Yesterday, I saw one of my idyllic images of the joys of parenthood materialized – my daughter was baking muffins with my wife. According to Pamela Druckerman’s “Bringing Up Bébé”
Action photography: autofocus speed
This is one of the first action shoots with my new Canon EOS-1D X
I borrowed a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM lens
For more examples of photos taken with a Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II USM lens
At the playground
Waiting for the ferry on the way to Whistler, I took a few shots of our daughter climbing about at a playground in her bulky but colourful whiter clothes. Trying to avoid the ordinary (read: “boring”) look of playground snapshots, I aimed for a very shallow depth of field (DOF) using a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM lens
How to photograph (and be photographed in) a group portrait: on cooperation and interference
No wedding, reunion or other event that involves gathering of friends and relatives is complete without a group photo. Here are some thoughts on how to photograph and be photographed in such situation.
Tip #1: Avoid interference from other photographers.
If there is more than one photographer taking pictures of the group, it is helpful to communicate to everyone, who the main shooter is at any given time, so that everyone is looking in the right direction. Here is an example from a very fun and relaxed wedding photo shoot a couple of weeks ago. Armando and I were taking pictures at the same time, but we explicitly asked everyone in the group to look only at Armando, so that he would take a more traditional shot, while I would try to capture candid moments as they were setting up.
Tip #2: Make sure you can see the camera.
If you are standing/sitting/laying behind other people and cannot see the camera, you won’t show up in the picture. A careful photographer would notice this and ask you to re-position yourself.
Tip #3: Mind the dynamic range.
If the photo is taken outdoors, the first thing to do, as far as exposure is concerned, is to “get to neutral”, according to the excellent advice of Jim Harmer of Improve Photography. This means avoiding sharp shadows and highlights on the faces. Bring the entire group into the shade or, if that is not possible, have them face away from the sun. (yes, do shoot against the sun! … just try to avoid the lens flare – make sure that the front element of the lens is in the shade).
Tip #4: Mind the depth of field.
The depth of field in the group shot should be larger than that in an individual portrait (so that everyone is in focus, of course). It is also helpful if the group is not spread too much front-to-back.
Tip #5: Take several shots using continuous drive.
In case someone blinks, you would be able to photoshop them in from another frame.
Image post-processing: preserving bokeh while enhancing detail of the subject
Adjustment points in advanced editing software, such as Nick Collection, for example, can be very effective for applying certain effects, such as enhancing contrast or structural detail, to a localized part of the image. However, sometimes the algorithm becomes confused, and the effects spill outside of the intended areas. In my experience, this often adds unwanted grain and other artefacts to the nice background blur (bokeh) created by fast lenses (low f-numbers).
Here is a simple Photoshop
1. Open the image in Photoshop
2. Create a copy of the background layer. It will become the top layer.
3. Apply the desired effects to the top layer.
4. Create a layer mask for the top layer and fill it with black colour. This will hide the layer with the applied effects.
5. Using a brush tool and white colour, paint the areas that should show the applied effects on the layer mask. This will reveal the effects in the areas that are painted white.
6. Save changes and close the file.
I used the above procedure on this image of cherry blossoms on Moss Street in Victoria, BC. I applied Nick’s “tonal contrast” and “structure” filters to the flowers that are in focus, but left the blurred-out areas untouched.
Wedding photo shoot: pains of image processing
Last Saturday, I was helping Armando as a second shooter on a wedding. It was a really fun gig, and I really enjoyed meeting the couple and the guests. Also, the wedding was at the Deep Cove Chalet in Victoria – quite possibly the best restaurant I know anywhere. The weather was also perfect for photography – slightly overcast with sunny breaks.
I heard an opinion shared by a few very influential pro photographers that shooting weddings builds experience for covering almost any kind of event. All in all, it was a great photo shoot. However, as it is typical for any event coverage, image selection and processing is a phase that can easily take at least as much time as the shoot itself.
This time, in the spirit of making the most of any situation, I am sorting through the images as I am recovering from extraction of my wisdom teeth. The painkiller drugs are a perfect excuse not to do any work that requires concentration, such as writing research papers.
