Envisioning the final image... all the way

Pentax 645D

We're always told to envision the final image before we press the shutter.  Frankly, I'm not quite sure what that means.  I mean, I'm evaluating the scene prior to picking up my camera; I'm looking at a little rectangle image in the viewfinder;  I'm placing my subject artistically in the frame; I'm evaluating my exposure; if Athena the God of good judgement is with me I'm checking the edges of my frame, not just my subject.  Does this qualify as "envisioning the final image?"

A nagging doubt makes me suspect not.  I'm often surprised when I see the image on the back of my camera.  Sometimes I see things there I didn't see in the viewfinder.  How three dimensions mutate when compressed onto two dimensions.

Having obviously not mastered the basics, I'm still foraging ahead to what I now see as the next level: envisioning the image as the viewer.  Not as the photographer.  As the viewer.  What emotions will it evoke?  What is it's use?  Will it be used for marketing? Education? Pure enjoyment?  How do these things relate to what the viewer sees?

And here's the point.  We (the photographer) take the picture. If we're professionals, it's for someone else. That person sees it not just as a picture, but as a tool.   It is a memory enhancer, or art to go on the wall, or a seller of product (shoes or dresses or beer), or a seller of brand (sexy accountant-- no, sorry, dedicated accountant).  If we want to excel as photographers we need to be knowledgeable in these areas, too.  Not just light ratios but marketing, adult learning theory, and social networks.  That's how our images are being used.  When the client looks at our pictures they're thinking, "does this sell, brand, remind, or beautify?" Most often it's the first of those: "does this image sell my product?"

That's not as grim as it sounds.  Seeing the image as the client isn't about adulterating your art with marketing schmooze.  Knowing marketing (and by extension the customer being marketed to) is simply another tool, another lens filter.  Consider this:  Shooting for a magazine you'd naturally consider negative space.  Your "dedicated accountant" wants to exude knowledge and assurance-- emotional qualities you might have pursued in your image anyway.  Negative space, emotional content-- those are important considerations in marketing. If you've ever done either of those two things, you've envisioned the image as the viewer.  But that's just the tip of the monster.

At Hurricane Images we posted a blog designed to help Etsy sellers use the videos we made for them.  When we work with merchants and artisans we start with the question, "what does our client want to express?"  We finish with the question, "what do their customers want to buy?" The client looks at our videos and images not as sellers, but as customers.  What are they really buying?

If you think about that question you realize they're not buying a handcrafted piece of jewelry.  They were buying the experience of being the subject of everyone's attention in the room. They're buying an object that takes everyone else's breath away.  Our video wasn't about jewelry, it was about breathlessness.  Shoot that.  Think about what the background should evoke. Is it intimacy or expanse, warmth or a winter night?  Is it a cocktail party out of focus? A hand submerged in fur on a cold night?  It's not a ring, it's an experience.

We also shot a set of testimonials for a center that provided holistic therapeutic massage.  No one wants therapeutic massage.  What they want is to be their younger, healthier self again.  The object (massage) isn't the subject.  The subject is what the customer wants.  

That's thinking like a marketer.  That's seeing the work as your client. 

Balancing Uneven Couples

As portrait photographers we're always working with an ideal of beauty on some level or another.  In life, these standards of beauty can be oppressive, damaging, but even the most independent and rebellious person tends to have at least one part of their body that bothers them because it doesn't fit that ideal.  Weight is one of the most common, and while every intelligent person knows it doesn't define beauty, most people would rather not see their weight "issue" immortalized on film.  And this is true whether their weight issue is real or not.  Couples can see beyond to the real beauty of a person, but when two people are pictured together, their difference in size can become even more obvious.

There are a number of techniques to "balance" a couple on film.  Generally speaking, each person should take up about the same amount of space in an image.  Culturally, we can see the man as a little bigger, but surprisingly they don't look any less masculine when equalized or balanced.  And if the man is a lot bigger than the woman, it can be equally distressing for them.

In standard V pose, couples of roughly equal size photograph "well."  It looks like this:

If the man is heavy set, you can have them face the camera and slide the woman in front so she covers part of his body.  This way, their space is about equal.  To keep her from becoming boxy, you have to put her weight on one foot, cock the hip, and work on the curves.

(You could have her face the camera directly and him angled towards her-- and this can work well for a certain feel-- but now he's in the feminine pose and she is in a more masculine pose.)

If she is larger than him, he can face the camera directly and she can slip her arm through his, placing her shoulder behind his.

Remember, the idea is to have them take up nearly equal space in the frame.

Recently, I photographed a couple who's height difference was 1.5 feet.  We played with her on a curb and him below, and sitting in various positions.  Her in his lap but their eyes level.  One thing you never want to do his have him slouch-- that'll ruin a picture.

