Social Documentary - Photographing The Memorial

The Memorial that I wished to take a picture of is set in a corner of the main square.  My intention was to do a slow shutter speed with An stood in the foreground.  This was a challenging task for the following reasons:

• To get a slow shutter speed and catch the movement of people I needed:
• Low light conditions therefore it had to be shot either very early or very late in the day. 
• I needed people to walk past to generate the movement, they were surprisingly considerate when they did go by and tried to avoid the camera!
• I wanted to get An in the foreground and make some impact on the picture.
• I had to frame it so that there was no distractions such as lamp posts or other things.
• I had to avoid harsh shadows as this would result in under or over exposure of the shot.
• My lens was limited to F22 at its shortest focal length and therefore I had to think of other techniques to deal with the light.

I took the pictures at around 08.53 which is not a great time but then I needed people too and thankfully there was a market which opened at 08.30.  The light meter indicated that I would need F29 for a correct exposure in the shade, this was 2/3rds less than my lens would allow.  There was also a bright sunlit part of the memorial which was changing as clouds went by.  I could not meter for this and so that part could well be over exposed.

The solutions I used were:

• I set up the camera across the street on the tripod.
• I used my remote trigger to take the picture, avoiding camera shake.
• I set the ISO to 100 to make the camera less sensitive to light, although this would not have a great impact.
• I fixed a Neutral Density filter to my camera.  This is a piece of glass that is tinted to reduce the amount of light entering the camera.  In this case is was an ND8 which is supposed to take 3 F-stops of light out.  This would mean that I should be able to drop from F29 to F14.  After taking some test shots I dropped to F8 almost 4 stops down.  The main reason was to try and balance between the shadow and the brightly lit areas.
• I could have adjusted the ISO back up to 200 if I needed more depth of field (more of the picture in focus), this would have allowed me to close the F-stop to 11 if required. 

Now it was a question of catching a few people as they went by.  There were a number of shots taken to try and get the right picture.  The final shot we took was pretty much the one I wanted, see below:

Problems with this image:

• The framing is not great, with the tree and the orange pole.
• An is too small in the foreground.
• There is a crane I don't like in the background.
• The memorial itself is a little too small for my liking.
• The red post box on the left is distracting too.

I turned to Photoshop for the solutions and did the following changes:

• I did adjust the light as it was a little too dark and as it happened a cloud managed to take the shadows away at just the right time.  You can still see the cast of the memorial on the wall but I was ok with this.
• I selected An and cut and paste her into a new layer in Photoshop.  This was a fiddly job to do.
• I then enlarged An to fill more of the foreground.
• I cropped as much as I could to take out the orange pole and the other distractions.
• I then created another layer to mask the rest of the orange pole at the top of the image.  I did this by cutting and pasting a section of the wall into a new layer and then sliding it into place to cover the orange pole.
• I then selected the crane, in two parts into their own layers and then erased it.
• For effect I thought it would have more of an impact if An appeared ghostly and thus I selected the layer that she was on and used the eraser tool set at 18% opacity resulting in the picture as it is.
• I then flattened the layers onto one image and then cleaned up by applying a stroke black line border and then by re-sizing the canvas to make a border.

The finished image is below:

It was a lot of work and if you look closely you may well be able to see where I have made my adjustments, but then it was a learning experience.  It is the first time I have used my neutral density filters since buying them almost 8 years ago!  Also I learnt an awful lot by padding my way through Photoshop. I do need to go back and take a picture of Arthur's name, which appears on the left hand side of the memorial.  I will be using another Photoshop technique which I discovered recently, allowing you to pick a spotlight and position it onto the photograph.

I never used to believe in post photo editing but then in some cases you can achieve a dramatic effect by using the software that is impossible in the camera.  Also it clearly managed to save my image from the rather bog standard shot that I began with.

The F-Stop or Aperture

After chatting to a friend today he suggested it might be useful to describe some of the technical aspects of the camera and its settings.  So here is the first of a few blogs on what the different settings do.

In the studio my routine camera setting is usually on the Manual mode, F-Stop 11, ISO 200 and speed 1/125Sec. 

Manual and other modes allow different levels of control over the settings in the camera, which allows everyone from the happy snapper to the professional to set the camera according to their knowledge and skills.  As you get better you will experiment with the other settings and eventually become comfortable with manual.  In layman's terms you cannot go wrong in fully automatic (usually a green rectangle on the dial on the top of the camera body), but then it can be a total disaster on manual if you do not set the rest of the camera up correctly.  I will talk more about modes in a later blog.

The ISO number ranges from 100 up to 3200 or higher on some expensive cameras.  The number refers to film or sensor speed.  What it means is that the lower the number the less sensitive it is to light, the higher the number the more sensitive to light.  Again I will come back to ISO later on in more detail.

