Take Intimate Portraits In Snapshot Situations
1. May 2008
Ron
Recently I travelled down east to Southwestern Ontario to visit my family which also meant meeting my grandniece for the first time. Said meeting took place at a family gathering at my mother’s house and as usual I had my camera handy. Let me begin by confessing that my least favourite type of photography is snapshot photography. I’m not denigrating snapshots, much of our personal history is documented with snapshots but it’s just not something I enjoy doing. The gathering took place mostly in my Mom’s average sized livingroom filled with the usual furnishings and knick knacks as well as dining room chairs to provide seating for the dozen odd attendees. A rather crowded venue which would make for busy photos and plenty of distracting elements. With this in mind I opted for the long focal length and versatility of my 70-200mm zoom lens. This lens allowed a degree of stealth and the ability to capture the moment without making my subject uncomfortable or self conscious (no clenched teeth forced smiles while the photographer focuses and composes).
Grandpa and Granddaughter Kylea
For lighting I used a hot shoe flash on my camera to keep things simple and unobtrusive. The built in flash on most DSLRs will usually provide adequate light for situations like this where subject to camera distance is under twenty feet but you are restricted to direct flash which can be harsh and will cast hard shadows. With a hot shoe flash you can use the bounce feature. You do this by aiming the flash upward thus bouncing the light off the ceiling which scatters it making it softer and creating more flattering portraits. If you happen to be in an outdoor situation or a room or hall with very high ceilings consider some sort of diffusion device for your flash. Luniquest make a complete line of flash diffusion and bounce attachments.
Mother and Daughter
Exposure is really a piece of cake with modern TTL flash units. With these the camera senses when sufficient light has entered the camera and simply turns the flash off at that point. I’d suggest you use manual exposure setting the shutter speed to the maximum sync speed, usually 1/250th (if you set it faster your camera will reset it to that speed anyway) and to minimize distracting background elements open the aperture all the way. Take a few test shots and preview the image and histogram to ensure the exposure is optimal, if not use the flash exposure compensation feature either on the camera or flash unit it’s self (not to be confused with exposure compensation or EV) to nail in the exposure.
Father and Daughter
To compose intimate portraits you want to get in tight. Don’t worry about getting full head and shoulder portraits but rather home in on faces, eyes, and expressions to get revealing character studies, leave the head and shoulder shots to the passport photographers.
Thanks for dropping by, comments and suggestions always welcome.
Digital Photography | 3 Kommentare »
Still Alive and Well
22. April 2008
Ron
As you’ve likely figured out I’ve let my blogging duties fall a bit behind lately. Sorry about that but real life has kind of eaten into my disposable time.
Registration is now open at LVS for the May classes. This session I’ll be giving Digital Photography 101 and Digital Darkroom for Photoshop. Classes start on May 10 and boards will open a week before. Hope to see a lot of you there.
Digital Photography | 3 Kommentare »
The Urban Wildlife Photographer
19. March 2008
Ron
Since my favourite photographic subject is wildlife I’m fortunate to live smack dab in the boreal forest of Northwestern Ontario. Practically at my doorstep I can photograph bear, deer, moose and beaver as well as many species of birds ranging from bald eagles to chickadees. With that in mind it was a little odd last week, that I should find myself in the urban jungle of Southern Ontario camera in hand photographing species of birds that I rarely, or never, get a chance to see at home. Specifically Burlington Ontario, a city nestled at the east end of Lake Ontario, a stone’s throw from the mega city of Toronto Ontario and across the harbour from the industrial steel city of Hamilton. The purpose of the trip was to visit my family in London Ontario for the week but I took a couple of days to visit places I was told about by photographer friends. High on the list of recommended locations was LaSalle Park in Burlington, a 57 acre green oasis in a desert of urban sprawl on the north shore of Burlington Bay.
After I parked my truck, gathered my gear and walked a short distance from the parking lot I was blown away. I had never seen so many water fowl gathered together in one place. There were hundreds if not thousands of ducks, swans, geese and of course gulls.
