Category: education

The Exposure Triangle – A Primer

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When we look at the elements of composition, the three that everyone constantly considers are shutter speed, aperture settings and ISO (or ASA in the old days of film). These three factors make up something called the Exposure Triangle.

Exposure Triangle

Readers of the blog have seen this before, in my post about The Future of Photography. The rules of the exposure triangle (such that there are rules in photography…) state that if you want to keep the lighting the same in your shot, as you increase one factor, another must decrease proportionally, while the third is kept the same. What does that mean? Simple – let’s take scenario I encountered when on a photo shoot with some friends touring the waterfalls of South Carolina. While shooting, I saw a perfect scene to demonstrate how this would be manifested.

For our first example, let’s set set up our camera and take a picture of a waterfall. In order to hand hold, and easily compose things, we have the following settings.

  • A shutter speed of f 1/250
  • An aperture of f 4.5
  • And an ISO of 100

Fabulous – but in looking at the photo, we’re not crazy with how the photo looks. Something is off, and we want to change one of our settings to make for a better composition. I’d like to see the same photo but with some blurred water. Now in your own photography it could be something else, like a flower to be sharper throughout the entire depth of the frame, or the background of a portrait to be completely blurred. So, how do we accomplish that? This is where understanding what each factor does to the composition:

Shutter speed

Shutter speed controls how quickly the shutter opens and closes. The higher the setting, the faster the “action” is – so you can freeze something like a speeding bullet, a blade of a moving helicopter, or the wing of a hummingbird.

Aperture

The aperture is the size of the opening on your lens. Think of it like a hose that controls flow rate. You could use a really skinny hose that only lets a teensy bit of water through, or a fire hose that just gushes gallons and gallons. Now, as you open the aperture wider, and let more light in, you also do something called creating a shallow depth of field. And the more shallow your aperture is, the less focused things will be in the foreground and behind your subject.

ISO

The ISO is the noise or sensitivity setting for your camera sensor. This changes how sensitive the sensor is to light hitting it. Lower ISO settings make it more sensitive to light, higher settings make it less sensitive. Back in the days of film, this was done by using films of a certain ASA value (which ironically was referred to as film speed, but I digress…) But the fun thing to consider is that once you inserted film in a camera, you were stuck with that film setting until you finished every frame, so ISO adjustability in digital cameras was a HUGE advancement.

Okay, so now, back to our example photo. Now in our example, we want to make the water more blurred, so we have to slow the shutter down, not speed it up. Okay, so let’s do that:

New shutter speed = 0.5″ (one half second)

So, what’s going to happen? Well, because we are now letting the shutter stay open a LOT longer (0.5 seconds is HUGE, but we need that to really blur water)! As a result, more light is going to hit the sensor, and make it way too over-exposed, so we need to compensate for that by adjusting the other two controlling elements – aperture and ISO. Now in this example, our ISO is already as low as it can go, so our only option is to make our aperture opening much smaller:

  • A shutter speed of f 0.5″
  • An aperture of f 29.0
  • And an ISO of 100

See how we did that? Now, this shot is going to have much more blurred water, and our exposure stays consistent. But, we’ve effectively made the same shot with a different composition!

See how the shutter speed and aperture will change the entire composition? Yes, I blurred the water, which was my primary goal, but look at the log in the foreground. Now it’s a little out of focus due to the shorter depth of field. Pretty fun stuff, eh? I should also mention now that since I slowed the shutter speed to half a second, there was no way I could hand hold that, so I mounted it to a tripod in order to prevent camera shake.

As a reminder, for a strict metadata comparison, that’s what happens when you account for the exposure triangle:

Shot 1

  • Shutter speed = 1/125th
  • Aperture = f 4.5
  • ISO = 100

Shot 2

  • Shutter speed = .5 seconds
  • Aperture = 29
  • ISO = 100

Happy shooting!

Author note: I was going to post this article in response to a question that came to me from Quora. Imagine my surprise when I realized I had never written a post in 10 years on something as fundamental as the Exposure Triangle!  It may have been written and lost in the server crash from a few years ago, but thanks to Quora for giving me the reason to re-create it now!

The Smart Phone Versus the SLR?

