This post is a small detour from photography. I’m looking to work with about 10 great illustrators – either established or emerging artists – on an upcoming project.

At this point I can’t really say more, however if you’re interested then please send me an email with either a couple of examples of your imagery attached or else include a link to a web site where I can see them.

Looking forwards to hopefully working with some of you….

• A bike company selling the idea of a frame that’s so light you won’t feel its weight
• A company specialising in sports health food and drink who wish to emphasize that it’s the athlete who succeeds, not the equipment.

Technically it wasn’t easy to produce so it’s a perfect subject for one of my anatomies.

The Cyclist

The shot of the cyclist was taken in a studio environment against a white backdrop. I used white rather than a green to eliminate any colour spill onto the subject. She was shot on a real cycle (secured on a home bicycle trainer) so as to ensure that she was in the correct anatomical position, and I shot her from lots of different angles to give me greater flexibility when creating the composite.

Examples of the studio shots

The problem with this approach is that the cycle covers up various parts of her body, so I then had her cycle her legs in the air and hold invisible handles so that I’d have the body parts that I would need to create the final image. These extra images were taken from the same position as when she was on the bike to ensure that the lighting was the identical.

The extracted cyclist. The bike covers up lots of the body.

Shots taken without the bike so that I've have body parts available during retouching

I don’t think the model really understood what my final aim was, so she may have felt a little silly complying with my bizarre requests!

For the lighting I relied upon my faithful ProFoto AcuteB strobes for the key light, and an SB900 for the rim light. The two were set off together using the new Nikon version of the PocketWizard FlexTL radio triggers.

Note that the decision to use a rim light was chosen to give greater three dimensional modeling to the image. This was done at the expense of a more flawless composition since there wouldn’t really be both a main light and a rim light in a natural environment (there’s only one Sun). In my image of the tennis player I was very careful about using one light since I wanted to create the most convincing image possible. In contrast, this image of an invisible bike is clearly impossible to start with and so I allowed myself a little more creative license. Nevertheless, to the untrained eye the rim light isn’t a noticeable giveaway…

The road

With the cyclist images in the bag I then hunted down roads that would be suitable. I knew what sort of thing I was looking for so used a number of scouting methods to find it: Google Earthing the local area, asking my entourage and just generally keeping an eye out when out and about. Eventually this road appealed to me.

As with the cyclist image I took the road from various angles so that I’d have an image that matched up with the angle of the cyclist image that I’d ultimately choose.

The backdrop

The backdrop of the road image lacked impact, so I decided to replace it. I tried quite a few candidates, from hills to mountains, but the green hills you see in the final result look best. It’s actually a snapshot that I took way back in 2004 while on holiday in Cyprus, just as I was getting involved in digital photography! The position of the sun produces a convincing look (to the untrained eye) whilst still adding some nice drama.

Putting it all together

Creating the composition took about a day and a half. The cyclist photo had to be chosen, extracted and then composited with various body parts to remove the bike. I originally had a false start in that the image I’d chosen looked great with the cyclist on the bike, however it looked very strange with the bike removed.

Once a better image had been chosen a suitable road image was used to match the angle of the cyclist, and she was blended into the image. The backdrop complete the composition, and the color toning finished off the image.

If you haven’t read the first post, then you might like to do that first….

The most important thing for me is to have access to my daily operations at all times, whether I’m on the road with my iPhone or in the studio on a Mac. I use applications that simplify my life rather than adding more complexity, and I like my software to be elegant with great attention to user interface design.  The attention to detail that some developers are applying to their software is astounding, and this appeals to my sensibilities as a photographer.

The essentials – email, contacts & calendar

Google currently remains my central storage for emails, contacts and my calendar.  Storing this sort of information “in the cloud” means that it’s accessible from anywhere and is easy to synchronise with all the devices that I use. I have many reasons for choosing Google, but one of the most critical features that GMail offers me is the ability to send emails from my various aliases, so emails appear to comes from timothyarmes.com and not gmail.com.

On the iPhone I use the standard email application to receive my mails (although I went through the longer setup sequence to use my GMail aliases), and I synchronise the calendars and contacts using Google Sync. I view my calendars using Calvetica because I’m a sucker for beautifully crafted user interfaces that work like a dream.

On the Mac I now use Sparrow as my email client (here’s hoping that it’ll come to iOS too), and BusySync to synchronise my calendar with iCal.  Contacts are synchronised with the built in address book.

Tasks

I continue to use Remember The Milk for complex task handling where I need to be reminded about things on due dates such as checking up on image licences.  There’s an app for iOS devices and the web interfaces suffices for the desktop.

For general lists however, such as shoot planning, I found that RTM tends to get in the way more than it helps, and this had been true of all the task management alternatives that I’d tried.  Most task management solutions are simply too powerful for 99% of my demands, and actually slow me down in their need for a highly structured approach.

Fortunately I fell upon a great solution called Task Paper. Task Paper is just a list of tasks formatted cleverly – it’s elegant, quick to use, and stays out of the way. It syncs with a companion iPhone app that’s just as pleasant, and it’s a quintessential example the sort of software I prefer to use. HogBay software are offering a big discount until Friday (and that’s what provoked me into writing this post now).

Documents

Dropbox remains my favourite way to synchronise important documents whilst also providing an off-site backup. Lots of applications now use Dropbox to ensure synchronisation of data too, so it’s become even more useful. I also like the way that I can share folders with clients and colleagues.

Other tools

I use a number of other tools to help keep things running smoothly – here’s a quick list

• 1Password – Passwords and other important information are securely stored using 1Password and sync’d across my devices using DropBox. Thanks to this program I no longer have one password for all my logins!
• EchoFon – Keeps me up to date with Twitter and it’s synchronised across all my devices.
• Instapaper – A great place to store things for reading later, whenever you get a chance.
• Flipboard – My favourite iPad application for staying abreast of Facebook, Twitter, my RSS Feeds (via Google Reader), Flickr and general news, all beautifully presented in a magazine format. If support’s added for reading things stored in my Instapaper account then I’ll be in heaven.
• LogMeIn Ignition – Access to my Mac’s screen and files from anywhere (you’ll need the free client too).
• Sunseeker – OK, this isn’t used for staying organised, but it’s such an important tool for photographer’s that I feel compelled to mention it anyway.
• Dialvetica – It’s the minor things that give the most satisfaction

Literally all the parents were enjoying taking photos of the event...

Naturally, I took along my camera to take lots of pictures of Annouk, and the other parents did the same. I wish now that I’d taken a picture of the parents taking pictures, but I didn’t. I did however find this crop from one of my images.

I’m lucky, I live in France, so when I asked if we were allowed to take photos the head master looked at me rather quizzically, as if to ask why on Earth I wouldn’t be allowed to take photos.

This is in stark contrast to my home country – Britain – where a national paranoia of photography has been gradually entrenched into the general populous. In theory schools can allow parents to take photos, but in practice we have a growing climate of fear that has led to no photo policies and dads being threatened with arrest.

Even though I don’t live there any more, and even though I’m thankfully free from this mentality, it still drives me crazy. How did an entire nation allow a few individuals to ruin this sort of enjoyment for everyone else? I love looking back at photos of me as I grew up; I hope that I can offer the same to my children too.

I do agree that with the ease of publication that the Internet provides common sense should be applied; clearly such photos should be for personal use only and recognisable images of other people’s children should not be published without permission. But that’s a far cry from the outright photography bans that are so often applied.

I’m curious to know which other countries are allowing themselves to suffer these sorts of restrictions, and which are still holding on firmly to their national self-respect.

Would a single official photographer have caught this gem?