I spent most of the day filling out my portfolio with new species I had never photographed before and some great in flight shots breaking only for lunch at a nearby diner (another perk of urban wildlife photography).
I also met a number of avid bird photographers, a species easily identified by the big cameras and lenses strung around their necks and engaged them in the usual conversations on exposures and equipment as well as the locations of other nearby birding hot spots. One gentleman put me on to an area where I would likely be able to photograph Cardinals. Since my home turf is just beyond the northern range of the Northern Cardinal and I had never photographed one I was quite interested. The place was the nature trails at the Royal Botanical Gardens located on another green space in the city of Burlington. Since I planned to return the next day I located the area on Google Earth and programed it into the GPS in my truck that evening. At the crack of dawn the next day I left London and arrived at the RBC nature trails ninety minutes later. It wasn’t long before I found an agreeable cardinal and soon learned to recognize their call which led me to more. I spent a pleasant morning on the nature trails then returned to LaSalle park to photograph more water fowl. All in all I probably took more quality bird photos in the heart of the most populated area of Canada in two days than I had in the past year in the wilderness of Northwestern Ontario, go figure.
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Is Photography a Solitary or Social Pursuit?
28. February 2008
Ron
I‘ve always been a bit of a loner and for many years I practised photography as a solitary endeavour. Since my favourite photographic subjects are wildlife and landscapes this involved wilderness hikes, or canoe trips, or single handing my little sloop Kismet on Lake Superior sailing to deserted bays. Sometimes MC would accompany me (if you want to test your marriage try being holed up with your significant other in the tiny damp cold cabin of a sailboat waiting out two days of rain and storms) but often I’d set off by myself sometimes for a week or more. Being located near Thunder Bay gave me quick and easy access to total solitude. A half hour’s drive from my home was public crown land covered in boreal forest and liberally sprinkled with lakes and streams. A day’s sail across the bay of Thunder Bay out into lake Superior gave me access to countless secluded anchorages.
Last summer MC and I took a road trip to the American Southwest, primarily southern Utah. For the majority of the stay we headquartered ourselves at a motel in Moab UT, a lovely little touristy town of 5000 on the shore of the Colorado River and minutes away from some of the most spectacular scenery it’s ever been my pleasure to witness. Since this was our trip a compromise had to be reached 
between my desire to wander off alone with my camera and sharing a vacation experience with my wife. We quickly fell into a routine that embraced both aspects. Since as you all know, photography is a craft best practised in the early morning or late afternoon and evening hours I made it my habit to be up and on the road prior to 5am, grabbing a coffee and muffin on my way and leaving MC happily sawing logs. Having researched on the internet the best locations to catch the morning light prior to the trip (ya gotta love the internet) I’d be set up and ready before the sunrise. MC in the meantime would get up, go for a jog and enjoy a more relaxed breakfast. By 10am I’d return from the canyon trails and we’d hook up for a day of exploring the wonders of the area me with a camera casually taking snap shots but mostly involved in the shared experience. Late in the afternoon we’d return to Moab where MC would explore the shops and galleries while I headed out to photograph landscapes in the evening light then finally we’d meet for a late supper.
I suppose the main reason I like to be alone with my photography is it gives me the freedom to do as I please. I don’t need to worry about cramping someone else’s style. I can move on when and if I please not having to follow someone else or take the responsibility of leading. I have however, in the last few years, hooked up with a few photographer buddies. Three gentlemen who are as serious about their photography as I am. We get together now and then over coffee to chew the fat about all aspects of photography and other typical guy stuff subjects. This time of year we meet each Sunday afternoon to photograph ice racing. Several times a year we’ll go on photographic day tours together. While it goes against my hermit character I do look forward to these events and they are always great fun.
So it’s not either or, the photographic experience can be solitary and shared.