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Lately the internet has been teeming with people fixating on the latest iPhone release, and questions are coming through the woodwork asking the same question over and over. Everyone thinks they are coming up with an original question, just because they changed one word here or there, but essentially all these questions come down to smart phone cameras versus traditional cameras. I’ve answered the question so much via email, in forums, on Reddit, and in Quora that I finally said “enough is enough”. For all who want to ask the question, I am going to direct you to this post!

Smart Phone Cameras in a nutshell

Let’s break down this phrase a bit – smart phone cameras What does this mean? It means the phone vendors like Apple, Samsung, LG, Huawei and the rest are adding cameras as software applications to sit on top of these cell phones. I’ll say that one more time for clarity. At their core, these devices are cell phones. So, on that basis alone, why would anyone want to draw a comparison between an add-on feature to a device designed with photography in mind?

The answer lies in dollar bills. That’s it – money! Vendors want to sell more devices, and if the phones can’t really be improved (let’s face it, cell phones are merely a function of the network they are on), then sales plummet! Think about it – iPhones, Androids, and the rest all must be on a cellular network for their original designed purpose of making phone calls, right? So, off the top of your head, how many cellular providers can you name? Not regional ones. I mean Tier 1 providers! I came up with 4/5:

Verizon

AT&T

T-Mobile

Sprint

US Cellular (don’t really wanna count these guys, but ok…)

I think the phone makers agree:

iPhone Carriers offered

From the Apple iPhone 11 Splash page

Samsung carriers offered

The others, like metroPCS, Cricket, Go Phone, etc. are really just smaller ones that piggyback on the major providers networks (and many are actually owned by them!)

So, don’t fall for the hype. iPhones, Samsungs, and every device out there as far as their phone service goes, is only as good as the network it lives on. They can’t sell products that way, because the experience will be different for everyone, based on the network and where the customer lives relative to the towers. So, cell phone vendors try to stand apart by their add-ons. That is the only reason why every vendor tries to hype their accessory apps like cameras, computer speeds, and media storage aspects of these ridiculous tiny devices (of course tongue in cheek when you consider that these devices have more processing capacity than what we had when sending a rocket to the moon!).

But, everyone likes cameras, and photographs are a part of our lives. We are a visual society, so everyone wants a camera they can always have with them. Naturally, since we always have our cell phones with us, it’s sheer brilliance to make the camera feature the selling point.

But the cameras are crap.

There, I said it. Cell phone cameras are crap compared to dedicated cameras. Don’t believe me? Check this out:

Here is a photographic representation of various camera sensor sizes ranging from a medium format camera, all the way down to the sensor sizes of point-and-shoot cameras, with their actual dimensions (courtesy of Wikipedia):

I don’t even see a cell phone camera listed, so off to Google I went in search of the actual dimensions of a cell phone CCD sensor for capturing images. Here’s what I found…

From https://improvephotography.com/55460/what-is-the-focal-length-of-an-iphone-camera-and-why-should-i-care/ )

So, the sensor in a smart phone is about 7mm x 6mm in physical size. The author claims that’s “about the same as a 1/2.5″ sensor”. I actually think it’s closer to the 1/1.7″ range, but that’s miniscule…

A meaningless measurement from the outside looking in, but it looks to me based on the lens that the sensor is about 1/3 of an inch. Interesting that this sort of information is not readily available from Apple, Samsung, or other phone vendors. I wonder why?

The answer is because at the end of the day, the sensor on these cameras are teensy tiny miniscule little things that are crammed into the innards of a phone, trying to get you to buy into the fact that the CCD sensor of the phone (thus making it a “smart” phone) is better than the sensor of an SLR, or even a point and shoot.

I’ll go to my grave saying that it’s not better, and never will be. Simple physics prevents it.

Lenses

If you ask any photographer the question of what camera to buy (excluding talk of the smart phone cameras), invariably, they will tell you that it’s not the camera you buy into – it’s the camera system. More specifically, it’s the glass that matters. The reason for this is because the camera is just a box that houses the sensor, and it’s the lens that defines the clarity of the shot, your aperture range, and even the sharpness of the glass comes into play. I know photographers that refuse to by Tamron or Sigma glass because they claim it’s “not as sharp as Canon” lenses. I’ll leave that argument aside for now, because the point here is to highlight that even if we were to exclude the sensor as not being as much of a factor based on this concept, we need to now look at the lenses in these phone cameras.

