Bring your own sunlight

The perfect snow day for photographers has to be where the clouds are high and thin, making a huge softbox for the sun to evenly illuminate the ground.  I usually am looking for medium soft shadows where you can easily see details in them.  The clear blue sky typical of winter results in stark shadows cast by the untempered sun, with extreme contrasts between the snow in the sun and snow in the shade.  Alternatively, the other typical winter days of overcast result in no shadows at all, just an even grey cast over the whole landscape.  What’s a person to do when the itch to photograph a landscape turns up?

Well, on a cloudy day you can bring your own sunshine and make your own shadows.  Off-camera flash units are perfect for this sort of light manipulation.  You put them where you want light, attach a light modifier of some sort and adjust to give the amount of light you want.  These are fill lights only – you aren’t going to be able to illuminate acres of ground.  No, this is like big light painting – you put light where you want and use composition to create the total image.

Here’s a before and after of what I’m talking about:

ISO 100, 24mm, 1/20 sec., f/7.1 – no flash

ISO 100, 24mm, 1/20 sec., f/7.1 – flash applied

Sometimes you just need a little extra light to bring more interest to the image.  I used three flash units in the “after” image:  one between the first and second tree on the left, one between the second and third tree on the left and one behind the distant tree on the right.  The first two have a softbox and white reflector attached, respectively.  The third one is just a bare flash.  Each one is attached to a PocketWizard radio trigger so they all fire when the shutter is released.  I like the PocketWizard because the range is well over 1000′ so I can place the flash units where ever I want.  I do wish the Olympus system had a wireless flash adjustment, though, so I wouldn’t have to run around to all the units to adjust the power levels between shots.

Obviously this is more than the on-camera flash built into the camera body, and all those flash units and transmitters do cost extra.  I use mine for multiple purposes, including the rare portrait or group image, so I could justify the purchase.  I like taking the sun around with me for when I need it but it’s more gear to buy and haul around so it might not be for everyone.

Others were using the late evening light as well.  The local deer are able to reach grass under the snow now that it has melted a bit.  It’s amazing to think how an animal of this size finds enough food to stay alive in the cold.  There was still some green grass under the trees, however, and the last snow came down heavy enough to insulate it from the bitter cold of the last week.  Deer will paw away snow to find food and I caught this one in the act.

ISO 100, 100mm, 1/250 sec., f/4.5

They have put on a nice winter coat this year and don’t appear to be too thin.  Talking with one of the park supervisors I learned they get feed supplements as well, placed at various places around the park away from where people will disturb them.  Must be working for them otherwise I think they would hang out around the road begging for handouts.

ISO 100, 100mm, 1/80 sec., f/4.5

Today they were moving around in groups, some feeding and some just lying around.  I’ve read their winter coat is so well insulated they can lay down on the snow and not melt it.  Has to do with the hollow hairs of the outer layer of their coat.  Sometimes you can see them walking around with snow on their back that isn’t melting either.

ISO 100, 100mm, 1/100 sec., f/4.5

They see a lot of car traffic through the park, most of it looking for them.  As a result they usually ignore vehicles passing by but every once in a while something will catch their attention and then everyone has to look up and see what’s happening.

I could have used one of the flash units to put a small catch light in their eyes – I don’t think it would have bothered them.  My lens was resting on the window and I was about 50 feet away so I’m pretty sure my best flash would have reached.  Perhaps next time I’ll plan on that and have all the gear ready to go.  For today I was happy to bring some light to the trees and photograph the deer au naturale.

The sun is really starting to set early now that we’re off the contrived “daylight savings time.”  At this latitude the sun is getting pretty low in the sky, which means it’s reaching places usually in shadow in the late afternoon.  I took advantage of this to try some lighting adjustments for outdoor photography.

I started with a couple of strobes set up to add some fill light to a scene, reducing the range from lightest to darkest regions in the image.

ISO 100, 17mm, 1/125 sec., f/7.1

In this scene there’s a strobe to the left hitting the decking and rail, and another to the right doing the same thing.  The left one is slightly brighter than the right one.  I wanted to bring out some detail in the decking while keeping the bright sun as the primary light on the sign and trees.  Worked on this type of lighting for about a half  hour but never really saw anything that got me excited.  Perhaps next time a third strobe way back on the left to brighten up that big shadow and bring a little depth to the image.

So, giving up on that approach I chose to work on some HDR images.  With all the high contrast areas the opportunities were numerous, especially for areas where I couldn’t put a strobe (they don’t float).  I pushed the processing beyond “natural” to get some deep textures and drama in the scenes.

