Through the looking glass

Knowing when to cut & run

2012-10-10T15:13:00.002-04:00

Had an important “assignment” to shoot a portrait. Plan A went bad, but had a backup at the ready. More after the jump.

Ok, here’s the situation (~~my moms & dad left on a weeks vacation~~): Last week my boss gives me a photo mission – re: Shoot a portrait of Barbra, our senior Design faculty who is getting ready to retire. “We need something very nice. You know, make her look wonderful.”

Ahh – specifics.

Quick background: Barbra is the most senior faculty member of my department. In fact, there’s a good chance she might be the most senior faculty in the entire University. And I’m not talking about age here… Barbra’s been with the University some 40 years. Working at the same place for most of the time I’ve been alive. You just gotta respect that. She’s done costume design for just about everyone and everything; from working with Remero on Creepshow to designing costumes Mister Rogers' Neighborhood; and a vast, seemingly endless array of TV, movies, and theatre.

So yeah – gotta take this seriously.

And I did. Barbra’s world is our costume shop, so that’s the first place my mind went to. Figgure a nice environmental portrait, with sewing machines and costume mannequins in the background. Make the picture about her, but fill in the space with all the things that make up her professional world.

Ok, all well and good. I made a few visits to the costume shop; found a nice corner from which to shoot; did all the requisite pre-viz of the shot... The shop was naturally filled with all the aforementioned props, and is banked on two sides with giant windows. My plan was to kill a lot of that natural light with my shutter, then build it back up flashes – just like the book says. So far so good.

But I can be a real nervous Nelly when it comes to a shot of any importance (and despite the um... specifics from my boss, I knew his expectations were high so I was treating this like a Papal bull). Point is: Best have a backup plan if it all goes bad (spoiler alert! It will).

My backup plan consisted of finding an auxiliary empty room, and setting up a neutral gray background. This would be my “in case of rain” go-to place and – if everything did go well and time permitted – allow me to shoot some other various looks to give my boss options.

Cut to shooting comma actual:

I arrive 45 minutes early to setup the space and my lights. One of our students had kindly agreed to be my assistant – so setup was easy. Used same for test shots/tweeking. Everything is looking good. Barbra shows up, we spend a few minutes talking, and I move her into place. If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the moment it all goes bad.

So Barbra wears glasses. Glasses can cause all kinds of grief but you learn to work around it. Actually, what you learn is the angle of incidence / angle of reflection rule. Actually, what you learn is put your key light up high and angled down. That solves the issue 90% of the time. So that’s exactly what I did when I looked at my first test shot of Barbra and saw her glasses reflecting. Much to my amazement doing that didn’t help matters much, if at all. Hurmm… move the light. Nope. Move Barbra, nope. Every shot I take has just a metric ton of reflection in her glasses, almost totally obscuring her eyes.

After long frantic moments I realize that it’s not my flash causing the reflection but the enormous windows that cover two full sides of the costume shop. Windows that DON’T HAVE BLINDS (who the… what the…). Ok, I think – move to the sides of the room that don't have any windows. Quick look tells me that there is not really a flattering view, + now I’ve got windows in the background that will dictate the exposure. And… and… I’ve got my subject waiting on her photo with my precious little plan is now absolutely nowhere. Errrrr...

McNally has one of my all-time favorite quotes: “On location, never go audible with your interior desperation”. It’s Mr. Miyagi like wisdom like that which makes him a genius. Deep breath… explain (calmly) to Barbra what it going on. Be honest but brief: There is a problem with the reflection, but it's not her fault. Give me a moment to work this out. Look... Think. Along one wall in the shop is this giant “card catalogue” of buttons for costumes. Re-set lights. Grab mannequin. Go.

Shot for maybe five minutes with this setup. It’s ok, but I’m not thrilled. Don’t like the disconnected hand, and can’t think of a way to connect her to the mannequin that is less contrived. Ok then, drop back and punt.

We move to the (dear lord thank you) backup room with pre-set gray background. Use words that make it sound like it was part of the plan. (Quickly) set up one AB1600 in my go to 25” Westcott Apollo softbox, one more behind Barbra pointing at the background. How many looks can you get from this setup changing only one light?

Overpower the bg for pure white.

Dial it down with a 20 degree gridspot.

Color that gridspot blue with gel still in bag from last week’s shoot

(and that just happens to match the jacket she’s wearing).

So the moral is always have a backup plan. Sure, going with something safe isn't always the most creative choice - but it's a heck of a lot better than blowing it. Also, when the clock is ticking sometimes you gotta ditch your plan, good bad or otherwise. Also, don't run with scissors, or give an Irishman cause.

Badda-bing, badda-boom, badda End of Line.

A matter of perspective

2012-03-27T20:32:00.008-04:00

I’m writing this particular post without much of a compass. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna wander around topic wise, so I ask that you bare with me. More after the jump.

A few weeks ago we were informed that a recent graduate of the school had passed away. Her name was Crystal, and she was only 24 years old.

The tragic news rippled through the school. Having so recently graduated she still had a lot of friends, teachers, and connections here. Some took the news very hard, and just about everyone felt the loss in one way or another.

For my part I didn’t know Crystal very well – in fact, it’s fair to say I didn’t know her at all. She was one of our Costume Design students; and they are far more concerned with sewing machines rather than CPUs. It’s just not a group I tend to interact with very often. But two years ago I was asked to take portraits of all the senior designers for the school’s web site. And that’s when I took this photo

The “assignment” (such as it was) was to take portraits of some thirty students, all against a semi-uniform background. The thinking was that our senior acting students all had New York / LA headshots on our web site, but the designers were largely submitting candid “this is me wearing a silly hat” photos. So there I was, being asked to shoot something “you know… decent. It doesn’t have to be fancy or anything. Just something… nice”

And that’s exactly what I did. If I remember correctly it was something like a Wednesday night. Because of classes and rehearsals we couldn’t even start until 8:30 in the evening. And not everyone could show up at once… there were starts and fits of people coming in all evening long. And I knew – I just knew – that there were going to be some number of stragglers that would miss the shoot, and I’d have to recreate the identical setup and look at some later date.

I only had two speedlights anyway, so simple it was. One on the background with a blue gel (because, really, why not), the other in a softbox off to the side, high up and 45 degrees down. Sit here. Look at me. Click, click, click. Next.

It was Sears fricken photography. I made a joke about how I should have bookshelves or autumn leaves as my background. I had already worked a long day and from the moment it started I couldn’t wait to strike my gear and go.

Cut to a few days ago. The school had graciously decided to have a memorial service in Crystal’s honor (actually, it was called a Celebration of her Life, which all things considered is the better choice). I was asked to take some photos during the event – something I’ll admit I had misgivings about… but ultimately agreed to do. When I entered the venue, right there next to the speaker’s podium, was an oversized print of my picture of Crystal.

I had completely forgotten about that picture. When I had originally heard of the plans for the memorial it never even occurred to me that I had a photo of her. In retrospect I should have remembered, but seeing it there never-the-less gave me a real moment of pause.

For the most part I remember the photos that I take. More accurately; when I look at my photos I can distinctly recall the moment the shutter fell. I’m not talking about f-stops or white-balance settings… I can remember taking the picture. Seeing that print of Crystal instantly brought me back to a long night when I was tired and all I wanted to do was be done with the job and go home.

If your reading this blog chances are good you like to take pictures. Chances are even better that you never think the photo your taking is going to be someone’s obituary photo.

It doesn’t occur to me, either; tho it’s happened before. The one and only photo of mine ever to run in the New York Times was an obit photo of a professor here at the school. I remember taking that photo too, and it was under pretty much the same circumstances. But that’s not the point. Crystal had an endless number of Facebook photos (I know, because I later looked). Of all of them, it was my photo – one I couldn’t have put less thought into – that was chosen to represent her at her own memorial. And to be honest I don’t know how I feel about that.

As I type this there is yet another tempest in a teapot going on in the internets. I’ve read exactly enough of it to understand the points involved but also to know that it really doesn’t matter. I don’t say that to be morbid or nihilistic – I hear (and in most cases agree) with the passion that’s being expressed. But the picture at the top of this post: it’s Crystal’s mother at the memorial (it was one of the most difficult pictures I’ve ever taken – I’m still not sure I should have taken it at all)… but long from now, when some small part of the grief has faded away, that mother will have a photo of her daughter. That’s what matters. Do you think for a second she’ll see it and think “I wonder what seminar that photographer attended? or “I hope he shared my position on technique vs. leveraging a strong marketing base”. What she will have is a photo that (I can only hope and pray) will keep the cherished memories alive and the grief a little farther at bay.

When people say that I’m a photographer I tend to shrug… not because I’m trying to be coy but because I know there are about a hundred million photographers out there that are so much better than I am. And I’ve been so very lucky to meet a few of them, and even luckier that they’ve chosen to share what they know. One of them is even my oldest friend in the world. It’s from them that I’ve gone from precisely nowhere with my photography to wherever it is now. And if I get any better it will in all likelihood be because of them as well.

The bickering, the arguing, the “this” vs. “that” it all comes because we are passionate about the same thing. I get that. I bet you do to. But at the end of the day that picture you take – it might just turn out to be the most valuable photo in the world to someone. Even if you can’t imagine that at the time you take it. Lord knows I’ve been guilty of this before and probably will be again.

McNally calls it The Moment It Clicks. I’m starting to think it’s The Moment It Matters. And when you think about it that way, all those pictures we take, they all have the potential to matter. Sometimes you know this, a lot of times you don’t. I’m not suggestion that every capture is pure gold; but you’ve got to treat them that way. That 125^th of a second is never, ever gonna come again. We try and we learn so we’ll be ready when that moment happens. We make mistakes - so many mistakes - but we try and get better. Who helps us, what path we walk to get there – it matters sure… but it all ends in the same place.

I look at that picture of Crystal now I wish to God I had put a little more effort into it. But that moment is gone and so is she. I didn’t know her in any meaningful way; but every time I pick up my camera some small and quite voice is going to remind me to do my absolute very best – and I think it will sound a lot like her.

End of line.

