Screwing around

In preparation for my trip to Seattle and Alaska next week, I'm trying to learn a few techniques to maximize my time away, and best be able to process shots when I get home.

Since landscape photography opportunities will be everywhere, I wanted to try some panoramas so I know what I'm doing before out there potentially wasting time and frames.



What did I do wrong here? Well, it was too close to what I was photographing. Panning from image left to right left the semi-circle voids at the bottom (and the top), so if and when I wanted to crop this evenly, the bottom of the image, the track, would be largely lost. Seems like I'll have to compose what's visible, and them sort of re-compose in my mind what will make the final crop.



So here I backed up a bit but I'm still far too close. (Won't be a problem in Alaska) You can see the bowing in the middle where the lens was the closest to the subject while panning. Here I was experimenting with how many frames I need to take to cover the area I want with the correct amount of overlap. Basically the margin for error here is large, since I probably ranged from 10-30% overlap, and no reference point really suffered through the stitching process that I can tell.

So, second task was this kind of inverted/desaturated layer overlay method in Photoshop that Prav told me about. It's kind of a way to bring out the same sort of contrast and tonal ranges that an HDR's Tone Compressor would emulate. It doesn't seem to replace a detail enhanced HDR, but that depends on the photo you're talking about, if you'd want to use that method or not if you're even going for an HDR in the first place. Any way you can bring out the best in the photo and only use the original shot is ok by me, so naturally I had to try it out.

Here are my results:





This certainly made the colors pop out of their shells, and without a "false" look to them. It's like a brightness and vibrance enhancement without any of the additional noise added if I turned it up that much in LightRoom. I'm interested in trying this technique on different kinds of shots. These example I took tonight served both the purpose of using the new 24-70mm during golden hour, and checking out how much color/tone was effected by this photoshop thing, which was my main interest.

Lagging behind

I've been sick for, basically the month of April. So I haven't had much drive to update much here lately, but that's not to say I haven't been busy.

Over the past few weeks I've done two wildly different shoots. One, a portrait session for an local Hip-Hop artist in Boston, hoping to use the materials for future promotion. Two, being an event hosted by and for M.I.T. at the Prudential Center allowing teams of graduate students to present their competing ideas for a real estate project in downtown Boston.




First up for this post:,Terence, aka "Blaq Legend", a super nice guy who not only wanted my input on how to get the best shot, but had a great idea and vision of what he wanted as well. A fairly rare combination in subjects I've found.
Prior to the shoot, Terence scouted locations and we decided on a meeting spot at Boston Symphony Hall. We concentrated on several areas that focused on his past, places that he spent time in his youth living in the city.
It was a very mobile shoot, capturing everything from a local pizza joint, to the subway system and Boston Landmarks like the Prudential Center etc. Aside from some local *ahem* over-served individuals, it was very easily managed session as Terrence and his Cousin, who accompanied us, were very easy going.

Catching up

A few weekends ago I accepted a last minute gig to cover an engagement party that my wife's co-worker was having. Having little or no expectations in terms of what the client wanted, or what i was truly working with in this situation, I boldly thrust forward....into near panic.

Let me try to explain to you the difficulties of this shoot

1) The reception area where the happy couple greeted guests was a bottleneck.. It was dark where they were standing, I had almost no choice of angle, distance from subject. Solution: Photograph what *is* working at that moment, even if you didn't plan on it. In this case, kids being ridiculously cute worked better than horribly crowded and poorly framed shots of the couple in bad lighting. However, it wasn't soon after this small triumph when I realized...


2) Everything was reflective. Stainless steel doors, plexiglass display cases, even the wooden walls had a sheen to them, I constantly had to deal with shooting a flash, and having the environment flash back at me. Solution: Angles are your friend. If you're you're in a room where practically everything is acting like a mirror and you have no choice but to use flash, minimize the damage. Avoiding, as much as possible, being perpendicular from the wall while maintaining proper composure seemed to work best for me.


3) The lighting that was available was very yellowing. Combined with the hue of the walls, choice of clothing, and natural skin tones, people were looking a bit jaundiced. Of course when I say "a bit", I mean "oompa loompa". Solution: Go with the flow, because there's almost you can do short of on-the-fly white balancing etc, so I let LightRoom take care of this one after I was done.

