stroller and if I want to stop for a few minutes to shoot, he rarely cares…as long as there are birds, dogs, roosters, cars, truck, bike, and the like to keep him amazed.

This Saturday morning walk is just one example, but photography can be woven into many different aspects of life. I have let myself become the photo nerd who always carries his camera. Much of the time, it just stays strapped to my back collecting sweat (we are in Thailand, after all), but it is there and ready to be woven into life when opportunity knocks.

Sometimes people ask (or recently, politely force) me to take photos of such and such an event. And other times, I just do it anyway. They like the photos; I get to shoot more. Though the subject matter might not be the most inspirational you have ever seen, you are gaining experience with every frame, so that when that inspirational moment does arrive, not only do you have your camera on hand, but you know exactly what needs to be done to make that photo work.

I knew I had expectations of what it would be and I also knew that some of those expectations were likely to be wrong. It is not like Chinese culture is going to look exactly the same in every country and every family around the globe. There are only a couple billion of them or something.

In China, the QingMing I witnessed was an all-day endurance test of incense, fire crackers, food, sun, cutting grass (on the graves), and sweat. This was more like a brief family meet up. The graves were already fairly well kept, cutting out hours of “grave sweeping”. And there was only one grave involved. In China, we went from grave to grave to grave, visiting all the ancestors they could remember.

Basically, from a photographic point of view, it was so brief, there was not much I could have done. I caught a few shots (and yes, I will show some once get the CDs made and off to the family), but not much. I kept waiting for something more to happen, but it did not.

The positive side is that post-processing took no time at all.

One thing I love about photographs is that normal viewers can feel how close they are to the subject. And I am talking about everyman kind of viewers, not photography educated folk who talk about lens length and depth of field and all that jibberish. There is something really fundamental going on in people here, and we photographers have a chance to touch that gut level feeling.

Using a long lens is not the way to get close. Using a long lens is a way to look like you are close, but actually to move away from your subject. Is this good or bad? No. It just is, and the viewer will feel the difference.

What Capa means, and the way to tap into that gut reaction from viewers, is to physically move in closer to your subject. We are talking about photography with a 50mm or wider lens, if you really want to know. When you move into that wide angle range, you either capture way too much information in the shot because you are standing too far away, or you move in and take shots that make viewers connect with the people in the photo. When close, they can experience the same things, feel the same things as those in the photo.

When you look through work of guys like James Nachtwey and wonder how they make you feel a part of the photo, this is one of the biggest factors. Of course, then you have experience, angle, and all the rest, but it would be impossible (for the most part) with longer lenses (50mm+).

If you have a kit lens, throw it wide open, or close to it, and leave it there for a while. Shoot around. You will most likely review your shots and see how boring they look. Leave the lens alone…the experiment is not over. Now, you need to do the second part: move in closer than you shot the first time. No, you will not solve all the world’s photographic problems, but you will have just discovered how to draw viewers into your photographs in a whole new way.

I will be returning to my wife’s hometown tomorrow and the next day heading to her Dad’s hometown for the celebration of QingMing. The whole Chinese side of the family will be there. Yes, it will be nice to finally meet all the family on my wife’s dad’s side, but I have to be totally honest, I am giddy with the thought of the photo opportunities.

You do not get much better than a cultural holiday. So many aspects of what people believe and how they interpret the world comes out during holidays. Though you are just used to it, pick any holiday and any people, even Christmas for Americans…you can observe belief of individual families, cultural norms, history, and what parts of Christmas we find important enough to pass on to children.

The last QingMing I was able to take part in was QingMing 2007 in a Dong village in China. Photographically, I am very excited about this one. Not only am I family this time (though still far from an insider), but I had some mysterious issues with my color during the last QingMing Jie (oh…sorry, the Chinese for ‘festival’ slipped out there).

Not that it was anything about QingMing itself that messed with my color and not that I expect any such issues this time, but I still think about that day’s issue every time I hear the word “QingMing”. Actually, that funky color issue inspired me to play around with the photos some to make them even more “unreal”. It certainly was out of my style, and I would not even claim it was in any way clever, but it is good for the creative juices to try new things, to make it different every once in a while.

So, here are the things I am thinking about to prepare myself for the upcoming festival of photography:

• What do they really believe?
• How sincere is their belief?
• In what ways is this QingMing (among Thai Chinese) similar or different?
• How many generations back do they pay respect?
• How many generations are present?
• Is this being passed on to the next generation?
• Are there other stories going on?
• How much money is actually spent in this festival of veneration?
• …and my main focus: What is the underlying spiritual reality of what is going on?
• How can I capture that “real” reality?