Canada Day long weekend
For the first time in the last several years we are at home in Victoria for the Canada Day. We thought about going to the downtown with our daughter to see the festivities as a practice for the upcoming trip to Paris, but ended up going for a relaxing walk on the beach near Mt. Doug.
Testing a new Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L
I took this shot of my daughter about to fall asleep in her mother’s arms in an almost dark room, handheld, no flash, ISO 2000, 1/80 sec, f1.4 (naturally!) using a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L lens
) Still, pretty amazing sharpness, clarity and bokeh, in my opinion. 
Photography business: end of a hobby?
Recently, I had an opportunity to closely compare two different types of commercial photo assignments, both within the same day. On a Saturday morning, I was invited to tag along for a children’s baseball league photoshoot, and in the afternoon, I photographed a final game in the local (adult) rugby league. The first type of a gig has potential for much higher financial payoff, but the second one (rugby action) is more fun to shoot and generally requires a much more creative approach.
The children’s league photoshoot was an impressive example of super-efficient commercial photography. The photographer relied heavily on the assistants, who posed the teams and the individual children, and the actual shooting was done in a rapid-fire mode, so even the youngest kids (3-4 year old) did not have a chance to whine, which they typically do in a queue for a photo with Santa Claus at a local shopping mall, for example. The trade-off is that there was literally no time to interact with the models, and I am fairly certain that all 300 portraits will come out looking nearly identical. I did not think that it was possible, but this photoshoot made taking photos of children sitting on Santa’s lap look like a creative endeavor.
In contrast, shooting the rugby action in the afternoon had a very spontaneous feel to it. The energy of the players was contagious, and the opportunities for interesting shots were unpredictable. From the commercial standpoint, the financial payoff of the rugby game coverage was far from certain. Despite that, I was sure that even if not a single picture would sell, I would not regret shooting the game.
I read somewhere that starting a photo business is a sure way to ruin a perfectly good hobby. I do hope that there is a balance, though. Fortunately, at this point, I do not need to take assignments where photography is traded as a pure service, an exchange of the photographer’s time for money. Recently, time has become so precious that I would definitely choose a more interesting assignment over a better paying one.
Chinque Terre: persistent vacation
Browsing through photographs from Italy taken in the summer of 2009, I realized that photos prom Chinque Terre still make me feel as if I was standing at the cliff overlooking Vernazza only yesterday. This is surprising, because usually it takes only a few days after returning home for the “vacation mode” to give way to the daily routine.
During the first couple of days after coming back from our first trip to Europe, it became obvious that my being “off-line” for a few weeks did not result in any particular disasters neither at work nor at home. On the contrary, I felt re-calibrated in terms of my personal and research interests and priorities, so I made a resolution to maintain this “vacation” mindset in daily life. Well, it didn’t work. Instead of being simpler, life became progressively busier.
There is a joke, told to me by a colleague, which describes this situation very well. To paraphrase it: I would like to be a bus driver, because there would be no loads of undriven buses waiting for me after a vacation.
In this sense, an academic job is nothing like bus driving…
However, a glimpse of that Zen post-vacation state can evidently be triggered by a visual image. In this particular case, I was looking for a picture for a photo contest on Flickr and opened a Lightroom library with thousands of photos from our 2009 trip to Czech Republic and Italy. It is always pleasant to browse through old photographs, but the ones from Chinque Terre had a particularly strong effect. These five colorful seaside towns that cling to the cliffs are strikingly beautiful, and the whole region has a romantic atmosphere, which makes it one of the most popular tourist destinations. Visually, I had no reference point for the Liguria landscapes in my prior experience – they are truly unique and seem to be frozen in time centuries ago. Seeing these images, even on a computer screen, even several years later, instantly forced my brain to disengage from the daily “treadmill mode”. This is an example of a picture that is worth a thousand words – there is a tremendous amount and depth of information, including the underlying emotional content, that can be transmitted visually.
At the moment, we are planning a trip to Côte d’Azur, often referred to as the French Riviera, later this summer. It will be our second European trip with Anna. She is 18-months-old now, so she will not remember any of it in a conventional sense, but I wonder if looking at our photographs a few years later would stir up some memories or feelings. I am packing the photo gear just in case.