How can a proud father put photos of his children on his blog while still servicing the thirst for knowledge that his readership demands? I figured that this dilemma was justification enough to buy Nikon’s gorgeous new 85mm f/1.4G lens and put it through its paces.

Used wide open – which is what this lens is for – the 85mm produces beautiful dreamy images with sumptuously creamy bokeh. On a full frame body its the perfect focal length for a wide variety of portrait work, and after a few shots it instantly became my favourite lens.

I wish I could add something more useful for you, but what more can I say? There are lots of technical sites that demonstrate how incredibly sharp this lens is, and how perfect the corners are, how great the colour rendition is, and how well built it is; that’s all great stuff. What’s really important for me though is that only a super-wide 85mm can give this unique look, and that’s why I bought it.

Here then are a couple of family snapshots taken with my new toy. For the technicians, you’ll may like to know that the lighting is provided by an off-camera SB900 bounced off a wall and an on-camera SB700. Quick and simple, but effective.

Clovis and mum. Melty heart and melt-away background.

Big sister. Three and a half, going on ten.

Then in September last year I switched to Nikon. The reasons for this had nothing to do with flash, however as a result of the switch I’ve spent a lot of time familiarising myself with the Nikon system. I thought it might interest some of you to understand how the systems vary from the point of view of someone who has (now) used both extensively.

First off let me state that I personally find that both systems give me good results in terms of TTL flash exposure – neither are perfect, and with both systems the use of flash exposure compensation under various lighting conditions will be a necessity, but I don’t find one system better than the other in this regard. Rather, it’s the differences in usage that are actually fairly significant, and this is what I’ll be discussing.

Ambiant vs. Flash control

One of the biggest differences concerns how the two systems give you control over the ambient vs. the flash exposure.

The Canon system completely separates the two exposures, such that any changes made using the exposure compensation dial will only alter the shutter speed/aperture combination – the flash exposure is not altered. To change the flash exposure the user must use the Flash Exposure Compensation (FEC) setting.

Nikon have taken another approach. The camera’s exposure compensation dial affects the whole image, so any changes made will affect both the “background” ambient and the flash exposure simultaneously. The FEC setting, on the other hand, will only affect the flash.

Bumping up or down the background exposure relative to the flash exposure is something that I do all the time. With Canon, the separation of these controls makes this very easy. With the Nikon system such a manipulation would possibly require a change to the global exposure (ambient light and flash) followed by a further change to the flash exposure to put it back where it was before.

I say “possibly” because personally I work with the camera in manual mode 95% of the time. In this case one can therefore continue to control the ambient exposure by adjusting the shutter speed and aperture, and then use either the FEC or standard exposure compensation to adjust the flash.

My opinion is that Canon’s approach is to be preferred, it’s simpler and less fiddly.

Remote TTL

Both Canon and Nikon systems provide the ability to control groups of remote off-camera flashes, both using TTL for the flash exposure or by offering the ability to adjust the manual power of the flashes from the camera position. There are however major differences in how this is handled by each system.

The Canon system provides for 3 groups of flashes. In TTL mode Groups A and B are intended to light the main subject, and group C is independent. The flash exposure of the A/B groups is calculated such that together they correctly expose for the subject, however the A:B ratio can be easily changed by the user, and the FEC can be used to affect the exposure of the combined A/B group. In manual mode each group must be controlled independently. It’s not possible to combine TTL and manual modes.

Nikon have taken a more flexible approach to remote flash control. There are 3 remote groups + the master flash, and each can be placed into either TTL or manual. The FEC (for TTL mode) or the power level (for manual mode) can be adjusted separately for each group (or the master flash).

In my opinion the Nikon SB900 master is considerably easier to use than the Canon 580EX – the rear control screen has been very well designed in this regard. I also love the flexibility of the Nikon approach, and the independent control over each group.

Although Nikon’s flexible system would allow me to light independent subjects using different TTL groups, this would be an incredibly rare thing for me to do. Rather, the different TTL groups will typically be pointing at the same subject from different directions, and in this far more common scenario I like the ability to quickly change the ratio of the lights. Canon’s system makes this trivially simple, where’s Nikon’s makes this a little harder than necessary since each group will have to be changed individually.

Clearly Nikon themselves have realised this too since the A:B ratio mode is now available on the new mid-range SB700. Unfortunately the SB700 doesn’t allow for a combination of manual and TTL groups, so where it gains is flexibility in one area it loses in the other.

Assuming that the replacement for the SB900 keeps its existing flexibility whilst also providing the new ratio mode of the SB700, Nikon will win the remote TTL game hands down.

FEC

The two systems handle flash exposure compensation very differently, and for Nikon’s pro-body users it’s a bit of a kick in the teeth.

Canon offers a FEC control on both the camera body and their external on-camera flash units. Any changes that you make using the external flash unit will override the camera’s own setting. When using multiple off camera flashes separated into difference groups, the FEC will affect the A and B groups simultaneously.

Nikon’s approach is to offer an independent FEC control for each remote group (and another for the master flash) that can be controlled via the master flash unit. The on-body FEC has a cumulative effect with the FEC values that have been set on the master flash.  This allows you to control the FEC of all the groups simultaneously via the camera body, and to adjust individual groups using the master flash unit. Note that it’s not possible to change the FEC globally for all groups using the master flash unit itself.

As a side effect of this approach, the Nikon system also benefits from a greater range of FEC. The flash offers ±3ev of compensation and the camera body offers -3ev to +1ev – since they are added together this in gives a theoretical range of -6ev to +4ev. With the camera in manual mode the global exposure compensation is also added to the mix, giving a total range of -11ev to +9ev. Obviously this can’t be achieved in practice.

If this were the situation for all Nikon bodies then Nikon’s approach would be the better one to my mind, however they’ve thrown a huge spanner into the works for pro-body users. Specifically, since there’s no on-camera flash on D3-series bodies, Nikon didn’t see fit to provide users with any on-camera flash exposure compensation. As a result of this decision, when working with the camera in a semi-automatic mode remote flash work becomes rather more complicated:

• It is not possible to adjust the flash compensation for ALL the remote flash groups simultaneously – each group has to be adjusted one at a time.

• Accessing the flash compensation on the flash is slower and more awkward than access via the camera body.

• D3-series users don’t benefit from the extended FEC range.

Note that there is a partial workaround for these issues, and that’s to place the camera into manual mode. In this situation the standard exposure compensation will continue to affect the flash exposure as explained above.

That said, the primary situation in which one uses TTL flash rather than manual flash is one in which the lighting conditions are changing – and in many of these situations the semi-automatic modes may also be useful for handling changes to the ambient exposure.

Rear curtain sync

There is one final detail that’s worthy of note: Nikon support rear curtain sync with their off camera flashes, whereas Canon don’t.

Conclusion

It’s hard to really say if one system is better than the other, but here are my personal conclusions after using both systems:

• The Nikon system is considerably more flexible in terms of remote flash control, and that’s a very good thing.
• The Nikon system is also far more user friendly.
• Canon’s ratio control of remote flashes provides for quicker control over the common case scenario. I hope that Nikon add this to their top-of-the range flash quickly.
• In semi-automatic camera modes, Canon’s separation of ambient and flash exposure is preferable. In manual mode there’s no difference, but I still find it clunky to adjust the flash exposure using the global exposure compensation.
• The lack of FEC on Nikon’s D3-series bodies is a significant oversight. Canon’s pro-bodies have on-body FEC.
• Nikon’s rear-curtain sync for remote flashes is a nice advantage.

Here are some of my favourite images. Results like this require great teamwork – many thanks to my assistant Matt and of course Emilie without whom these images would be somewhat lacking!