The Four Photographers ©2008 Tom Skoropad All other photographs ©Boreal Photography
Digital Photography | 5 Kommentare »
Special Effects
22. February 2008
Ron
When I first got into photography I quickly became interested in the possibilities of creating images that weren’t based on reality. I started out by learning how to do multiple exposures, long exposures, painting with light, intentional blurs as well as working with special effects filters. I soon realized that if I really wanted to have serious control in this area I needed to do it in the darkroom. I enrolled in a couple of college night classes on darkroom techniques and soon after I got a taste of darkroom work I built a wet darkroom in my basement. I had a lot of fun working with high contrast sheet film, sandwiching slides and negatives, creating solarized prints and doing a lot of experimenting. While I enjoyed most of the time I spent holed up in my darkroom a lot of the work was tedious. Making a single posterized print could require exposing and processing a dozen sheets of high contrast film and then the final printing to paper was hit and miss.
When I got my first computer it didn’t take me long to realize the potential of using it for this sort of thing. Back then of course there was no digital photography and scanners were prohibitively expensive. I could and did send my slides to a lab and have them scanned to Kodak Photo CDs though. I eventually got a Nikon slide scanner and later a digital camera and today my darkroom has taken on a second career. Now adorned with fluorescent lights MC uses it to start seedlings for her gardens.
One thing I used to do in the darkroom is soften portraits so I thought I’d share with you a quick and effective method of doing this in PS or PSE or PSP, pretty much any application that supports layer blend modes.
- Open an already optimized photo.
- In the layers palette right click the background layer and choose Duplicate Layer
- With the duplicate layer selected go to the Filter Menu and select Blurr>Gaussian
- For a web sized image choose a radius of 5 to 10, for a full sized image choose 20-30 and click OK
- Right click on the duplicate layer and choose Duplicate Layer
- In the blend type field where it says normal activate the drop down and choose Hard light for the first duplicate layer and screen for the second.
- This part you can play with but start here, for the Hard light layer set the Fill value to 80 and for the screen layer set it to 50.
Adjust the Fill values of the duplicate layers to your choice, lower values will make the effect more subtle and higher values will give it a more surrealistic fantasy look. Below are a couple of before and after examples. If you click on them you can view larger versions.
Other Photo GPS Tracking Options
20. February 2008
Ron
Since few cameras these days have dedicated units like the Canon WFT-E2/E3 here are some other options available…
Robgeo http://robogeo.com/home/help.asp is a software program that works automatically with Garman GPS units matching tracking data from the GPS with the camera timestamp. Make sure you camera clock is in sync with the GPS time. A demo can be downloaded and the full version cost $39.
Photofinder http://photofinder.atpinc.com/ is a neat little GPS unit with a memory card slot, you put your card from the camera with the photos on it and it writes the location info to the files. I don’t know if it’s available in North America but I couldn’t find a dealer on the website, it won’t write to RAW.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gps2photo/ is a free open source (I think) program and a couple of people I know swear by it. Documentation on the site is pretty sketchy but more info can also be found here http://code.google.com/p/gpicsync/ .
Digital Photography | 0 Kommentare »
Where Did I Take That Photo Anyway???
15. February 2008
Ron
My name is Ron Lacey and I’m a technoholic, it’s been three days since I bought my last high tech toy, a GPS unit. I had decided I’d be getting a GPS sooner or later when we almost got lost off roading in Canyonlands NP last summer. As it happens, a couple of months ago I got a WFT-E3 wifi grip for my Canon 40D. One handy feature it gives you is the ability to connect a GPS unit to the camera and write the latitude, longitude, and altitude of the location from which you took the photo to the EXIF metadata of the image file. How cool is that? Well okay I could live without it but like I said I’m addicted to this stuff and I really do need a GPS, honest. Anyway that’s why I bought the GPS sooner as opposed to later.
A couple of days ago I gathered up my gear and headed off to try out my new toy. I headed out to Mission Island a handy conservation area within the City of Thunder Bay which among other things is home to a healthy population of whitetail deer. Shortly after I crossed the bridge over the McKellar River I came across group of deer that included a photogenic young buck. I pulled off the road well away from the group, fixed my 300mm lens and 1.4X converter to my 40D, plugged in the GPS and went deer hunting.
