Hooked On Light

Catching light and dragging it, kicking and screaming, into the camera

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Utah Photo Safari: Scavenger hunt

This month's Photo Safari is a scavenger hunt! We're meeting in the Salt Lake City Public Library atrium located at 400 South and 300 East on Saturday, November 15th at 1pm. We'll form up into teams, get our assignments then split up, find pictures and collect our points.

Photo passes for the Library have been pre-arranged.

At 5pm we'll meet at Charlie Chow's across the street from the library for dinner and a review of pictures and points.

Hope to see you there!

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Light: Science and Magic

Light: Science and Magic
I admittedly haven't read a lot of books on photography, but I do frequently read technology books, and Light: Science and Magic is one of the best I have read. Many challenges arise for technical books: keep the reader engaged, don't write a dry treatise, maintain balance between too basic and too advanced and include all the relevant points so the reader can follow the train of thought. The authors manage do all this and impart a great deal of knowledge on how light works in making pictures.

I appreciate their approach of presenting a problematic situation and then giving principles of how to solve the problems encountered. They don't give a cookbook recipe but rather go into details about what the challenge is and explain how to overcome it with both positive and negative examples.

The situations presented tend towards product shots such as might be found in sales catalogs, but this is in no way a limitation. The authors simply use this context to present principles of lighting that are applicable to any type of subject. This gives the advantage of a tightly controlled environment, so the reader can easily reproduce the setup to get hands-on experience and cement the lessons in their mind. The training can then be applied outside the "laboratory" in real-world situations.

In addition to writing a great book, the authors created and hang out in the Light Science and Magic Flickr group. This group is specifically for people to post images inspired by the book with explanations about how they made the image. There are also low-volume, high-quality conversations in the discussion section.

Finally, they run regular challenges based on topics covered in the book. Currently (November 2008) the third such challenge has just started. The idea of this challenge is to use a single light source to illuminate an object but also provide a graduated background, giving depth to the image. The rewards for participation is learning more about lighting with one lucky submitter being awarded a free book from Focal Press.

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Photowalking Utah: Antelope Island

Antelope Island
Antelope Island
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

Join Photowalking Utah this Saturday, November 1st, at Antelope Island for the annual Bison round-up. Starting at 9:30, we'll be getting up close at the Bison pens where the state park ranges give them their health checkups. When we're done there, we'll head over to Garr ranch to check out the historic sheep ranch.

Pay attention to the weather and dress accordingly. Most of this will be outside.

Meet in the parking lot west of the entrance gate in Syracuse. There is an entrance fee to the park $9/per car, we can break up into groups and share rides for those interested.

9:30 am - approx 12:00 pm

Antelope Island
State Park
4528 West 1700 South
Syracuse, UT 84075

As always, skill level is unimportant. Nor does it matter if you shoot a digital SLR, point and shoot, medium format film camera, camera phone or whatever. Come on out and join us and spend some time hanging out with other photographers and having a good time.

Please post an RSVP comment if your planning to attend. Scott Smith (the organizer this month) may be able to get discount pricing into the park if we have a large group.

Sunday, October 26, 2008

Bear Lake Regional Photography Seminar

My wife and I just got back from a photography seminar put on by the local photography club up in Montpelier, Idaho. This was the first time either of us had gone to an informal seminar like this and were not quite sure what to expect. We had a great time meeting people and hearing the presenters. It was held in the Oregon Trail Center with a little over 50 attendees and 3 presenters. The organizers had been a little apprehensive since this was their first event of this type and didn't know what type of response to expect. They were very pleased with the turn out. Montpelier is in the south-eastern corner of Idaho, 25 miles from Utah and 15 miles from Montana. Given this location, most people were from the southern Idaho, north-western Montana and north-eastern Utah. My wife and I and one other attendee were from the Salt Lake City area. And there were two attendees, friends of the organizer, from California.

Sliding HannahFriday night was registration where we checked in, met the organizer Ross Walker and submitted a framed image each for the photo competition. I rarely make prints of my images and was moderately pleased with the way mine turned out. I thought Diane's was stunning. As can be seen above, it was a brightly lit yellow, orange and red flower on an almost black background. After we checked in to both the seminar and the hotel, we met up with Ann Torrence and went to the recommended spot for dinner. The food was acceptable and the company was superb.