The 1/125sec is the shutter speed.  This can be varied from bulb setting which means you hold the shutter open to 1/8000sec.  A speed of 1/60sec is enough to take a photo of a person and avoid camera shake or blurring.  The shutter speed can be set low to allow lots of light in or high to freeze movement or where there is too much light.  Again I will go into more detail later on.

Now the main purpose of this blog the F-Stop or aperture setting, in this case F11.  The F-Stop number refers to the size of the hole that allows light to pass through the lens and onto the sensor.  Bizarrely, the smaller the number the bigger the hole and the more light that will hit the sensor. 

If you look at the lens you have it will have written on it the maximum size of the hole.  On my standard 17-70mm lens it has F2.8-4.5.  This means that when the lens is at 17mm the aperture will be 2.8 but as you zoom in the aperture will close up to 4.5.  This is to do with the characteristics of the lens and its manufacture.  The more expensive lenses have this maximum aperture throughout the zoom range.  The minimum aperture or smallest hole size varies depending upon the lens you have, the lens above has a minimum aperture of F36 when fully zoomed out to F22 when set to 17mm.

So what does this mean?  Well the three characteristics of ISO, Shutter speed and aperture are combined to obtain the correct exposure.  If you adjust the aperture or hole size then you must adjust one or both of the other two to obtain a correct exposure.

There are other effects to adjusting the aperture depending upon what it is you are trying to do.  A small aperture of say F22 will result in what is called a large depth of field - the amount of the picture in front and behind the subject which is in focus.  If you want to capture the foreground and background with your subject you will need to set a small aperture/hole (high number).

Alternatively if you set a large aperture of say F2.8 then only the subject will be in focus and you will have a small depth of field.  Now the added complication here is that the depth of field will also vary depending upon how close the camera is to the subject.

So, summarising, a small hold (F22) in general terms will let less light in and result in more of the picture being in focus.  A large hole (F2.8) in general terms will let more light in and result in less of the picture being in focus.  There are two main uses, letting light in when there is not much about and arranging the amount of the photograph that is in focus.

Just a little more detail and then I will finish off.  The F-stops are 1.0, 1.8, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8.0, 11, 16, 22, 32, 44 etc.  You will notice that they double every other time, each of these is called a full F-stop.  The F-stops have a linear relationship each one allows twice as much light in as the previous.  So F22 allows twice as much light in as F32.  To add to the complexity or really just to have a finer level of control, most cameras have 1/3 of a stop increments between full stops.  So the sequence between F22 and F32 is 22, 25, 29, 32.

The last line on this is to remember that it is a balance between the three attributes of Aperture, ISO and shutter speed.  It is a lot to think about and therefore it is best to look at the camera mode and use each one depending upon which of these attributes you wish to control, until you master each element.  The camera will always try and compensate or indicate when you have exceeded the limits, except of course in Manual!  You can still take an incorrectly exposed picture in all but fully automatic, if you do not heed the camera's warning (usually a blinking indicator that can be seen when looking through the viewfinder).

I will post some pictures to demonstrate what I have written, it will just take me a bit longer to get that sorted!

As promised a couple of photos to demonstrate the F-Stop and its effect.

This was taken at F22 (small hole), 5 second exposure at ISO 400.  Notice that almost everything is in focus.  The focal point or subject was the word Cochrane on the left.  This is referred to as a large depth of field.

This image was taken at F2.8 (large hole), 1/15 second at ISO 400.  Notice how the right hand side of the image is now out of focus.  The focal point was the same.  This is referred to as a small depth of field.

I adjusted the shutter speed when compensating for the aperture setting.  As I closed the aperture I lengthened the time that the sensor was exposed to the light.  The camera was quite close to the subject here, the further away you are the less the effect.  As you get further away the depth of field to the front and rear of the focal point gets greater.

Studio Shoot and Photoshop

As part of my portfolio project to shoot portrait shots I set up the living room for high key photography.  This involved rigging a backdrop of white material that extended down over the floor.  I had four lights set up two at the back on the white screen set for F22 @ 1/125 sec and ISO 200.  The front two lights were set at F11 @ 1/125 sec and ISO 200.  I adjusted this down by closing up 2/3rdson the camera to F14.  I had An lie on the floor and therefore the over-exposed background was a bit of a wasted effort.  The original image is shown below:

Editing in Photoshop I selected the subject using the lasso and magic wand, I feathered the selection, inverted the selection, then selected the brush tool with a large setting.  I then brushed over with white across the image to clear the background.  I then re-sized the image to 8 x 12 inches @ 300dpi, applied a stroke and then re-sized the canvas by adding 6 and 4 inches to the long and short edges respectively.  The resulting image is shown below.