Doing the job

2012-03-04T09:03:00.008-05:00

I recently shot some promo work for The Sparks – the dance team for Pittsburgh Power. I’ve done work for them before, but this time the requirement was to shoot full body against pure seamless white. For me this meant building that very specific setup and taking it on the road. All the info you will ever need is after the jump…

Let’s start here: If you’ve spent even a minuet studying photography then you doubtless have come across two – seemingly contradictory – ideas. One is that “your gear doesn’t matter” and the other is “use the right tool for the job”. On the one hand you’ve got the oft repeated ideal that a good photographer can take a good picture regardless of what gear they have. On the other, you don’t see a lots of Pros buying disposable point-and-shoots along with their Red Bull at the local Convince Store.

The truth (with a lower case “t”) is this: There is a hell of a lot you can do with very little gear; but sometimes you’re just screwed if you only have is hammer and all you can do is look for nails.

Up until recently my entire lighting inventory consisted of the following – one AlienBee 1600 and two Nikon SB800s. And that, my friends, is a three light setup. You can do a helluva lot with a rig like that, and it’s done Yeomen’s work for me. But, sadly, there have been times when that just wasn’t the right gear to do what I needed; and full body white seamless was one of them.

(A quick aside): Yes, yes… you can shoot FBWS (full body, white seamless) with the gear I just described. Of course you can. I can take that picture, you can take that picture. But in this particular case the job called for shooting 14 subjects, each with 2 outfit changes. Let me jump to the end and say that I wound up shooting some 1300 frames over the course of the day. The SB800 is venerable to say the least… but, again, just not the right tool for this particular job. If I had used the SB800s as my background lights then between the recycle time and changing batteries every 15 minutes the shoot would have taken days. So can it be done? Yes. Is it the right way to do the job? Don’t think so.

So, what is the point of all this fine nonsense? Well, after much financial deliberation I ended up pulling the trigger on two more AB1600s. Now, I’m not at all a fan of Gear Acquisition Syndrome; but just like when I acquired the PCB Vagabond Mini I was lucky enough to be buying gear for a job that would pay for the purchase. And this, perhaps, is the most critical point of this post: Don’t buy gear and then look for work – whenever you can, get a job and then buy the gear to accomplish it. /Sun_Tzu=off

Aside #2: If you are wondering why I didn’t buy two AB800s or two Einstein’s… well, the latter would have been awesome but just too expensive. The 800s would have certainly done the job, but I was looking ahead to the summer – when I like to shoot outdoors against the sun – and that extra stop of light will come in very handy. Also, I hate math… and adjusting the ratios on identical flashes is much easier if they are, you know, identical.

And, in the interest of full disclosure - for this particular gig I also ended up buying the following: A fresh 9 foot roll of white seamless, two 4 by 6’ sheets of white tile board (to pick up the reflection of the subjects), and two 4 by 8’ sheets of Styrofoam insulation (to be cut into flags for the background lights). That’s about another $150 out of pocket, but it’s all for things that I’ll be using again on future shoots.

Finally; the shoot proper was going to take place at a nearby fitness club. I’ve shot there once before and knew that they had the obligatory Racket Ball courts. When the club was suggested as the venue, I immediately knew the courts would be the perfect “studio” for these shots. Perfect with the exception of shooting, literally, inside a fishbowl. But wadda you gonna do?

Notes about this setup: I’ve got one AB1600 upfront in a Wescott Apollo 55” softbox and two more behind the flags. More importantly, everything (and I do mean everything) you see inside the court had to be packed into my Honda Fit.

Here is a slightly less cluttered shot of the setup. A note about the flags: Zack recommends using Home Depot bi-fold doors, and I’m sure they are perfect for a studio setup. But they are also fairly heavy – and I had to load and unload all the gear myself. Styrofoam insulation (while not nearly as sturdy) was cheaper, did the job just as well, and was a heck of a lot easier on my back.

And once you have the setup right you can take this awesome picture…

This is a test shot with just the background lights at about 1/8^th + 2/3^rd. It’s pretty close but there are two important things that needed to be fixed. The first is that both the lights are spilling off the background paper and hitting the wall. This light (as well as the light from the background itself) was also skipping of the silver materiel on the Styrofoam flags. All of this meant that light from the background was spilling over and contaminating the subject. If you look at the picture at the top of this post, you’ll see exactly how much light was reflecting off and hitting the subjects. Re-aiming the lights and angling the flags minimized this a great deal. But it was that silver “stuff” that was causing me the most grief. Pulling it off wouldn’t have done much as the Styrofoam was white underneath. At the end of all my tweaking I was still losing some mid-tone contrast in my images. I hate thinking “well, I’ll just fix that in Photoshop”, but in this case it was a small and very easy adjustment to make.

Unpacking, setting up all my gear, and making the necessary lighting adjustments took exactly one hour. Time to start shooting…

Notes about these pictures: All the post was done in Lightroom and consisted of (very minor) dogging of the edges to get them pure white, increasing the contrast & blacks, and some minor sharpening enhancement.

So that’s my story. It was a very long day, ending with a paycheck that went fully and directly to paying off the gear that made it possible.

End of line.

Back in the saddle

2012-02-24T22:09:00.012-05:00

Hiatus. Apologies. Let’s get back to work…

I’ve made a bunch of lighting purchases low these many months, and I’ll be getting to the details of that soon. But for now let me talk about this week. As I’ve mentioned many, many times before; I’m a giant Zack Arias fanboy… so, earlier this week when he posted his walkthrough of shooting the CEO of Coke, it didn’t go un-noticed. What that line… “great artists steal”? Well, I may not have the “great” part down yet, but I figured I could handle the stealing part. More after the jump…

So – the short version… Zack has been shooting close portraits against pure white backgrounds. In his recent posting he was foolish enough to show a setup shot, and it’s easy to see that there isn’t much too it. Somewhere inside I’d like to think that – had I given it any real thought – it should have been easy to reverse-engineer. But looking at that single picture of his setup, I was hit with one of those “ah, ha!” moments. And later the next afternoon found myself wandering the hallways of my office building, looking for a clean white wall.

Of course, neither clean nor pure white are really necessary. You throw enough light at anything and it will go pure white. So, like in so many other situations, what I was looking for was room. Specifically somewhere with tall ceilings and no nearby walls. Nothing for the light to bounce off of, and contaminate the subject.

And as it just so happens, we have a space that fits that bill just about perfectly. It’s an access hallway that sits between the backstage of our main stage theatre and our scene shop. Both areas – the theatre and the shop – have these huge two story doors to allow for giant set pieces to be moved into place. So what you end up with is 20 by 20 foot area, with (guessing) 30 foot ceilings. I’d make it my apartment, but that might be weird.

About the only thing that made it less than perfect was the loading door for the scene shop. This was the door I wanted to use as my background (as it’s one giant door, as opposed to the theatre which is two, with a seem running down the middle). The door I wanted to use is painted this awful cooperate/industrial beige, and heavily scuff-marked. But, again, you just gotta throw enough light at that sucker, and the problems – literally– disappear.

In one sense I had plenty of room to work – certainly more than I’ve had on other, more important, shoots. But I didn’t have unlimited room. I would have liked to use my 80-200 for these portrait shots, but didn’t think I had the space. My 24-70 is a workhorse, but for portrait stuff it has a real tendency to distort. The just left my 50mm 1.8. The fifty it is, then.

I also knew that I wanted to shoot at a fairly tight aperture – f/8 for starters. That meant my flashes would have to kick out even more light, but wadda ya gonna do? One SB800 on a short light stand pointed at the wall, set to 1/4^th power about four feet away to give the light enough room to spread out. A second SB800 in my go-to 25” Wescott Apollo softbox, attached to a boom on a C-Stand. Initially I set that key light to ½ figuring…. well, I don’t know what I figuring. Turns out the key is going to be so close to the subject that I didn’t need the extra power – setting the key to 1/4^th got the ratio pretty close.

SB800 pointed at the background - another in the softbox.

All that was left was to start grabbing anyone that was foolish enough to walk by. Several hapless souls fell victim to me just grabbing them, sternly saying “stand here, look at me”. Then click, click, boom. Shot a bunch of people, never for more than a few frames. Less than 30 minutes after setting up, I was breaking down; a half-dozen portraits in the can.

A few notes about post processing. 90% of all the post was done in Lightroom (which was weird!). All I really had to do was clean up the edges of the background a little to get it uniformly pure-white. Add a little sharpening, increase the black levels, perhaps a little crop and spot. That’s it. Once I had a look I liked a copy & paste of the Develop settings cut my time down to nothing… save for obsessive tweaking. Once or twice I had a spot-removal situation that LR couldn’t handle, but that’s why god invented PS.

So the moral of this story? Stealing if fun.I’ve got more stuff in the pipeline… jobs and gear, and incessant rambelings. Stay tuned…

End of Line.

Halloween & Lightroom

2011-11-05T13:05:00.013-04:00

My friends take Halloween fairly seriously – and it’s always an opportunity for me to grab some interesting photos. This year however – when the chance to take costume pictures finally arrived - I was really pressed for time, low on gear, and shooting in a pretty crappy location. But Lightroom (and a little luck) came to the rescue. More after the jump…

For Halloween my friends like to do group theme costumes. This year the theme was The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lweis. I had been hearing about their costume ideas for a while, and vaguely thinking about photo ideas. But my October schedule is always crazy; and I ended up taking their pictures late one night in an empty theatre. It was the end of a long day, I was tired; and (other than my camera) all I had was one SB800, a Lumiquest III softbox, and my PWs.

No light stands? No problem – a VAL would do the trick nicely. But the theatre wasn’t very big, and the background was crappy… so, up the shutter speed to 250/s, and try to get the flash as close as possible for maximum light falloff. Problem there is (in this case) I’ve got to shoot 2 people full body, so the flash has to be backed off enough for coverage. After a few test shots I’ve got the background dark, but not completely so… it’s the best I can do given the circumstances so we roll with it.

Untouched, out of the camera.

When I’m shooting fast and loose one of the first things to go is composition; and looking at this shot it’s easy to see it happening here. As much as I hate to throw away pixels, a quick crop will go a long way.

Next – and it’s here old habits die hard – I exported the photo so I could edit it in Photoshop. Why? Because it’s always been done this way. Grab the burn tool and get to work. Some 20 minutes (and many visits to Levels) later, I think I’ve got something workable. I am also very wrong.

After cropping (LR) and burning is PS.

I re-import the photo back into Lightroom (mostly because I’ve going to use Lightroom later to export a web gallery). But while the background might look fine, very shortly Lightroom is going to reveal the brutal truth.

