Capturing the Essence

I wanted to take a couple portraits of my parents while visiting them for Thanksgiving in 2010. The stuff I got from the “official” session was representative, but my favorite image came from a lighting test I did with my mom:

Before our vacation I’d been chewing on an idea from David Hobby: whatever you use as a key light, fill with a large soft source directly on the lens axis, placed as close as possible behind the camera. My mom is sitting in a chair in the library/stereo room; on her right is a table with a standard lamp. I attached a speedlight with a diffuser dome to the shaft of the lamp, keeping all light-emitting surfaces under the shade; in essence, I just gave the light bulb more power. (Cue Tim Allen grunts.)

The fill behind the camera is a plain ol’ shoot-through umbrella. The results looked so-so in color but gorgeous and dramatic in black and white. To get the pose, I think I just asked my mom to do something silly, and she obliged. She more than obliged, actually; it’s not modest of me to say so, but this is the truest portrait of my mother I have ever seen.

Gear is helpful and cool lighting is fun, but if the final picture is dull and lifeless you might as well have not taken it.

Exercises in Visualization

The outing where I was able to capture some neat underpass graffiti was originally intended to take advantage of clear cold weather for getting a shot of the University of Illinois’ power plant in full steam.

The previous day had much the same weather but I was limited to scouting the area for a good location, which gave me time to visualize my image. I wanted a strong monochrome rendering of the scene, and thought of Ansel Adams’ visualization of his famous photograph Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, as described in Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs:

I saw the photograph as a brooding form, with deep shadows and a distant sharp white peak against a dark sky. The only way I could represent this adequately was to use my deep red Wratten No. 29 filter, hoping it would produce the effect I visualized. (p. 4)

In the same way, I wanted the stacks and steam to stand out against a dark sky, while the values of the rest of the building could fall where they may, as long as they were legible. The old Main Line of Mid-America runs right next to the plant; I realized that the top of its embankment was the best place to put my camera.

Not being sure of the optimal focal length, I used my 18-105mm Nikkor, my most versatile lens. f/8 provided adequate depth of field. Without camera movements to manage convergence, I knew I’d have to tilt up and correct perspective in post, and frame just a touch loosely to allow an accurate crop. I exposed to the right and made several exposures with different shapes of steam plumes.

Lightroom’s B&W converter is like Channel Mixer on steroids; it allows the user to control the relative contributions of eight colors to the values of the final image. For this image I took the automatic levels and severely decreased the contribution of blue, darkening sky and shadows without appreciably affecting other values. It took a little more work to find the right amount of perspective correction, and not all parallel lines are strictly parallel even in the final rendering; the stacks are appreciably straight, however, which establishes the necessary orientation and sense of height.

I could have further darkened the sky by using a polarizing filter, but did not think of it while shooting; in any case, it is probably better to capture optimal data and tweak the relative color luminances later, rather than polarize and bake-in relative tonalities I cannot undo.

Photographic Penance

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, so here’s something in purple:

This was the first chance I got to walk about with my camera after my second son was born. At the time I was on a fluorescent WB/purple/magenta kick, and I turned a perfectly normal overcast day into this. Realistic? No. Fun? Definitely yes, and I like to look at it while listening to *ahem* “Smoke on the Water.”

Gone Like A Flash

The anxious noises you’re hearing in the background are coming from my bank account, as something I’ve long wanted to buy has become more affordable, but still not trivially so. Ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

You can trigger a flash in three ways:

1. Direct electrical connection, whether through the hot shoe or through a wire. Pros: rock-solid reliable. Cons: limited by length of cord, number of cords, and people tripping over cords.
2. Optical slave. A light sensor pointed at a master flash unit detects the master’s pulse and triggers the slave unit. Some optical slaves use infrared receivers, like Nikon’s Creative Lighting System or Canon’s equivalent thereof. Pros: no cords, simple electronics for third-party versions, comes with your camera for manufacturer versions. Cons: works only within a narrow angle with line-of-sight to the master.
3. Radio slave. Radio transmitter on the camera signals a receiver on the flash when the shutter is released. Pros: no cords, no line-of-sight limitations, good ones will trigger hundreds of feet away. Cons: if you don’t position your antenna correctly, try to trigger through thick concrete or metal, or are subject to RF interference, they won’t work.

The gold standard for radio triggers has long been the PocketWizard Plus II, which has multiple channels, high reliability, long range, and is fairly rugged. The exposed antenna can be bent or broken, but otherwise it holds up well. It’s also expensive at $170/unit, and you need one for each flash plus one for the camera. I’ve had my eye on a set of Plus IIs for a few years now but have not saved enough to buy them.

Enter the PocketWizard Plus III. It’s lighter, stronger, more capable, more reliable, and $30 cheaper (right now; price could drop more later) than the Plus II. This never happens to photo gear; better kit is always more expensive. I’m not going to pre-order these, so my hard-earned cash can breathe easy for a little while, but they’ll probably be in my bag sooner than I thought.

Photography Is For The Birds

As spring approaches our local park becomes a haven for geese and ducks. I took my son out for a walk on Saturday, and he liked it so much he had to go out again today. His perseverance was rewarded with a large gaggle, and we could hardly tear him away when it was time to leave. Bird photography is not my specialty; the couple decent frames I got were acquired by pure dumb luck, not experience or skill.

Inverting depth cues (sharper = nearer) is not generally advised, but sometimes you can make an effective composition thereby. In this case, the bird must be sharp; blurring the foreground tuft of grass is not only inevitable but beneficial to the final image. Granted, it remains identifiable at f/8, but only enough to provide a sense of location.

Endless Journey

My series of interesting local graffiti continues with this gentleman, frozen for all time while walking east under the railroad tracks at Neil and Stadium.

I was constrained by space on the sidewalk, so I broke out my Tokina 11-16mm ultrawide and chose a low camera position. I really would have liked to have someone on the left side of the frame, but alas, I was shooting by myself.

This was also one of my candidates to use for testing the beta of Lightroom 4. So far, I have successfully avoided selling my soul to Adobe, but I so enjoyed using Lightroom for my Sunday shoot that it will be difficult to avoid buying it when the final release is ready.

Old Flowers

I have posted before about digging in my hard drive for old images, which excavation is not guaranteed to yield anything good. This time, I think it did, with a frame from summer 2008 that I never put on Flickr:

The only difference between this version and my original is a 4:5 crop and selective sharpening of the flower’s stamens. My original goal was to make something that prints well, which it does; it’s all the more gratifying because I used my D70 with kit lens in Program mode. Sometimes the camera does read your mind.

Ice Needles

Rime is the technical name for needle-shaped crystals of ice deposited by freezing fog. (Frost accumulates from water vapor rather than the supercooled liquid droplets in freezing fog.) We had freezing fog this past Monday morning, and the rime stuck around almost until midday, giving plenty of time to take some pictures.

The fog, although diminished, remained until midday as well, which greatly transformed Mattis Park. The apartment buildings in the background are almost unrecognizable.

Our mild winter has not been kind for photography, so I’m doubly thankful for the freezing fog, which is unusual around here.

Striking Twice

In the past week I’ve forgotten to carry my camera as often as I should, but on the one day that I did I was able to find yet another interesting bit of graffiti:

Curiously, it’s across the street from where I found the previous one. That block must be where all the cool kids vandalize stuff.