Messing around I then applied an effect, which was called Glowing Edges and sits in the Stylize option under the filters tab.  Which I thought looks ok, the image is below:

 



The most difficulty I had here is getting the subject to relax and be comfortable in front of the camera.  The inspiration for the pose came from a recent book I have bought called Photographing Models:1000 Poses A Practical Sourcebook For Aspiring And Professional Photographers by Eliot Siegel.  It is a useful book which gives good advice for lighting and other aspects of preparation as well as the different poses.  In a lot of cases the set up only requires one or two lights, which is quite handy.

I did take other shots during this shoot which I will post in due course.  For me this was about learning what sort of poses I liked, but remembering that it could be that it is better to ask what the model likes.  It was handy to show her the book and she could flick through and suggest poses.

Social Documentary - Graveyard Shoot

Last Saturday I managed to get out and take some more pictures.  The plan was to do two photo shoots, one in the centre of Aarschot next to the monument and another in the local grave yard.  As it happens the conditions were not right for the first, there was way too much light and I needed to set a really slow shutter speed.  I will have to return at a later date to that one.

 

In the graveyard I had more success and it was a good learning experience.  I had An wearing a black dress with a red scarf and holding some yellow flowers.  The sun was bright and casting some harsh shadows so it was going to be a bit of a challenge.  With me I had a stepladder, two tripods, my usual range of lenses, remote trigger and flash gun.  I metered the light and it was F20 at 1/125 at iso 200.  I wanted to capture the scale of the graveyard to indicate the number of people who were killed during the executions.  The graveyard was a separate area within the main public graveyard and it had the graves of Belgian soldiers on one side and civilians on the other.  The picture below captures the extent of the loss of life, all from the first world war.

I probably won't include this image because I think it is not particularly well composed or has any impact, or certainly not the kind I am looking for.  The Soldiers are buried on the left of this picture and the civilians on the right.  Between the trees is a large monument, which I wanted to photograph and Arthur's grave is in the shadows in the opposite quadrant.  Because the trees cast such a large shadow I did not have to contend with streaks of very bright sunshine when taking later pictures.  I did have to handle a rather harsh shadow across the main monument which is demonstrated in the photo below.

In the first image the shadow is cast across the top of the monument and I have set up the flash off camera, but it is lighting up the side rather than the face.  I had set the flash to give the same exposure as the rest of the ambient light.  With some adjustment I directed the flash to achieve the exposure for the second shot.  The only thing I am not too happy with is the slight glare of the flash that has caught the tree on the left hand side of the picture.  That said I decided to get closer to the model and frame a rather different shot which is shown below.

Again here the glare of the flash is caught on the left hand tree but the cross is nicely exposed.

 

I moved on to the tricky subject of photographing a shadow cast onto a gravestone.  I will cover this in another post but I would like to close on the next image.  I went behind the trees to where Arthur's grave was and measured the ambient light, it was F5 at 1/125 at iso 200.  I set up the flash on a tripod off camera and turned the power up so that I could cast a shadow.  I measured the light reading from the flash and it was F18 at 1/125 at iso 200.  I had failed to appreciate that I was about to under expose the background.  I did not achieve the aim of casting a shadow but I did get a rather good result when I made this mistake!

 

There is a shadow cast but it was not really the right height and set up.  I opted to get a lot closer to the grave stone but that will be shown in my next blog.  An was not really posing for this as I told her it was a test shot, I do like the way the colours have come out and the look she has.

 

That is all for now!

 

Social Documentary

One of my two portfolios is based upon a social documentary theme.  In my case I have chosen to remember an event from 19th August 1914.  The First World War had only just started and in the small town of Aarschot there was an incident where around 150 local people were executed in reprisal for the killing of a senior German Officer.  My mother-in-law's grandfather, Arthur Ryckmans, was one of the victims.

My aim is to mark the event, the link to the family and the idea that the family continues even though this terrible thing has happened.  I will post more details when I have researched them, but to start with I have this photograph of my mother-in-law's hands holding a picture of her grandfather.

Starting Out

Hi, I am just starting out with blogging and my aim is to chronicle the photo shoots that I do so that I can learn and pass on my experiences to other like minded people.

I have been into photography in one form or another since I was a child, but I only bought my first SLR camera back in 1997.  I am a Canon man, although this is not because I favour it over the Nikon or any other brand but that I have started with Canon and it would be far too expensive to give up my equipment now and change.  I have an EOS D50 and a range of lenses and other equipment.

Until recently I liked to avoid the use of flash, although I have had a Speedlite 550EX for some time, it has sat shamefully in the cupboard for most of the time that I have owned it.  That all changed when I attended a course at First Point Photography in Bournemouth.  Here I have learned how to use flash, both studio and on camera outdoors.  I quickly bought a light meter, which I now use all the time and a set of studio lighting.  I went a bit mad but then the possibilities are vast when you have the toys to play with.

I have to complete two portfolios for my course and so most of this blog will be about that to start with.  I do work full time too so keeping this up and doing the photography is quite a demand so here goes!