3 Products Under $10 that Will Improve Your Photography More than that New Lens

It's very tempting to succumb to the belief that a new, better lens or camera will significantly improve our photography.  We know in our hearts that it won't, but we trick ourselves into believing it's true.  But there are some items that will actually improve our photography skills (and not just the contrast in our images).  And they're all under $10.

Painter's Tape
In the closet drawer it's probably not helping much, but there is a way to put it to good use:  Cut a 2-inch portion of tape and fold over one edge so that it can be easily removed (if you're worried about residue on your camera, stick it to your kitchen counter and then peel it off to reduce the stickiness).  Now put it over the top LCD screen on your camera.  This prevents you from reviewing your settings on the top monitor.

Go into your menu settings and turn off instant preview of your images.  Now, you can't quickly crimp your images to check exposure or focus.

Without info from the top LCD or the ability to quickly crimp, you can focus on seeing everything you need to see through the viewfinder.  All the info is there-- ISO, shutter, aperture, exposure, compensation.  Learn to adjust your settings without taking your eye from the viewfinder; and learn to evaluate the exposure of your scene for yourself as well.  Your camera's meter can be tricked-- so ask yourself, "is the scene predominantly light or dark?"  "Which way do I need to compensate?"  When you evaluate the exposure this way, you're seeing the edges of your frame (and not just your subject). There's no "run-and-gun" method; each picture is a thought-exercise.  It will slow you down at first, but when you remove the tape and turn on Instant Review again, you'll find you shoot both quicker and smarter.  Quicker, because you no longer have to take the camera away from your eye to adjust the settings; smarter because there's less trial and error.  My advice is not to leave the tape on for more than a few days-- it will, eventually, start to harden onto the camera.  But I've found that even a couple of days with the tape improved my evaluation skills and attention to technique.

Camera Remote
I've preached about this before.  It's challenging to practice portraiture because you need a willing subject.  With a remote, you can be both photographer and subject, exploring new lighting and new poses.  I think this is helpful in two ways: First, top photographers like Gregory Heisler always rehearse their lighting ideas before a shoot.  He's known to use a giant piece of paper on the ground so he can mark his lighting positions and take them with him.  That type of preparation separates his photography from the crowd.  Second, doing the poses yourself can help you communicate them to your clients.  Seeing what they look like in the picture tells you about camera angle.

Notebook

We think of learning as taking in information.  It's not.  It's our ability to process and remember.  Remembering is about recall.  You know that the head of a president  is engraved on a penny (maybe you even remember which one)-- and you've seen it a hundred thousand times.  But you probably can't answer with any confidence which direction his head is facing.  If you want to learn something, anything, practice recalling the information.  My notebook has become a way to process and aid recall.

My focus is at Hurricane Images is "people" photography, and that translates into excellence in three areas:  lighting, posing, and image editing.  I divided my notebook into those categories.

Bonus Product

Websites like this one.  The internet is chock full of free information.  It's almost embarrassing how little knowledge you need to pay for nowadays.  Everybody is giving at least a little bit away for free, with the hope that you'll purchase more, but every little bit is different.  You can cobble together a full set of skills from what's available online.

Day 66, Learning 66: Tastier Food Photography

Back in January I wrote a post on photography food that covered the basics.  The more you practice, of course, the more nuanced your understanding.  Or sometimes things that were "invisible" to you because they were seemingly self-evident become commandingly evident while working one's craft.  While shooting some promotional images for Yum For All, a vegan cookie company who's tasty tidbits are out-of-this-world delicious, a few self-evident approaches made their presence clear.  So I'm adding on to my original post here.

In product photography is easy forget that it takes an inordinate amount of futzing.  If you shoot events you learn to create captivating images in a fraction of second...

Portraiture is more methodical, but you're still working within a small window of time in order to catch authentic emotion.  When shooting product, you need to slow down that clock.  Play with the lighting-- both subtracting and adding.  For that reason, it's easiest to work with continuous lights.  You don't need the power of a flash because you don't need to freeze movement.

Cookies are an interesting challenge.  They don't have the color variety of fruits or vegetables.  That means you can't play with contrasting colors.  They're also relatively small-- making it easy for other elements to overpower them in the image.  And they're commonly recognized, minimizing any "wow" factor.  For the picture above we went matching tone colors: the wood plate matches the almond slices in the cookies rather than contrasts them.  The jar of almonds would have overpowered the cookies except for two things:  we only see part of the jar and the almonds inside echo the almonds on the cookies.  We introduced a little "wow" or unique factor by having the plate be a stump ring-- not something you see every day.