I gotta be honest; I’m still a neophyte when it comes to reading Histograms. Yeah, Yeah… I know what it’s there for; but inside whatever passes for my brain I just haven’t found the connection between looking at a histogram and how changing it changes my photo. At any rate – here I am looking at my edited photo in Lightroom, moving the mouse around, and (accidently) moving the mouse over the top left side of LR’s Histogram.

Boom. On the screen my photo goes all blue. And it’s the color of inspiration.

Ok, Ok… that’s a little dramatic (to say the least). And, yeah, I know what clipping is and that both PS and LR do it. But specifically looking at clipping just isn’t something I regularly incorporate into my workflow (and it’s here I’m gonna throw up the oft-used excuse that me=amateur). Want proof? I had to do a quick Google search to learn the hitting the “j” key in Lightroom would turn clipping on.

Alright –so, what does all that fine nonsense do for me? This….

Remember: this is the copy that I’ve already spent 20 minutes burring in Photoshop. Sure, it looks fine on the monitor but (like the cake) the monitor is a lie.

Time to pop over to the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom. Exposure -4.00, Brightness -2.00. Time spent, (maybe) 5 minutes. The result….

Now that’s a clean background.

One more export back to Photoshop to re-position and drop in some text (oh, and one more Google search for the appropriate quote) and I’ve got the foolishness you see at the top of this post.

But the true fool is, as always, the photographer. And my only saving grace is that I’m an old dog that (occasionally) can learn a new trick.

End of line.

Enjoy Your Doom

2011-10-10T15:47:00.003-04:00

October: I month of ghouls and goolies. And I swear to you this has nothing to do with that.

Well, almost. See, some of my lady friends decided that they wanted a “Destroy the dress” shoot; and I was happy to oblige. But we hadn’t planed things much further than dresses that must, you know, be destroyed. So we set out on a Sunday afternoon and, before sunset, the story of three elegant ladies beset by rages of the undead was told.

More after the jump…

Update: Robin also has a write-up of this shoot on her blog.

A few more shots on my Flickr page.

End of line

Low Water

2011-08-20T20:52:00.008-04:00

The boys from Low Water were in town this weekend to do a show… and as always that meant I nagged them to let me take some pe’otos. More after the jump…

Friday night at the venue, a hipster bar not far from where I live. The very top floor of the building is the apartment of the owner (?) that also serves as a “green room” for some of the performers. About 10 minutes before the boys did their set. Found a patch of white wall, threw the Lumiquest III on a SB800 and either hand-held it or used one of the guys as a VAL. About as quick and dirty as it gets.

John

Turner

Joe

Next day, Chief & Joe stopped by my apartment for a bit so I managed to harangue them both to sit in the “studio” (giant grain of salt, because that means the 9’ white seamless set up in the back of my living room). Started by using the AB1600 with a beauty dish and booming it up overhead. Small apartment, low ceilings, light bouncing all over the place= least most interesting light ever. Quickly scrapped that idea and went with the 50 inch softbox. Suddenly there’s math involved, and I hate that. Got the softbox in as close as I could to get the background as dark as possible. I’ve got all of two feet between Chief and the background, so I put on my 80-200 and got as far back as I could. Gotta compress that background. Hope for just a bit of luck…

Joe was bouncing with nervous energy and picked up these two oversize stainless steel ball bearings I have on my desk. I’ve said it before, it’s an organic process so we decided to go with it. I grabbed a jacket out of my closet to cover up his choice of summer-time ‘beater shirt. I don’t really know what these pictures are (other than odd), but I kinda dig ‘em.

Typically I like to wrap up these posts with some kind of moral; something approaching a take-a-way. This time I’ve got nothing. I choose to consider this very zen. Or lazy. You decide.

End of line.

Hitched!

2011-07-18T19:17:00.003-04:00

Photographed my friends Robin & Colin’s wedding this weekend. It brings my grand total of weddings shot to a whopping four. 15 hours, 900+ photos. Stats on consumption of cigarettes and RedBull are yet to be tallied. Tales and photos after the jump…

More often than I have any right to expect, people ask me why I don’t shoot weddings. My response is always the same; it’s just too much like work. And I say that knowing that I’ve been lucky about the few (very few) that I have shot: they’ve all been for people who somehow managed to remain sane during the emotional gauntlet of a wedding day. I’ve never had to deal with a bridezilla or a Special Forces father or ax wielding wedding planner (tho I figure that sooner or later my luck is bound to run out). Point is there are just too many pit falls; too many things could just go wrong shooting weddings. On top of all that it’s a job with zero tolerance for failure; if the photog screws the pooch is not like you can ask to do the thing all over again.

So no, shooting weddings are not my speed. But when Robin all but demanded that I be the photographer for her special day (well, weekend, really), I wasn’t given much choice.

Warning: The next paragraph contains Camera-nerd content. Reader discretion is advised.

With due-respect to the bride, the real star of the show (for me, at least) was my newly purchased Vagabond Mini. I bought it specifically for this event, and so I’ve only had it a week; but man-oh-man is it ever a dream come true. Three and a half pounds vs. the 18 of the Vagabond II, but with all of the gusto you could hope for. Most of the formal shots were done outdoors, early afternoon July summer’s day. I was using my AB1600 cranked up between ½ and full-power for all of them. Three second recycle time, just as advertised. I donno how much of the full charge I ended up using (because I don’t typically carry a flux capacitor in my bag), but when we finally moved indoors it recharged in under two hours. The simple fact that I’m not visiting my chiropractor today is well worth the purchase price on this thing. Bottom line: get one.

<nerd_stuff=off>

I also need to point out that I had a huge amount of help from Michael Rubino. He was my Sherpa/second-shooter all day long, and none of this could have happened without his help. Hopefully he’ll post some of his pictures soon – which are fantastic. With luck he’ll give up photography and stop making me look so mundane.

Robin had a fairly extensive shot-list, so our arrival time at her hotel was Noon (for a wedding that would eventually start at 6:30pm). Shot the obligatory “getting ready” pictures.

As a man, it's difficult for me to fully understand the concept of "eyeliner disaster"

Getting into the dress required the precision of a Seal Team 6 operation.

Colin's "getting ready" consisted of eating a sandwitch and then putting on a jacket.

Finally outside, it was time to shoot the “first look” pictures. And, hey, we're only 30 minutes behind schedule.

Robin & Colin had first met at a nearby bar, and Robin was emphatic that we go there to shoot some pictures. Problem was, while I understand nostalgia I also (sadly) understand temporal mechanics – we had barely started and the clock was already getting away from us. Never-the-less, I threw Robin, Colin, and Mike into my car and did my best New York cab-driver impersonation into afternoon traffic. Fate smiled on us as there was a parking space directly across the street from the bar. I left Colin & Mike to the task of getting the bride across the street while I ran ahead. Entering the bar, my heart sunk. It was packed. What the hell were all these people doing crowding into a bar on a beautiful summer Saturday? A question best left for some other time. I quickly made my way down the bar and spied what looked like a group of four folks having drinks. Walked up to them like I knew them all my life: “Hi. Listen. In about 10 seconds a fully dressed bride & groom are gonna walk through the door. This is where they first met. I’m the wedding photographer and we’re 45 minutes behind schedule.” I honestly don’t think it was my words, so much as the reflection of frantic truth in my eyes. Whatever it was, they happily agreed to give up their seats. The bartender, who had overheard my rant, was looking at me. Note: part of the “first met” story involved Robin buying Colin a Guinnes. I pulled out a $20 (the only thing I had on me) and said I need 2 Guinness right now, keep the change. Beers are pouring as I hear clapping from the patrons of the bar. R&C had arrived. I got them into place and we did our thing. Click, click, boom. Out the door, back to the hotel. 18 blocks, a dozen pictures. Total round trip time: 20 minutes.

Spent two hours driving around town in a limo-bus, big pimp’in style. Hit the other locations on the shot-list, re: A bridge on an island, the hills overlooking the city, pictures inside Duquene Incline, and finally meeting friends down by the river. Lot's of moving around. Lot's of setting up and tearing down gear. Did I mention that the Vagabond Mini was only three and a half pounds? This is where that makes all the f'n difference.

Into the limo-bus with the rest of the bridal party.

5pm. I’m drenched with sweat. Back to the hotel, Indy 500 pitstop to shower and change into my tux. Oh, did I mention that I’m also in the wedding, as well as shooting it? Yeah, there’s that too. Over to the venue proper and what would turn out to be my favorite shot of the day – the signing of the Kutuba (for the goy, the Kutuba is essentially the Jewish version of the wedding license – as soon as it’s signed your married, making the rest just ceremony).

I love this photo so much it hurts.

But ceremony is impotant, so they figgured they better have one.

The ballroom where the wedding/reception/diner took place is very popular for weddings, and unforgiving for photographers. It’s a “romantically lit” (ie, dim) cavernous room with 30 foot high brown marble ceilings – nothing you could ever bounce a flash off of. Basically an enormous, poorly lit cave. Even my venerable D3s @ 3200 iso was struggling to keep up. There was a period during the after ceremony speeches where the whole thing just got away from me. Nothing I was shooting was looking at all acceptable, and nothing I did was making it better. These are the dark times. During my sporadic cigarette breaks I was muttering to myself what the situation called for was a real photographer, and not a hack with fancy gear. But eventually the dancing and making merry began, and I could at least run & gun with my SB800. The pictures improved as did my mood.

2AM and the party breaks up. Everyone (my friends included) head back to the hotel. My dear friend Liz, drunk as a skunk, somehow managed to pull one over on the hotel’s night manager and got him to let us all into the hotel pool. I stripped out of my tux and down to my skivvies and got in the hot tub. Best. Idea. Ever.

3:30AM I’m back at home, stinking of chlorine. Exhausted, but not done yet. God bless Lightroom; it let me cull through 900 pictures and pick the best 200. Copied them onto my iPad to be shown at the 11AM brunch back at the hotel. I had Lightroom also upload a web galley of the same. At 6AM I crawled off to bed for a meger four hour "nap".

Brunch was filled with ohhhs & awws over the pictures. There were hugs. I donno if I’ll shoot another wedding anytime soon, but this one sure was something.

End of line.

For Robin, on her wedding day.