Though the deer here are accustomed to people and of course hunting is prohibited they are still wary. Add to this the heavy brush in the area and getting a really good shot can be a challenge. I walked down the road slowly and as I got closer the deer retreated into the brush. When I arrived to where they had gone into the woods I could see them standing looking at me some 50 meters away, well within range of my 420mm focal length but, unfortunately, a thick veil branches separated us and there was no clear shot to be had. I decided to go to the edge of the bush. This made them nervous and they started to move off slowly parallel to the road. I followed along the the bush line and finally the buck stopped and studied me where we had a clear line of sight tof each other. I happily took my buck photos and, not wanting to stress the critters, returned to my truck. I spent a few more hours hiking the trails and photographing more deer but my best photo was the first buck image which is destined to be printed.
Anyway back to the GPS. If you use the Firefox browser and have the EXIF reader plugin you can right click on the photo and choose View Image EXIF Data to see the meta data. Scroll down to the GPS area and you’ll see links to map websites, if you click on one of them a map will open showing the actual location where the photo was taken. If you don’t have Firefox click here to open the Mapquest link. In either case you can zoom in closer and choose a satellite photo view.
Upcoming Classes: As I noted last week I won’t be doing any classes for the March session but in May I’ll be doing Digital Photography 101 and the Photoshop Digital Darkroom class. As well in September I’ll be introducing a second Photoshop photography class.
Have a great weekend.
Digital Photography | 3 Kommentare »
Welcome to My LVS Blog
8. February 2008
Ron
The first Photoshop Digital Darkroom class is winding down now but if you’re behind don’t panic the site board will be up and running for some time yet and I’ll be monitoring it well into March.
I’ll be taking a hiatus during the March session to do some updating of the Digital Photography class. In May I’ll be offering both Digital Photography 101 and the PS Digital Darkroom classes again. I’ll try and keep this blog updated weekly with any new events in the world of LVS digital photography classes as well as some photography and editing tips. Hope you all will check in once and a while.
This weekend I’ll be photographing the ice races again.
Digital Photography | 0 Kommentare »
Registration is open at LVS Online Classes!
7. February 2008
Ron
Registration for the March 2008 session is open at LVS Online ~ Where Learning Is Fun!
For more information, go to http://www.lvsonline.com/update.shtml
For a complete list of all available classes at LVS Online go to
http://www.lvsonline.com/schedule.shtml
Instructor-led classes begin March 8th so head on over to LVS Online Classes to enroll now! http://www.lvsassociates.com/register
Digital Photography | 0 Kommentare »
Digital Photography with Photoshop Class
7. February 2008
Ron
Not so long ago photographers had two choices in the process of getting pictures out of their cameras. They could take their exposed film down to the local photo lab and anywhere from one hour to several days later receive a wad of 3X5 prints. All processing decisions were out of their hands. Or they could spend thousands of dollars to set up their own darkroom and invest many hours and more dollars learning the skills involved in making quality prints.
Those were the bad old days. Now, with the advent of high quality affordable digital cameras and inkjet printers those days are behind us. On the most basic level you can simply download images from your camera to your computer and print them out on your inkjet printer. Some printers will even let you print photos without the use of a computer. No more trips to the mall to process your pictures. Sharing photos with friends and family is also a snap with email or photo websites. But your computer is much more than a convenient one hour photo center. With the right software you can do things with your images that even a skilled photo finisher with a well equipped darkroom would find difficult, time consuming, and often impossible. Of course that software is Adobe Photoshop, the industry standard in image editing.
In this class you’ll learn how to navigate your way through Photoshop Bridge, discover the power of the camera RAW file format with Adobe Camera Raw and learn how to produce the best possible final results from you camera files. We’ll be covering basic and advanced photo editing techniques as well as some of the exciting special effects you can accomplish in Photoshop.
For more information and to register, follow this link: http://www.lvsassociates.com/register/product_info.php?products_id=248
Digital Darkroom with Photoshop | 0 Kommentare »