Prior to switching to Nikon from Canon I compared the lens line-ups of the two systems to make sure that I wasn’t shooting myself in the foot.

I couldn’t find a decent comparison, so I thought it might benefit some of you if I were to post one here. The comparison is based on the current lens line-ups of the two companies. In cases where both a new version of a lens and the old version are still listed I’ve only included the new version.

I’ve tried to match lenses in each system to their nearest equivalent. The prices are from B&H at the time of writing, and are really there as a point of comparison.

All add my personal observations on the line ups at the end.

Note that users of the RSS feed may find the table easier to look at directly on the site…

Canon have the most complete lens line-up, however in reality most photographer’s won’t notice this since both companies address the needs of most photographers. Here though are the most important advantages that I notice:

• Canon’s range of primes is more up to date, with many more lenses using USM/SW motors than the Nikon equivalents.
• Canon offer more options for the popular 70-200mm range, including all the permutations of f/2.8, f/4, stabilized or not. Nikon only offer a stabilized f/2.8 which may be too heavy for some uses.
• Canon offer an f/4 version of their 400mm lens which is significantly cheaper than the f/2.8 version from either company.
• If you’re a macro shooter, only Canon offer a true macro lens with the MP-E 65mm.
• Canon now have a fisheye zoom.
• Nikon are more expensive, and this is especially true for the super telephoto lenses.

Nikon does have a couple of tricks up its sleeve though:

• The 14-24mm. Need I say more?
• They have a better range of DX (EF-S) format lenses, no doubt as a result of the amount of time that they took to enter the full frame market.

I don’t think that my reasons for switching will apply to many other photographers, but I’ll explain my choice for those that are interested.

My decision to change system was a very hard one. Canon offer many compelling reasons to stay with them:

• Canon Inc.’s immense size gives them a research and development capacity that dwarfs Nikon’s. It allowed them rule the autofocus domain for years and to be first to market with full frame and high-definition video. This has given Canon shooters real advantages over their Nikon competitors.
• Canon’s system is, as a whole, better value than Nikon’s – equivalent lenses are often substantially less expensive.
• Canon also offers a larger range of lenses, including a series of f/4 L lenses that have proved extremely popular with those that need to reduce the weight of their gear. They have a better range of primes, and the latest 8-15mm fisheye zoom shows that they’re still innovating, whereas Nikon are still playing catchup in terms of the range of lenses on offer (but not in terms of quality).
• Most 3rd party developers release products for Canon first. The ControlTL PocketWizards spring forth as an immediate – and important – example.

Nikon, on the other hand, doesn’t have any big advantages like these. To remain competitive they’ve had to play with our hearts; they make great bodies, and they haven’t reserved high end features such as state-of-the-art autofocus and weatherproofing for their pro bodies. Nikon’s reputed for their ability to listen to photographer’s needs, and I believe that’s what’s kept them firmly in the game.

Nevertheless, now that Nikon have caught up in sensor technology it does finally seem that Canon is finally having to compete in these other aspects too. The Canon 7D is well built and feature packed (although they still haven’t put in pro level AF….).

So, given the fact that we have the most equal playing field that we’ve seen for years, why would I want to switch now?

My problem is that Canon have separated their professional users into two categories, providing a body for each of them:

• The 1D meets the needs of sports shooters and photojournalists to due its high frame rates and 1.3 crop ratio. The 1.3 crop is a great compromise, adding more reach whilst leaving enough space on the sensor for better quality pixels than on an APS-C sensor.
• The 1Ds is a great studio and landscape camera. Canon are clearly doing their best to take some of the medium format market, adding as many pixels as they can to the full frame sensor. Speed is therefore not the objective of this camera, and the frame rate is half that of the 1Ds.

The separation is an intelligent one, and I believe it benefits most of Canon’s professional users. Unfortunately it doesn’t benefit my work. I need a full frame performance camera. I want full frame for the image quality, the shallower depth of field and most importantly the wide angle lenses. I need performance because my subjects move – often very fast. In other words I need either a full frame 1D or a fast 1Ds, and I don’t think either of those are on the table just yet because the current dual line up makes sense.

I’ve been making do with the 5D Mk II because there’s no where else for me to go in the Canon line-up. The 1D isn’t an option for me at all due to the crop factor, and the 1Ds would be an extremely expensive investment considering the frame rate would still be limiting me on some shoots. A fast EF-S body with appropriate wide angle lenses could have been a begrudged compromise, but even that isn’t an option since Canon haven’t put their 1D autofocus onto any EF-S cameras.

It’s principally this problematic that’s forced me into this position. Nikon has a full-frame body designed for performance – the D3s – whereas Canon doesn’t. It probably seems like an insignificant problem to most photographers, and it may seem wildly excessive to change systems, but a glance at my portfolio shows that I use a lot of wide angles, and shoot a lot of movement. I want to get the best images possible for the work that I do and the limitations of my 5D Mk II are having a direct impact on my ability to capture images. I have to change it now – either I compromise in my choice of 1D body, or I move to the system that’s best adapted to my needs.

I don’t like compromising my work…

Here are some considerations to take into account when cataloguing with Lightroom.

Multiple Catalogs vs A Single Catalog

Should you create lots of catalogs for your images, or keep them all in one single catalog?

This question doesn’t have a right or wrong answer – you’ll need to consider your needs carefully. I personally use a single catalog for all my images, personal and professional. I do this for a number of reasons:

• A don’t like having to switch between catalogs to find images.
• A single image can be both personal and professional. For example, the gymnast shot uses a background image that I happened to take while on holiday in New York. By having all my images in a single catalog I can maintain an entire reference of material that I can call upon.
• I also use both my personal and professional images when considering shoot locations, so once again it’s useful to have all my images in one place.

There are also good reasons to maintain separate catalogs, such as:

• If you’re working in a team environment, it obviously makes sense to limit the catalog to images have been taken with the context of the organisation.
• If there’s no cross over between the type of photography that you do then it’ll probably be easier to maintain properly organised databases if they’re separated. For example, if you do weddings then it seems sensible to maintain a catalog specifically for this work.

Note however that I don’t subscribe to the idea of photo ‘buckets’, where each catalog can fit onto a CD or DVD – I think that the justification for this has vanished with today’s backup options.

Collections vs Keywords

When should you be using keywords in preference to collections? The choice isn’t necessarily cast in stone, however a well organised library will probably use both keywords and collections. Here are some of the main differences between the two:

• Keywords may be exported as XMP metadata when exporting a file.
• Keywords may be stored as XMP metadata in (or in a sidecar file of) the original file. If the database becomes corrupted, your keywords are still intact.
• Each keyword may have a list of synonyms that are exported with it.
• Keywords may be used as search criteria from the filter bar.
• There are many more ways of applying keywords to a file than there are of placing images in collections. They may be typed into the right-hand keyword pane, applied from the keyword templates, applied using the keyword stamper, or dragged and dropped from the right-hand panel. Keywording is rapid.
• Collections are essentially virtual folders and as such the images in a collection can be ordered.  This will be useful for a slideshow or web gallery. Also, the image flags (flagged, unflagged and rejected) and (optionally) the filter settings are local to each collection.
• Collections can be exported as a catalog, and reimported at a later date. This can be a very powerful feature in some workflows.

From the above it would seem that keywording offers many more advantages than the collections do, but they really serve very different purposes. Keywords are best used to describe images an collections should be used to organise images.

Be wary of the various tutorials on-line that show keywords being used in a hierarchical structure to organise photos. Something like this:

> People
    > Mike
    > Bob
    > Phil

An advantage of using keywords like this is that it would be easy to find photos of people using Lightroom’s filter bar. With collections, you’d need to find the “Bob” collection to locate all the photos of him, which may take more time (albeit only a little more if the collections are well organised).

