Being Efficient With Your Subject's Time

While waiting for my girlfriend Amy to meet me outside the Old Navy in downtown San Francisco, I noticed a perfect opportunity to take a quickie portrait. I liked the colors on display in the shop window. More importantly, the window was a large source of diffuse light, so if Amy stood next to it, her face would be softly lit. As with most things in life, advance preparation is important, especially because Amy doesn't like to stand out in the cold while I tinker with my camera!

First thing I did was use my hand to test what exposure setting would best light her face without overexposing the items in the window. Second, I took some test shots of the window to figure out how to best frame the photo. When she arrived, I was ready to go. I told her where to stand and told her to smile. Thirty seconds and two shots later, I was done and we were off to dinner. Though the exposure settings and composition I chose for Amy differed from my test shots, I was very close. I only had to make a few minor tweaks. The few minutes I spent figuring things out without Amy saved her from having to endure that time in the cold. Whether it's scouting locations, setting up your lighting, or figuring out your exposure settings, the more you can do before your subject arrives, the more efficient you can be with your subject's time.

Missing Malou

Exposure: 52.5mm focal length, 1/60 sec, f/2.2, ISO 400, 2:00pm.

I was at a popular restaurant with coworkers when I saw a camera crew surveying the scene. I caught a glimpse of local television personality Malou Nubla interviewing people outside. I wanted to take some discreet shots of her as I walked out of the restaurant, so before getting up to leave, I readied my camera for some quick shots. I set my autofocus to the most automatic setting (I normally use a single focus point and have to aim carefully). I set the shutter release to continuous low, so that I could take a series of photos quickly. Finally I held my camera close to my chest hoping that I could aim the lens without looking through the viewfinder. But I forgot to change the exposure settings! My exposure time, aperture, and ISO were set to capture my coworkers inside the restaurant where the ambient light level was many stops below the light level outside. What a rookie mistake! I should have just put the camera into aperture-priority, shutter-priority, or full auto mode...anything but manual exposure mode! Shame on me!

Natural Light Is Awesome

I took some photos of my coworkers and I having lunch at a popular Chinese restaurant near my office. I sat with my back towards the window, so the coworkers sitting across from me were nicely lit by indirect sunlight. My other coworkers were not so lucky because they sat next to me and the sun only lit the back of their heads. I didn't pull out the flash out of respect for the other diners. Wow, what a difference a bit of diffuse sunlight makes! You can see the rest of the photos here. You guess which people didn't require much post-processing to bring out the details of their face.

Digitizing Old Photos

Setup:

My friend Jeanna asked me to help her digitize some very old family photos for a digital slideshow. It sounded like great fun, so I gave it a shot. My brother tried to scan the photos, but because they were matted, the scanner produced photos with ugly grid marks. Here's what I learned: 1. Handle photos with care, they are precious. 2. Use tape that doesn't leave a sticky residue, e.g. gaffer tape. Immediately remove tape after you're done shooting. 3. Shoot with a big diffuse light source. You want to avoid shiny spots (specular highlights). 4. Decrease the exposure to reduce the appearance of dust. Unless you have access to a lab room, there will always be dust on the photos. 5. Make sure the plane of the photo is parallel to the plane of the camera sensor/film. Simply speaking, make sure that the center of the lens is over the center of the photo and don't let one side of the photo tip farther away from the lens relative to the other side. 6. It's okay to capture some of the tape or even the surface under the photo, because you can crop it out or remove it during post-processing. In my setup shot, you can see that I am very close to the soft light coming through the window. Also note how the sensor film of my camera is not parallel to the plane of the old photograph. See how it messed up the top photo. Tsk tsk! We all have old family photos we want to preserve digitally. If scanning is not an option, then try taking photos of the photos!

Scary Matt

After Christmas dinner with the family, I dragged my brother-in-law Matt into the living room, so that I could experiment with my DIY poster board reflector. The main light was a flash on a light stand at camera left. The camera right side of his face was too dark, so I taped the board to my tripod in order to reflect some of the light from the flash back onto Matt. The poster board provided just enough light to fill in the shadows on the left side of his face and make him look "mysterious" ;-)

San Francisco in the Rain

It was raining on Christmas Eve as I headed out of work and towards the train station (yes, I worked Christmas Eve). I didn't want to get my camera wet, but the camera supposedly has "environmental seals", so I thought what the heck. I had fun taking the photo on the left. I set the camera focus to manual and focused on the California inscription on the sidewalk. To get the camera low, I propped it on my foot. I must have looked crazy out there in the rain! The rain coated everything, giving the scene a nice reflective quality. For lack of a better description, everything just looked cooler. I think the city looks better wet than dry. You can see the rest of the photos here.

More Photos of San Francisco at Night

Wow! It's been a long time since my last post. Work (the kind that pays the bills) has been keeping me busy, but I was still able to find time to snap off a lot of shots. Look for an avalanche of posts in the upcoming weeks. A couple of days before Christmas, I took some shots while strolling around downtown San Francisco. You can see the rest of the photos here.