So, let’s do that for the iPhone 11:

That’s actually better than I would have thought, because most predecessor phone cameras had fixed or nearly fixed aperture sizes on their lenses. But a range from 1.8 – 2.4 aperture opening is impressive, as it’s nearly a full stop (read more about apertures and F-stops here) so I’ll grant that. Now let’s compare that to the absolute cheapest lens for a Canon lens at B&H Photo (I looked at the EF and EF-S lens mounts). I also could have picked Nikon, Pentax, or another maker, but I am CanonBlogger for a reason: 🙂

So, for $125, I can get a lens that goes from an f1.8 all the way up to f22? (That’s about a 6 full F-stop range by the way, for those of you keeping score..) A smart phone camera will never compete with that. Now, for the average Joe (or Josephina) consumer, what does that matter or mean? It means from a smart phone, you’ll always get images that look like this:

And never get images that look like this:

Now, with my rant over on the differences between the camera apps and sensors in phones versus the dedicated SLR and even point and shoot cameras, I need to clarify something.

Software

The way that phone cameras are able to get some apparently stunning imagery is not because of the camera – it’s because of the software. So, if you really want to compare apples to apples, the comparison should be between phone camera software and standalone software. And I will grant you that the software the developers at Apple and Samsung have done some amazing work as to what’s baked into the computational algorithms. The problem lies in the fact that it’s baked into the phone. We have no control over it.

Now, devil’s advocates will say “There’s an app for that” and sure, there are tons, but that’s not a fair comparison, now is it? Comparing a software app from a phone camera to a dumb SLR that has the sole purpose of capturing images makes no sense. So, if you want to get into a discussion of software comparisons, we can do that, but we need to make it an apples to apples comparison. Which one would you like to start with? We could start with a comparison to Lightroom, Photoshop, and others…

But if anyone tries to tell me that the hard baked software for photo editing in a phone can compare with Photoshop, Lightroom, or any of the above, I’ll… well, just don’t! 🙂

Printing

Does anyone print images anymore? I am not sure about that to be honest. With social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and LinkedIn (and probably a whole host of others that I am not hip to), we often are looking at images through this medium rather than by prints. So, my argument here could be meaningless, but…

Take a photo with a smart phone camera. Take the same photo with a point and shoot camera. Try to print them at your local print store. My guess is you’ll be able to print up to perhaps an 8×10 photograph from the cell phone. From the SLR camera – you can go billboard and poster sized effortlessly. Why? Because of the sensor and the pixels.

You see, cramming pixels more tightly together in a small teensy sensor is going to produce something called artifacting, which ultimately translates to bad pictures when you try to print to a larger medium. So, there’s that too…but again, perhaps I am long in the tooth because I don’t know anyone who prints photographs anymore. 🙁

Conclusion

So, there you have it – the full explanation as to why a smart phone camera will never truly compare with a dedicated camera. The SLR will always win. In any category.

What say ye all, interweb citizens of the world? Agree with my assessment? Hate it? Sound off as to why you like what I have to say, or where I am just flat out wrong in my preconceived notions. Otherwise, I’m ready – what’s the next question…?

5 Tips for Better Pano Photography

Jason2 Comments

With Apple and Android phones, the ability to take panorama photographs has really changed the landscape (if you’ll pardon the pun 🙂 ) for still photography in this genre. You can get some truly stunning results without the need to stitch several photographs together in heavy desktop applications like Photoshop anymore. Like anything else though, there are things you can do to increase your keeper rate, and things to avoid (unless you like deleting tons of photos).  Here are Five Tips To Improve Panorama Photos:

Tip #1 – Make sure you scope out the scene all around you.  Believe it or not, the iPhone panorama photo feature goes to nearly 300 degrees from left to right.  This means you will almost be doing a complete circle.  Is there anything on your left or right that you particularly want to be in the photo, or the draw of your photo?  Make sure that you initially face that particular person or scene.  Then turn 90 degrees to your left before you start shooting.

Denver Airport Panorama
Denver Airport Panorama

(I wanted to make sure the plane on camera right was fully in the frame, and my first short, the pano ended right before the hallway on the right, so it looked like it was cut off…)

Tip #2 – Go slow!  The iPhone will tell you to slow down if you start moving too quickly from left to right, but at that point, it’s likely too late.  Stop the shot and start over.  Don’t get impatient because your wife (or husband, or significant other or friend or whoever) wants to get to your ultimate destination.  The amount of time it takes to completely capture the pano scene is about 15 seconds from left to right.  Add another 15 seconds to review the image on screen before you leave the area (you may have to re-shoot).  Finally, add another 15 seconds to your itinerary in case you really do need to re-shoot!  Just as a buffer, I’d add a final 15 seconds in because…well, you never know!  All in, that’s one minute of their lives that your S.O. will have to wait for you.

Tip #3 – Consider the lighting – If your scene varies a lot from dark areas to light areas, that will not bode well for capturing a pano with the iPhone.  Why?  Quite simply, it can’t capture the dynamic range of our eyes.  Low light to bright light can be tough for the sensor to handle, and extremely low light scenes will introduce a lot of grain too.  Most of the time, shots that result from these scenarios will be unusable.  Exceptions to this would be city skyline shots.  The bright lights will be blown out, and the skyline itself will be all in shadow, but that’s ok – that kind of contrast is actually a good thing for skyline shots!

dark pano - what not to do
dark pano – what not to do

(Clearly, the bright light of the lamp and the darker area of the living room made for a bad contrast between bright and dark areas here…this is a bad shot imho..pano or no pano!    )

Tip #4 – Consider the framing from top to bottom.  When shooting pano shots from the iPhone, you can’t rotate the camera to go into landscape mode – it must be recorded in portrait mode.    This means you may get portions of your scene at the bottom, the top, or both that you might not otherwise want in a final photo.  Re-frame accordingly as you conceptualize the shot!

Similarly, consider what’s off-camera to the immediate left and right. Is it the road you’re on or a coastline? Unless you take up several frames when viewing this kind of shot, it may end up looking a bit odd.

Finally, consider that you do not necessarily have to go the full range from left to right or right to left. Some the best types of scenes for panoramic photography are better off from perhaps just a little bit more than a standard picture. Here for example, an architectural shot, or perhaps a larger group of people. Everyone automatically presumes that panos are best utilized in landscape photography. While this is true, there are usages outside of that genre.

How to Hold Your Phone Camera

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How you hold your camera is so important, yet so many of us take our camera grip for granted, assuming that we will naturally hold it in the most stable way available.  For some, it does come naturally, but for most of us, bad habits can take root before we even know it.  To that end, there’s a couple pointers I’ve put together on How To Hold Your SLR and How To Hold Your P&S.  To wrap things up, today I’d like to share a couple tips on How To Hold Your Phone Camera.

Video seems to work for demonstration purposes, so again, YouTube to the rescue:

The takeaways from the video?  Three simple ones:

1.  Finger Curl – curl your middle fingers around the front lower side of your camera phone – this will add stability and will help subconsciously you to keep your armed tucked in

How to Hold your Smart Phone
How to Hold your Smart Phone

2.  Arm Tuck – Since I just mentioned it, avoid sticking your arms out – either to the side or in front of you.  Extended your arms reduces stability and tends more toward camera shake.  Keep your arms tucked in, elbows into your tummy by your waist.

3.  Double L – Make an L with both hands and cradle your camera phone into the corner of each hand.  Position the phone so that your camera lens is on the topside.  That way, your thumb (either left or right depending on phone model) will be at the ready for the trigger on the edge of your phone (don’t use the on-screen one).

As always, there is no hard and fast set of rules to follow – using these techniques will not guarantee a stable shot.  If you watch the video – notice even as I demonstrated, the camera shifted slightly even in my grip.  The best way to hold any camera is not with your hands but with a tripod!

There are options out there for phone cameras now too – I like this one:

Got your own tips, ideas, or suggestions for hand holding a camera phone?  What works for you?  Do you use a tripod or a monopod?  What gear would you recommend?