However you’ll need to be very careful if the photos will ever be supplied to a third party, such as a stock agency or an end client. Given the example above, “Bob” is meaningless to anyone who doesn’t know who Bob is – it certainly should not be applied to a stock image. You could turn off the exportation of this particular keyword, but this would be a fairly painstaking and error prone approach to the problem.

In the above case I think it’s hard to fully appreciate whether to use keywords or collections, but consider instead a collection of images for an exhibition. The advantages of a collection here are more obvious – the ability to order, flag and filter these images is a powerful aid.

You’ll need to consider the fors and againsts for each method, and to use the tool in the way that’s best for you. I would however recommend the following approach:

1. Use collections to group photos that intrinsically belong together, creating sub-collections as needed. Examples include photos of friends and family, all black and white images, photos for a particular client, all photos submitted to a stock collection, all finished fine art prints, works in progress, exhibitions, etc.
2. Don’t create collections for information that’s already provided by the metadata. For example, the IPTC metadata already allows you to store the country, state and location in which a photos was taken, and is conveniently extracted by the metadata browser.
3. Use keywords to describe the image itself, as if you were giving it to a third party. For example, use “cat” but not “freddy”. Stock photographers and journalists will understand this approach well. Since the keywords are exported with the photo as part of the metadata, this makes the photos easy to find and index by those that’ll be using the photo at a later date.
4. Use lots of keywords. The richer your database, the easier it will be to find photos at a later date.
5. Use the hierarchical keywording to increase your efficiency, not to slow it down. For example, you may have a structure such as this:

   > Animal
       > Mammal
           > Cat
           > Dog
           > Fish
           > Shark

   Now when you type “cat”, the implied keywords “Mammal” and “Animal” will be exported automatically.

6. Make good use of synonyms. One obvious way to do this may be to add the plural form to each keyword.
7. Think to the future. If you’re not selling your work today then the choice of keywording or using collections may seem less important to you. If one day you decide to try selling your photos through a stock agency or to an art buyer then you’ll be glad to have correctly keyworded images.

9) Consider using David Rieck’s Controlled Vocabulary to help you keywords your images.

Worklists

I use Eric Scouten’s Worklist approach to keep track of which images still need sorting and keywording. I highly recommend reading his blog post on the subject.

My collection hierarchy

Here then is a screenshot that shows a part of my collection hierarchy:

The top level is divided into three main collections sets: the worklists, my personal work and my professional work. Each of these is further sub-divided, grouping my images into things like web site collections, resources, clients, stock, etc.

For the curious, Building Blocks contains photos that include imagery that may be useful when compositing images, and Scouting Resource contains images that may be useful when searching for shot locations.

Planning

A shoot like this requires access to a top athlete – both for the move itself¹ and the physique, so my first problem was to find one that was willing to participate. After searching the Internet for a while I discovered that one of France’s leading gymnasts – Yann Cucherat – trains just an hour away from me in Lyon, so I contacted him, pointed him to my work and asked if he’d be interested. He was kind enough to say yes.

Yann’s training schedule was very busy so my time with him was going to be short. My assistant and I made sure that we were well in advance for our photo session, and this allowed us to prepare and test the equipment before Yann’s arrival.

Lighting and troubles

With my flashes I wanted to achieve two things: to simulate sun light and to freeze the gymnast’s motion. This would normally be a simple task, nevertheless in practice lighting the shot proved to be problematic. The issues involved are certainly worth examining in detail. Let’s look at the constraints one by one…

Constraint 1 – flash was the only option

I needed control over the light – not only was the ambient light was flat and boring but I needed a hard light source to simulate the sun for the final composition. A flash was therefore essential.

Constraint 2 – overpower the ambient light

Despite its size the gymnasium was actually very well lit thanks to copious amounts of overhead lighting and a number of skylights that were allowing plenty of daylight into the room.

Since there were other gymnasts in training there was no possibility to turn off the center’s overhead lighting. To avoid the motion blur introduced by the ambient light falling onto the subject my flash would have to deliver enough light to completely overpower the ambient light.

Constraint 3 – shutter speed

In order to minimise the contribution of the ambient light (constraint 2) the use of a fast shutter speed is a move in the right direction, however I couldn’t go any faster than my camera’s sync speed – a measly 1/200th of a second for the Canon 5D Mk II. Fortunately I was using a PocketWizard MiniTT1 to fire my flashes, so this allowed me to fire slightly over the sync speed – 1/250th – using their incredible HyperSync feature.

Constraint 4 – lowest possible flash power to reduce flash duration

To freeze motion I would need a fast flash duration. The Profoto AcuteB flash packs that I use provide their fastest flash duration at lower power levels (by switching out the capacitors), therefore the lower the flash power the better my chances of freezing the gymnast.

Constraint 5 – the aperture

The choice of aperture was being pushed in all directions by a number of variables.

• To reduce the ambient light (constrain 2) I needed a small aperture.
• To reduce the flash power (constraint 4) I needed a big aperture.
• To produce a convincing composite image the aperture would need to be similar to that used in the background shot. For example it would be odd to have a very shallow depth of field on the gymnast and a pin sharp background.

I decided to compromise with f/5.6.

Constraint 6 – the ISO

The choice of ISO was being hustled by the same constraints as the aperture.

• To reduce the ambient (constraint 2) I needed to reduce the ISO.
• To reduce flash power (constraint 4) I needed to increase the ISO.

The ambient light was really very strong. Given my 1/250 sec at f/5.6 the ambient light at ISO 200 was still introducing motion blur. I decided to move to ISO 100.

The compromise

With the ISO, the aperture and the shutter speed all fixed, the only remaining variable in terms of exposure control was the flash power, and I needed to keep that at a minimum (constraint 4).

Prior to buying my portable studio flashes I spent a long time examining the options that were available to me, and I detailed the results on this blog. I stated the following:

“Another excellent starting point would be to buy 2 AcuteBs, one with the bi-tube (Twin) head. This set up offers a great deal of flexibility – the two heads are totally independant for complete control and less cable routing problems. When portability is paramount one pack is very light to carry about. When more power, quicker recycling times or shorter flash durations are needed then the two packs can be used to drive the Twin head.”

This is actually the route that I took. By using two AcuteB battery packs with one Twin head I was able to further reduce the flash duration for the amount of power that I would need.

The shot of Yann used for the composition.

Was it enough to freeze the gymnast? No!

Despite my best efforts there was still a touch of motion blur. It’s was mostly visible on the feet and legs which were having to move faster than the torso. The face was sharp though, and that was critical. All the variables had been exhausted. I had two choices – either to call it a day or to accept the motion blur as a creative effect in final image. I took the latter.

The right moment

The 5D’s frame rate is very limiting for this sort of work, so catching Yann at the right moment in time was a matter of good timing. Yann was great to work with – he managed to repeat the move enough times for me to get the shot I wanted.

Compositing

With the photo of the gymnast completed I entered into the final stage of the creation of this image – the post processing.

I had a photo from New York that lent itself perfectly to the concept that I had in my head, and so I used this for the background. I had positioned the flash so as to provide exactly the same angle of light as the sunlight in this photo – this is vitally important when creating compositions.

To extract Yann from the gymnasium I used Photoshop CS5′s new Refine Edge improvements. Adobe have really done a fantastic job with the refine edge tool now.

The effect of perspective on an object is governed uniquely by the distance of the object from the lens (focal length is irrelevant), so to create a convincing composition the gymnast was placed such that he appeared to be approximately the same distance from the viewer as he was from me when I actually took the photo. In a photo like this there’s a little leeway before the eye really starts to notice something strange going on, so I made him a touch large than he would probably have been in reality. Note that this is different from the tennis player composition in which the perspective effect was so strong that the positioning was critical.