Not that all or any of those questions will be answered, but I want to keep my eyes open for all kinds of stories or angles on this day. I want to get my mind in gear.

The old stand by for me is to do everything short of actually asking somebody if I could take a photo of them. Sometimes, I did get the tacit “ok” with eye communication, and that is fine, but more often than not, by the time the approval came, I had already shot the shots I really wanted. It all depended on the situation.

I am not trying to take advantage of anybody, but firmly believe that in most cases, the best moments are spontaneous: the best smiles, the most fun, the real person behind that face. Those are the moments I want to capture. There is more to it, though.

It is all about trust. The best situation is when the people know you already. Everybody is comfortable and they do not really mind you picking up the camera every once in a while and shooting around. Just this past Sunday, I was able to catch some great shots of kids lying around on the floor, relaxing on each other, and just spending a lazy Sunday afternoon. When I picked up my camera, none of them flinched. They knew me, trusted me, and had nothing to prove.

Similar to this is a situation where you are no necessarily known (not personally, anyway), but you are trusted. You are the photographer of the event, and they all know it.

So, what about all the other situations, where you are not known and trusted? Well, it still comes down to trust, of course. I mentioned the knowing look; you meet eyes, they know you are taking photos of them, and it is clear they have no problems with it. Go for it.

Recently, on occasion, I have been asking people if I could take their photo. I do this in situations where I cannot sneak anything. It is either ask or just not take the photo. So, I have been using this more and more just so I can get used to still catching a natural image even though they know full well I am shooting. For me, it is just different, and I want to get better. So, I am looking for opportunities to use this new tool.

A lot of this photographing strangers business has to do with naturalness. If you act like paparazzi, you will be treated so. If you respect their space, their life, and maybe even have a little conversation here and there, people will most likely warm up to you. If they do not, respect that too, and move on. And speaking of, if somebody really has an issue with a picture you just took, go ahead and show them the photo and delete it in front of them, if necessary.

And on the topic, use those LCD screens to your advantage. A lot of the time, people do not quite know what to think. When there is obvious nervousness, immediately just go up and show them the shot. The majority of the time, seeing they are not heinously ugly or that you have not manipulated them in any way, they will smile and be pleased that they just had their photo taken. And if it was a particularly good photo, well, all the better. Too few people out there have good photos of themselves. You might even end up e-mailing photos to them.

I guess to sum up my thoughts, there are no rules. It is not a do this and do that kind of thing. Respect people. Be natural and friendly. That will take you a long way.

Maybe you have the same problem I do. You do not have the Nikon D3 or the Canon 5D or some other full-frame, no-noise wonder, and moving your ISO up just a little turns your image into static. Do you want to keep image quality at its best (or pretty close) and stop sacrificing your pictures to the ISO noise gods? Here is what I do.

Before I give the tip, here is a good starter: buy fast glass. If you are on a budget, there are budget prime lenses out there that have pretty open apertures and can gain you a few stops of light over the cheap zooms.

So, you need to move that ISO 800 shot with its annoying noise back to an ISO 200, no noise shot? If your aperture is at its limit and you just cannot sacrifice the speed any more, just shoot the shot too dark. Exposure compensation is the answer (find it in your camera manual and figure out how to set it).

I know, it sounds backwards: “the shot it too dark so I am going to make it darker”, but it actually makes loads of sense. If you tell your camera it needs to meter minus two stops, then your speed can be two stops faster. Then, in post-production, you just bring the exposure back up. Sure, you get a little noise that way, but at least in my case, way less than if I had bumped up the ISO.

Disclaimer: if you shoot JPG, this trick is not really very helpful. Do yourself a favor; shoot raw. With raw, you easily have a couple stops to play with. I find (with my camera, anyway) that bringing a photo up three stops is just too much. That is when I would start to shoot 400, then compensate -2 on exposure, gaining three stops of light, total.

So, back to the nameless seasoned pro. He said they did not use light meters (they were not built in to the cameras, and no photojournalist had the time to be taking light readings for every shot). So, they would shoot 400 film, shoot it too dark, just guessing on the exposure. Then, when they developed the film (not making prints, just developing the film itself), they would leave it in the chemicals till it looked right. What I realized is that I am effectively doing a digital version of the same trick.

I knew I was not crazy.

Following a comment on a post of mine a few days ago, I have been thinking about shutter noise. I unashamedly like quiet and I really notice when a camera is not quiet, even though that statement is quite relative. I was all excited to see the Sony a900 (this is the camera that brought up the topic in the first place) in the store and I picked it up to give it a few test shots. Ergonomics, handling, buttons: good. Style: very Sony-ish, but I like it (I like it more than the other Sonys). Then, I pressed the shutter release. KER-PLUNCK! Holy cow! That sound alone would take lots of great features and a very low price for me to actually think about buying one.And Mal (my honored commenter), I mean no disrespect. This post is not written to tear somebody else down or, in any way, to make my way sound like the best way. That comment just got me thinking, and I wanted to share some of my thoughts on why (to me) a loud shutter really matters.

I know, this is yet another in a long list of topics that I think about but almost nobody else does. Well, that is not totally true, but the internet does gives us a false sense of perspective sometimes, making unimportant things out to be incredibly important. Even though a hundred people comment on a blog entry on any particular topic, that does not necessarily mean there is even a slim chance I will ever meet anybody in flesh and blood that could care less.

I care, though. Here is why. The reader comment I mentioned above said it should not matter unless the photographer was into stealth photography. Well, not necessarily. It has to deal with the interaction between photographer and subject. If your subject is a mountain and trees, well, then no it does not matter (unless you have really sensitive ears, I guess). If however, your subject is human, it will matter, because humans react to things like that.

I do not want to dive into a Leica-esque philosophical debate, but they do have a point when it comes to leaving as little a footprint as possible. What I mean is this: even if somebody has given me permission to shoot, sometimes the difference between a subtle camera sound and an obvious one could change their reaction and totally change the face I capture. If they are a model, probably not, but I rarely shoot models. I shoot normal people.

My camera is no Leica (I could only be so fortunate), but it is not terribly loud. I have seen faces change that ruin the situation because of sound alone. Maybe I got the shot I wanted on the first try and I can quit; maybe their reaction to the sound ruined my opportunity to keep trying for a better shot.

We even see this issue playing out, in part, in point and shoot cameras. I detest their I’m-taking-a-picture announcements. Again, feel free to not care, but it can make a huge difference. Those beeps and fake shutter noises are just begging your subject to give you their fake smile or break up that natural moment you wanted to capture.

I think the point is this: the more quiet the camera, the more likely the photographer is forgotten and the more likely the situation will continue on naturally without the nervous feeling of being recorded. That means better photos. That means more photos. That is not to mention the feeling of comfort of the subject (though this is just one small issue in the greater issue in that case). This is all important when you need to capture that special moment, that perfect expression. Well, you could just get lucky on the first shot, but besides incredible luck, staying low key always improves your chances.

This is much the same reason I shoot only prime lenses. Well, price, aperture, and quality are other big factors there, but still, you are not carrying around Big Bertha. Keep from drawing undue attention to yourself.

And that is why the quieter your camera is the better.

Here are some tips, gleaned both from experience and a podcast which inspired me to write this stuff down. It has been so long since I have listened to the show, I cannot remember what from my notes was the guest’s idea and what was mine.The podcast was the Digital Photography Show and the guest was James Duncan Davidson. Well, I think it was him, but for the life of me, I cannot find the podcast I listened to in any archives. Anyway, the photographer in question has a lot more experience than I do, but I can attest to each of these points in my own experience.

First, the settings. Do yourself a favor: shoot raw. Many of you will wonder why I should even mention it because you always do anyway…just tune out for a paragraph, then. You will run into wildly different light sources, and raw will give you the latitude you need to very easily change the color temperature back to what it should be. Well, there are more reasons to use raw, but color temperature is a big one.

When you need to photograph speakers, here are some specifics. You will often be shooting in fairly dim situations and need high ISO to get shutter speeds up to 1/125 to 1/250 (we will get to aperture in a minute). You will need as fast as possible. What you will find is that photos look out of focus, but really they are just slightly blurry. I know, these are not high action shots, but especially in the lips, you have to be able to freeze the action. Some speakers are harder than others; you have to acclimate to the speaker.

And this is certainly no place for that f/3.5 – f/4.5 kit lens! You need fast glass, baby! Canon, Nikon, and I am sure the other manufacturers as well, have cheap 50mm f/1.8 lenses. You will learn to love ‘em, I promise. I have a friend who bought a 50mm f/1.8 and now rarely ever puts his kit lens on the camera. You get really used to that extra stop or two of light…think of it, two times the light! In any case, you will be constantly frustrated with your photos with anything less than f/2.8. Even then, you will be riding at the very edge of your equipment’s capability.

Have your flash ready, but do remember how incredibly distracting it will be. You better let the speaker know…that might not be a nice surprise: speakers kind of need the audience’s attention. If you do use flash, it is best to shoot some test shots before hand so you know right where it needs to be set. In other words, get it right the first time.