How to Hold your Camera – The SLR

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A while back I was up at Maroon Bells in Colorado, anticipating the peak of the fall colors.  The lake there at the base of the Maroon Bells has become quite an idyllic scene for photographers of all levels to aspire to. So, I was not alone when I was there.  Quite the contrary. The place was loaded with literally hundreds of photographers, bot from Colorado and even from places as far away as St. Louis (from those I talked to anyway).

One of the things that struck me was that from all the expensive gear out there, I saw many many people holding their cameras wrong. It honestly seemed like they knew more about the gear than about taking and making pictures.  What do I mean?  Simple. You can know all about the technical aspects of gear. You can learn what the maximum ISO settings are. Even get rock solid on frame rates, crop sensors, and all that techno-jargon pretty easily.  All it takes is an internet connection and some time to memorize the numbers.  But what you can’t learn online is good photography techniques.

Proper Holding Techniques

So, how do you hold a camera?  Excellent question!  This has been covered by many in the blogosphere, and inevitably, someone will likely say refer to Joe McNally’s “The grip” video.  In this video, he talks about shooting hand held at slower shutter speeds, and introduces a grip technique for left-eyed shooters:

It’s got some great pointers in there, but many can get distracted by the “low light shooting” and the “left-eye shooters” concepts.  Rest assured, there are elements of this whole approach that are universally applicable.  Here’s some simple pointers:

1.  Keep your arms tucked in – letting your arms go outside past your core body introduces instability…never a good thing when hand-holding.

2.  Unfortunately for left-handed shooters, the camera vendors have designed cameras with the grip on the right side.  This is the part where your fingers curl around the camera body, so just make sure your right hand is curled there.  Most everyone gets this right…the part where there is a lot of variation is the left hand!

3.  Keep your left hand under the camera and resting on the lens.  Resist the urge to bring that left hand out to the side to turn the dial for zooming…you can do it with your hand on the bottom, and this way, you are providing more stability to the camera.  The other upside is that by keeping that left hand under, you are also keeping your arms tucked in!

4.  Stop using the LCD/Live Preview.  I know, we all like a big screen and the bigger the better to see your shots…but so many people are migrating to using the live preview (especially when the camera has that articulating screen), and it’s introducing bad techniques.  When you use the LCD screen – what happens?  Your face goes back or your arms go out, and the camera becomes unstable.  Keep using the viewfinder for as long as the vendors keep it on the camera!  Keep your face planted up against that camera body…it helps with that whole stability thing!

A great way to test this is to take a shot using good technique and an identical shot using..well, a not-so-good technique.  Compare the results and see what produces better results!  Of course, some will likely chime in and ask “What if I don’t have an SLR?”  That’s a great point, so if that describes you – make sure you come back later when I talk about how to hold a point-and-shoot camera (and a camera phone tutorial is coming too!) 🙂

Or, if you can’t wait to read the text (because let’s face it, we all wanna binge watch stuff these days anyway…)

and here (for the smart phone technique):

Hardware Review: Sigma 18-250

Jason15 Comments

The subject of today’s post:  The Sigma 18-250mm lens review!  You read that right – Sigma has a lens that covers the range of 18-250.  This allows you to go from relatively wide angle shots at the 18mm end to zooming pretty far in at 250mm on the opposite end.  But, is the quality really there?

I took the lens through its paces over the weekend and here’s what I found out about the Sigma 18-250!  In the interests of full disclosure, I should also note that this was actually requested by myself for review, and that I am not being compensated in any manner by the good folks at Sigma.  So, this is, in fact, a loaner and I am required to send it back no later than June 26th.  Since I will be busy next weekend, decided I should get the review shots done with this weekend so the lenses can be shipped back on schedule.

sigma18_250

Pros:

