David Porter Photography

Photos of you, proceeds to Charity - Tuesday from 3pm

2010-06-28T16:13:00.002-04:00

Update: Facebook event page, click here.

Do you find yourself needing a portrait for your social networking sites? Are you creatively cropping pictures of yourself so you have something to post on your profile?

Camaraderie (102 Adelaide St E) and David Porter Photography are teaming up so you can get a professional headshot of yourself on June 29 for $50.

To sweeten the offer, we're donating 1/2 the proceeds from your photography session to the Disabled Sailing Association of Ontario. Their mission is to build confidence, self-esteem and enhance independence for people with mobility or other impairments.

We'll have studio lights and a seamless paper back drop for your session at Camaraderie. Register now at our Facebook event site.

In both photos, is Nigist Sewnnet last years Commodore of DSAO and competitive sailor.

Event photography - how to figure out a shot, fast

2010-06-16T08:40:00.000-04:00

As the saying goes, nothing a photographer likes better than group shots. Especially in dimly lit areas where flash is frowned upon. Am I talking about Weddings in St James? Nope, an AGM by by a local professional organization.

The Association of Career Professionals was having it's AGM in local watering hole and about 60 people showed up for the event. As it was a solo gig, I once again borrowed my friend Tracy's D90 so I had 2 cameras with me at all times.

Composition

Now, the basement of this place has 3 bare concrete walls that have all the photographic appeal of a gray card. One of the saving graces was a post covered with red wood paneling of some kind. Perfect. Gives me a left frame for the pictures as the board members speak to the crowd.

Exposure

Next issue, I wanted to include the people listening but couldn't get the lighting to work for all the people in the shot. No problem, turn the back's of people's heads into silhouettes and make sure the speaker is adequately exposed. I'm still shooting at ISO 1600 and ISO 1000 for many of these shots though (1/30, f2.8) The slow shutter speed actually worked for me in some cases.

Post processing

When I got back to the office, I downloaded the photos. As expected, there was a fair bit of grain in the shots.

For those who don't know, the D300 is a good camera, but not in the same league for low light shots as a D700 or a 5DII. (I'd put it up against either one of those at ISO 200 though...).

I had heard of some good things with Adobe's LightRoom 3 which has been released (finally) and it's noise reduction algorithms. Knowing I'm probably going to buy a copy soon anyways, I download a trial version and import the photos from the shoot.

All I can say is wow! I was impressed by the results. It even has some lens presets to correct for the 70-200VRI vignetting.

I got through the photos quickly, I'd taken over 300 shots but many of them were throw aways (did I mention the 1/30 shutter speed?). The shots will be used on the Advanced Career Professionals web site with links back to mine so I made a point of getting the turn around to less than 24 hours (which I normally try to do any ways).

Reception shots and packing light

2010-06-15T10:01:00.002-04:00

My father got married again and ended up holding a reception out in West Vancouver. I had some choices to make as I wanted to pack rather light and mostly carry on if I could get away with it (I don't have those fancy pelican cases yet).

What to do? I was going to be the only photographer there, so I had have a second camera body. Tracy was kind enough to lend me her D90 (which has the same sensor as my D300). I wanted to take some umbrellas, light stands and such but I had no room!

A while back I got an adapter to mount a lighting head on to a broom pole. I also have one of those tri-flash head mounts. And, I was reasonably sure that where ever I ended up would have a broom pole I could borrow (worst case, run out to the local hardware store).

So what did I end up taking?
D300
D90
2xSB800
1xSB900
3xPocket Wizards
17-55
70-200VRI

Spare batteries and chargers.

Easy enough to fit into one of the 2 carry on's that you're allowed these days.

For some of the photos, I was able to hand hold a flash, after setting the ambient exposure to where I wanted it. (See above, iTTL on +1.7 and taken around 6:30pm local time. The city lights are off and the sun's coming down pretty hard. Even the Lion's Gate bridge lights are off.)