Saturday was spent all day in three lecture sessions with a break for lunch. The first presenter was Roger Boe, a retired pediatrician who now does overseas medial missionary work. In conjunction with his charitable work, he takes the opportunity to enjoy his passion of photography in the context of other cultures. He talked about travel photography and how he believes the feel of the location is best captured when people are included in the image. He displayed and discussed a number of his own images. After that, photos submitted by the audience were displayed on the screen and we critiqued them as a group. This was an interesting exercise as there was a variety of opinion at times about what was "good" and "bad" with an image. There were times certain features some thought should be reduced and/or eliminated whereas others thought that same feature was what made the image. Just another demonstration that much of what we call beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

After lunch, the second presenter was Alan Stauffer, the owner of Alan's Photo Store in Afton, Wyoming. He presented two topics. The first was about a recent self-assigned project to get closer to his portrait subjects and presented a number of images from this work, discussing various aspects in making the photos. He mentioned there are three ways to get closer: use a long lens, physically get close with a standard or wide-angle lens or crop. On cropping, his point was with the high-megapixel count on modern SLRs, you can crop a lot and still have enough pixels to print out a reasonably sized print. (This echoed a statement made by Kenneth Linge at the September Photowalking Utah event where Kenneth showed a 42" diagonal print that was taken with a 6 megapixel camera.) He also mentioned, when shooting kids close up, if you get in obnoxiously close, to the point where they're distracted, you can then back off a bit and they'll relax and start ignoring you, giving you the opportunity to get some good candid shots. If you just get in to your desired shooting distance, they may not relax enough to get the types of shots you want.

Alan's second topic was a beginners' tutorial on Photoshop. If you knew nothing about photo editing, it probably was informative. I did hear some comments from others indicating it was new material. I consider myself at an advanced beginner or beginning intermediate level and found it very basic. In some cases, the techniques demonstrated were probably not the best way for new users; they could probably get better results easier with other methods.

The final presenter was Ann Torrence, a friend of ours writing a book on the highway US-89. She wove together details about her project with how to do a largish photo project. As she talked, she had a slide show of images from her work running behind her, punctuating the topics and providing glimpses into her passion for the highway as well as photography. One of the things I got from her presentation, which I don't think she explicitly said, was to carefully evaluate and estimate the size of your project before you start it to make sure it's not bigger than you want. Another take away, which she did mention, was to stick with it. There will be times of disappointment and feeling overwhelmed. At these junctures, take a deep breath and press on.

After a break for dinner, the photo contest was judged. It was open to all attendees and I think everyone brought something, putting close to 60 images on the wall. There was a single judge who did a fabulous job. He had a large amount of judging experience as well as a formal degree in fine arts with an emphasis on photography. For each photo, he gave a one to two minute commentary about the good in the photo as well as how it could be improved. This was as informative as any of the other presentations. It was fascinating to hear his perspective on composition, lighting, and color and how they interacted to make a strong or weak image. In the end, he choose three for awards. Mine happened to place third.

Sunday was a free form day where people could choose to do whatever they wanted. Maps were provided with interesting photo subjects in the region marked. Unfortunately, I had to catch a flight early Sunday afternoon for a professional conference starting Monday, so we had to leave early. All in all, it was a great experience and will definitely consider attending similar events in the future.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Photowalking Utah: Gardner Villiage

Radar failure
Radar failure
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

Photowalking Utah is meeting at Gardner Village this Saturday, October 18th to photograph ghosts, witches and other tricksters. This is going to be our kid-friendliest Photowalk yet. If you have them, dress them up or hand them cameras and bring them along. We'll be meeting at Archibald’s Restaurant at 3:30 pm and wandering around until 6:00pm when it's time for dinner, meeting back at Archibald's. Here is the complete discussion.

Skill level is unimportant. Nor does it matter if you shoot a digital SLR, point and shoot, medium format film camera, camera phone or whatever. Come on out and join us and spend some time hanging out with other photographers and having a good time.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Utah Photo Safari: Mt. Olivet Cemetery

Headstones
Headstones
Originally uploaded by hpebley3


Saturday, October 11th, meet the Utah Photo Safari group at Mt. Olivet Cemetary. We'll be starting by the main gate at 5:00 pm to get some late afternoon sun and continue through sundown and moonrise.