  • Weight – this has a nice solid feel to it.  With I think a total of 13 elements in here, it’s no surprise that it doesn’t feel the slightest bit flimsy.  The weight adds a certain durability, but I still took things carefully as this is only on loan from Sigma for the purposes of this review.   Compared to the 70-200, it certainly felt heavier, but I am not sure what the comparative weights are.  All in all though, I think the weight is a good thing.
  • Noise – Excellent!  My prior experience with Sigma is my own 70mm Macro, which does not have the HSM (hypersonic motor).  That thing is NOY-ZEE!  This, on the other hand, rivals the USM operation of Canon lenses.  Compared to the 70-200L glass I own, the two are pretty close to each other in terms of silence in operation.  The test I did for this was switch focus to manual, then take the lens all the way out to the opposite end of its last focus point.  I then switched it back on to AF and listened for the motor operation.  Sure, I could hear it when listening, but man was it quiet!
  • Range –  This is without a doubt, my most favorite element (bad pun) of this lens.  The fact that I could go from wide angle work to close up work with such ease makes this an ideal lens for things like photo walks (which are becoming more and more popular), or for just a go-to lens on a regular basis without having to switch out.
  • OS – Optical Stabilization – the equivalent of IS on Canon lenses.  While I don’t own a Canon IS lens for direct comparison, I will say that it went a full stop faster than my 70-200mm CanonL f4.0 did at the same focal length/light.  In a day and age where fast glass is becoming pretty much the standard, I would say this meets the mark.
  • Size – This lens is remarkable compact – standing at almost half the height of my 70-200 comparison lens.  Think about that – a wider range of zoom and half the length.  I can store this vertically in my bag, saving precious cargo space for other accessories and accouterments.  Alongside would be the 70mm Macro, the 10-22mm, lensbaby, flash and other such items.  Very tempting for that reason alone.
  • Feel – The signature brushed metal feel of Sigma lenses is present here and it just exudes “cool” and “professional”.  No bells or whistles, no fancy L rings or anything, just brushed smoothness.  Gotta love it!
  • Image Quality – The bugaboo, the real deal, the end result – the pictures!  So how does it stack up?  Pretty well actually, but rather than wax on, I’ll just share some images I took for you to judge the IQ – just remember to distinguish IQ from compositional quality!  🙂  Here’s the results…

A little zoomed in at 50mm

A first glance of the Sigma at 18mm

Full zoom at 250mm

The Sigma at 18mm

The Sigma at full zoom (250mm)

Sigma detail and sharpness

Another detail shot

Cons:

  • Weight – Yes, I am listing weight as both a pro and a con – the weight did get to me after a while of shooting on the 40D.  While it’s durability is not in question at all, the heaviness can get on your wrist and forearm.  I should put this qualifier out that I am still recouperating a tender arm from our move last July, which I am for the most part over, but it still flares up with extended use.  So, things like shooting for a day can wear on me. Lighter is always better, but if I had to choose between durability and lightness, the former would win every time.  Take what you wish from this con then…’nuff said.
  • Cost – It retails at B&H for $529, which is always a big price tag to swallow no matter what you are buying.  Then again, when you look at a comparable lens from Canon that has the OS/IS built-in, the Canon counterpart goes for almost twice that at $1025 (and you still don’t get the same range of focus).  While it may be a lot to pay on first glance, you really are getting quite a bit of bang for your buck.

Truth be told, I couldn’t find much else to nit on.  I also liked the fact that they made this lens so you can put the lens hood on while also leaving the cap able to attach.  Don’t ask me why, but I like that…  Believe it or not, the lens also performed fairly well with portrait work too.  I did a few test shots with yours truly as the subject and even got one I liked!   So, would I recommend this lens?  Absolutely!  To see a complete gallery of photos I took this weekend, including the portrait ones, and even a few of the moon last night with a TC attached), follow this link:

Sigma 18-250 Gallery of Images

Well, that should be enough content for the day (I know, my reviews are long-winded), so get out and shoot (with a Sigma if you like! 🙂 ), and we’ll see you back here tomorrow.  Happy Shooting!  Don’t forget – would love to hear reader thoughts and ideas for product reviews – let me know in the comments or via email!

Grab the feed

Photography Location

Jason1 Comment

A lot of the time people ask me what suggestions or recommendations I can give them when they look for a photographer.  It’s usually because the person is not in an area I can get to, or it’s a family member or a friend that wants to pick my brain (even though it hurts sometimes! 🙂  )  When I get this question, I tell most people that choosing a photographer is much like choosing a house or real estate:  It’s all about location!