4) No working space, and competing photographers. I was the only hired photographer there, but when people lined up and posed for me, enthusiastic family members would quickly fill any spot that was left empty around the seemingly shrinking room. I also had trouble navigating from one end of the room to the other once all the seats were filled. Solution: If your environment is hindering you, think of ways you can use it to your own advantage. In this case since i often couldn't move to get where I may have wanted, I was forced to take the time to see what was immediately around me that I could make the best of. This led to a bunch of the party's detail shots that may have otherwise not been captured (which my client ended up loving)

New ventures

I guess you'd call my lasted gig "product" photography. Advertising, maybe. Either way it was something I've never quite done before.
I was hired to showcase an artisan's wooden chest and interior decorating skills for an upcoming issue of Boston Design Guide. The June 2010 issue I believe.
The shoot only took about 20 minutes. Lighting wasn't too much of an issue as ambient light from the windows were enough to act as a decent "fill" for what the lamps lacked. The temp/tint/hue issue foreseen from the very yellow lamps was minor, and what I couldn't adjust for on-scene, I could easily manage at home in LightRoom.

The real challenge for this was the fact that the wall this piece was up against was literally almost the same width of the piece itself. My client made it clear she did not want any kind of background of her house in the image. Also, there was a slightly blown out (in comparison), and distracting light that leaked in from the front door which nestled itself into the bottom right of the frame.

So, not only did I have to crop out as much as possible, I had to engineer more background than actually existed for her wishes to be fulfilled. Covering up the light switch and some railings on either side was a snap...but creating a whole, textured, differently lit background for the last 1/8 of each side of the frame? With no discernible artifacts?

Yeah. That took some work. I should probably post a "before" photo too, but I don't have one handy with me right now.

Anyways, the client LOVED it, so I'm very pleased that I pulled it off. Now to look for my next challenge.

Interesting developments

In the last week I've been in the process of booking for a product shoot that will end up in Boston Design Guide magazine, and agreeing to a last minute request for a large engagement party shoot on Sunday.

The product shoot is for an interior designer, and I'm still waiting on the details regard when it will take place etc. I'm all for shooting anything that will end up published, as the exposure can't hurt.

The engagement party is for Andrea's friend at work. It's taking place at a museum that also hosts events, so the bride-to-be has hinted at some potentially fun pics with the artifacts. I love it when the subjects are really into the shoot, and suggest ideas to make it that much more lively and enjoyable.

I'm looking forward to both of these sessions, since they'll both be outside of the realm I usually practice in. Shots of the party up soon, the product shoot, TBD.

Gold Star BLVD

This past weekend I did some shooting during a recording session for a friends' band called Gold Star BLVD. Later on, I may be doing some live-show photography for Zach, who is in G.S.B. and another band, gigging in Boston and Worcester in May. I'm excited about the prospect of that, but the recording session was interesting in its' own right.



During the first session Darter the guitarist, decided at the last minute to tell me he doesn't play in under the lights in the studio...he plays and jams under candle light....great..and just 10 minutes earlier I had realized my Vivitar off-camera setup was out of batteries. So, no fill light for me in this very dark studio.

I had to get creative, so I ended up using a mix of slow sync flash, "puffer'd" flash, and standard long exposures.

Zach, who I thought was the bassist, also laid down a different guitar track next. Luckily, he plays with the lights on. Unluckily, the studio is pretty boring in terms of photographic potential. I tried a mix of angles, crops, and overenthusiastic use of bokeh to liven the shots up.



After Zach's session, I did a few shots of Victor on the drums, and then listened to their almost completely finished track back in the "booth" part of the studio. I had to say, I was really quite impressed. I'm too lazy to Post Victor's drum shots. But I'll have to link to the whole shoot.

Chicago

In my anticipation of going to Chicago for business, I took a brief hiatus of photography. Once there, I pulled out all the stops.



I took along almost all of my gear minus external lighting and stands (which would have been a bit ridiculous). So I walked the city with my 3 lenses, and tripod etc etc. I really enjoyed having my tripod with me while out shooting everyday. Not only for the fact that I could take shots requiring the tripod, but because it forced me to take pause whenever I was considering a shot if I wanted to set everything up. It made me conceptualize my shot before just snapping away. When I was setting up the shot, I took that much more time to properly compose, expose, and correct where needed. Here's a good example of when I was in this mindset:



I tried to get out of my own head occasionally and really think about what I was seeing and find something interesting about everyday scenes or objects. How I portrayed that depended on the style in which I decided to conduct that shot. I got into a little bit of an "urban" mindset for about an hour, which led to shots like this:


Overall, I feel this was a fairly productive trip in terms of generally being able to execute the shots I wanted to, and being pleased with the results. The full set of pics from the trip can be seen here: