You know how the cobbler’s kids have no shoes? Well it’s not that bad, I do have photos of my kids, but they were not easy to get! I have tons of photos of my friends’ children that are wonderful and were much easier to create. It is something about the pressure of performing for your own parents that makes it a difficult task for the kids. Not to mention the expectations I have for my little muses as a mother and an artist with a vision. Even with the right location, clothes, light and bribes in place, it is still challenging to photograph your own children.
Start with movement. I don’t mean the kids, they do that already. I mean you, the photographer. Bend, squat, jog, kneel, and shake the camera and yourself on purpose. My father was 6’6” tall and a gifted photographer. However, he did better photographing the animals at the zoo than the rug rats at home. I think because every shot was taken at eye level and that gives a very specific look, especially at his height. So try it…..
Shoot up
Shoot down
In your face
On the ground
Keep it loose. I think traditional portraiture can be so stiff. This is another great reason to shoot a lot. In the old days of film, photographers use to shoot a roll not using any film for the sole purpose of loosening up their subjects. Here are two favorite tips I have for making my subject lighten up. First, interact with each other. Not looking at the camera, but at each other talking and laughing. You are bound to get some dorky shots with people’s mouths open, but you might get a real moment too. Lastly, when in doubt, walk it out. People can’t look stiff while they are moving; I think it is physically impossible. Again, you will blow through a million out of focus, lousy frames. If you keep at it, and practice your panning prowess you are going to get a great shot. PS. if you are walking backwards have someone watch where you are going. I have fallen into a pricker bush and almost off a dock before.
Keep it loose
Wearing a cape running through a field, or using a butterfly net as a prop. These both capture universal themes of childhood. Look at your print ads and catalogs what is going on there photographically. Think of at least one emotion you are trying to convey and about the perfect wardrobe and location to make it happen.
I know parents that shoot their kids doing everything. This is a much more photojournalist approach. There is nothing wrong with that. As a matter of fact shooting weddings has made me a better observer. You are not directing every moment in a wedding… sometimes you are a fly on a wall. It is while you are observing the mundane moments in life, that is when the magic can happen.
So you know how to get to Carnegie Hall right?
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.
If you use studio strobes for lighting, and your images are consistently too light or too dark, it’s probably not your fault. It’s entirely possible that your light meter and your camera are not on the same page. I know that sounds improbable; after all, they are both precision instruments. But, while all manufacturers produce equipment to close tolerances, it’s possible for a meter and camera to both “pass” their respective Quality Control tests but not be in agreement with each other. Fortunately, it’s really easy to discover if the two machines are out of sync, and it’s really easy to fix the problem.
You will need a neutral gray or white target. You can find collapsible targets from BalanceSmarter.com and Lastolite.com, both of which are gray on one side, white on the other. The difference between the two is that the BalanceSmarter product has printed lines on both sides, to make it easier for your camera’s auto focus to lock on to it. These products are invaluable for Custom White Balance as well and are available in several sizes.
For this exercise we’ll use a gray surface, which will allow us to use the camera’s histogram to judge the accuracy of the meter.
Begin by mounting the gray target on a light stand, and aiming a strobe at it. You will get a more even light by setting the strobe at least seven feet away from the target and using a softbox or umbrella to spread the light even more. Check the exposure with the light meter and move the target slightly forward or back, if necessary, until the exposure is a perfect whole f-stop, like f8 or f11, or a perfect third of a stop (f+.03 or f+.07). Check the top and bottom and both sides of the target as well, to make sure the exposure is even across the surface, no more than 1/10 stop off in either direction.
Fill the frame with the target (you can turn off auto focus if you can’t get close enough with your lens) and take a picture. I try to just shoot the center portion. Be sure your shadow does not fall on the target. Also, be sure to set the ISO on the meter to the same value as the camera. If your meter and camera are speaking the same language, your camera’s histogram will show a spike right in the middle, which is exactly where you want it.
All good flash meters allow you to make adjustments, in tenths of a stop, in how they read the light. If the spike in your first image is left or right of center, you’ll need to make an adjustment to the meter, basically tricking the meter into reading the light stronger or weaker than it did before. All meters will make adjustments differently, depending on the manufacturer. Consult the meter’s instruction manual to determine how to do it for your equipment.
Regardless of how it’s done, all you need to do is adjust the meter until the reading it gives you produces a histogram spike that’s in the middle of the graph. You’ll need to adjust the target toward or away from the light each time you make an adjustment, so that the reading the adjusted meter gives you is the same as the reading you started with. In other words, don’t make any changes to the aperture of the camera, just adjust the target position.