What do I mean by this?  Simply put: a photographer can shoot on-location.  I see many photographers speak to their ability to shoot on-location, and this is an important aspect of many genres ranging from wedding photography, to band photography, and even architectural work.  Heck, last week I did a maternity shoot that was “on location.”  So, why is this such an important thing to be able to stake claim to?  Three key things come to mind for me:

1.  Adaptability – Being able to shoot on location means you can adapt.  If the surroundings are beautiful, you can adjust your composition to include elements of the scene to give a sense of time and space to an image.  If the surroundings aren’t so beautiful, then it equally means you are able to diffuse things so that you can’t tell where a shot was taken – only that it’s a beautiful shot!

2.  Controlling – Yes, being able to shoot on location means you are adaptable, but it also means you can control for a number of factors, and of utmost importance here is the ability to control the light.  You can bring flash to fill shadows, or scrims to bring shadows to harsh light.  If a photographer can control for the light in a scene – the shot will improve by a factor of ten in most instances.

Castle Rock Firehouse

3.  Fundamentals – Given the above two factors are in place, this also usually means that the photographer brings a certain set of fundamental skills to the table.  He or she knows an aperture versus a shutter setting, and can likely tell you whether ISO 100 is better or worse than ISO 32000 (depending on the look of course!).  Although many like to wax esoteric about photography in abstract terms (myself included), there are certain fundamentals that every photographer worth their salt would and should know.  If you can shoot on location, you likely have these fundamentals.

These are just three of the factors that I think about when I see a photographer say they are an “on-location” photographer.  Of course the proof is in the pudding, and while I certainly would not pick a photographer solely on whether or not that term is included in their online presence, the ability to back up statements with a solid portfolio (and yes, an interview if you have the time to talk to a potential photographer!)

While we all like to think we have these traits, and in enough of a capacity to “bring it” for any client – let’s face it…some photographers are better than others.  Either they’ve got a natural knack for it where others have to work harder at it, or they’ve just simply been shooting a lot longer.  Seriously…time means practice, and the more you practice, the better you are at anything!  There are photographers who have been shooting for decades and some of us can’t hold a candle to them.  Meanwhile, others have been shooting for days, and I often stand in awe of their work.  So, consider the above three things when you decide to hang out your own shingle – because people will likely be looking for these traits.  Do you have them?  Do you have more?  Less? Something different? Something new?

What traits do you bring to the table?  Or better yet, what traits do you think are important for potential clients to consider when hiring a photographer?  The above is just my opinion – but that doesn’t mean it’s the ultimate answer!  Am I right or am I way off base?  Sound off with your own thoughts as the conversation is always the best part about this blog!  Can’t wait to hear what you have to say!  Until next time, keep the comments coming – oh yeah, and keep on shooting!

Triptych Photography 101

Jason1 Comment

If I were to say the word triptych to you, many folks wouldn’t know for sure what I am talking about. Let’s be honest…in photography, there are lots of crazy semantics to understand! Everything from ISO’s and apertures, to shutters, diopters and f-stops, ASA’s and guide numbers are all part of the craft. Heck, there’s even one called the “circle of confusion” – and you can quickly get lost in the sea of words and acronyms in photography. One that I can’t believe I’ve not talked about here before is a TRIPTYCH! It’s pretty simple actually when you break it down really though, so fear not. Here’s your beginner’s guide to triptych photography!

In a triptych, all you are doing is taking three photographs and putting them together in sequence. The sequence can be three photographs all composited into one montage (say in Photoshop), they can be individual prints that are assembled in a wide frame, or even three framed photos that are hung horizontally or in close proximity to each other on a wall. Traditionally, triptychs follow a theme, whether it be a series of photos over time (a house in the Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter), a person with different poses, or a landscape cut up into a left, center and right framed photograph.

Triptych photographs can be a lot of fun, especially if you have the digital capacity to preview how things might look in sequence like this. Here’s a few examples I’ve done digitally to give you an idea. First, a posed series:

Triptych Portrait - Maggie
Triptych Portrait – Maggie

And now a landscaped series:

Triptych Landscape - Weeds
Triptych Landscape – Weeds

See how a landscape can have various elements in each, to visually tie things together? This is similar to, but quite different from the effect of a series of portraits. I’ve seen some wonderful triptychs where people have assembled longitudinal poses (say a dog as a puppy, at 4 years and in their senior years), triptychs of seasonal changes in a landscape, and even triptychs that juxtapose color, black and white, and sepia filters on photos.