2011-07-15T14:00:00.009-04:00

The half-dozen regular readers of this blog will recognize Robin; she makes a lot of appearances here. In all deference to my friends (whom I love and adore), I probably take more pictures of Robin than anyone else. It’s easy to see why; she’s gorgeous, fearless, and has all the personality in the world. She’s getting married this weekend and, despite my staunch and repeated objections, has asked me to be her wedding photographer. More after the jump…

I first met Robin in 2002 when she was a University of Pittsburgh freshmen and came to Friday Nite Improvs. She was part of a larger group of friends who all lived together, all of who would eventually become my friends as well. I was taking pictures of just about every FNI between 2002 and 2009; looking back at those photos it’s funny to see her (and others) migrate from being just faces in the audience to some of my dearest friends. Robin finished her undergrad and went on to graduate from Pitt’s Law School; she met her fiancé Colin here in Pittsburgh, and has been generally one of the most awesome people I know.

And perhaps that last bit requires a little explanation.

Robin is hot, smart, and an absolute sweet-heart (and this, I assure you, is the rarest of trifectas). She is a veritable encyclopedia of knowledge – both practical and arcane – so much so that one of her many nicknames is “Factsy” (and woe has it been to many that dared counterfeit a loosely held belief as proof in her presence). She is also one of the most patriotic people I know (over which she loves more – Colin or the USA – it’s probably a coin toss), and she can drink you and all of your friends under the table; on more than one occasion I’ve seen her consume enough alcohol to kill a bison, and then, despite not having the ability to stand name every American president in chronological order (forwards AND backwards).

Some early pictures of Robin

Robin is nothing if not a true Patriot...

...But she will shotgun that beer faster than you can blink

In 2005 Robin lost both her parents, suddenly and unexpectedly, within a span of four months. Now, I wouldn’t presume to speak for her but – as one of her friends with her during that time I can tell you it was a brutal assault on the soul; one that could rightfully make even the most pious question the nature of a benevolent God. The fact that she still stands is a testament to her character – perhaps the only one she will ever need. If you knew nothing else about her, trust me, this would be enough.

Robin has also been one of the strongest supporters of this photography…thing… I do. Every time I’ve ever come up with some hair brained photo scheme I only have to pick up the phone and Robin is eager (eager!) to be my photographic Chuck Yeager. And if I so much as utter a self-disparaging word regarding my work, she is just as eager to give me a fierce tongue lashing. I’m not kidding when say that I honestly fought with her about being her wedding photographer. I tried my best to convince her to “go with a pro”, but she would have none of it. Look, I like to consider myself a pretty independent kind of guy – but Robin has (repeatedly) believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself. And that’s something not easily taken for granted.

This weekend will be filled with fun, friends, and more pictures than I’ve probably ever shot at one time. Assuming I don’t accidently leave the lens cap on there will be a post to follow. For now, I’m looking forward to the wedding of a dear friend; and looking forward to a time when I’ll be taking pictures of her children, all the while regaling them with stories about their mother that she’ll be furious that I remember.

Robin loves her some karaoke...

... and some factual facts...

... and Colin.

Note: I’ve chosen these pictures of Robin not based on their artistic value, but rather as a poor attempt to give you glimpse of the person I call friend.

End of line.

Happy birthday, America

2011-07-05T09:44:00.000-04:00

Every 4th of July my dear friend Liz throws an Independence Day party. My friends are a fairly patriotic bunch, so the photos have to match – and that where I come in. More after the jump…

My typical blog posts are… wordy. This time, in honor of America’s birthday, I’ll keep it sweet and to the point. Arcane photo nonsense: Photos taken in a back yard… AB1600 up front in a 25” Wescott Apollo softbox, camera left, at 1/16th power. The flag is hanging from a background stand – and about 6 feet away and directly behind the flag is an SB800 at 1/64th. That’s it… simple as apple… pie.

Awesome friends, however, are extra.

End of line.

Long weekend

2011-06-26T12:48:00.007-04:00

Been in a bit of a photo-lull these last few weeks. A combination of work, family, and – perhaps – a bit of the dog days of summer… I just haven’t had the time (or, to be honest) the will to do any significant shooting. Felt guilty the whole time of course; wouldn’t a “real” photographer be able to just conjure photos out of the ether? Perhaps. But the hammer came down this weekend. Four events, 600 photos. More after the jump…

Friday, after work, it was a trip up to Beaver PA. Some friends of mine do an improv show there – and were going to be short handed as a bunch of the regular troupe members were doing a show in DC. So me and a bunch of Pittsburgh folks made the drive up to help out. Got to the venue about an hour or so early, at the tail end of sunset. Broke out an SB800 and an umbrella to shoot that top pick of Robin.

I’ve also been trying to shoot a little more bare flash lately. I haven’t quite gotten to the point where I like the results… but I think I’m getting a little closer.

Saturday was (thankfully) a day I could sleep in… because I knew in advance it was going to be one of those forever days. At 2 pm it was off to campus to shoot the Orientation of our summer Pre-Collage program. Nothing fancy, mind you. A meet & greet type of event. I’ll spare you the vast array of uninterestingness. Three hours later I’m out the door to the second event, the penultimate home game for the Pittsburgh Power.

Actually, I shouldn’t say that. There is a good chance the Power (or, Pah’errrr if your local) will make it to the playoffs. The fact that they are in contention led to – what turned out to be – a ridiculously exciting game. It was a must win to keep their playoff hopes alive, and a back & fourth struggle for most of the game. Behind on the scoreboard and with only 14 seconds left, the home team gave up the ball – causing a lot of the fans to get up and leave the arena. All the Visitors had to do was snap it twice to lock in the win. But wait! Fumble!! Recovery!! Seven seconds and dreams are being dreamt. With one second left on the clock the ball is snapped, the QB almost sacked, but an end zone completion is made – tying the game. With no time left in regulation the kicker (who had missed something like 4 out of his last 5 attempts) successfully kicks the extra point for the win. I don’t care who you are, that’s some fairly exciting stuff.

Shot just a ton of pictures – but because it’s a paying gig can’t post many of them. But here are two I don’t think the bosses will mind…

Pittsburgh sports fans - you just gotta love 'em.

In th last second of the game, even the normally stoic Color Gaurd is on edge.

10:30pm and a quick switch of CF cards. Because it’s off to a local bar to meet some friends for, you know, a Drag Show. Like you do. I’m exhausted, but I’d never been to one of these before and figured it was high-time to get that particular Merit-Badge. Small, smoky bar; packed with people for the show. A Drag re-telling of biblical stories. Don’t exactly know how I’m going to explain this to my church-going mom; but I’ll worry about that later.

Satainica

Audience interaction - also, catching another photog's flash.

Lady Gaga as the biblical protagonist

Today I get fitted for a tux, becasue I'm also James Bond. Then it's off to my secret lair to get some F'n sleep.

End of line.

Review: PocketWizard FlexTT5

2011-06-02T08:17:00.002-04:00

Gotta rather difficult review today… PocketWizards Flex system (FlexTT5, AC3 controller & AC9 for Alien Bee flashes). It’s difficult because it’s (spoiler alert) a largely negative review for products that come from a company I really like and have a lot of respect for. It’s a long(ish) review, and non-photog unfriendly; so once again normals are encouraged to look elsewhere. But if you want to feel the pain there’s plenty after the jump…

If you’re a photographer and you have any interest what-so-ever in off-camera flash then you already know about the PocketWizard Plus II. They are the gold-standard of wireless flash triggers. They are the thing against which all other things are judged; and most competitors to the crown come up wanting. Are they expensive? Yep. But save your pennies (lord knows I did) and just get them. They are brilliant, so easy, and 100% reliable. Nothing else really compares.

The only problem with the Plus IIs (other than their price point) is that they are one-trick ponies. They fire your flash when you hit the shutter release. That’s it. Boy-oh-boy do they do that one trick well (damn near to perfection). But one trick never the less.

So I, like a lot of folks, got real excited when PocketWizard announced their next-gen series of triggers. CLS, iTTL, High Speed sync, wireless control of power settings. It’s the kind of talk you expect to pay $1.99 a minute to hear.

But I’ve been dealing with technology so long I like to tell people I invented Al Gore. I know you never (well, almost never) invest in bleeding-edge tech. As much as it hurts, you have to wait. Give it some time for the early adopters to work out the kinks; then you plunk down your cash. It’s a formula that I really thought I had down to a science… but it looks like this time I missed.

About two weeks ago I swaggered-up to the internet bar, threw down my credit card and said “leave the bottle”. Between Adorama and B&H I picked up 2 FlexTT5s, one AC3 and one AC9 (all for Nikon). $580.00 total. Boxes arrived, manuals were read. There was also a good deal of swearing, but I’ll get to that in a moment.

I know by this time you’re probably itching for me to get to the “review” part. Let me begin by saying that I was using the factory installed (and at the time most current) firmware… but by necessity had to upgrade to v. 2.123 which is beta.

I’m gonna start with a (probably very weird) critique: form factor. This may sound petty, but I’m just not digging the FF on these new units (well, at least on the FlexTT5s). I can’t imagine how we ever got used to the Plus IIs – giant ungainly boxes with that goofy antenna sticking out. But you know, it just kinda worked. It also helped that with a little Velcro the Plus IIs fit perfectly on top of your flash. The FlexTT5s are just plain weird looking (even with the antenna folded down), and when you attach the AC3 controller things don’t get any better. Perhaps - and this would be fair to say - I’m just afraid of change. But for some reason it just doesn’t feel right.

Looks aside: On the FlexTT5 you’ve got two switches; one for your flash grouping (A,B,C) and one for your channel selector (unit off, C1 & C2). There is also a Test/Learn button. There are two control ports, one for remotely triggering a camera, the other for a (simple) remote flash. Hot shoe male on the bottom, female on the top (where the flash goes for “smart” triggering). Finally there is an antenna that folds down, behind which is a mini-usb port for connecting the unit to your computer.

Not too bad. Not quite as simple as the Plus IIs (on/off, test, remote/local/both, channel 1 through 4)… but these FlexTT5s (are supposed to) do a lot more “stuff”, so, ok, there’s more stuff on ‘em. I get it. Problem is, the FlexTT5s do a lot more stuff. Much more than there are controls for. You only get a true understanding of this when you connect one of the units to your computer… and see the wide variety of option you can set. Now, I know I just bitched a little about the form factor; and I’m not suggesting that PWs put a physical switch on for each option. But too few physical switches don’t help either.