The cemetery is located at 1342 E. 500 South, Salt Lake City, across the street from the U's Rice-Eccles Stadium. Parking is just behind the Friendship Manor on the corner of 1300 E and 500 S (enter off of 500 S).

Hope to see you there!

Friday, September 26, 2008

How to create a photo with a pure black background

I recently posted an image on Flickr with an all black background. One of the first comments (by basswulf) asked if I shot the image with a black background or if I did it in post processing. It was actually some of both; most of it was handled in camera with a black background supplemented by a minor bit of touch up after the fact. I thought I'd share here how I typically do this type of shot.

My buddy, super photographer and all around great guy, Rich Legg, wrote an article about creating a photo with a pure white background. My technique is similar but slightly different because I use Paint Shop Pro instead of Photoshop and I'm doing a black background instead of a white one.

I start by shooting against a black background. In this case, the background simply consists of a black piece of fabric suspended by the overhead floor joists in my unfinished basement. I try to put a bit of space between my lights and the background to eliminate light spill onto the fabric. I also try to orient the lights so they are not pointing at the background. Doing this helps give a nice even black background and minimizes the amount of touch up work required.

1 Black background startHere's the starting image exposed at f/14 with a 1/160th shutter speed and ISO 100. Without flashes, this exposure setting would cause the entire image to be almost completely black, even with the overhead lights on. Exposing this way helps produce a black background and lessens post processing work. As can be seen, the background is very close to black. In spite of all this, if you look closely, you can see a bit of detail on the right side. This is where the fabric ended and some of the items in storage in my basement can be faintly seen. A combination of ambient, a little spill from the strobes and being stopped down caused them to start fairly dark but visible.

2 Black background by faceAbsolute black, in RBG color space, is when all three color components are zero. Zooming in close to the face on the left side, we can see the background has values close to black but not entirely black. In fact, it's a very, very, very dark gray.

3 Black background hand detailLooking at a zoomed in portion of dark detail on the hand, we can see the green and blue components are very similar to the black, but the red is a bit higher. This means its similar to the background but has some additional information providing subtle details for the eye.

4 Black background histogram adjustmentSince the goal is to get the background black, I want to adjust the image so the background's three components are all zero while maintaining the relative value of red component in the hand. The best tool I've found for this is the Histogram Adjustment. This tool allows a number of adjustments, but for the purposes of this image, we just want to adjust the lower bound. By sliding the black pointer on the left side up from 0 to about 10, we cut off all the very small variations on the black side of the image without significantly changing the lighter portions.

5 Black background by faceNow, when we look at the background, we can see it's gone to pure black.

6 Black background hand detailBut we still have some red component in the details, so we haven't completely lost them.

I didn't post an overall image at this point, but the faint portions of unwanted background detail on the right side of the image are greatly reduced. In fact, I couldn't see them at all. But when I ran the color picker over that area of the image, I did see RBG values other than 0, 0, 0, so I knew there was still some more work to be done.

7 Black background negative pre touchupA cool trick is to change the image into a negative. By doing this, the mostly invisible details in the black background suddenly show up as tints when the background is made white. The blue/gray details clearly visible here on the right were nearly impossible to see in the positive version.

9 Black background negative by faceAs can be seen in this close up, the previously all black section is now pure white.

8 Black background negative post touchupThe next step is to select the paintbrush and set its color to pure white. Now I just paint out the details I don't want on the right side.

10 Black background finishedOnce all the background that I want to finish as pure black is painted a pure white, I again select the negative image adjustment and everything changes back to the proper colors. At this point the background is pure black and the image is ready for any further processing I may want to do to it.

Note: Click on any image to see a larger size.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Full Photographic Finale (for the week)

This last weekend was full of photographic culture for me. Friday night I went to a career retrospective by Sam Abell, a National Geographic contract photographer for 30 years. Saturday afternoon, I joined the Photowalking Utah group to view a presentation by Kenneth Linge, a wedding and portrait photographer. Both these photographers have a long history of exceptional work and both are about as different as Bob Newhart and Robin Williams.