Finally there was a fair amount of tonal work involved to make the two images feel like they were a single whole.

1. If anyone can tell me what this move is called I’d appreciate it!

Update: I’ve removed most of this post since I’ve found a dealer who’ll give me a very good price on all my Canon gear.

There are some great resources on the web to help get a feel for how other photographers are thinking about their promos – some of the best include as Heather Morton’s blog and No Plastic Sleeves.  If you look though these sites you’ll find all matter of interesting portfolios, many of which are the results of some very creative thinking.

I thought I’d contribute my bit by discussing the creation of my new promo card.  My objective isn’t to help you emulate my design – your promo needs be be a reflection of you, not me – but rather to talk you through some of the thoughts and considerations that I had during the design stage. I hope that this may help you to get on the right track for your own creative process.

The goal

First, let’s consider what we’re trying to achieve.  A promo should:

• bring awareness of your existence to new and old clients.
• make them want to visit your site.
• make them want to remember you, preferably by sticking your promo up on their wall with the best of the rest.

But we should be aware that a promo will also:

• form part of your brand – your identity.  Your promo says something about who you are, so it’s in your interest to make that first impression count.
• set expectations – if you have a beautifully produced promo and a shoddy web site the client is likely to feel disappointed when then visit, and that’s not what you want.  Your branding needs to be of consistent quality across the board.

Format choice

With these considerations in mind I started to think about my new promo.

There are some really great promos out there, going from the giant in-your-face wall posters to small boxes filled with interesting goodies.  There’s no doubt that these’ll attract attention and make you stand out from the crowd, but you’ll need to set aside a good sized budget! I also imagine that some clients may be a little put off by the photographer’s care-free attitude to the environment when they receive a giant poster….

This concern is also a valid argument for not sending printed promos at all – email suffices. The problem with email, however, is that it’s so easily ignored. It’s a fine line to tread.

I decided to print a card, but rather than going with the classic post-card style of promo I chose a more unusual format that I would post in an envelope.

When folded the card measures just 10x15cm (good for the mail), and when unfolded completely it’s 42x15cm (A3 in width, A6 in height).  I felt that this long panoramic format had lots of potential, left room for a very large main image (for visual impact), and also matched the panoramic format of my business cards (subtly maintaining my brand).

With the format chosen I started thinking about the graphic design and about the images that I wished to use.

Design considerations

Once again I considered my brand.  My website uses lots of white space to keep it fresh looking; the text is grey and I use a green accent colour (also found on the business cards).  It was important for my brand that I maintain these aspects in the design of the card.

I wanted to choose images that showed various facets of my work, and I took a lot of time choosing images that worked well together and also allowed me to maintain the design considerations listed above – especially with the use of white space to keep it fresh.

Front page – Skate boarder

The front page

When the promo is folded the front page is small, so I needed an image that wouldn’t clutter the design.  I felt that the skate boarder had a certain edginess to it that was appealing – it’s an image that generates good feedback. It also had a great format – thin and vertical – allowing me to use whitespace to give breathing room. Finally, the image itself sends messages to the viewer:

• The backdrop is very French, and France is a very salable location photographically.
• The image is conceptually interesting – I wish to be associated to this sort of imagery.
• It shows that I’m quite happy to be taking images in a town center – I don’t wish to get type-cast as a photographer of the great ourdoors, which may be a risk with active lifestyle photography.

Inside double-spread – Acrobat

Double page spread

For the second image I wanted something dynamic, and the acrobat was a perfect choice due to its blown out background and the green grass corner.  Once again the whitespace helps to maintain freshness and brand image, and also leaves room for the text.

Cutting the image in two across the opening of the two pages was an aesthetic decision – I felt it made the design more interesting.

Inside 4-page spread – Swimmer

The center-piece - a wide panoramic

The swimming image from a recent self-promotional shoot was a obvious choice for this promo design. The image is original and has lots of visual impact, its format fits perfectly into the panoramic space and there’s even room for more white space above and below! The colour palette is once again green, and that further helps to pull the branding aspects into the design resulting in a promo card that feels coherent in its design.

I also placed my logo on this page so that my identity wouldn’t be lost if this page where left open on a desk or pinned to a board.

The Text

I kept the text simple and to the point – art buyers are busy people. I considered what the most important things were that I wanted to say:

• What I do (specialised area).
• My nationality and country of residence (since these aren’t the same). It may seem irrelevant to state that I’m British, however these cards will be sent to many anglophone countries and I wouldn’t want to lose potential clients who may concerned about the language barrier when dealing with a photographer in France.
• To ask the viewer to visit my site.

The text is in both English and French since these are the two markets that are most easily accessible to me. I could have had separate promos printed for each language but I felt that this tells the client something else about me, and that’s useful information.

Back page

The back of the promo and that of my business cards

The back page is home to my contact information. The design matches the back of my business cards – branding!

Final thoughts

You may love or hate this design (preferably the former, especially if you’re an art buyer!), but in any case I hope this post will serve its purpose and help you start thinking about your upcoming promo design. A little thought now may help you go a lot further later…

• I aim to deliver images that separate myself from the crowd. Post-processing and retouching thus form a critical string to my bow, allowing me far more self-expression than I can achieve otherwise. I’ve written about this previously.
• I put my images into my portfolio, and these attract the attention of potential clients. When I’m hired, they’re hiring me in part for my ability to deliver the certain style of imagery that I use to promote myself. A good portion of that style is due to this post-processing work.
• The client then asks me to deliver images that have not been retouched – they often prefer to retouch in-house in order to have more creative flexibilty and to keep costs down.

The top image is indicative of my personal style and sets the expectations for the client. However, the bottom image is what the client then specifically asks for...

I hate delivering these un-processed images – I feel like a chef serving raw ingredients to a client’s dinner table.

Although I can generally understand the client’s reasoning I was taken aback not long ago when it was suggested to me that the photographer shouldn’t need to do any retouching – they should be “getting it right in camera”.

What’s scary here is the lack of understanding of the role of today’s commercial photographer. I believe absolutely that we should be getting the image right in camera, but the definition of “right” has evolved with the introduction of wide-spread digital techniques.

Today, the “right” image is one that is a prime candidate for manipulation. It should be well lit, well composed and technically correct – all this goes without saying, but it should be taken with consideration of the post-processing phase.

Here are some examples:

• The final image may need to have a “blown out” look. If the original isn’t blown out I can then choose the level to which to blow it out in post.  If it’s blown in camera I loose that ability.
• The final image may need to be toned. The “in-camera” image should nevertheless have natural coloration – no one expects the photographer to use coloured filters to do this any more!
• By giving a little leeway to the crop when the image is taken the client has for more cropping options available in post than if the image is too tight during the shot. The above image is a good example of this.  Obviously this can’t be taken to the extreme or else they’d be no pixels left!  This is one reason why I prefer high pixel count cameras such as the 5DMkII. The cropped image above still has 8MPixels – more than enough for most uses.

The list goes on, but the principle remains the same – the “right” in-camera image will often look very different to the final result. Moreover, we pre-visualise the final image before and during the shoot and so we’re shooting with the knowledge of how we’re going to be processing.

The running image below is a perfect example of all these considerations.

The original image to the right looks appalling and yet I absolutely got this image "right" in-camera because I was specifically shooting with the final image in mind.

The solution….

How can we address this issue with respect to out clients?  I only have one solution – educate them. Clients who approach us for out photographic style need to understand that post-processing is as important to our craft as the placement of our lights when we press the shutter.