The image below is a little more traditional.  We used a triad of cookies because three is visually pleasing, and it creates depth in the scene.  Remember the January post where I said utensils bring the viewer into the image?  Well the bite does the same thing.  That single crumb does adds something remarkable:  it makes you think the cookie was just bitten into.  The action becomes immediate.  Notice, too, how the bite is both in focus and the brightest spot in the image.  The focus of a food image should always be on the spot where the viewer will take the next bite.

 

 

This last image puts the crumbs and the ingredients into the picture.

 



I'm not quite as fond of this one for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.  The separation between the background and foreground cookies seems too far; and the chocolate pieces... I wish some of them were in focus.  Maybe it should be a trail of chocolate pieces leading up to the front cookie, rather than a trail of crumbs.

Day 50, Learning 50: The Long Road

 

Whew!  I'm at the half-way mark for my 100 Days of Learning project.  For the most part it's been easier than I expected, though I hope the last couple of days aren't foreshadowing for the next 50.  Finding new material was hard.  But I still can't recommend it highly enough.  There's a certain point in everyone's development when you can only learning by consciously pushing oneself; and everyone has learning to do.

What pulled me through the past couple of days was exploring the idea of combining niches.  For example, if portraiture is your thing, than the "environmental portrait" requires you to have a high degree of control over both landscape and interior photography.  So what combination is necessary for you to excel in your niche?

On my 50th day, I'm offering a few thoughts on landscape photography:

• Standing upright is rarely the right position for landscapes
• Look for either leading lines or a strong foreground element
• Play with long exposures for creating movement, even if it's just creamy clouds
• Bracket your exposures when shooting a high contrast scene
• Look for natural "frames:" trees, cliffs, rocks
• Wait for that side light: avoid shooting between 11am to 2pm

Day 46, Learning 46: Meter for the Light You Can't Control

Meter for the light you can't control

I ran across this sentence in my notebook today and tried to remember what it meant.  I had deconstruct the statement: the light you can't control... ambient light.  The meter part wasn't simply about measuring, it was about  creating your exposure based on the ambient light, and then adding the light you can control.  In the outdoor setting, this advice seems simplistic and self-evident.  For the above image I placed my model in the shade; then I under-exposed her a stop and adding a soft box with an SB800 on camera right to give more energy and shape to the light. 

But you can apply this same principle indoors.  If there are windows, the light outside is the one you can't control.  French photographer (and Lightroom guru) Serge Ramelli makes most of his income from photographing hotel rooms.  He has great advice about waiting for the Golden Hour before photographing hotel interiors. Turn off all the lights and see what the environment looks like, then building your lighting scheme around that.

Day 41, Learning 41: Miksang Photography

Chances are you've practiced a little Miksang without knowing it; if you're a street photographer (or a compulsive iPhone photographer) you've definitely dabbled, perhaps knowingly.  The term "Miksang" is Tibetan and means "good eye."  It has been described as the art of seeing without biases, filters, or judgement, with a focus on the "discovery" of everyday things.  It's an exploration of how the elements of design-- line, shape, form, texture, color, and pattern-- illicit emotion when stripped of their meaning.  The image isn't a chain wrapped around a pole, it's texture, strangulation, liberation, and confinement.  (I'm not suggesting that the above image is a good example of Miksang because frankly I have no real expertise in this area; it is, however, Miksang.)

Such a broad and vaguely defined term begs for abuse, and it wouldn't surprise me if in a couple of years it "becomes all the rage" amongst undisciplined artistic types.  Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't already, especially in a place like San Francisco where I'm from.  Nonetheless, I think the idea poses an interest challenge, a reminder to look deeper.  I wrote about pre-visualization a couple of days ago.  This is the exact opposite.

Day Ten, Learning Ten: Golden ratios in Lightroom

 

Pretty much everyone is familiar with the Rule of Threes in photography.  And when you use the Crop Tool in Lightroom, it gives you an outline of the rule with which to crop your images.  But are you familiar with the Golden Triangle?  Or the Golden Spiral?  Lightroom is, and here’s a great tip.  Click on your Crop Tool, and then hit “O” (that’s the letter, not the number).  With each press you’ll cycle through each of the six Golden rules for composition.  Hold down the SHIFT key and hit “O” and you’ll change the orientation of the overlay.

The Rule of thirds is, in my opinion, the most useful.  But the Golden Triangle can be helpful in determining where to put your point of interest with the composition has a lot of diagonal lines. 

Similarly, the Golden Spiral is especially helpful when you have a lot of negative space, or empty space in your image.  Now go back to the image at the top of the post.  This isn’t the perfect example, because ultimately you’d like more of an angle following the arc of the spiral, but the top of the violin to the elbow/hand (continuing on thru the bow arm) accomplishes some of that arc.

This feature seems to exist from version 3 forward.  Kind of amazing what they hid away in the program, huh?