ISO 100, 32mm, f/8, 17 image composite of various shutter speeds

This seemed to be going well so I tried inserting some curved leading lines into the composition along with highlighted regions to draw the viewer’s attention.

ISO 100, 14mm, f/8, HDR composite of 6 images varying shutter speed

The reflections were looking very nice; why not an HDR of nothing but reflections?  Besides, the water’s surface acts as a nice polarizing filter to darken and emphasize the sky.

ISO 100, 24mm, f/8, HDR composite of 5 images varying shutter speed

The sky was radiating so much light as the sun set further down I used that as a source for the details in a grungy HDR composition of angled leading lines.

ISO 100, 14mm, f/8, HDR composite of 5 images varying shutter speed

There is a lot of learning yet on using strobes outdoors so I’ll be returning to that again as winter sets in.  Feeling pretty good about seeing HDR opportunities, though, and applying the post-processing effectively to get the look I want.  As with most things, some compositions work well with this technique and some just don’t but only experience with it will enable me to make those choices prior to hitting the shutter.

Lighting addition

Great sunset today after a gloomy, cloudy start.  Really felt like an attempt by nature to warm up the rapidly coming coldness soon to envelop us for several weeks.  Thought I’d practice a bit using my off-camera flash to lighten up the harsh shadows created by the strong sunlight, and see how all that would process out as black and white.  Have to work faster now; as the sun approaches the horizon it quickly sets within just a few minutes.  Not like the summer sun that takes its own sweet time sliding below the sky’s edge.

Just a dab of color makes an emotional difference

As I’ve been told in the past, it’s easy to be seduced by color in photography, to end up making images that are full of colors but not meaning.  Autumn is my nemesis – I see all the warm colors and go crazy pointing my camera here and there only to find so few images actually have any composition to them.  From what I read it’s the “fear” of color that drives fine art photographers to black and white.  And by fear I mean the lack of control, the mostly mysterious way color is processed into the developing of film or digital files.  Great color is awesome – slightly not-so-great color is a train wreak.

But does this mean a wholesale fleeing from color in photographs?  Not for me, in spite of my autumn insanity.  Actually a little color added to images can be a great way to alter the mood of an image or bring attention to an element that might other wise be ignored or relegated to secondary status by the viewer.

As an example, an ordinary still life image:

One flash to the left of the subject and a piece of white foamboard to the right to reflect some light back subject.  I altered the lighting ratio (the difference between the brightest and darkest part of the light reaching the subject) in order to give it as much dimensionality as possible.  Nothing fancy and pretty bland.

What could the addition of color do for this?

Same setup as the first image but here I draped a piece of red cloth over the foamboard on the right so the flash would reflect that color back onto the subject.  This image feels a little more mysterious – where could it be setting right now? – probably because this is a movie effect we’re used to seeing in horror flicks.

This is a simple effect to create once you realize the light from a flash will reflect the color of the surface it hits.   A lot of time portrait photographers doing outdoor shoots find this more of a problem than a help, as clothes, trees, or buildings near their subject will reflect the sunlight or flash back onto their subject’s face, giving it a color cast that can look unnatural.  Usually this is solved by merely moving the subject else where but sometimes a white reflector has to be inserted between the subject and the troublesome reflection to correct the problem.

Once you start playing around with this idea it’s fun to see just what colors will have what impact on a subject.  Here’s another simply still life:

Here I’ve added a second flash to the right instead of a white reflector so I could control the amount of light on that side.  The more powerful flash is still coming from the left and the shadows it’s casting on the surface of the fossil as well as on the table to the right really help bring out the dimensionality of the piece.  For this I experimented with different color gels put in front of the flash on the right, just to see what changing the color of the darker side of the piece would do for the overall tone of the image.  Here are some examples:

Some of these look artificial while some look pretty natural.  Warmer tones portray less ominous images than cooler tones, although that’s probably a personal perspective rather than a general one.  Each does, however, feel different from the ordinary first image of this subject.

One lesson the Impressionists taught is that shadows are not always black, nor should they be portrayed that way.  Look in the shade of their trees or the shadow of their subjects and you’ll find many colors all placed there to elicit a sense of that particular shadow.  They recognized how light reflects into shadows from other sources and how the color of those sources influences how the shadows appear.