Feel free to point them to this post if you wish…

Previously I’ve described shoots in which I was working towards a very specific end result – this is the most common scenario for a commercial photographer. In this case however the shoot was less restrictive – I was aiming to get 2 or 3 strong images for my portfolio and to gain more personal experience with underwater sports photography.

Planning and preshoot

Even though the shoot would have less structure than usual it still needed planning if it was to be successful. I needed to find a location, a model, and most importantly I needed to create a rough shot list.

For the location I used a private swimming pool that was in a particularly nice setting, and via a contact a I was able to find a swimmer from a local club who was both very good at her sport and enthusiastic about the photography. For the shot list it was just a case of sitting down, thinking, reading, browsing and generally trying to find inspiration. Even though I was prepared to experiment on set I knew that the shoot day would be a catastrophe if I didn’t at least have some starting points for shot ideas.

A image from the pre-shoot. The look of the the final images has evolved but this gave me a general direction.

I also planned a pre-shoot day with a stand-in model (also known as my lovely – and expecting – wife). The pre-shoot in this case was very important, allowing me to:

• Check my equipment and make sure that the waterproof housing (a Ewa-marine SLR bag) was, indeed, waterproof.
• Experiment with shooting techniques. For example I wanted to know if I was better of trying to hold my breath or go the whole hog and bring diving equipment into the pool.
• Understand how natural light was going to effect my shots so that I could choose the best time of day based on this.
• Make sure that I had everything that I needed.
• Get more inspiration for the shot list.
• Experiment with post processing. Knowing ahead of time how I wanted my final images to look would help me when shooting for real.

The shoot

Based on the pre-shoot I planned the shoot for the early afternoon. This is usually the worst time photographically since the Sun is high in the sky and produces unflattering shadows, however in this case the high Sun would produce lighting effects that had inspired me during the test. The pool was equipped with a jet that kept the surface moving, thus casting amazing patterns onto the walls and swimmer.

Yours truly. As you can see, holding my breath was a no-go. I needed to bring my diving gear to get the shots I was after...

I arrived an hour early to set up. As usual I brought along some home made food – a fed model is a happy model. Same goes for the photographer….

The model arrived with a selection of costumes and once again the pre-shoot had given me some useful insights that allowed me to choose the best option. While experimenting with my post-processing options I had decided that I was going to take the tonalities slightly green. The lime-green costume was therefore an obvious choice.

We shot for 3 hours (with breaks) and covered most of the ideas that I had noted.

Post processing

Before and after Post-Processing. The difference is dramatic.

As I’ve stated previously, post-processing is a vital part of my photographic skill set; it allows me to deliver images in a personal style that’s simply not possible directly from the camera.

With underwater photography, however, post-processing becomes absolutely imperative – images direct from the camera lack contrast and, for lack of a better word, oomph. Following the test shoot I has already experimented with toning options, and I spent more time refining this for the final set of images.

To my mind the result is more interesting than a colour correct image and is also more indicative of my personal style.

And yet every time I need to do this I end up tearing my hair out.  Why?  Timezones.

I’m based in France and when dealing with clients abroad I need to find a time that suits both parties.  That should be easy, but typically it’s a frustrating and time-wasting experience. Just yesterday I needed to organise a meeting with an American client who informed me that he was available from 9am to 12am CDT. Converting that to Paris time should be simple.  Right?

Wrong.   On-line world-time converters typically just list a bunch of cities – I haven’t a clue which of the American cities in the list happen to to fall within the timezone that I wish to convert from.  If I want to specify a timezone such as “CT”, or an offset such as GMT+2, or even a whole country (if it isn’t split into different time zones), I can’t.

I got so fed up with the situation that I finally took some time out to search the web for a better solution, and I eventually discovered the best online timezone converter I’ve ever seen. Simple, elegant, ad-free.  The author’s accompanying blog article is an excellent read and epitomises my experiences with alternative solutions.

I realized immediately that this would make a great Mac OS Widget, so with the authors blessing I spent a couple of hours making one.  Feel free to download it and simplify your lives too.

Chase produces very high end – and high budget – photography, and this shows with the gear that the team are using. For example, the two field drives are G-Tech 256GB SSDs, and at $1200 each they’re worth significantly more that the MacBook Pro itself!

Chase knows this though, and he makes a very important statement at the end of the video when he says “everything I say here is scalable, and you need to design your backup solutions for your needs”. Storage and Backup are vital, but the workflow can be scaled up or down based on requirements and budget. There’s no single “right” solution for that’ll work for everyone, but there’ll certainly be a solution that’s right for you.

I thought it might be interesting to describe – with far less grace and without the cool little graphic doodles – the workflow that I use. I hope it’ll prove interesting for other photographers who have comparable budgets to myself. I’ll compare my workflow to Chase’s so that you can see how the key ideas are the same, even if the gear isn’t.

In the field – Key concept: backup multiple copies immediately

In the field Chase ingests his photos into Aperture using a fast firewire compact flash reader and has them copied onto two daisy-chained SSDs. The images are therefore backed up onto each SSD and (I assume) the hard drive of the computer – three copies in total. Since SSDs have no moving parts they are an ideal storage solution when travelling.

I ingest my images using Lightroom (obviously!) and have them backed up to an external 2.5″ rugged hard drive. Once that’s done I then stick my compact flash card into a NextoDi backup device. This little gadget copies the photos off the card extremely quickly and performs a hardware verification of the data. The end result is that I also have three backups.

Chase’s SSDs look fantastic, but my rugged hard drive is much cheaper. It’s also very small and light; for my work size and space are of paramount importance, especially when trying to fit everything into a rucksack. Although there’s more risk of mechanical failure with a traditional harddrive that with an SSD it’s still slight and with 3 backups I’m secure. That said, SSDs will be cheap enough to make them a no-brainer in a few years time.

Why a NextoDi rather than a second exernal hard drive on my MacBook Pro? Well, if the MacBook Pro breaks down, crashes, smashes, bursts into flames or simply runs out of power I can continue to backup my work. In fact I think that this feature is so important that I’ll undoubtedly invest in a second NextoDi in order to ensure that I can continue to back up 2 copies if the laptop fails – never be afraid to evolve your workflow.

Also worthy of note is that my external hard drive is partitioned, and a SuperDuper’d copy of the MacBook pro has been placed on one of the partitions. If the Macbook Pro’s hard drive fails I can boot from this and continue to work.

Base Camp – Key concept: back up your work in progress

Back at base camp Chase copies his field drive to a G-Tech 2TB G-Safe. A lovely piece of kit. With one copy procedure he gets two backups (thanks to the RAID setup), each of which shares a room with a different person on the team.

I think that different photographers will have different needs when it comes to making backups at base camp. Personally I use fields drives that are big enough to hold the data for the entire shoot, so I don’t need to make any further copies. Once again the idea is to travel light. For very big shoots I can certainly understand Chase’s approach however.

If working with an assistant then separating the drives is definitely worthwhile – the biggest risk being an opportunist thief.

The Studio – Key concept: backup, backup, backup.

In an environment such as Chase’s, where there’s an entire team of people working at the studio, a central server is an absolutely requirement. But many photographers, including myself, work alone from either a home studio or a small office – in this case we can limit our expenditure whilst still protecting our work.

I use a powerful Mac Pro with a 30″ NEC Spectraview as my central workstation. A fast computer is essential when working with the large files such as those generated by a 5D Mk II. In terms of data storage, it’s set up in a particular way:

• Data is stored internally on 3 “enterprise level” 2TB hard drives in a striped RAID (very fast data transfer, but if one fails everything’s lost). I don’t physically separate RAW files from “Live work” but I do work non-destructively, so the RAWs never get modified.
• The boot drive is an SSD and doesn’t contain any photographic data, but it does contain most other things (accounts, emails, etc).
• A 4th internal hard drive (actually the machine’s original boot drive) is used as a Time Machine back for the boot drive. Time Machine’s great.

