Quick Tip #9: Turn off 'Shoot w/o card'

Note there are no images with this entry. There is a reason for that.

Before I go into why, do me one favor. Go to your camera (if you have a Canon) and turn off the menu option called Shoot w/o card. There may be something similar on Nikon.

Just do it, don't ask why...

Ok, so you want to know why anyway, right? Well, that option lets the camera operate normally even if it doesn't have a compact flash card. Instead, it takes the photos and dumps the data silently. At first, I thought that was a great idea, since it let me try out the camera without writing any files.

Until I tried to take some pictures today of my children with a few other neighborhood kids. And only realized after I was done that the twenty some shots I took were gone. Hence, the no pictures on this post.

So just turn it off. Today, the pictures weren't irreplaceable. But if it was for a paying client, it could have been disastrous. So just turn it off and let the camera get angry at you if you don't have a CF card in. It is much better than losing moments forever.

Quick Tip #8: Check Your Background!

Last night I completed another TFCD shoot, and it went very well (the family dressed in traditional indian cloths, very beautiful and interesting). Except the first series of shots.

I've gotten a routine down for the TFCD shoots where I arrive at a location early to set up the lights and get everything dialed in on the camera. Actually, for the last two shoots (and tonight's) I've been using the same garden (as seen at the top of this post). It works great, except last night I made a rookie mistake: when I was shooting, I didn't check the background:


Can you see the problem?

For the record, my friends were concerned about their images showing up on the internet so they wanted approval before I posted anything. For the purposes of this post, I removed them since it is the background I wanted to show.

The good news is that the flower can be easily removed by cloning, especially with an out of focus folliage background.


I also have a shot or two with no people in it, so I could easily clone the flower in to the right or left in an appropriate place. So nothing is really lost from the client's perspective, since the images I will show them will be fixed. But from my point of view, I cost myself an hour or so of cloning and editing proofs to remove the flower 'tiara' from her head in about ten images. And all of it could have been avoided, if I'd just looked through the viewfinder and took into consideration the background.

The moral:

Check the background before beginning a series of shots.

From now on, I need to get in the habit of checking the whole picture (not just the smiles and exposure) before shooting. It will save me time (and money) in post processing.


Bonus Tip:

In this same series, I tried to keep the ISO at 200 for less image noise, so a reasonable aperture (f/7.1) gave me a shutter speed of 1/40 sec. I thought the tripod would prevent camera shake and stop motion, but I didn't consider the motion of my subjects. Well, I balanced the ambient correctly, but many of the images have significant blur from subject movement. Moral:

It is better to use a higher ISO and deal with noise than to risk image blur at a long shutter speed.

Fireworks

Here's my required fireworks picture in honor of the holiday. Taken with my 350D since I hadn't gotten the 20D out yet. Happy July 4th!


Oh, a post without a list? Can't do that.

How about a list of things I learned my first time photographing fireworks (I still have a lot to learn):

1. Use low ISO (I used 100), a tripod, remote release and bulb mode. I tried timing the shots at 20 seconds (and covering the lens when I didn't want anything else), but it was easier to use the bulb mode and a remote release. Bulb mode allowed me to time the shot to the explosions and control how much of the background showed (use a longer exposure to get more background).
2. Choose a suitable background. That was my biggest problem, since I was with my family, I couldn't get the Hoover Tower behind the fireworks. Fireworks without context just aren't as interesting.
   
3. More is not better. If you get too many shells in the image, it looks like a mess (see right). I found it better to try to only get one or two explosions in each one, or even part of the explosion. Sometimes it looks better if you trigger the shutter just after the initial explosion so the light pattern is empty at the center.
4. Shoot lots of photos. After all, you don't know what they'll shoot up and when.

Some Fireworks Shooting Resources:

• About.com
  
• Best Family Photography Tips
• Digital Photography School
• DPC Thread

Squint-Reduction: Cross-light with the Sun

It is funny how Strobist seems to always know just what I am thinking about. It's also funny how I can reuse photos from the last post to fill this post (just watch!).

Anyway, the most recent Strobist post discusses simple cross-lighting with the sun. While I read and understood the original cross-lighting articles (here, here, and here) it only really hit home on Saturday's TFCD shoot that I can't force my subjects, especially children, to face the sun. Otherwise I get the dreaded squint effect at left.

I always just figured my own kids were too sensitive to the sun and tried to position subjects with their faces toward the sun anyway because it is the most direct lighting. My son, in particular, can't take any sun in his face and we have a ton of pictures in our archives where he has his head tipped down, looking up at the camera through watery eyes.