Watch movies carefully and you’ll see many shadows have color in them.  This isn’t a mistake in post-processing – the lighting director puts gels in front of lights just as I have in order to create spots of color in the overall scene, even where you don’t expect color to exist.  One problem with playing around with photographic lighting is you start to pay more attention to details in the movies and not so much to the plot!

A great thing about this technique is you can apply it to macro images of tiny things up to portraits of people (you may need some help with bigger reflectors, especially on a windy day).  My first photography instructor showed how to warm up images of flowers by simply holding a gold surface reflector near them and letting the sun bounce off it onto the flowers.  Really brings out the saturation and helps them stand out from the background.

You don’t need fancy “professional” gear for this – grab some cloth or poster board in your favorite color and give it a try!

What’s inside?

I banged my knee a few weeks ago and it just didn’t get back to normal so my wife took me to the doctor to figure out what to do.  As part of the exam they made X-rays of the joint to find out if something was loose.  It got me to thinking about how we create photographs.

As much as we talk about using light to create our images the process is actually indirect.  We capture the reflection of light off our subjects, not the light directly.  It’s only on rare occasions like fireworks, sunsets or nighttime shots of city lights that we rely on the direct capture of light as a subject.  A direct photograph of light usually is just a blob of white with no detail – what’s the interest in that?

But X-rays by their nature make images by the direct capture of light.  Sure, it’s the dark areas that are of interest to us, but these are shadows blocking the light from hitting the film (or sensor mostly now) so in a sense the image is truly created by direct capture of light.

This is useful because the energy of X-rays (a form of light we can’t see) allow them to penetrate objects we have a hard time seeing the inside of and that helps doctors, engineers and scientists view elements without taking the subject apart.  The light we use for photography isn’t energetic enough to penetrate most of our subjects; as a result we usually don’t wonder what’s inside of them.  Still, even though the frequency of visible light isn’t energetic enough to penetrate that doesn’t mean we can’t use it to display the inside of subjects.  Crank up the intensity of the light and shine it through a thin enough subject, and it will reveal what’s inside.

For fun I set up my most powerful flash, put my macro lens on the camera and set up a rig where I could shine the flash’s light through some subjects.  None of these revealed elements are invisible to us; it’s just most people don’t hold them up to a bright enough light to see some of their internal elements.  My subjects were just household items but now I’m keeping my eye open for other, more novel subjects for visible “X-rays.”  Got any ideas of where to look?

Can’t do macro photography with out the ever present leaf image.

Here’s what keeps you from eavesdropping on your neighbors mail.

Even bright, white heavy stock business paper has internal areas of different density.

Machine weaving may result in consistent cloth, but you have irregular threads inside.

The vertical thread is inside the money, not printed on one or the other surface.

Watermarks inside the money mimic the portrait printed on the surface. Vertical along the right edge is an example of micro-printing reading “The United States of America Ten Dollars”

On camera flash is good for something

Don’t you just hate the look of images made using that on-camera flash?  The flat look of people’s faces or the harsh shadows on the wall behind subjects?  You start wondering why the manufacturers even put that thing on their cameras.  So much more control when  you can get the flash off the camera and put the light where you want it.

But, sometimes it’s all you’ve got and it does work in certain situations.

Take this image for example:

It’s just a redbud tree starting to bloom in the woods.  I composed it to give the color contrast of the red against the last of winter’s grey as well as the curve of the limb across the image.  The thin spiderwebs were a plus – didn’t really notice them until looking at the image on my computer!

Even though I used a large aperture size to reduce the depth of field so the sharp-focused buds would stand out against the blurred background, the difference isn’t as dramatic as I wanted.  What would really be nice is for the background to be blurred and darker while the limb and buds are brighter.  But how to do that out in the woods?

Wait, what did I learn in school?  Flash for subject, aperture for ambient light?  Gosh, if I only had a flash….   You get the idea.

That blinding insight on the obvious resulted in this image.

I closed the aperture down a stop or two to reduce the amount of ambient light, and thus darken the background, while opening the shutter speed a stop and firing the on-camera flash (set to -0.3EV).  The limb is so far in front of the background there’s no shadow cast by the flash and the background is so far away the flash has little reach to illuminate it much.  The limb is just slightly darker than in the previous image so a little more time in the field adjusting flash ratios would have helped (hard to see that detail on the back of the camera).

Now the image has more of the drama I wanted.  The red buds hold your attention by being in focus and the brightest objects in the image, the curve stands out more to show off its gracefulness and the background provides a sense of place without distracting from the subject.

All as a result of my on-camera flash.  Guess those manufacturers are a pretty smart bunch after all.