Example: There is only a Channel 1 or Channel 2 switch physically on the unit. According to the spec sheet, the unit can “talk” on any one of 32 channels. How, exactly, dose that work? Oh, you’re supposed to set the channel via your computer…right. And when I’m out in the field and my laptop got flown to Jamaica (without me, dammit!) – what am I supposed to do then? Oh, don’t worry, there’s a “learn” button. Just hold it down for 10 seconds (which, according to PW own documentation eats up battery life) and then press “learn” on a second unit to sync them. Nice story, but sadly I have to report that it doesn’t work. I’ve tried more times than I can count to get units to “learn” about each other… I’ve followed the printed instructions and watched PW’s own video… all to no avail. Point is: Just having a C1 & C2 button does you little good when your unit’s have decide to start using Star Fleet sub-space priority Alpha One frequencies to communicate.

Which leads me directly to my second problem: My two FlexTT5s sometime just decide to stop talking to each other. Donno why, but they just do. In the absence of being able to fix this “in the field”, the only solution I’ve found is connecting both to my computer and – via the software – manually setting the channels. After that, they are fine. Right up until the time they’re not.

Wirelessly control your flashes!

Let me get this out of the way. With all respect to McNally, I could care less about CLS or iTTL. I’ve said it before, it’s straight-up voodoo. If you dig it, all well and good; but it’s just not my style. What I care a great deal about is A) being able to remotely control the power output of my flash and B) High Speed Sync.

About power control: With my SB800s things seem to work as advertised. Important note however: Only Nikon camera bodies with pop-up flashes contain the internal menu options to do this without extra hardware. My D200 with the FlexTT5 can, for example, remotely change the power on a SB800 (or SB900, I assume). My D3s (go figure!) doesn’t have a built-in flash and so doesn’t have the correct menu options. To remotely change the flash power with my D3s, I needed to buy the AC3 controller.

I don’t blame PW for this – after all it’s a Nikon thing. But it’s just a little ironic that my 5 year old body can do something that my much newer (and much more expensive) body can’t. Wadda ya gonna do?

At this point I feel like a have to say something nice: With my SB800s and FlexTT5s High Speed Sync worked exactly as advertised.

Hand holding the flash (bare) out with my left hand, shooting with my right. 1/4000th of a second.

Let's try that again, this time 1/8000th of a second. Are you F'n kidding me?

As for the AC3 controller: It, too, (mostly) works as advertised. Beyond looking a little silly sitting on top on the FlexTT5; there are three control knobs that let you set three flash groups up to six stops (three up, three down) in 1/3rd increments. In Manual mode the AC3 sets the remote flash to three stops down from full power, and lets the user control it from there. So, with my SB800 the “0” power setting on the AC3 is 1/8th on the flash. Three stops up is full, three down 1/64. I lose 1/128th as a flash setting, but I don’t really consider that anything to cry about.

Things, unfortunately, got really witchy when I tried to set up the AC9 adaptor on my Alien Bee 1600. The “promise” was remote power control, HSS, and other fun stuff (like iTTL – but again, don’t care). Out of the box and with the latest “blessed” firmware on the FlexTT5s, nothing worked. Not even close. I’ll spare you the recount of my (several) evenings of trouble shooting – but finally some Google searching led me to a little salvation. DeVende Photography had the same problem back in early May and had found (mostly) the solution. From the PocketWizard software utility you need to enable the option to download “beta” firmware, then download and install version 2.123. After doing this, things got a little better; I could fire the flash and change the power. If you’ve had this problem with the AC9 and Alien Bee units, please go to his blog and thank him – I did.

Oh, but the story doesn’t end there. After installing the beat firmware things were working… almost. With the AC9 and my AB1600 I’m seeing a weird behavior. If I dial down the power on the AC3 controller and take a picture – the flash doesn’t change its power. If I then take a second shot, the flash power drops down to where I have set it. Changing the power UP doesn’t have this problem. So, to set the power down I have to take an extra shot to “tell” the AC3 the new power setting. It might just be the AB holding the previous power in it's capacitors - but if that's true it seems like the AC9 could just tell the AB to dump it's charge before it fires. This behavior would really suck if I was using my Vagabond II – because when you are running on battery power every shot counts.

And again, like with my SB800 – sometimes the Flexs (and the AC9) just stop talking. Sometimes shot-to-shot. Frustrating to say the least.

So the conclusion: The Flex system just isn’t ready for Prime Time. Not by a long shot. With luck, PocketWizard will hammer out most of the issues and resolve them with better firmware. How long will that take? Your guess is as good as mine. But (as they are right now) I wouldn’t even think about taking these things into the field on a paying shoot. They are just too finicky and unreliable. And perhaps the biggest disappointment is that all of this comes from a company that makes the best radio trigger on the planet. If wireless triggering is your thing, and you’ve been on the fence – don’t let this dissuade you; scrape the cash together and get some PocketWizard Plus IIs. You’ll be happy you did. As for the Flex system – give it at least six more months and see what happens.

End of line.

Review: Lens Pro To Go

2011-05-31T08:15:00.005-04:00

Me and the Nikon 200-400 VRII. Photo by James Wong.

Today’s post is really photog-specific (shocking for a photography blog, I know). It’s about my recent experience with the online lens-rental service Lens Pro To Go. Any “normals” that are luckless enough to stumble upon this posting are urged to look elsewhere. For Brothers & Sisters of the faith, there’s more after the jump…

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been shooting a lot for our city’s new Arena Football team the Pittsburgh Power. Recently I’ve had to shoot several actual games; and this is relatively uncharted territory for me. Initially, I thought I could get away with my 80-200/2.8. In the AFL, the field is only 50 yards long; and while (like hockey) there is a wall surrounding the field, I’d be shooting from the end zones and whatever passes for the sidelines.

But after I got back from my first game it was clear that the 80-200 just wasn’t gonna cut it. It’s a fine piece of glass, no doubt about that; and it’s always been a workhorse for me. But after looking at my pictures it was evident that I needed something with a lot more reach.

Somewhere in my travels of the interweb photosphere I had come across the name Lens Pro To Go (Strobist? Arias? I can’t remember and despite searching can’t find my original point of demarcation). Doesn’t matter…. I knew that such a name existed and Google did the rest.

One look will show you that their web site is pretty much a breeze to navigate. Canon/Nikon, pick one. What (general) kind of lens do you need? Here it is, and here is the rate. It couldn’t have been easer.

However, this being my first time dealing with them (or any lens rental really), I wanted to skip the impersonal online experience in favor of something more…. Well, more. Note: unlike a lot of sites that bury their phone number deep in the subterranean tree of a “contact us” tab, LPTG has their number in a giant font and at the top of every page. Well done.

I think the phone rang twice. Then the strangest thing happened. A person… a real, honest to goodness human answered. He even had a name (Paul). When I explained that I was interested in renting a lens – and had never rented from them before – the immediate answer was “Sure. I can help you with that.”

I already knew what piece of glass I wanted – the Nikon 200-400 VRII. Paul simply could not have been more helpful… he was able to immediately verify that they did, in fact, have it available – and answered all my questions about the rental process.

In less than 15 minutes everything was set. I needed the lens over a weekend, one week away. Paul gave me the exact date the lens would ship, when it would arrive, and when I had to ship it back. Important note: All the prices on the web site include the price of shipping EXCEPT for the super telephotos. Makes sense; bigger, heaver glass, more costly shipping.

I also opted for the “lens insurance”. An extra $25 bucks. It doesn’t cover loss or theft (in which case you on the hook for the full depreciated price of the lens); if the lens is damaged, you pay 10% of the depreciated price. In this case the depreciated price was $7000.00, which meant that (had I damaged it) I would have had to pony up $700.00. It’s not the best protection I could imagine, but it beats the alternative.

On the shipping day I got a call (again, from a actual person!) confirming my shipping address. Less than an hour later I received an email with a tracking number. Pretty darn through.

Two days later, exactly on time, it arrived. The lens (all seven and a half pounds of it) was extremely well packed. Upon examining it, it was clear that this was a used lens – but also a well cared for one. No scratches on the front or rear, no sign of fungi. A few marks and scuffs on the outside, but absolutely nothing that gave me pause. If’n I had to, I would have rated it 8 out of 10.

Used the lens for four days (and, sadly, because of bad weather here not nearly as much as I would have liked too). When I was done I packed it back up in the original box, slapped on the pre-printed return label, and sent it home.

The verdict on LensProToGo: excellent. I absolutely would not hesitate to rent from them again. Their prices are very reasonable – and for that price I got excellent service that delivered exactly what was promised. If I could suggest anything; it would be a slightly more encompassing protection program for lens insurance; even if it meant paying a premium.

But overall, if you need a specific (and otherwise expensive) piece of glass for a specific job, I can’t recommend these guys highly enough.

End of line.

Photoday

2011-05-26T09:29:00.002-04:00

‘Twas the first nice Spring day that was also free of work obligations – and that meant going out frack’en side to take photos. More after the jump...

T.S. Elliot was right – April is the cruelest month. Every April I feel the thaw creeping in, and it starts the itch to go outside and take pictures. I find myself watching the skies, looking for contrasty cloud formations. I'm Almanac like in my observance of "magic hour". But April is, as aforementioned, cruel… so I know I just have to hold out – just make it to the middle of May. Surely by then conditions for outdoor photo adventures will be perfect. Surely.

Perhaps not. With few exceptions it has rained just about every day this May. If the long range ~~shaman examining goat innards~~ weather forecast is to be believed, we’ve got rain coming every day through July. I know I have no business even trying to complain… but still; can't a brother get a break?

Well, last weekend we did. For one brief day out of the last ten, the great day-ball in the sky choose to deign us with it’s presence. Grab some gear and call some friends. Seize the carp.

As per norm I brought along much more gear than was really necessary. All these pics were done with a single AB1600 and Vagabond. Modifier for the top pic was just a 20 degree grid. For glass I stuck almost exclusively with the 50/1.8.

Started out simple - open shade with a 32" shoot-through umbrella for fill.

Moved out into the direct sun – 7” reflector, AB set to about ½ power.
Sam said “I could use a new headshot”. Back to the umbrella; backed the flash off to balance with the ambient. Done.