For some others, I found some willing volunteers to hold a broom pole that had the 3 strobes on it. (iTTL +2 and the sun as a back light held on a broom pole by a kind volunteer VAL) The SB800 and SB900 almost (not quite) have the same GN and it seemed to work well.

As a side note, I used CLS a fair bit more on this trip than the PW's as I was pushing the shutter speed to 1/2000 regularly and you can't do that with PW's (at least not without shutter dragging issues.....).

Photos of you, proceeds to charity - June 29

2010-06-10T10:40:00.003-04:00

High speed synch - Auto FP - Overpower the sun with 4 AA batteries

2010-05-16T19:28:00.016-04:00

As a few of you may know, I’ve been getting very interested in the work done by some photographers using high speed synch. There are some great articles on it over at Strobist and I’ll try not to repeat it too much here. This article will give you some tips on how to have almost total control over your lighting even in a bright and photographically speaking, potentially boring afternoon. It will allow you to get the ambient exposure you want and help make your subject pop from the page. (Or put another way, how you can pretend to over power the sun with 4 AA's, at least for a fraction of a second)

Not having any people to photograph , I went down to the Lakeshore this afternoon to test out a few theories and get a handle on how this could work for me. In spite of a few snide remarks and some chuckles from passerby, I took a view of the horizon and used a lamp post as my stand in for a person. Keep in mind these were all done on a nice sunny day around 4pm.

Top pic - P mode: As you can see in this photo, the full auto and no flash with spot metering gives a decent, boring lighting of the post. Notice how the sky is blown out though.

Centre pic - The camera was in manual mode at f7.1 , 1/3200 and ISO200. In this pic, no flash was used as I wanted to get the skyline set the way I wanted as it was almost 4pm in the afternoon. See how you get details in the clouds but the post is dark. Without Auto FP, you could never synch with shutter speed this fast.

Bottom pic - Same settings as the centre one except I used the flash on iTTL, spot meter mode on the post (hey it was also my focus point), and the SB800 set to +3.0 (Keep in mind this is not the camera’s EV buttons, this on the flash only! On the SB800 this is the + button on the strobe itself while the mode is TTL).http://www.flickr.com/photos/porterspixels/4612917721/in/photostream/
I was standing about 1 metre from the pole, strobe in left hand, camera in right.

A few notes that may be out there but worth repeating:

You need to be very close to your subject when using high speed synch as the flash gun is pulsing in an effort to keep up with your shutter speed. I was at about 4 feet (1.3 metres) from that pole.
Some photographers are using a head that allows you to carry as many as 3 strobes on the end of one light stand. I used one here at 1.3M, 3 strobes would be better. :)
A pocket wizard will not let you synch over around 1/2000 (I think, I may be wrong) but Nikon's CLS will if you change your Flash Synch Speed (Menu option e1) to Auto FP. I'd be amazed if Canon did not have an option for this too, some where.

What I really like about this technique is it only takes a few minutes to setup, and you can create much more dramatic portraits than you otherwise could. You can see from the picture on the top how bright it was. If you have some people to pose, I think the picture on the bottom would be a much edgier and make the person really pop.

Group shots and receptions

2010-05-09T16:39:00.003-04:00

Oh that favourite topic of every photographer, group shots! My father's (delayed) wedding reception was on the weekend and he asked me to shoot it. I drove through a rather crazy wind storm to find the party had already started without me having any time to setup. Pictures available at http://photos.davidporterphotography.ca/wedding-porter (If you don't have the password, contact the bride or groom, not me.)

I had with me a 17-55 and 2 hand held strobes with light stands and pocket wizards. As I quickly assessed the home, I determined it had some good and bad points. Lots of marvelous large glass windows letting in tonnes of ambient light, open concept design and a front hall that just killed me. It also had a ceiling that was painted with white paint. Perfect.