 

[Editor's note:  I do actually know what I'm talking about, just can't write it down correctly.  You set the aperture for depth of field and amount of flash on the subject, then the shutter speed for the amount of ambient light.  Faster shutter means less ambient light, slower shutter means more.  Total flash amount is controlled by dialing up or down on the flash power.]

Light show

I finally got around to some tabletop photography today, trying to improve my eye for what I call “item” photography.  Doing this helps me visualize what I want from a subject and then create some drama around that.  It’s not something I feel I’m very good at yet; right now takes far too much time to get organized and the results still aren’t satisfactory.  But, practice is how you get to the big leagues, right?

After playing around with some flowers I started experimenting on some glass objects that have internal elements – paperweights and such.  I wanted to see if I could illuminate the interior elements without getting glare off the outside of the glass, always a challenge with curved glass objects.  We practiced this in photo school but I never really felt I understood how to achieve it accurately.  And I wasn’t sure I could do it with the lighting equipment I have on hand.  Still, the flowers didn’t seem to be working for me and I knew the glass would be dramatic if done right.

I started with something pretty basic – clear glass around an interior design.  To eliminate the glare I found all I needed was a narrow slit of light off the flash, which I got by blocking the flash with a piece of black foamboard.

My first lesson from this is make sure the glass surface is perfect – little scratches or dings will show up as the light shines from inside out.  I can take most of these out in Photoshop but it’s better to start with clean materials.

This is direct side lighting – the heart is lying on a piece of black velvet and the flash is right at tabletop level with the black foamboard blocking all but a 1/2″ slit pointing at the heart.

I really liked the look of this.  The next piece sits up more vertical so I wanted to get the light coming from the bottom instead of the side.  Using a large round bowl that is tall enough to put my flash into and point upward I put a piece of black foamboard I’d cut a hole in on top and put the subject over the hole.  I hung another piece of black foamboard up to serve as a backdrop since I would be shooting sideways instead of downward.  All I wanted to show in the final image was the glass piece so I set my aperture where all the black background would have little or no detail.

I have no idea how glassblowers get these little elements inside the glass but they really work out well when lit up.  In addition to the flash under the subject I placed another flash to the right and turned it down to a low power just to give some definition to the edges of the larger fish.  It spilled over a little onto the backdrop (that brighter area up and to the left of the subject) but I found that helped give some dimension to the composition.

The up-from-below lighting was so dramatic I decided to photograph a subject directly from above, looking right down into the light.  I have a glass paperweight that is almost full of internal elements so I put it over the hole in the foamboard and set my camera directly above.  For this I turned the flash in the bowl up almost to 100% in order to get the brightness I wanted in the paperweight.

Not quite the Eye of Sauron but pretty haunting.  Looks like a red whirlpool or an image from one of those scopes they put down your arteries.

Well, with an image like this you can’t pass up some Photoshop opportunities.  So, a la Warhol, I made this.

Even though the dramatic flower photography didn’t turn out they way I wanted I’ve at least learned a little more about photographing glass subjects.  Light and glass always go together well!

Fishing by strobe

I’ve wanted to continue experimenting with using strobes for outdoor photographs, especially of people in some activity.  One of my photography colleagues volunteered to go out with me as long as the photography was about fishing.  Since he habits a lake near me we met there last week for some tests.

Of course the day we picked was the rainy one out of all the nice weather that week but he says fishing in the rain is not an issue and my camera and lens is pretty weathersealed so it was just a matter of keeping the strobe dry.  Too much wind for more than one strobe, though, and that one securely handheld so my lighting angles were limited by how far I could get from the camera using the remote shutter release.

With the generally dark mood of the day the challenge was to light my subject so that is looked somewhat “natural” and not like he was cut and pasted into the picture.  I found adjusting the aperture and the strobe power gave me the control I wanted of the scene.  A little Photoshop work to increase the contrast and I got this image.  Luckily for us, too, since that line of dark clouds in the background drenched us just as we’d packed up and started walking back to our cars.

19mm, ISO100, 1/100 sec., f/4

And since I had these images that didn’t look all that “natural” because of the lighting I thought it would be fun to play with the high-contrast HDR look I’ve seen several photographers use.  Using a single image in Photomatix Pro tonemapping application I was able to use the extreme contrast between the dark background and lighted subject to my advantage.  Increasing the saturation in the grass and adjusting the lighting on that feature seemed to balance the brightly lit subject, especially as the image background faded into darker tones.

14mm, ISO100, 1/200 sec., f/11