Triptych Boneyard Beach
Triptych Boneyard Beach

Add to it the ability to angle photographs from the top left to the bottom right, or from the bottom left to top right, and even up and down to create an entirely different effect. Matting and framing choices also factor into how successful a triptych display would be. You literally are bound by nothing more than your imagination. As the folks at Canon are keen for saying then, where does your imagination want to take you today? Follow that path unique to you! To that end, I’d like to hear from the reading audience, here’s my questions back to you:

1. Do you find triptych styles of presentation appealing?

2. Have you done any triptych work in the past that you’ve posted either online or in your own house or gallery?

Shooting for fun or money

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For this first of two holiday weeks for the year, the blog will be turning to more of an esoteric theme. Tips, tricks, tutorials, and the like are all fine and dandy, but this week I’d like to pose a question fo whether we are shooting for fun or money!

While clearly we all start in the craft because we love it as a form of expression. We are captivated by capturing the moment, painting a scene with light and color. if we learn the craft well enough, and our eye gets discerning enough, others may ask us to take pictures for them! Or even better, ask if they can have a copy of something we’ve already done. Praise is a wonderful ego boost and source of flattery, and while we all may mask it with self-deprecating remarks, humor, or coyness – no one likes the compliment better than someone who wants to pay them for their work!

“Getting paid to do something you love” is an oft-quoted sentiment, as is the idea that “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”. But, truth be told, if you make your living in photography, there is going to be a certain amount of pressure to perform – or produce results. And the minute to take something you love and try to earn a living at it – the pressures of running the business side will reduce the passion you have for the subject. It’s the nature of the beast. You have to eat. You have to have shelter. If you can’t afford those two necessities, how much will you really “love” working as a professional photograper?

The shot today is a perfect example…I absolutely love this shot:

Adirondack Weeds
Adirondack Weeds

From a critique perspective, this is a horrible shot. The angle is all wonky, the horizon isn’t straight, there is really no subject, and I probably butchered the saturation in post production. But, for me…when I was canoeing with my family this last summer, we were cooling off in Raquette Lake, and I was sipping a lukewarm beer. My brother and brother-in-law were to my left and right…the nephews were out galavanting around being pirates or whatever young kids pretend on trips like this. We were cut off from the world (well, not really, but as close as one can get since there was no cell reception, and only a 9-5 Park Ranger available to sell you firewood at $5 a bundle)., and this shot reminds me of that day. I loved that day, and for that reason, I love this shot!

This shot will never sell though – for no one else except those on this trip, this shot is meaningless until now. I cannot make anything off of this picture. Yet I feature it today on the blog because I took this shot for fun…

The comparison shot I am about to show you actually sold for me on iStock. Now granted, it’s not like I’ve made a ton of money off of it (it only sold once or twice), but it actually sold!

I was on a photo walk, scouting out areas for the South Carolina Photography Guild (now defunct), and the shadow of the guy on the crane, along with the wet bricks from where he was repairing and cleaning the masonry work just stuck out for a reason. I took it from a few angles and this one was the best of the 3 or 4. In the end, it was kind of a boring shot, but it was pretty tack sharp, and when I opened my first iStock account ages ago, figured it’d be a good sample to submit to show I had enough of a grip to consider stock work. The image was approved, along with 4 or 5 others, and my istock account was opened. Within a few days, there was a sale on this shot. Do I like it? Not really. It’s probably on some construction workers website, or someone wanted it for a church bulletin, or a school project or other long-since completed project. It doesn’t really inspire me though.

Which image brought me more satisfaction? Which one brought you more? Would you pay huge amounts of money for either shot? Probably not. I wouldn’t either. Thus, this is the dilemma we face.

It’s no secret that most photographers don’t make huge amounts of money. Yet, somehow the ability to say that “I am a professional photographer” is something said often with a sense of pride. Is it because you know the crap out of pixels, shutters, and apertures? Or is it because you made 50.1% of your revenue from photography last year? Or is it because you love to hear the sound of the click? Last but not least, could it be the excitement at seeing something you made come out beautifully on either a printed tangible piece of paper or in a web page…saying “this is my artistic vision that I want to share with you”. Why do you take pictures? What motivates you?