Now, with just 2 lights and 0 assistants,there's no easy way to get great lighting on everything all the time. At least not with this many people in a room this big. You have to pick your spots. I set up both lights on light stands, one of which I quickly moved after seeing it starting to wobble as people were passing by. I found the top of the kitchen shelves to place one strobe on and bounce off the ceiling while finding another out of the way spot to place a lighting stand and bounce from an opposite direction.

Did this give me perfect lighting all the time? No.

The long kitchen bar and wooden cabinets gave me heck the whole time as I had one strobe placed on top of the cabinets so it could hit the ceiling and not get knocked over.

Did it give me good quality lighting in a few high traffic areas that I could cover with no assistant? Yes.

My strobes were hitting the ceiling area over the living and dining rooms to make for consistently good crisp pics all afternoon at a steady f6.3, ISO400 1/125 all the time. The strobes were set to about 1/4 power so they could recycle quickly.

Sync speeds and intimate concerts

2010-05-09T15:44:00.005-04:00

As some of you may know, I've been spending some time over at my friend Darren's place aka the Cave of Comics. Darren has found a gig that gets several good folk music acts into his basement every month or so and as a result, I get to take pictures.

Over the weekend, I got to borrow my friend Tracy's D90 so I could have both a wide and my zoom lenses going at the same time. I mistakenly thought that since the D90 has the same sensor as my D300, most of the rest of important bits would be the same too. Oops! The flash sync speed is slower on the D90 than it is on the D300! Pictures available at http://photos.davidporterphotography.ca/sean-cotton

Normally, when I'm shooting in Darren and Cathy's basement, I use a few flashes. I nuke the walls using a red gelled flash pointing behind Sean at about 1/4 power and a second flash at about 1/32 power bouncing off the ceiling in order to get a white light hitting the artists no matter where they move while singing (People were complaining about yellow and red skin, go figure). I sit in the back row taking pictures, where I can't adjust the angle or the power levels of the flash without interrupting people.

Why do you care about sync speed? Well, on most CMOS SLR's, the shutter closes either from the top or the bottom (~~go figure~~). Roughly put, the sync speed is the fastest shutter speed that all the light from your strobe can reach the sensor. Strobist has a really great article on this. Also, whether the shutter closes from the bottom or the top depends on the model. The D90 shutter closes differently than the D300 and they have the same darn sensor and share a lot of other bits too. If the settings on your SLR are making everything black except what you paint with a strobe, you get a dark band on the bottom or top 1/2 of your frame (left or right if you hold it vertically). While David Hobby and Chase Jarvis can do some really cool things with this in day light, if you set the exposure to be black where your strobes aren't hitting, it matters a great deal!

Why do I care? I had to crop a bunch of photos prior to posting them today in order to get rid of the black band on the bottom of the frame (see the smaller picture below). No real harm done and lesson learned.

Shooting cars at night

2010-05-04T15:44:00.000-04:00

I was over working with Alan the other night doing a car shoot. A buddy of his over at www.bmwblog.com had a 550 to shoot. I think Alan had a minimum of 4 Alien Bees alone in the back of his studio last night. I was getting really nervous about the light he had over the roof but it worked out well. (I was having visions of it hitting the paint on a $90k car.....).

It wasn't my shoot so I don't have the final shots, but here are a few showing the setup.

Content aware fill

2010-03-25T19:15:00.000-04:00

This content aware fill from PS CS5 may just be enough to convince me to get a quad core. I don't normally touch up photos much after I've taken them. I'm a big believer in getting things perfect in camera, but this is crazy. (And a bit spooky).

Juno Nominee Joel Fafard in the Cave of Comics

2010-03-12T10:10:00.008-05:00

So my friend Darren had another concert in ~~his basement~~ the cave of comics last night and it was a good one. After having the chance to photograph Lynne Hanson last month, Juno nominee Joel Fafard was in the house this month. The pictures are here: http://photos.porterspixels.com/joelfafard

I’d done some more experimenting with my favorite photography topic, off camera flashes. While Darren’s basement is an excellent venue for hosting 20 to 30 people for a intimate and interactive session, the lighting is usual, functional combination of fluorescent and incandescent lighting. To my non photographer friends out there, this means you basically have a choice between making people look slightly tanned, or looking slightly green.