And think through the kinds of shots you will need to take. Marketing people want crowd and conversation shots. PR and news folks want shots of keynote speakers. You can figure it out for your situation, just make sure and think it through.

And if you really want to put a smile on their faces, find a way to run a slide show or something on site. The audience would love to see those photos; that is the only way most people will ever see them. A good example is running a slide show of photos from a wedding ceremony at the reception. If you truly have a unique vision, you will have a perspective on the wedding that nobody really noticed.

And by all means, get experience just shooting around at your next conference. It is ok to be a photo junkie. Have fun. Play with perspective. Find something nobody else saw.

I certainly wan to give a special thanks to the original photographer and the hosts of the podcast for the ideas in this post.

Yes. Wait…no. Man, I don’t know.

There are many answers to each of those questions. A photo may be worth a thousand words, but depending on the content of the photograph and the audience viewing it, just which words could be hard to determine. The photographer needs to determine what the message is and communicate that. If words are needed, use them. If not, don’t.

I remember my early impressions of Ansel Adams, probabaly the first photographer’s name I ever remember remembering. I loved his work. It was…um…pretty.

Recently, I watched a great special on public television about him and his work, and I never realized what he was trying to communicate or what he achieved through his photos, historically. Basically, the West was declared closed. We had tamed the wilderness. America had hit the West coast and civilized everything in between.

Ansel Adams felt that the wild was an essential part of America and being American. He did not want to lose that and so he proved otherwise with his photos. There was much untamed wilderness. His influence did much in the development of an environmental ethic, even when “environmentalism” was not a word.

Maybe that message was understood by the people of the time, but I am guessing it was not the “Such-and-such Mountain at Dusk” titles that communicated his message. They already understood or felt much of the context of his photography.

On the other side of things, most of my photos come from China and the cultures which live there. Without captions or some kind of communicated message, viewers would often have no idea what is going on in the photo, much less what the greater implications or story are behind the photo.

Basically, if you want to become an excentric artist, you can do anything you want. If, however, you want to communicate with your photography, you will need to evaluate the audience and how they will understand the content of your photos. You might even have some pity on later generations who will not understand the context at all and just go ahead and write a caption.

I was using a different lens this time. I was using a 50mm f/1.4, but had it on the end of a 35mm f/2. I thought f/2 would have been wide enough to allow for this to work, but evidently not. I do like the vignetting, but opening up to f/2 was just not enough to make this bokeh—that is what the out of focus region is called…its Japanese…so cultured, huh?—make star shapes.

On the upside, I had a hard time getting my 50mm to have good vignetting, whereas this wider 35mm really came through nicely. You live and learn.

I will tell you what I did using another of the photos from that night.

This is a shot of some groovy building in the background with the barracks wall of the Alamo in the foreground. If I remember my Alamo history correctly, sacrificed men were several layers deep inside that very window on March 6th, 1836: Texans, Tejanos, Mexicans, and others. “Remember the Alamo”…and not just the picturesque facade.

I used a Canon PowerShot A720 IS. I had tried other settings besides manual, but nothing really got me to the point where I could hold the camera without blurring the shot. How did I know? Well, you basically have two settings on all cameras (though companies have increasingly confused us with millions of variations of those two settings). Those are shutter speed and aperture.

Aperture is how big the camera makes the hole through which the light enters the camera. I was watching the shutter speed, though, and that is how long the camera opens up the aperture. So, obviously, 1/20th of a second is slower than 1/50th of a second. Almost all these shots were shot at 1/20th. Normally, that is too slow…meaning, though I try to hold the camera still it will move while the light is coming in, thus blurring the photo.

As a parenthesis, many of my shots were blurred. 20 (or 1/20th) was just too slow, but that is what I needed to get the light necessary to make a visible photo and not just a black frame.

Besides that, I did not do too much. Hold it still! Oh, and turn that blad-durned flash off! It is not going to light a 50 story building.

I will say more later, but the first and most important clues I have to make this work are these. One, turn the flash off. Two, turn the ISO (film speed) up. And third, if you dare (and if you want good shots out of these little machines), go to all manual settings.

I can see a lot of folks doing steps one and two, but the manual settings are a bit difficult for most…otherwise, you would be using an SLR camera. So, for now, let’s keep it simple: turn the flash off and turn the ISO up to 800 or so.

The flash does not need to be on anyway, because it will never be able to light subjects so far away. As for the ISO, the one negative is the grain. If you look at this shot, there is some grain, but it is not too bad. The photo is certainly better than if I had tried it at ISO 200…it would have been a strange, blurry mess.

More later on my night point-and-shoot experience…