Portrait Photography

Washbasket

01.30.15

As you may now have noticed, I have made an entry to my photoblog every day of January so far. (Starting work at first light and driving home in the dark has meant, indoor shots, processing of old shots, or reflective writing). When it snowed big fluffy flakes last night I took my 5D and Sigma 24-70 f2.8 out to the back garden and setting a high ISO, snapped this. The light source is the automatic security spotlight in the garden. The tree looked great covered with sparkly snowflakes, and so a picture I simply wouldn’t have bothered trying, became a piece of fun because I have been trying on some January discipline for size. I desaturated most of the scene to help focus the eyes on the snow and the simple triangle of elements without colours distracting.

The really interesting thing here is not photographic at all. The plastic washbasket has been on top of the picnic table for about 3 weeks and indeed throughout the high winds of a few weeks ago. These winds toppled the child-bench in the foreground at their peak, but the plastic washbasket remained unmoved! How does that happen?

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Rannoch Moor Lochan

01.28.15

One of the things that magazines regularly suggest we do to help our creativity is to revisit old images and to see whether we might choose differently or perhaps have a different approach to processing/retouching as we have become more experienced. I found this one from 2007 tonight taken with my first DSLR, a Canon 400D by the roadside going through Rannoch Moor coming home from Glencoe.

I don’t remember being very happy with it, however, upgrading the file to use the post 2012 new Lightroom engine, just seemed to give me so much more control over it. A grad filter to darken the skies and a little clarity adjustment and it seemed to pop nicely. One thing still bugged me though, the rock on the left hand side was drawing my eye in a bad way. The last refuge of a scoundrel was employed and I used the clone tool to remove it. I have left a version with the rock to illustrate.

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Jodie

01.27.15

This is just a really simple picture with no flash. The coloured lights behind were from a bar in Glasgow where we met to say hi before taking our eventual 100-portraits choice in Buchanan Street. Jodie had such a lovely, bubbly personality and this picture , with her looking slightly upwards just seems to capture her perfectly. A little lightening of shadows in Lightroom, some vignetting and a radial filter tool to dull down the potentially distracting background, and done.

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Convenience or dangerous addiction?

01.26.15

I like the fact that my phone has a built-in camera. The oft repeated truism that “the best camera is the one you have with you” works for me too. There have been many times that I have been glad that I have it with me or I might have missed a moment. The only problem is, that it isn’t very good no matter how many truisms I praise it with. This image is one I took while photographing HB at Seamills beach in Ayrshire. I had my Panasonic G3 micro four thirds camera with me, so this was just an experiment out of curiosity, or perhaps so that I could send the image there and then? I was pleasantly surprised by this image and in fact it made me wonder wether I should be making more serious use of this incredible photographic tool in my pocket. On a whim, I recently ordered a print of this and the results were truly…..underwhelming. Look closely at the sky, yes the sunbeams catch your attention and look interesting, however the sky was just a wash of unrecoverable detail. The print was full of blocky digital artefacts when you looked closely, and the overall colour and contrast was simply washed out and bland. An 8 inch print was simply too revealing for the quality of the image. Nice picture for a small screen or a Facebook image though, but that is the limit.

When I was recently up Conic hill by loch lomond, I enjoyed another fun feature of the uber-useful Galaxy S4 I carry everywhere, its built in panorama mode gave me a fun record of the expanse of lochscape I was seeing below me. I wouldn’t waste my time trying to print it again however, I’ll just enjoy it onscreen. It is nice, Loch Lomond, mmmmm!

Colour and contrast aside, there is a really “scientific” reason why I will never fully embrace a phone-camera, the tiny sensor means that the depth of field is always enormous, and that in turn means that people-photos have every distracting detail fighting for your attention in the frame. This picture is from the Galaxy S4; it is at f2.2 which seems to be the maximum aperture. The room was lit by artificial light only so it is a real challenge for a tiny sensor in terms of noise and sharpness anyway. The picture should bring the foreground queen into stark 3-dimensional focus with a sense of depth brought on by the diminishing depth of field. Sadly there is almost no depth to this. Serviceable, but flat and 2-dimensional. This is no mere moan, portraits really pop and become magical when the background falls out of focus to even a small extent; it really makes your eyes go to the subject.