I talked briefly to Joel before the show and asked if he was OK with me setting off some strobes. He said it was fine if it was during the instrumental numbers, but not when he was singing. As a result, I was a bit stymied as to when I could shoot (and he always had his head down during the instrumental numbers).

For the Lynne Hanson concert (right pic), I erred on making Lynne looking slightly tanned. (Given a choice, people generally prefer it over looking green).

For Joel, I got a bit fancier. I setup 2 SB800 units on either side of the rec room. One up close on frame right with a red gel, set to ¼ power and 18mm with the diffuser. The blue gel went over the one on frame left. As the blue one was at a distance, I generally left this at 85mm and no diffuser at about 1/8th power.

So what are people's thoughts on this? Personally I prefer the colour gels but give me your thoughts.

Graffiti alley portraits

2010-03-08T10:25:00.000-05:00

For those of us in Toronto this weekend, it was an amazing warm and sunny day. What else was there to do but go down to graffiti alley and take some shots?
I took my 17-55 and a single SB800 for lighting and started looking for interesting spots, checking out new art works. When I found a spot that I liked, I’d start doing some preliminary work. As a long time fan of Strobist, I’m a big believer in getting the flash off camera. I’ve read McNaly’s Hot Shoe diaries and while I’m not a fan of letting the camera’s computer figure stuff out for you, it’s impossible for me to argue with the results he gets.

No direct sunlight was getting into the sections of the alley where I saw the paintings I liked. I set the camera to manual mode and went to work. I wanted to get the backgrounds so they were not black, but pretty darn dark without any flash. So, I was generally playing with a very high shutter speed (1/250), low ISO of 200 and fooling around with the aperture until the histogram was a good ways to the left. I didn’t want the frame to be black, just dark.

As fellow photographers wandered by, I’d introduce myself and ask them if they were willing to pose for me. To my continued astonishment, most of them were (I love this town). I’d set the strobe to somewhere around ¼ power in manual mode, using the iTTL as a trigger. I dialled in the strobe to 105mm as I didn’t want a lot of errant light hitting the background. The results were satisfactory but I wish I’d had a non-Nikon diffuser (the Nikon one forces the zoom to 18mm).

Playing with Window's movie maker and YouTube

2010-02-20T19:14:00.004-05:00

It was an interesting week. Some people tried to convince me that they "couldn't" make a video without any software on their computers and all that. Now, I'm running Vista and using Windows Movie Maker to produce the video below. It's nothing that's going to blow your mind but as a means to an end, it works out OK. The audio is offered up by YouTube when you upload the video. You can then cross it over to your local business center listing with Google.

Just saying...

White balance and auto mode

2010-02-19T14:58:00.002-05:00

After going out and talking to some people this week, I was getting a bit frustrated about hearing how the pictures almost took care of themselves. ~~(Manuals are for wimps, right?)~~

So I did an epxeriment today. The photo on the left is in full program mode, auto white balance, TTL flash held in my left hand, spot metered on the eyes..

The photo on the right is set up in manual mode, fluorescent white balance, with a handheld strobe in my left hand. The strobe had a incandescent gel on it to warm up the skin tone a bit and I chose a fluorescent WB to make a dreary sky a bit more blue. If I 'd had more than 5 minutes, I might have dialed down the white balance even more to make the horizon a darker blue. What I'm trying to do here, is encourage people to stop letting the camera's computer brains do their thinking for them. Take 5 minutes and experiment.

Macro photography

2010-02-14T16:58:00.001-05:00

I was over at the orchid show today as some friends of mine really like to go over and check them out each year. In anticipation of this, I rented a macro lens and got out my ring flash. All in all it worked pretty well, I think.

The 105mm has a minimum focus distance of 0.3M (about a foot) whihch allowed me to fill the lens with an orchid. Combined with a Orbis Ring flash, an strobe light and a synch cable, there were some pretty good results.