No shoot would be truly complete without a sit-com’esque group shot. So, put up the 50” Wescott Apollo softbox in a parking lot. You know, like you do.
It turned out that we were shooting on the day of the predicted Rapture. It didn't happen.
Or did it?
So that's that. My first day of shooting "just for fun" in a long time. There will be more of this, rest assured. Unless the rapture really did happen, and B&H is closed.

End of line.

Burlesque

2011-05-24T11:50:00.001-04:00

I got the chance to shoot a burlesque show recently; and got a little lesson in event photography on the fly. More words after the jump, as well as pictures (but note: they are *mildly* NSFW).

So it was my dear friend Liz’s birthday; the “plan” had been to go to Kennywood, our local and much beloved amusement park. But as the date grew closer, it became clear that the weather just wasn’t gonna cooperate; and at the last minuet changes were made and an alternative was found…

Friday morning I checked my mail – the new plan was to see a burlesque show that night. Specifically the Sticky Buns Burlesque show out of Baltimore. Sounded fun; and hey, it might be interesting to shoot.

Now, a good rule for event photography is to not just show up with your camera and just assume you’ll be allowed to take pictures. Sure, most every cell-phone these days can take pictures (and in a lot of cases video comma HD). And yeah, a lot of point-and-shoot cameras pack just as many (if not more) megapixels as DSLRs. But I’ve been to plenty of events where half the audience was holding up their phones or compact cameras, but my gear was frowned upon. Point is: it’s always best to at least try and get permission before shooting any event. More specifically, this was a show where people were going to – you know – get all skimpy ‘n such. So I figured that the rule would apply times two.

One Google search later landed me on their web page, and therein an email address. Short and to the point: Me photographer coming to show can I? In this case I was also lucky enough to know the MC for this event, who’s name I referenced mostly so I didn’t come off as some Internet creeper.

Later that day, I got an email back: Sure, but with some restrictions. No backstage access, no use of photos without permission. Now, I’m asking these folks to do me a favor – ie, let me photograph what they do, so I’ve got no problem following their rules. This would turn out to be important later, when they announce pre-show that the taking of pictures was strictly prohibited; except for that one guy who was allowed. Heh.

When I arrived at the venue the doorman immediately eyed up my camera bag. Jumping the gun on him (because nothing works like the truth) I politely explained that I would be taking pictures and had permission to do so from the performers. Same thing when I entered the theater space where the performance would take place. I quickly spotted a security guard at the front of the stage and made a b-line for him. I introduced myself and let him know my deal.

Fun tip: People, as a general rule, like to feel the power that comes with authority. As I was walking over to the security guard I spotted my best position for taking photos – the front row of seats stage right. Now, this was a general admission show, and I had paid for my ticket. There is nothing stopping me from just sitting in the front row and just doing my thing. But after I introduced my self to the security guard, I asked him if it was ok for me to take pictures from there. It’s a silly question in this case, because he’s not gonna say “no”. But suddenly I’m his friend because I’m asking him, Godfather style, for his permission. Later – and twice during the show he came over to me and asked me if I was ok or needed anything. It’s the little things.

Shot the show, went home and did a quick run-through of the pictures. Picked a few of the better ones and quickly sent them off to the Sticky Buns folks with my thanks. The next day I went through the rest of the pictures (some 200 in all), cleaned them all up, zip’ed them into a file, and sent them off as well.

I don’t know if there is a moral to this story (or even a clever way to wrap it up), save this: Even when your shooting something for free & really just for fun, always treat everyone involved like a professional. Get permission, talk to and treat the venue staff with respect. Treat the subjects just like you would a paying client – follow their rules and get them the “deliverables” as promptly as you can. If you can do all that for a free gig, it only makes it that much easer when it’s “for reals”.

End of line.

Weird

2011-04-25T13:21:00.005-04:00

During FlashBus tour I picked up the Lumiquest III softbox. Full review coming soon; but here it is on camera.

End of line.

Friends & Freeconomics

2011-04-21T09:13:00.004-04:00

This is Cheryl, a eighteen year old high-school senior. The lesson she'll be teaching you today: Free and the new economy. More after the jump…

So we start here: A friend of mine named Brad coordinates a tutoring program for a non-profit, and he sent me an email looking for a favor. There is a student in his program who is particularly stellar. She’s hard working, serious, and goes to a local private school which is highly academically challenging. Brad has worked to raise some of the funds to make it possible for her to attend this school. Could I, asks Brad, take some pictures of her that he could use in conjunction with hunting for a few more scholarship contributors – figuring that a face with a name is better than a name alone.

Let me be the crotchety old man for just a moment. I hear stuff like this all the time. Not the “great student” or fund rasing part – but the “hey, can you take some pictures for me” part. The addition of “… for free” is so common and so implied most people don’t waste the energy in actually forming the words. Worse yet; it’s always a friend and it’s always for something semi-noble enough to induce the proper amount of guilt (grandma’s hundredth birthday, baby’s first liver-transplant, etc). It’s always something.

Ok, before you (rightfully) try to reach though the Internet and slap me in the mouth let me say this: Of course I’m going to take these pictures. I’m gonna be happy to do it. Hell, I’d probably *pay* someone to *let* me take these pictures. After all, it’s honestly for a good cause – and, let’s face it; at my age I’ve done so many ridiculously egregious things I can use all the good karma I can get.

So – arrangements are made, pictures are taken. Upon meeting Cheryl it takes all of five minutes to realize that everything Brad said is true; she’s sharp as a tack and wise-beyond her years. When I asked her what she liked to do, her reply was “Write poetry. But I’m in high school. Everybody does that.” When I asked her what she wanted to study in college; her: “Art-history” me: “Why? Her (deadpan): “Because I like art. And history.”

Needless to say, charming.

All well and good. But what does this have to do with the global economy in the 21^st century? Glad you asked. Let’s recap: Here I am, doing a favor for a friend; spending my time and (arguably) talent and getting nothing in return save for a warm-fuzzy. Or am I?

Turns out, the school has a communications director (cuz it’s that kind of school). To protect the student(s), the director wants to see copies of all my pictures – just to make sure everything is on the up-and-up. Sadly, that makes perfect sense. But while the director and I were talking, a few interesting things come up in the discussion - Oh, the school is always looking for pictures to put up on the school’s web site. And, oh, and the school does a lot of promotional work; and happens to be looking for a photographer for an upcoming project.

It would be easy to chalk something like that up to just chance. But just last week I shot another freebie gig. Something that I didn’t mention in that post was that, before the night was over, I got two potential job offers. So, two “free” jobs led to three (possible) paying opportunities.

Cheryl, shot with natural light 70mm 1/80 @4.5 is skeptical of my argument.

Now a lot of what I just said falls dangerously close to “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today” kind of logic. And that would be a fair assessment. For example: If I ask my landlord that – instead of a rent check this month – what if I just sent a nice picture instead? Well, that’s just not gonna fly. But I’m not talking about the barter-system here (tho that sometimes works, and I don’t discourage it). No, I’m talking about getting my photography in front of people that might (just might) be interested in paying me for my photography.

As photographers we’re always doing things to get our “stuff” noticed. We put our pictures up on Flickr, or Facebook, or a Blog, or any number of other sites. Admit it, you look at every “like” and every positive comment on your photographs the same way Gollum looks at the One Ring. And that’s completely understandable. But it’s probably not doing very much to pay the bills.

One trade photographers often make for "free" photos is photo-credit. Photo credit is great, and it certainly is better that not-photo-credit; but photo credit doesn’t pay the bills either. “Thank you” is good, cash is better. But, especially when you are starting out, getting people to pay (for whatever it is you do) isn’t particularly easy. It’s here that we as photographers have an advantage. We can show people (at little cost) exactly what we can do. “Look! See this thing I just did? Well I can do it again. For you. For money”.

Oh, and when I say “at little cost”; yes, gear is expensive. As is your time. And yes, talent doesn’t just magically appear. I hear you and you are 100% correct. But if you consider all of those things as investments, suddenly the equation changes. Your camera doesn’t know if it’s taking a free picture or a paying one. And the cost of producing those two pictures - at least in the world of digital - is exactly the same.

While it pains me to use this example, think about Google for a moment. Their primary service is completely free. If it went away tomorrow, the world as we know it would effectively end. If Google started charging for their search service, you know you would pony-up whatever jack they demanded. But you also know that their stock wouldn’t be anywhere near the $578.51 it is today.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you give away your pictures for free. Far from it. But if you can show someone (even a single someone) that what you do is valuable, then all that’s left is cashing the check. And if it takes some free samples to do that, so be it.

Cheryl, lit with an SB800 in a 32" shoot-though umbrella at1/16th to match the ambient thinks that I might be full of BS, but is amused by my LOTR refrence.

So, what is the point of all this fine nonsense? Well, if I had the one true answer to that I’d be writing this blog from my Lear jet made exclusively from unicorn tears. But I can tell you a few things.

“Free of charge” doesn’t mean you don’t get something in return. Having just shot a theatre benefit (for “free”) how in the world did I *not* realize that the people attending this event would have money; money that they were literally looking to give away. Getting the opportunity to show my wears in front of that group of people was easily the best deal I could have made. Whatever I would have charged is nothing compared to the opportunity. Pittsburgh just isn't that big a town - and I'm bound to see those same people again. "Oh, your that photographer right? Well my daughter's bat’mitzvah is coming up and.... yada yada yada". I have looked into my crystal-ball and I can assure you this is my future.

Another quick example: I’ve shot a lot of pictures of my friend Robin for her up-coming wedding (at no charge). Robin actively maintains her own blog, specifically about wedding planning. She has used a lot of my pictures; and more importantly links back to my blog. Her blog generates traffic to mine; and because of witchy Google logic, ads for wedding services appear here. The click-through rate for those ads far out weighs that for photo ads – but either way I’m making Internet nickels for each click. Now, it's not unicorn/tear money, mind you, but it's not zero either.

And lest you think it only works one-way: I took pictures for Cheryl... Taking them let to a possible paying opportunity. In addition I got Brad in touch with an organization I’m familiar with, and they are considering some support. Cyclical processes; scary stuff.

Cheryl, lit by an SB800 gridded and gelled to match the florecent, thinks I better study this new economy stuff a little more.