This is my EOS 500D with a fairly similar view, and also an f2.2 aperture. The larger, APS-C sensor, means that depth of field can be made more limited. That queen, could be the sharp lovely eyes of your subject.

Not everyone has a DSLR, not everyone has a Compact System Camera, but huge sales growth says that many people do. They are great for throwing in a small bag and having with you everywhere. Most people who buy these might only have a kit lens and assume that it is good enough. This is my Panasonic G3 with kit lens at its widest f3.5 aperture. This is a large sensor compared to a phone camera, and slightly smaller than my APS-C sensor in the standard DSLR. Still usefully 3-dimensional and “interesting” in terms of depth and selective focus.

For completeness, this is my Canon S95 compact, with a sensor that is fairly small, but still a little larger than a phone camera sensor, so some depth of field control, but not a lot. This picture deliberately at f2.2 again for comparison. It has just enough separation to have the psychological effect of drawing your eyes to the sharper queen and the front of the picture. Go back to the phone-camera example and note that the king at the back is basically sharp; basically sharpish throughout.

This is from my recent, very pleasant shoot with Helen MacKinven. It is a full-frame sensor, Canon 5D mk2. Immense depth of field control. Eyes sharp, background psychologically and photographically unobtrusive.

So what is my point? It isn’t that you should stop using your phone-camera and buy a full frame DSLR to carry about. It is that you should use the one you have more, because the contrast, colour saturation and above all depth of field control that you get, will mean that your pictures will be more magical and will have more depth. The trouble is the phone is ever-present, ever convenient and addictive to DSLR users.

My partner Julie takes gazillions of images of HB. They are good, and she has way better mastery of her phone camera than I do, but once in a while she grabs her large sensor DSLR, puts on a fast prime, and HB is captured in “full magic with sparkle”! I am afraid that a whole generation of DSLR owning photographers will have most of their treasured moments in “flat practical with that’ll do”!

Thanks to Wikimedia for sensor size image. The smallest one is approximately a phone camera’s relative size.

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Shopping trolleys – the way to travel!

01.25.15

This is my daughter HB. Today we were shopping, (walking 327 miles around Ikea’s human-livestock milking maze), and eventually she decided that a trolley was marginally better when combined with a rare chocolate-coin bribe than me breaking my back carrying her around as is her usual want! Anyway, this is all irrelevant except to explain why HB was in a dark carpark with overhead floodlights. I have been consciously trying to connect with my photography again so I noticed the interesting lights highlighting her hair and grabbed my camera. In this case my Canon 500D with pancake f2.8 lens. She was playful and awkward to photograph, refusing to look at me and hiding behind her soft toy, but once she was finished playing, she was clearly happy and relaxed about the trolley pics.

In terms of light, this was at ISO3200 which I chose from gut feeling only as there really wasn’t any time before the moment was gone. This gave me 1/15th of a second (which I didn’t check); with no flash, that was simply too slow, and I feel silly admitting it. Out of 6 exposures, there were only two that passed muster because of steady hand, “still-ish” child and pure luck. Only one of these showed a suitable moment! It is not pin sharp, but it is fun and full of movement and life, and that is what I need to become more relaxed with. (Perhaps with ISO 6400 next time at least). The wind whipped her hair up appealingly and although the light was way too low in level, the floodlight behind created great rimlighting and the floodlights behind me became “key” lights albeit a little unbalanced. Essentially what we had was a kind of studio light setup but with too little power!

Why not just use auto ISO? The truth is I have had so many bad experiences of my Canon DSLR’s allowing slow shutter speeds in some misguided attempt to keep the ISO low. The camera knows the focal length, and knows the rule of thumb about needing your shutter speed to be at least 1/focal length to have a hope of sharp handheld images. Apparently Canon didn’t programme this in, because it doesn’t always work. It’s almost like they have assumed that all lenses will be Image Stabilised these days, however very few prime lenses are. I use primes most of the time for portraits. I would love to hear if others have noticed this about Canon’s algorithm?

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