Check them out at http://photos.porterspixels.com/orchids2010

Web sites and Adobe Flash

2010-02-12T11:17:00.000-05:00

I was talking to some friends via Facebook last week who were looking at photographers web sites. They discovered, as I'm sure many before them have, that there are several good choices to choose from. So many in fact that they eventually got to the point where if they web page used Adobe Flash to display the pictures, they'd skip the site entirely and go on to the next one.

Now, I don't use Adobe Flash for my site www.porterspixels.com, as it allows my site to load faster and allows people to see my work on those ubiquitous iPhones. My questions is: Have you ever skipped over a web site just because it used Adobe Flash?

Concert shooting in the Cave of Comics

2010-02-11T13:42:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine has been hosting several folk concerts over at his place. Apparently some clever types got together and organized various artists go from home to home in Ontario to earn a living. I think it's an awesome idea as it promotes local talent and people like me get to have an intimate and interactive session.

I was asked to take a few shots, so I arrived with my gear last night. It was obvious this setup was going to present me with a challenge. The lighting my friend has set up for his house concerts involves using some fluorescent lights of various temperatures. To further complicate matters, the artist was standing in front of where the lights were, so instead of being nicely lit up, her whole face was in shadow.

The second challenge was that he has one of those windows that is 1/2 below ground to let some light into the room. Any lighting I added had to take that into account so it didn't reflect off the window.

During the break, I asked the artist if it was OK if I used a strobe. I positioned a SB800 on a book case and asked a friend to stand in for a few sample shots. (Unfortunately, I had left my grid at home). There was a bit of spill on the window, so I re angled the light so it would work. Bingo. The next challenge was that while my friends basement was a perfect off white for his home office, it was as boring as could be for photographs. The musician was only going to be a 4 feet in front of the wall so I wasn't going to get much separation. What to do? I added a Tungsten gel to the flash and took another test shot or two. It was better! I had a nice warming effect on the musician while getting at least some separation from the wall in the back.

How to get great shots anywhere

2010-02-08T16:46:00.001-05:00

I know some of you will have heard of Ryan Brenizer in NY. I've been following him on Flickr ever since I got my D200 and he was an admin for the D200 users group on Flickr. His work is hard to miss.

He had a workshop on the weekend which appears to have involved turning the absolute most awful surroundings you can find and turning them into a good shot. Many photographers know that fluorescent lights tend to look green if your white balance is not set correctly. In his latest blog post, he has a Tungsten light on a couple in a dreary Orwellian hallway. Set the WB so the people look good and the hallway turns blue (which is a darn site better than potentially turning green). One of his students took the video below. The blog post has the finished result.

Ryan Brenizer Workshop from Brett Maxwell on Vimeo.

Google's Keyword Tool article on davidporter.ca

2010-02-05T09:58:00.001-05:00

For those who attended my workshop, I've got an article on how to find what the popular search phrases are on Google. You can find it at www.davidporter.ca.

Web pages for photographers

2010-02-03T10:00:00.004-05:00

A big thank you to everyone who showed up for the workshop last night.

As promised here are some links to the LightRoom plugins I referenced.

I found my main web site template by following the FaceBook LightRoom application page.

To upload photos from LR to Zenfolio, check out this Jeffrey Friedl's blog. He has well written instructions on how to install his plugins.

As a follow up note, in order to setup the LR FTP settings, click UPLOAD SETTINGS --> Custom Settings to get the dialog box you see below. This information should be provided by whomever is hosting your main site (not your blog or client proofing sites).