Sam Abell's photography is very documentary in nature. His goal is, as an observer, to record places and events as they are. His presentation followed this style with a scripted slide show and an allotted time that he finished to the minute. It was a documentary of his career. This is not to imply a dry lecture. Far from it. He held a room of over 100 people spell bound for two hours as he showed images and regaled us with stories from his personal family life as well as tales of adventure from his professional travel. Interspersed with all this were tips for improving our photos: use strong diagonals, bad weather means good photos, put peoples' heads and shoulders above the horizon line, compose and wait, take pictures from behind people to respect their privacy.

As a portrait photographer, Kenneth Linge's photography is highly personal. With the goal to capture the individual's personality at its best, he employs copious amounts of personal interaction to surface their inner beauty. Like Sam, his presentation followed his photographic style. The opening "Hi I'm Kenneth. What do you want to talk about today?" exemplified our entire time with him. It was highly interactive with participants' questions and comments driving the direction of the discussion as we covered topics ranging from the color of his studio walls to the psychology of photographing people.

Even with the great differences in picture and presentation style, I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent listening and learning from each. If you ever get a chance to see either one, I highly recommend it.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Using Focal Length in Composition

As photographers, we frequently use the zoom feature to adjust the size of the main subject without moving the camera position. In this article, I will explore other aspects of zoom, also known as focal length, in composition.

Loosely defined, focal length is the zoom setting on the lens. It is indicated by a number, measured in millimeters, indicating the distance of the lens from the sensor. Smaller numbers, meaning the lens is closer to the sensor, produce a wider field of view. Conversely, larger numbers, meaning the lens is further from the sensor, produce more magnification with a narrower field of view.

FocalLengthCompWideAngleFocalLengthCompHighMagnificationTo get an intuitive understanding of what's happening, think about two rods that are a fixed distance apart on one end and connected by a sliding ring. As you move the ring closer to the fixed end, the free ends will move apart. As you move the ring further from the fixed ends, the free ends will move closer together. By analogy, the fixed end is the sensor in the camera, the lens is the ring and the free end represents the field of view.

Besides the obvious size of the main object, there are two other effects caused at the extremes of focal length spectrum. The first happens at short focal lengths and is called foreground expansion. The second happens at long focal lengths and is background compression.

42/52 Pointing the fingerForeground expansion magnifies items close to the lens to look proportionally larger than other items in the image. This can be used to emphasize one object over another. This image is taken at a focal length of 18mm with the finger about 2 inches from the camera lens; my body and face are at arms length. With this setup, my hand is about twice the size of my face.

Background compression happens at larger focal lengths with a narrower field of view and is where perspective causes the background to pull in closer to the subject. Here are several shots at progressively longer focal lengths: 18 mm, 55 mm, 100 mm, 205 mm and 300mm. The camera position was moved back so the main subject is the same size in all the shots. With the narrower field of view and increased magnification, even though the subject is the same size, the background is significantly changed. This can be seen best by paying particular attention to the fence and trees.
18 mm55 mm100 mm205 mm300 mm

Using zoom can make things more convenient by changing the size of the main subject from a fixed position. But next time your out shooting, remember that by moving around it can also be used to change the composition and overall feel of the image.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Utah Photo Safari: Donut Falls


Donut Falls trailhead
Originally uploaded by hpebley3

The Utah Photo Safari group's next adventure is this Saturday at Donut Falls. We'll meet at the carpool parking lot near the beginning of Big Cottonwood Canyon at 6:00 pm and then drive up to the trail head (a couple yards shy of the 11 mile marker). The plan is to be on the trail at 6:30 pm. Hopefully we should be able to get some good evening, low-light shots.

It takes roughly 30 minutes to hike the trail which is a pretty easy hike of 1.5 miles round trip with an elevation gain of only 420 feet. Plan on being at the falls for about an hour. Total trail time should be around 2 hours. The path is well-maintained and suitable for all ages.

In addition to your camera, you'll probably want to bring along:

  • Water
  • Bug spray
  • A flashlight
  • A tripod

Anyone interested is invited.

After the hike we'll be meeting at Porcupine Grill around 9:00 pm. If you're planning on coming to eat, please RSVP on this thread so reservations can be made.


Porcupine Grill menu directions
3698 Fort Union Blvd.
Salt Lake City, UT 84121