Once calibrated, your meter will measure light that’s perfectly tuned for your camera. If you use more than one camera, repeat this exercise for your other gear. It’s possible that your other camera(s) will require a different adjustment or none at all. If that’s the case, a marked piece of white tape or a white label on the bottom of the camera will remind you how to reset the meter. My Sekonic, for example, offers two different calibration methods, one of which is invisible. The other shows the adjustment on the meter’s screen every time it’s turned on. This is the one to use if you have more than one camera in play because you’ll immediately know if the adjustment is correct for the machine in your hand.
The sun is low and behind the subjects
It’s a beautiful sunny day outside so you want go out and shoot, right? Let’s think about this…. How great do the kids look at the beach in the mid-day sun, squinting at the camera? I generally try to shoot 90 minutes after sunrise or 90 minutes before sunset. That is when you will have the most flattering light. Your subjects can look at you either with the sun in their faces or to their backs. This shot of my kids was taken on the beach in Maine about 90 minutes before sunset. The sun was low and to their backs.
Even at the golden hour I rarely shoot with the sun directly in the models faces. Most subjects have trouble keeping their eyes open even in low light. A wonderful option is to use a silk between the sun and your subject to diffuse the golden light as seen here. Try to cover the subject completely. Watch where the shadows created by the silk are falling and try to keep it natural looking.
The light is diffused using a silk
One of my absolute favorite things to do is to shoot into the sun. Have your subject stand directly in front of the sun. You will need to carefully watch for lens flare created by the sun entering directly into your lens. I often choose to have flare in the camera as seen here.
This image has intentional use of lens flare
You will have to use trial and error to see how much flare is desirable. You will need to either expose for your subjects face using a hand-held incident meter or use exposure compensation in program mode and open up at least 1-2 stops to accommodate for the meter being fooled by all that bright light. You can also balance the light adding on-camera flash. Expose for the background and use the flash to light your model. You can take this even further by under exposing the background by a stop or two and then balance the flash to your subject. This is a trick photographers like Annie Leibovitz use. It makes the foreground objects pop against the nicely saturated background. Sometimes accidents turn into the best photos…the trick is knowing how to repeat them.
This photo shows the Bokeh effect
My other favorite thing to do is to utilize the dabbled light created by the leaves in the trees as seen in the photo above. This look is accentuated when using a longer portrait lens. The compression of a telephoto makes the subject in the foreground stand out and creates a Bokeh (derived from Japanese, a noun boke 暈け, meaning “blur” or “haze”) effect. I also used a white fill card here to reflect more light into the model’s face. Pay careful attention to what is happening behind your subject. Shoot at a shallow f-stop so your background is soft and out of focus.
Generally the last thing you want to do is go out in the mid-day sun. Unless you can find open shade it is really a difficult situation to work with. Since you probably can’t get a crew and a large enough silk to diffuse a big area, get creative. Can you work under an umbrella or a porch? Can you hold a card up to block the direct sun and try to use the shade created? This image was created on a sunny day around 10am under the overhang of a porch.
Sunny day under the porch
While you are at it, forget about the sun all together. There is nothing like shooting on an overcast day. The light is soft and even from every direction. You are not limited to the time you can photograph. It is an all day shooting opportunity. This shot on the beach was taken on a cloudy day.
Overcast day at the beach
A real pro works with what light they are given. So take a 360 degree look around you and start shooting.
I love to travel. Even though it’s become a much larger pain in the backside than ever before, each trip I make presents innumerable opportunities for photographs. Because I’m in terra incognita, I look at everything with more intensity and curiosity than anything I might see in my own backyard. Over the years I’ve developed a sort of repertoire of techniques that I draw upon, and I’d like to share some of them with you. For photographers, travel is more of an adventure than a vacation. My camera is always with me when I travel because I consider photography such an integral part of my psyche that I just can’t leave it behind. Taking pictures is just too much fun.
When photographing people, watch for the “moment.” Interaction within a group, large or small, indigenous or tourist, will tell the tale much better than a static shot of people looking at your camera. Try to be unobtrusive. Keep the camera to your eye, making exposures as opportunities present themselves. Above all, avoid the urge to “chimp” your images, looking at the LCD after each picture to see what you got. It’s distracting to the subjects, onlookers, and you. Besides, you might miss something.
Isolate your subject. Use a telephoto and a large aperture (200mm and f2.8 in this case) to put emphasis on the subject by making the background out of focus. If the subject is lit, try to position yourself so the background is at least partially in shadow. Doing so will lend additional emphasis to the subject. Photo 2
Pan the camera. Following action and using a slow shutter speed (1/5 second here, but shutter speed should be chosen for the speed of the action) results in a blurred image with some portion recognizably in focus. To pan the camera successfully, find the subject and start panning before tripping the shutter. Note the location of the part of the image you want to remain important and its place in the viewfinder. Keep it there for the duration of the entire pan. It’s also a good idea to pan past the end of the exposure, as you’ll avoid stopping the camera movement too soon.