Social media and creative commons

2010-02-01T13:14:00.001-05:00

I use Flickr a lot to share pictures with family and friends. I recently changed the licensing on my pictures to creative commons. I am getting some interest (and free PR) from the following sites (every little bit helps!):
http://www.schmap.com/ and the Wiki commons

Websites and SEO for photographers workshop - February 2

2010-01-19T22:07:00.000-05:00

On February 2, I’m conducting a workshop to get more Toronto photographers online. The course covers the following topics:

How to setup a site quickly
Have a site that’s easy to maintain so you keep people coming back to your site
Know how to optimize your site so your clients can find you – for free
Post password protected portfolios for clients online – cuts down on your travel time
Learn how to use (free) social media tools that are at your finger tips to promote your site
How to have a clean professional looking site

This is a website workshop geared for photo geeks, not computer geeks. The idea is to get you up and running with a professional looking web site that’s easy for you to maintain. Your clients will have a better chance of being able to find you in Google and you’ll be able to show them your portfolio online.

It's not hard if you know how. I have a background in taking complicated computer items and breaking them down into easy to use pieces for the rest of us.

In November 2009, I wasn't even on page 10 of Google search results. Search on David Porter Toronto right now and see where I rank now. Didn't cost me anything. Contact me if you're interested in learning how to get started and attending my workshop.

Graffiti in Toronto

2010-01-19T21:16:00.000-05:00

I was over by Church and Shuter the other day and was really impressed by the graffiti I saw. Have to keep it in mind for some future shoots...

I'd been getting bored with the stock stuff in graffiti alley.

Your camera doesn't matter (much)

2009-12-14T11:18:00.002-05:00

A month or so ago, I wrote an article saying your camera doesn't matter much. Check out some pictures I took in the Eaton Centre using my iPhone and Chase Jarvis's Best Camera vs a shot take by the Globe and Mail on December 26, 2008 in the Eaton Centre.

To be fair, I wasn't under deadline and I'm allowed to touch up my pictures with some post processing. I don't know for certain, but I suspect the Globe can't touch up pictures without getting into some kind of trouble. My point is though, even with a crappy iPhone camera and $2.99 of software, you can get some really nice results if you have some time to think about it a bit.

Just saying...
:-)

Toronto Help-Portrait

2009-12-14T10:06:00.004-05:00

On Saturday December 12, a group of Torontonians went over the Sanctuary as part of Jeremy Cowart’s Help-Portrait effort. Help-Portrait is an initiative started by Jeremy down in the US as part of an effort to help some disadvantaged people feel better about themselves. Groups of photographers, make-up artists and computer people showed up to take photos and print them for free.

The Sanctuary provides Street Outreach, Employment Training and a Health Clinic among other programs in downtown Toronto. They had distributed some fliers for us on Tuesday and Thursday nights when they serve food to help us promote the idea. None of us were certain what the turnout would be on Saturday, but it was easy to find out where to go with the number of people with tripods and light stands were going up Yonge Street. (It almost looked like a TPMG event....or a Toronto Strobist group).

As it turned out, I took several portraits of people who were, mostly; very shy and appreciative they’d get a photo to show to whoever was important in their lives. I was stunned at the effort some of these people made to get themselves cleaned up so they would have a great of photo of themselves to give. These people may be having a rough time of it, but they still have their pride ~~damnit~~.

One very dapper gentleman showed up in a suit that that was a few sizes too large for him and wanted to make sure his picture included highlighting his well worn penny loafers. We had to rush to get him his print as they were serving food in another mission on Saturday and he didn't want to be late
Another gentleman spent some time getting his hair cleaned up and looked very spiffy in order to have a picture to send to his mother for Christmas
A woman who showed up had a clean dress in one of her plastic bags, changed from some well worn clothes into her dress, got made up and had some wonderful portraits to send to her Mom

As the pictures were taken and printed, you could see people's appreciation. It was truly heart warming and I was honored to be a small part of it.

CNN ran with the story on Sunday and you can view it below. Canada AM interviewed a few people from the Toronto effort on December 14 but I haven’t seen the video online yet. If someone does, I’ll post it here too.

TPMG Christmas Party at the Madisonville pub

2009-12-11T09:53:00.001-05:00

Some students asked us to take some pictures last night in the pub. Well, twist my arm. They are up here on Flickr along with some other shots from the TPMG Christmas party last night at the Madisonville pub.