The 3 2TB hard drives form a single data partition, and every night this partition is SuperDuper’d to a partition on an external Drobo while I’m tucked up in bed. The same is true of the boot drive.

Note than when I get back to the studio after a shoot the images from one of the field drives are copied to the Mac Pro, but the field drives aren’t emptied until this data had been backed up over night. Typically, they aren’t emptied until the next shoot, just as an extra safeguard.

For those that are interested in maximising the performance of their Mac for photography I highly recommend reading the Mac Performance Guide by Lloyd Chambers. Chamber’s explains how he configures his data drive on a Mac Pro, and also the reasons behind the the stripped RAID that I’ve adopted.

At this stage I have my data backed up twice – once internally and once on the Drobo. This does not suffice. As Chase also states an off-site backup is an absolute necessity. You must protect your data from fire, theft, flooding or any of the other unpleasant things that might happen to you. I keep my data backed up on an external hard drive at a friends house, and I keep his at my studio.

So I’ll leave you with my last words of wisdom – “3 backups, one off site. No less.”

1. Chase – how did you do those cool little graphic animations?

Fact 2: One of the frustrating things about photography is that that there are so many types of photography to explore.  It can be quite overwhelming for those coming into our world.

For those contemplating professional photography as a career then the good news is that somewhere in this gargantuan gulf of photographic endeavours there’ll certainly be something that’s right for you.  Whether you’re introvert or extrovert, a recluse or a team player, an image taker or an image maker, an artist or a technician, there’ll be a branch of photography which will suit your personality.

For example, as a professional fine-art wildlife photographer you’ll be spending hours waiting patiently for that perfect moment and then selling your images as pieces of art, whereas a traditional wedding photographer may need to deal with difficult mother-in-laws and control crowds of slightly merry people while managing the technicalities of his or her flash.

The vital thing is that you choose a form of photography that’s right for you.

I’m commercial/advertising photographer specialising in active lifestyle images, very often sports or outdoor oriented imagery, and I love my work. Commercial photography imposes its own requirements on the type of personality that’s best suited to this career, so  I thought I’d present my own reasons for choosing this path – it may well help some of you to go in either the same direction, or else strike it off your list and look at the many other options available to you.

Create, not take

I love to create images – to put all the pieces together to form a compelling photo that will provoke a response in the viewer.  I enjoy composing the image, placing the talent and perfecting the lighting.

Carrying my camera around at all times in case I see something enticing just isn’t my thing – I know this through experience.  I’m also uncomfortable taking images of people who haven’t chosen to be in front of the camera.  So travel photography, journalism and other such pursuits simply aren’t well suited to my personality.

A creative outlet

Creating images is great fun, but being creative gives the greatest rush.

Commercial photography offers plenty of room to express yourself as a photographer; most shoots offer opportunities to be creative.  Sometimes the client involves the photographer in the early stages of a concept, other times the brief is specific but there’ll be opportunities to express yourself on location once the required images are in the bag.

And of course you can do anything you like when creating images for self-promotion….

Personal interaction

Comercial photography requires a lot of interaction with a large variety of people – clients, art directors, models, make-up artists, stylists, assistants, etc.  It isn’t a job for the introverted, (although you certainly don’t need to be an extrovert to succeed), but you need to enjoy the human contact.

Variation

My job is incredibly variable.  My activities include self-marketing and prospection, client meetings, brain-storming sessions, production and logistics, photography, post-processing and retouching, accountancy, paper work, chasing up clients, maintaining my web site, keeping up to date with the latest technology and techniques, updating this blog, etc etc.

I really enjoy variation in my life, but I appreciate that this constant juggling act isn’t for everyone.  In particular you should know that actually taking pictures is but a small proportion of all the above.

The technical stuff

All forms or photography require a certain degree of technical competency. Commercial photography requires a particularly high level of understanding if you wish to avoid being limited in your ability to create images.

The geek in me loves this stuff.

Finally, the challenge…

Many good amateur photographers have told me that they couldn’t become professional because they like to take their own images rather than being “dictated” to by a client, to which I’ll quickly retort that it’s perfectly possible to take and sell your own images professionally – fine art or stock photographers do this all the time.

That said, in my case I adore the challenge of accepting a client’s brief and exceeding his or her expectations.

Of course I do get plenty of opportunities to create my own imagery for self-promotion.  It’s the best of both worlds.

Concept

The concept was a simple one – the guy who’s so passionate about his sport that he even skates to his day job.

The shot that I really wanted in the bag was very straight forwards – the skateboarder would be skating very casually through the town, perhaps dealing with a client on his mobile phone.   The concept dictated that the control of the skate board had to be completely second nature – as if this is the character’s main form of transport.

Planning

Although this shoot is considerably simpler than the tennis player composition that I detailed previously, it still required planning and forethought.

The first problem was to find a model in the right age range who was willing and able to skate through the town wearing a suit.  This would obviously draw attention from onlookers so the talent would need to be at lease a little extravert.

I found a specialist skateboarding shop and explained my project to the owner; he immediately thought of an ideal candidate and offered to pass on my business card and explain my request. Within half an hour my model had called me back, willing and able!  The cherry on the cake is that the model was an ex-salesmen so he already had a suit that would fit.  If only it was always this easy…

Using competent sportsmen and women is essential for my work.  The fact that they are often not professional models doesn’t tend to be an issue since they’ll be concentrating so much on what they’ll be doing that they’ll look natural on camera.  This is very different from asking a non-professional to take a static pose.

We set a date for the shoot and I crossed my fingers that that weather would hold out.  Since this is my home town location scouting was a fairly painless process.  With the help of my assistant, Matt, we chose a couple of interesting locations.  I knew that I wanted to shoot with a wide angle lens to get the context of the town into the photo, so the major considerations were the position of the sun, the look of the backdrop and a smooth surface for the skateboard.

The “cool dude” shot

This is the shot that I wanted in the bag.  I shot with a fisheye from low down, pre-focussing at the point at which I wanted to take the shot.  The fisheye would allow me to have the skater take a predominate position in the frame – thanks to his close position – while still allowing me to capture the surrounding context.  I chose to use a fisheye for aesthetic reasons, I don’t like the way the edges of the frame look disproportionally large when shooting with a  rectilinear lens under these types of conditions.  In post I would remove just some of the fisheye look.

I then asked the model to pass in front of the camera lots of times, varying the poses – hands free, in pockets, using phone, etc.

The sun was back lighting the subject so Matt provided fill using a Sunbounce Pro.  The entire spectacle drew attention from the people in the café for a few minutes, but they soon got bored and started to ignore us.

The “jump” shot

Once I was happy that I had a keeper we moved onto the second location.  The model was keen to try something more dynamic and by this point I was more than happy to start expanding the limits that I had originally defined.

This time he would be skating into the sun – a compromise forced on us by the fact that he needed to put his right foot forwards.

The key technical difficulty was the focussing – even with a very wide angle lens with a small aperture the photos were totally unacceptable if the focus point wasn’t near enough to the model’s head at the moment that I took the shot.  Since the jump was never in exactly the same spot each time this reduced the number of keepers significantly.

During the whole shoot my model was just great.  He was incredibly enthusiastic and tirelessly devoted to getting the best image.  He would even offer his discerning eye over the results, explaining what was right and wrong about a shot from a skateboarder’s perspective.