So the next time someone asks you to take photos for free - don’t immediately assume it’s an attempt to take advantage of you (or your gear, time, or talent). While it’s certainly not going to apply to every situation, there are ways to leverage “free” into “getting something back”. What’s more, sometimes the getting AND the giving can be exactly the same thing.

End of line.

Cover shot

2011-04-19T20:31:00.002-04:00

Ok, a little bit of an ego-blast. But I promise to keep it short. This is a the book cover for a play called The Inspector General. Originally written in 1842 by Nikolai Gogol, this new translation was done by my good friend Dr. Michael Chemers. For reasons unknown, he wanted one of my pictures from the play on the cover as well as a dozen more inside. PhDs are weird.

End of Line.

WJAZ

2011-04-16T12:57:00.001-04:00

I wish I could take credit for this; but it was conceived and shot by my good friend Chief. It's part of a set for his band's upcoming video. He is a real jerk, and you should tell him so.

IGY.

Your powers are not weak, old men...

2011-04-12T17:29:00.006-04:00

Yesterday was the FlashBus stop here in Pittsburgh. Today my brain hurts (no, really; I’ve just exceeded the daily recommended dose of ibuprofen). Something approaching a review after the jump….

Back in January Dave Hobby & Joe McNally announced a cross-country, small-flash bus tour. The day on-line registrations opened I didn’t hesitate to sign-up. Yesterday, like a kid on Christmas morning, I involuntary woke up at 6am for a thing that wasn’t going to start until 10am. What the H?

What the H indeed.

Look; let me being by jumping right to the end. There are still a bunch of dates left on the tour. If you somehow stumbled on this page because you’re looking for an opinion, then here’s mine: just go. It’s great and well worth your time. You may now stop reading, forever.

First impressions:

The venue was a business-class hotel in the suburbs. In retrospect (and given the two guys in question) the place that was exactly what I should have expected it to be; no-frills, get-the-job-done, functional. I also didn’t know what to expect in terms of the crowd; I figured there might be some over-flow from people that didn’t get into the NY or Philly stops – but, honestly, a small part of me was kinda hoping that the turn-out would be low. Really low. Like twenty people low (and, come on; how much fun would it be to have McNally & Hobby damn near one-on-one for a whole day?)

Yeah. Well, when I got to the hotel (30 minutes early to get a good seat) there was already a line of 200 people. In Pittsburgh. So much for dreams. My final estimate for the crowd was about 350 or more. Friggin RockStars.

Or perhaps not. While standing in line, here comes Joe McNally. Shaking hands; everybody’s hand. Personally welcoming and thanking every single person that showed up. I’m not even in the f’n room yet, and the teaching has already begun. What do you think Joe’s day-rate is? His gig doesn’t start until much later in the afternoon; but here he is. Greeting everyone like they were coming into his home.

That seems like such a little thing… and perhaps it is. But, man, if you want to dismiss even the thought of someone being a (well deserved) diva, well then there ya go.

Check-in was quick, swag-bags handed out. Everyone on the staff is super friendly and cheerful. The room had seats for 400; and like I said it was at about 90% capacity. Adorama had one small table in the back. Again, nothing fancy; just exactly what it needed to be. 10AM on the dot and Hobby takes the stage.

They call him “Mister Strobist”

I’m not gonna lie to you – I loves me some Dave Hobby. Four years ago (give or take) I’d honestly have to say that my photography was precisely nowhere. Then I found strobist.com. And as amazing as strobist is on it’s own, it also opened my eyes to the wealth of great teachers that are available on-line. Perhaps more importantly, it’s the de-facto filter for the dreck; leaving you only the sweet filet mignon.

Dave was exactly the guy you’d expect him to be – smart, excited, and down to earth. He spent the first two or so hours meticulously breaking down example photos; showing exactly where he started and then building up each layer of light. The data is at T3 speeds; hard and fast… so proper attention is necessary. While he never strays into the truly esoteric realms (you don’t, for example, have to do inverse-square in your head) he does expect everyone to have a solid understand of the basics.

One thing that did surprise me was that, given the size of the audience, questions are actively encouraged. Dave (and later Joe) almost insists that the audience ask about things that are unclear. You’d think that this would bring things to a screeching halt; but both David and Joe were able to field questions just as fast as the audience could throw them out. Pretty cool.

Hobby’s second half consisted of more photo dissection, but also a healthy dose of new-media philosophy. In ways that make marketing directors salivate, Dave is firmly entrenched in the center of the social media sandstorm. In his case the big success has been with Strobist.com; but he spent a good deal of time talking about his HoCo360 project. Clearly, this is a guy that gets “it”. He could do a whole separate tour just talking about leveraging the synergies of near-zero-cost media distribution (and I would go to it). Point is: this is clutch stuff for anyone who wants to, you know, actually do something with their photography (or any other interest, really). I’m glad it was given a place in the tour.

They call him “Mister Numbnuts”

Lunch break, and we’re back with McNally. Look; CLS (and specifically it's TTL function) is straight-up voodoo, I don’t care what anyone says. It makes me itchy. But from the very start Joe picked up his camera and was shooting tethered – and the audience got to see every one of his frames (bad ones included). So it was interesting, to say the least, to watch what was going on. Joe started simple; with a single flash – then worked up to increasingly complex setups (at one point he was using four).

Again, like Hobby, McNally was more than eager to answer questions. At one point someone asked about range; Joe had one of the assistants walk to the far and of the room with a flash (about 70 feet) and Joe kept remotely firing it. When it finally started to fail, he showed his little tricks to get it back (zooming the flash head, bouncing the signal). It’s exactly that kind of stuff that only someone very experienced with the tech is gonna know, and is never going to be in the manual.

To here -and watch- McNally do it, it would look like he was just triggering the flashes optically (with the added bonus of being able to control the output from his camera body). But watching the output, I could see that TTL was doing whatever it does; meaning that the consistency from shot-to-shot just wasn’t there. Clearly, it’s a style that he embraces and has learned to control. But the really slick part was watching him set up a few flashes, grabbing someone from the audience, and in a single frame kick out a million-dollar portrait. Clearly, it works for him.

Wrapping it all up:

The show started at 10am, and Joe finished up by 5:30pm. After a quick break Dave & Joe took the stage together for an informal Q&A. After that, both of them stuck around an shook every hand, signed every autograph, sat for every picture that was asked of them. Just two of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. And considering that these two can spend their time practically anyway they want, it’s amazing to me that their doing this.

End of line.

A very strange affair

2011-04-10T12:07:00.008-04:00

No, wait, I can explain.

Some very good friends of mine have – for years – been working with an organization called the Bakerloo Theatre Project. Based in upstate New York, Bakerloo has strong ties (not to mention many members) here in Pittsburgh. This weekend they threw a fundraising event, and I ~~was~~ volunteered to take photos.

Now, I’m not a big fan of Event Photography. There is nothing wrong with it, mind you; but given the choice it’s not my favorite kind of pictures to take. So; a few discussions later it was decided that I could set up a little gear in a corner and have a place where guests could come and have their portraits taken. And, being the technocrat that I am – I even shot tethered to my laptop, which was connected to a photo printer; so guests could take home a little 4” by 6” of their picture.

When I arrived at the venue, they had a little nook set up for me with a makeshift painted background. I put together a very simple setup: just one AB1600 with a Wescott 25” softbox (note: I would have preferred to use the 55” for the inevitable group shots, but there just wasn’t the room). I was also pleasantly surprised to see a giant box was on the floor filled with hats, wigs, masks, and the various detritus that gets inevitably collected by any theatre company. Oh, and there was going to be an open bar; so, you can pretty much figure out the rest.

I have to admit, I was a little nervous about shooting this thing. I’ve mentioned this before; a good half of photography is strictly technical. You know, your f speeds and your shutter ISOs. All well and good. But the other half – and equally important – is making a connection with the people your directing all that gear towards. They’re the ones in crosshairs; and if you can’t manage the personal (or perhaps it’s interpersonal) part… well, then your probably doomed.

I’m lucky in that I get to shoot my friends - a lot. And when I’m doing that probably the last thing I’m thinking about is how they are handling all my ridiculous nonsense. But out in the world; well, I just never know how the “normals” are going to react. Example: like at a wedding, no one wants to be the first on the dance floor. Same thing here. The first 45 minutes of the event was all thumb-twiddling; until my friends Robin & Colin let me take their picture. That let everyone know that the camera doesn’t, in fact, steal souls; and that it was ok to come on over. After that (and no doubt also to the open bar) the rest of the evening was all uninterrupted workface.

Shot and got to meet a lot of different people. And they were a fun group (which isn’t surprising considering they were mostly theatre folks). People had a blast going through the box of props, and being silly in front of the camera. For the bulk of the evening I stuck with my basic setup – but for the last hour or so I decided to change things up a little. Loose the softbox and the funny hats; switch to B&W and grid-spots. Everyone was super kind and patient, and overlooked a lot of my mistakes. By the time I broke my gear down, had almost 60 portraits. And a fun night.

Yes Virginia, there is a Ms. Batman.

The Bakerloo family.

End of line.

Your powers are weak, old man.

2011-04-02T11:25:00.001-04:00

If your one of the literally dozens of people who visit this blog, then you may have noticed that I have a little bit of a boy-crush on Zack Arias. I stumbled on his site a few years ago thanks to Strobist.com, and was lucky enough to take his OneLight workshop last summer.

Zack went up against the Phenom Joey Lawrence at the 2011 Gulf Photo Plus expo this year, and this video has been making the rounds. But I post it here because of a little moment that caught my attention: always the teacher, at the 6:14 mark Zack asks the audience “…aperture controls what? Anybody??”

Considering who's in the audience, that is Pure. Genius.

End of line.

Robots & Running Backs

2011-03-31T07:50:00.004-04:00

Ok, so this is my first (and only) post in all of March. If nothing else, this long gap in updates probably only solidifies my “blogger cred”; because a blog un-ignored cannot be a constant source of guilt.

Truth is, I’ve been shooting the H E double hockey sticks out of this month. Lots of pictures of lots of things. And a lot of it for pay (good for paying off my credit-cards, bad because I can’t post a lot of it here). But I’ll share what I can after the jump…

Web see’ite:

At the School of Drama we’ve just launched a new web site. It’s the result of more than a year-long process, and a total re-design from our previous web presence. While not all the pictures on the site are mine, about 90% of them are. Performances, facilities, guests, events, staff & faculty headshots… it’s just a scary number to contemplate. Looking back on eight years worth of photos; I can remember vividly the taking of most of them, but can’t tell you where all that time went.