Of course, maybe it is my own high resistance to sun; I haven't had a pair of sunglasses for over 7 years. I just kept sitting on them and breaking them, so I gave up and let my bushy eyebrows shade my pupils. Side note: how come every year my eyebrows are larger but the hair on my head is disappearing?

When I was setting up on Saturday before the shoot, I naturally chose a lighting scheme where I used my single strobe to cross-light with the sun. My goal, of course, was to keep the sun out of their eyes (and choose an angle where the speckled light wouldn't make patterns on anyone's face). And once I placed the sun at camera left, I needed to put the flash at camera right to balance. Only after the shoot did I realize I had cross-lighted.

Of all the shots, these are my technical favorites. Like Strobist says, cross-lighting with the sun is a dirt simple trick in your repertoire which is a good fall-back if nothing else is working. The best part is, you only need a single flash!

10 Lessons From A Family Photoshoot

For the next week I'm going to be really busy (three TFCD shoots in 8 days, plus my tutoring and classes have suddenly picked up). That, along with the DPL playoffs this week and leading two tours at work, has pretty much sucked away my desire to blog. But at least I'm not as far behind as Photomedic!

Last night I photographed a family that is leaving for bigger and better things next week (the children are J. and L. as seen here). They are good friends and we'll miss them.

The shoot went smoother than my first family shoot around campus, but there were still a rough areas and I learned a few more things. As usual, I'll present them in list form:

1. Acting like an idiot helps get attention of little ones. L., the baby, didn't like to look at the camera. But I found that yelling 'Beep!' at the top of my lungs, waving my arms around, and standing on one leg got his attention. Yes, for some of the shots, I was literally standing on one leg (with my other one out horizontal), and my non-camera hand straight in the air.

2. Golden raisins calm a baby. Near the end, L. was getting fussy (even when I did my little act) but J. (mom) was doing a good job of keeping him calm. Only near the end did I notice her secret; she was popping golden raisins in his mouth whenever he got fussy. Worked great for the shoot (they kept his mouth busy so he didn't cry) but I have to wonder if he has a raisin addiction now. Check it out, you can see it in the image at right (ewww, gross!). Click to see it larger, if you dare...

3. Doing the first set-up before the family arrives helps. For the first spot (the photo that opened the entry) I was able to unpack and balance the flash before they arrived. It allowed them to sit right down and get some shots before the kids even realized what was happening, and since I had time to think through the lighting and setup, I think those were some of the better images.

4. I need to get some experience with a model. This isn't really related to the family at all, but at one point I was working with just J. (the mom) and L. while R. and little J. scouted another location. It was amazing how much easier it was to work with just one person. I really need to find a TFCD model to get some extra practice with posing, lighting, and balancing flash and ambient. Without the need to stand on one leg while I do it.

5. Look around for interesting light. R. actually pointed a few areas with interesting light that I didn't notice; one of them is in the image at right. The sun was coming in low and hitting the stone floor, causing some interesting reflections. In hindsight, I should have bounced the flash off the ceiling and wall behind the camera (and to the left) but it makes an interesting image with nice segmentation between the subjects and the background. Of course, Stanford is just loaded with these types of places, but they can be found everywhere, from the city to the barnyard.

6. More locations may not be better. We did a LOT of locations (maybe 8?). I think I would have been better served to perfect a few instead of moving around so much.

7. Tell portrait subjects not to wear white! I keep forgetting to warn my TFCD families not to wear white, and invariably one (or more of them) shows up wearing stark white. In processing, white is a nightmare to keep from blowing out (and dodging it is not easy). Plus, bright objects draw the eyes, so it is ideal if the subject's faces are the brightest thing in the portrait.

8. Direct sunlight is hard on kids, even in the evening. As much as I'd like to do frontlighting, both little J. and L. had trouble looking anywhere near the sun, even at sunset. Especially J., he was making all sorts of faces when I had him face towards the sun. See left for an example. I need to figure out poses which shield their eyes yet don't make sharp, nasty shadows.

9. An hour is about the max. We went a little over an hour, and honestly both the kids and the adults (including me) were showing the strain. I think 45 minutes to an hour is about the perfect length for a shoot.

10. I need to get a sand bag (or make one) for my umbrella stand. The wind blows it over way too easily (although I was able to tie it down with the ball-bungees... those things are useful!).