Post processing

Back at the studio I made my selects using Lightroom and then processed the images using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop.  The post-processing phase is really the point at which I get to express my personal style.  You can see the before and after shots for the jump here.

"Out of the camera"

The final version

I organised the shoot with a fairly local professional model; there were no hard and fast plans, we simply headed for the Alps with the intention of getting some mountain lifestyle shots.

Although there were no specific requirements I never undertake a shoot without having quite a few planned shots, so I’d spent the previous week sketching image ideas as they came to me.  For an easy-going shoot like this I’m not obsessional about actually getting all the shots that I’ve noted, but they do give me a starting point once on location, and from there I allow the shoot to evolve.

I worked with a great model.  Since she wanted to use the images for her portfolio she’d also taken the time to think of some ideas before hand, and this allowed us to brainstorm various possibilities and do some scouting to find interesting locations based on our plans.  The best images always come from a collaborative exchange of creative ideas such as this so I’m always thrilled to find myself working with like-minded people.

Organising a shoot like this is fun and rewarding.  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Have some clear ideas of your objectives before you go.  Even if you don’t follow your original plans they’ll give you a good starting point from which to get your creative juices flowing.
• Allow yourself to deviate.  If your models have ideas then don’t brush them off – collaborate.  You’ll get more from them if you encourage their participatation.
• Think about your models’ comfort.  In this case I bought along some extra snacks and fruit to keep us both going.
• For lifestyle images create a “story” around each picture so that the model can more easily imagine the appropriate poses.
• Think hard about the gear you need to bring with you – both photographic or otherwise.
• Have fun.

Carrying camera gear into nature’s more wild expanses is always problematic. It’s heavy, it’s big and it needs to be carried with a certain amount of equipment needed for the trip itself – extra clothing, food, first aid kits, etc.  The problems can often be mitigated to a large extent when working with assistants that can help share the load, but even this plan can fail since more assistants often means that there’s more opportunity to carry even more gear!

The ugly reality of the situation is that there are very few good carrying options on the market today. Lowepro have the biggest range of rucksacks but personally I’ve never found them to be comfortable with heavy loads – they’re camera bags first and back packs second. To make matters worse most of them don’t leave any room for non-camera related essentials.

It was therefore very intrigued when I came across a fairly new company called F-Stop Gear that makes a couple of camera back packs specifically designed for the outdoor photographer: the day-sized Tilopa and the expedition sized Satori.

Both packs are based on the same premise – they are extremely good back packs in their own right, and they are specifically designed to hold an “Internal Camera Unit” – or ICU – to carry the camera. F-Stop gear provides two ICUs – a large model and an extra large model. Both packs will hold either ICU, but obviously the extra large one leaves less space for other equipment. The Tilopa is supplied with the large ICU and the Saturi with the extra large.

I spent a long time trying to decide which of the two packs to buy, but in the end I went with the Tilopa. It’s big enough for a day’s commercial shoot on the hills, but not so big that I’d be tempted to overfill it and risk carrying a silly amount of weight.

My main concern was whether or not the large ICU would be big enough for a typical trip, however my fears were lain to rest this week when I packed the sack for it’s first call of duty. In the ICU I had:

• 1 Canon 5DMkII with battery grip
• 1 Canon 70-200 f/2.8 IS L
• 1 Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L
• 1 Canon 16-35 f/2.8 L
• 1 Sigma 15mm fisheye
• Lens hoods for all the above
• A pocket wizard Flex transceiver/transmitter kit
• 1 Canon 430EX Mk II
• 1 Nextodi (to back up memory cards)
• 1 Manfrotto Mini tripod

Outside of the ICU I had room for:

• Lunch
• A Gortex jacket
• A fleece jacket
• Hat and gloves
• Map/compass
• Walki-Talkies
• iPhone
• Leatherman
• First aid kit
• Waterbottle (in side pocket)

Needless to say, there’s plenty of room in this sack!  But space isn’t everything, and the Tilopa just kept on delivering the goodies.  Here are the things that I just love about this pack:

• First and foremost the Tipola is a great back pack in it’s own right.  There’s an internal metal structure to place most of the weight of the sack onto the hips, and the hip belt is adequately padded and very comfortable to wear.  The above gear weighed 12kg (26lb) and I was fine carrying it.
• Most camera packs offer easy access to gear, but with the Tilopa (and Satori) access to the gear is from the back of the pack.  This means that it’s the front of the sack that gets put onto the wet/muddy ground – the back stays clean.   Access to the top is also designed around this concept.
• Opening the back access is easy thanks to a nice rounded zip that avoids sharp corners.
• The pack’s flat bottom means that is can be stood upright.
• The shoulder straps are perfectly shaped for maximum comfort.
• There are pockets galore.
• The 3 colours in the range are great choices.  The black makes this pack a great choice as a camera back pack for street use.  The red is ideal for the mountain where high visibility is important and the foliage green will appeal to wildlife photographers.
• The pocket on the hip belt fits an iPhone very nicely:)

All considered this is the best and most comfortable back pack that I’ve used.   I was also pleased to discover that their customer service was both speedy and competent.

F-stop gear offers free worldwide delivery, however I wanted to avoid the complications of import duty to France so I bought the sack from their German distributor.  My only complaint is that this was a fairly complex and frustrating event – they don’t even take credit cards!  Still, once the transaction was made the bag was delivered promptly.

A fun and unusual family portrait....
(click for larger size)

The snow we had here just after Christmas was impressive – It measured 60cm on the garden table. It’s the first time we’ve had that much here since we moved to France nearly 10 years ago.

Having the family blocked in the house was a good opportunity for a fun family portrait. I decided to play with interior paranoramics.

Interior panoramic images present the greatest degree of difficulty for the panoramic photographer. The close up nature of the subjects requires that there be absolutely no parallex error when rotating the camara, otherwise the image stitching will fail. To achieve this the camera must be rotated precisely around the entrance pupil – there’s no room for sloppiness.

The image that I wanted to create required that the subjects would be very close the lens. The tiled floor would add to the stitching demands, but to really compound the problems the subjects would also be moving! I wanted my 2-year-old daughter to appear once with each person (and the cat)…

The camera was mounted vertically (so as to have a taller image) with the Canon 14mm MkII lens attached (this lens is sharper than my Sigma 15mm fisheye). I rotated the camera for each shot and moved people in and out as required.

The resulting images proved tricky to stitch because in some cases the subject would take up a significant proportion of one frame, but wouldn’t appear in the images to each side. In the end, and to my surprise, it was Photoshop CS 4 that came to the rescue. Each image was added as a layer and then aligned automatically – PS did a near perfect job with the exception of its choice of central position (which I had to change manually) . Since I still had my layers it was easy to mask in and out the subjects as required. Once I was happy the layers were blended together to remove all trace of the seams.

A fun result for a family portrait…

Note that I’m offering panoramic tuition as part of my new workshops.

Participants of the Panoramics Workshop will receive Kolor’s demonstration DVD and a discount code for their Autopano software.

Many photographic workshops are aimed at newcomers who seek basic guidance and support, covering entry-level subjects such as exposure, composition “rules” and simple post-processing techniques. My objective is different — to address the needs of intermediate and advanced shooters who wish to push themselves further and overcome any hurdles that are preventing their progression.

With this in mind I have chosen not to offer a rigid menu of predefined workshops. Instead, I will discuss your requirements with you in advance so that each workshop will be a unique experience designed to meet the specific needs of its participants. Nothing is fixed — the dates, course content, duration and even the location are all open to discussion (and guidance).

You can browse the list subject areas that I’m currently proposing on my workshops site. If you have other needs then please feel free to contact me.

To get the ball rolling I’ve decided to offer a 20% discount on the first five bookings for 2010.