Visit our site; now on the Web!

Rise of the Machines:

You know, at one time or another, everybody bitches about their job. Everybody. I like to imagine that, at least once in a while, Bill Gates wakes-up on a cold & rainy Wednesday morning and thinks to himself “Man, do I really hafta do this billionaire crap today?”

I’m no different. But; more often that I have any right too, I’m reminded about just how lucky I am to work where I do. Carnegie Mellon is truly an amazing place to work, one where constant surprise is always just around the corner.

Case in point: This month I got to meet the delightful Heather Knight. Now, I want to be very clear here on my use of the word “delightful”. Heather is PhD student in the School of Robotics. Her CV includes working at MIT’s Media Lab, NASA’s JPL, and helping to design & build a little contraption that you just might find familiar. Her current endeavor is studying human/robotic interaction; specifically as it regards intergrading robotics into the performing Arts. Now that's how I define delightful.

At any rate: Heather and the head of our Dramaturgy department are working together on an upcoming TED lecture – where a robot will be performing interactive comedy & theatre. You know, it’s just another day at the office. Sadly for me, I was rather light on gear when I got the call to take these pictures – and had to improvise (ha!) some quick no-frills lighting in a room where only Grad students deem to dwell. Next time I'll do better. To learn more about Heather & her amazing work, see marilynmonrobot.com .

Data, the stand-up robot, and a progenitor.

Solved. Just like that.

Doctor ~~Noonian Sung~~ Heather Knight

Pittsburgh Power:

Donno where to begin… I’ve been doing a lot of work for the Pittsburgh Power, the new AFL team here in the city. It’s been amazing experence and really pushed me out of my comfort-zone. For starters I shot a 14 month calendar of the Sparks (the dance team for the Power); easily the biggest project I’ve yet to work on.

If your a Facebook friend, there is a behind the scenes video where you can see me doing whatever it is that I do. The result of that job led to others for the Power – things like doing the team head-shots and covering a game.

One of the great things I saw shooting the Power game was that afterwards, most of the players and the dance team came down to the field to sign autographs. Take that, NFL. It led to, of course, a totally surreal moment when I looked over and saw a crowd of people clamering for autographs on their freshly minted calendars. The ladies of the dance-team were more than happy to oblige; no one asked for my autograph tho (sad trombone).

No one ever askes for the photographer's autograph.

The other result of shooting that game was that one of my pics will be used for the cover of the program for the next home game on April 2nd.

Oh, and no post would be complete without a shameless plug. My “boyz” in Low Water made a Pittsburgh stop earlier this month. Their new album is out, and if you listen to it Joe might eventually rethink his facial choices.

Release the Kraken.

So that's about it. Busy month; with more to come. I promise that the next update will be a) much sooner and b) far less ego-centric. It’s just 12 days to the FlashBus tour; and if I have any brain left after that, there will be much to report. Until then, I leave you with the words of the MCP…

End of line.

Oscar Night!

2011-02-28T19:34:00.009-05:00

Hosted an Oscar party and played a one-man paparazzi. More after the jump…

A few years ago I thought it would be funny to have an Oscar party and give out, you know, real Oscars. Working, as I do, with Theatre people; I asked a prop-designer how one goes about securing such things as Oscar statues. After some less than satisfying Google searches he shrugged. “Well” he said, “I could make you one”.

More Google searching led to medium res photos of various celebrities holding their statues. Based purely on eye-balling, my friend managed to reverse-engineer the size & dimensions of Oscar; and then hand-build a 3D model in AutoCad. That model was then hacked apart by another program and fed into a Computer-Controlled router which dutifully carved full statues out of MDF. A minor math error meant that the statues were a little, shall we say, oversized; but that just added to the novelty.

I tell you that story only as a cautionary tale. This is the slippery-slope that is my constant home.

At any rate: Now, it’s a thing. My friends all come; everyone brings a food-item specifically named with a current Oscar pun. This year’s best was a tie between “The Sausage Network” and "Chicken a la the King's Speech".

Chicken a la the King's Speech

The Sausage Network

Also, the ladies dress up. Donno why; it’s a lady thing I guess. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. It means that some segment of the night is devoted to photos.

I had my white-seamless set up (sure, for photo reasons; but mostly to hide all the clutter that typically inhabits my apartment and that was, for one night only, shoved hastily in the corner). AB1600 up on a stand, with an SB800 off to the side for fill/rim. I had my Wescott Apollo 25” softbox out, as well as the Paul C. Buff grid-spots.

What was “fun” was taking a series of pictures with the softbox, then switching to the grids, then back again. Must have done that two dozen times or more during the evening. Not a bad exercise, actually. It’s always a good thing to train that sort of stuff into your muscle memory; one less thing to worry about on an actual shoot.

Lexi. Right on top of the Wescott. I mean, that thing is *just* out of the frame.

John, being the villian in some hitherto unknown Indiana Jones movie. Also, 10 degree grid.

Robin & Collin. Again, inches from the Wescott.

Hey, you know what would be fun? Going back to grids. Also, Liz is an Oscar-winning Pirate.

Mike - the Ayn Rand version.

Ok, back to the softbox. I'm too tired to switch back to color.

Fun night. Tasty food and good company.

End of line.

Review: Black Rapid RS-7

2011-02-24T10:18:00.007-05:00

Silly story: So last Saturday I found myself on the North side of the city with an extra hour to kill. Here in Pittsburgh we recently (well, in the last year or so) got our own casino – and it was just a few blocks away. Doing the math in my head; if I decided to kill this hour with an impromptu casino visit I figured (and rightly so) that I’d lose about $100 bucks – because I hit 16 against a dealer 10 just like the book says too.

However exchanging $100 bucks for 60 minutes of downtime seemed, at least at the moment, a little extreme. But wait! The only camera shop in the tri-state area was also just a few blocks away! And I never go in there just to browse… this is a perfect opportunity to do so!!

An hour later and $139 dollars lighter I emerged….

Really, I should have known better. And for the first ten minutes I was fine; I even managed to rebuke the salesman’s initial “can I help you with something” gambit. But then I started thinking about all the little things I constantly forget I need; a new UV lens filter, light stand mount, extra cold-shoe, etc. Nothing major; but enough to open the flood gates. Inertia took over, and even the sales guy could smell it. All hope was lost.

“Well,” he said like a cobra coiled to strike, “perhaps Sir would be interested in this…”

Reaching into a display case he pulled out a BlackRapid camera strap.

Asides:

In my defense let me say that I’ve been wrestling with camera straps for some time now. Sometimes I love ‘em, other times they just get in the way. The standard Nikon strap isn’t at all bad, but has (imho) a fatal flaw: It uses tension-grips to attach to the camera body. This means that if you absolutely can’t stand the strap for another second, it’s at least five minutes of fumbling to remove the thing and five more later to put it back on. I tried to “fix” this DIY-style with some $1 carabineers from the ‘Depot. Which worked, with the exception that the aforementioned carabineers were only rated to twenty pounds, and that always made me a little nauseous about the safety of my camera.

My DIY solution.

Also, my friend Zavo recently had been raving about the Luna Loop. It sure sounded interesting; and I have to admit that having hardware that is Mil-Spec certainly appeals to man-parts, no doubt. But at that moment the Luna Loop was ethereal, and the BlackRapid right in front of me. What’s a guy gonna do?

I’ll tell you: Try it on like a fancy Victorian lady in a hat shop, that’s what. And it’s here that I’ll (finally) get to something approaching a review: The number one selling point for the BlackRapid is that the thing is frick’en comfortable.

No, really. In the first second of having the strap over my shoulder I involuntarily let out a little sigh; ahhh, that’s just… better. Now, obviously, it’s a highly subjective judgment; your mileage may vary. But I gotta say that it takes the weight off my neck and puts it… well… somewhere else. I honestly think I could wear this thing for hours and still not care.

The strap it’s self is made of ballistic nylon (so there’s something to appease the boy-bits), and the connector is made of (what seems to be) quality alloy. The connector isn’t exactly what I’d call “quick release” – because you need to unscrew the locking mechanism to get it off. But this really only takes an extra moment or so, and I’m pretty sure I’ll get quicker once muscle-memory kicks in. All things considered it’s much quicker than dealing with a tension strap.

The connector clips on to a fastener, which screws into the tripod mount under the camera. I “get” the idea here, but I do have a few problems with that. First is a (probably irrational) fear that the fastener will unscrew from the body if the camera twists on my hip. BlackRapid clearly tries to address this with a little rubber “compression disk” that sits between the steel fastener and the camera body. And the connector is designed to spin, rather than the fastener; which intellectually I know should do the trick. But my brain is at the mercy of the dollar amount hanging from my hip; we’ll just have to see which one wins.

My other problem with the fastener is that, when disconnected from the strap, it sits like a giant nub on the bottom of my camera body. If I have to set my camera down all the weight is on the fastener. Shouldn’t be a big deal as the fastener is steel and all. But it just seems awkward. And, of course, you can only use a tripod quick-release plate if you get the optional FastenR-T1 for another $18 bucks.

The leaning tower of Camera.

Still, those criticisms are extremely minor; especially when you use the strap as intended. Obviously, it’s real purpose is to allow you to shoot like a gun-slinger. And here the BlackRapid performs exactly as advertised (probably better, actually). Dropping my right arm down to my side, my hand almost naturally finds the camera grip. It’s a little spooky. Going from hip to eye takes so little time I can barely say it happens at all. In just as little time the camera can be back on your hip, ready to go again.

Just as importantly; walking, even at a fast trot (sadly my top speed), the camera stays put. If I had to run (and perish the thought), I’d probably have one hand on the body anyway (again, mind v. camera-cost). All things considered the camera feels pretty solid on my hip; and that’s not something easily ignored.

So the short version is: I’m digging the BlackRapid, and I’d recommend it if it’s on your radar. All things considered, it’s a much safer bet than doubling-down against an ace.

End of line.

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Knowing when to cut & run

A matter of perspective

Doing the job

Back in the saddle

Halloween & Lightroom

Enjoy Your Doom

Low Water

Hitched!

For Robin, on her wedding day.

Happy birthday, America

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