If you’re working in a basic, automatic camera mode, your built-in flash may pop up. Switch to Tv (Shutter Priority) and set the shutter speed you want. This shot would be just a snapshot if the flash had gone off.
Wait for the peak of the action. When any object moves back and forth there will be a short time at each end of the arc where some action freezes. Situations like this require a shutter speed fast enough to catch the peak but slow enough to allow faster movement to blur. This hula dancer was photographed under stage light at 1/15 second, f3.5, ISO 400. The Tungsten (Incandescent) white balance preset was also used, along with Continuous Shooting, to increase the chance for a successful image. It’s almost impossible to nail something like this with just one shot.
Watch where you’re going. Whether you’re shooting just to document your trip or to fill your stock files, pay attention to the country you’re driving through and be sure to stop when the scene looks “right” (and it’s safe to do so, of course). As an aside, color is always more saturated after a rain.
Wait for Sweet Light whenever you can, or make sure you’re just out with your camera. At the Magic Hour just before and immediately after sunset colors are warm and rich, and not seen at any other time of the day. First light of dawn is also beautiful, but usually not so intense.
Look down. Great compositions are not always found at eye level. This plant was slightly off the path, but moving the camera closer to it and pointing the lens down in an atypical manner revealed this unusual view.
Isolate details. Much as you would with people, get close to the subject with a longer focal length lens and use an aperture large enough to gently blur the background.
Use local architecture to frame areas of interest. If the exposure had been made for the buildings the resulting overexposure of the landscape would have made a rather ugly picture. The landscape by itself would have been just as dull, given the early morning haze. As it is, the building’s old facades and retrofittings add a sense of interest and antiquity to a very tranquil scene.
Use shadows to your advantage. Since few people like to see people they don’t know in their travel photos (but tourists are everywhere) use building shadows to silhouette your fellow travelers and add visual interest to your shots beyond simple documentation of your location. Also, try to keep your fellow travelers’ backs to you. That makes them even more anonymous.
Anonymous people add interest to patterned compositions. Architecture, and the repetition of detail, presents many opportunities to record line and form and you should certainly take advantage of that whenever possible. Images of this nature, however, are actually improved by the addition of a human being into the shot because the scale of the building becomes apparent as the design becomes humanized. Obviously, it’s not something that can always be controlled, but it certainly should be photographed when it happens.
Use Exposure Compensation to saturate the colors of sunset. Depending on which metering mode you use, you may find it valuable to dial in Exposure Compensation to get even richer colors than may be noted by your eyes.
The first image, shot in Av Mode, did a terrific job of photographing exactly how the sky looked just a few moments before sunset. The second image, made just a few seconds later with a -1 stop Exposure Compensation represents this sunset more as we imagine it. This scene is now transformed into one of those idyllic images we see in our mind’s eyes.
Shoot the icons. In hundreds, if not thousands, of locations around the world there are iconic images that represent the location.
For almost 70 years, the USS Arizona has been leaking a small amount of oil a day since it was sunk at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Arguments have been presented on both sides for stopping it or letting it continue, but the point is that those leaks represent the monument possibly more than the actual monument itself.
Bad weather is your friend. Don’t hunker down in your hotel room, get out there and shoot. This blizzard was a nasty event that lasted the better part of two days, caused me to miss a flight, and basically made my life miserable as far as my actual wedding job was concerned. The bottom line, though, is that it was beautiful in its ferocity.
In between shooting obligations for the actual job, I made several hundred images of this blizzard within just a block or two of my hotel. It was unpleasant, but so what? If the picture’s everything, what’s a little frostbite among friends?
In situations where I’m photographing many items or situations over the course of the day I’ve found it very valuable to also photograph some notes. When I find an item of interest that’s not immediately identifiable I’ll make a note with a black marker in a small notebook that I keep in my gadget bag. The marker makes the note easy to read, even from a catalog thumbnail, and helps tremendously when I need to identify a subject. The best part? It costs nothing to shoot, and the note will stay with the files and any catalog unless you delete it.
You can also take a picture of a menu, napkin, or other identifier to help you keep track of where you where or what you did.
Shoot after sunset but try different presets. Your camera’s sensor is an amazing instrument. Using the Av Mode, the sensor can read and communicate a correct aperture/shutter combination to the processor to produce wonderful images for you, but different Color Balance presets will produce different colors.
You’ll need to use a tripod anyway, so take another minute or two to rack through the choices, just to see what might happen. This first image was made with the Daylight preset, the second with the Incandescent.
Contemporary digital cameras are perfectly capable of metering moonlight as well as sunlight. Should you be lucky enough to see the moon rise behind a nice composition, well, bang away. You may need to do some Exposure Compensation, because the moon will be such a bright spot in the dark heavens, but playing with the camera will be worth the results. Play quickly, though. No celestial object will wait for you.
Always, no matter where you are, keep your eyes open for humorous moments. It doesn’t matter where your sense of humor leads you, your audience will laugh at your ability to see the world the way you do.
There are three things that make me feel like a rock star. One is getting my hair professionally blown out. Two is watching my children grow. And three is strapping on ten thousand dollars worth of camera gear. Okay let’s talk about number three. It is not the ten thousand dollar part, although having big a** cameras are a lot of fun. It could be a point and shoot, or a “PHD” camera as my dad used to call it (Press Here Dummy). What makes me feel like a rock star and what should empower you too, is the ability to know how to use it, and the vision to act on it. Even if it is a Polaroid, as long as you know what you are doing, you have conviction, you own it…you own your power. This kind of confidence is contagious. It makes your subjects comfortable. It draws people to you like a magnet. I think this kind of charisma is essential for a people shooter. It’s through this rapport that you will get your best shots.
So how do you develop these qualities? It’s like the law of attraction which basically states, what you put out there comes back to you. Or in other words, if it feels good you are on the right track. Keep doing that. So when you are learning how to shoot, first focus on what you are attracted to. What interests you? What are your reading about or looking at even when your favorite TV show is on. What moves you into action?
I am betting if you are on this website you love shooting and you are a mom. Can I take a guess; you probably love shooting your kids! I know I do. So take this and run with it. Practice with them, on them, until you know what you are doing. It’s a lot more inspiring then doing exposure tests on a mannequin. I am constantly at Target styling my next photo concept…or, I am driving around town scouting out the perfect location. What do you want to photograph? Write down all your shoot ideas…keep them in a journal, refer to it often. Make a habit of leafing through magazines for inspiration. Ironically, when I was a photo editor at a magazine my job required me to look through them. I always felt guilty about doing this. It seemed so decadent. Maybe because I am the product of a Jewish father and a mother who attended catholic school… it is double the guilt. But when you are an artist in training you must find motivation anyway you can. You need to fill the well with lots of inspiration.
Then next thing that will catapult you to rock stardom… is just doing it! Sure you have heard that before but sometimes it is easier to watch Oprah then to learn something new. Another cup of coffee sounds like a better idea than researching photography websites. The idea of a photo class seems too intimidating. How could I possibly make time for that… the kids, family… Yeah, yeah we are all there. It is all about balance. The happier mom is, the happier everyone is. So if you need to take pictures…and you are actually doing it….congratulations you are a ROCK STAR!
(this post has been updated from a post at RESOLVE http://blog.livebooks.com/category/contributors/sas-becker/)
A career in photography requires you to adapt and change. I guess any career that involves technology demands that you always keep up to date. Gone are the days where you stayed at one company for 30 years. For someone that is a technophobe like me, this basically stinks. You mean to tell me that to continue doing what I love; I have to always learn new stuff? I guess there are worse things. I mean I went kicking and screaming into digital and now I curse myself for not switching sooner. I am not sure where this fear came from? I know most people are afraid of change. Although, growing up my role models, my parents, where always the first to try new technologies. We had the first microwave on the block…. which was enormous if I recall. My mom also had one of those huge cell phones with a brick size battery you had to carry around with it. So one would think I would have developed some desire to be the first to conquer the new frontier. Not really…. but what I do have is tenacity and this has served me well.
I graduated photo school with some great contacts but not a lot of practical photo skills. I didn’t feel technically astute enough to be a first assistant so I became a photo editor. That taught me a lot about producing great photography, but it wasn’t as fulfilling as creating it myself. So, in 1993 my husband and I took the leap and starting building our stock library. We walked into a stock agency with a box of 8×10 black and white prints and got signed on the spot. The thing that was great about stock is that we could learn how to shoot on our own time. Granted it was our own dime too, but through trial and error we figured out what we were doing. The stock allowed us to build a portfolio, which led to magazine assignments. The editorial work led us to a rep, which got us a few advertising gigs.
We continued to shoot stock and assignment work for the next decade. We were happy as clams….but, then digital happened. Now all of a sudden everyone is a photographer. The cameras got better and more affordable. The price of equipment was no longer an obstacle for beginning shooters. The market was flooded and our stock sales dropped, a lot…. Now, here comes the bride…. All of a sudden weddings are looking pretty good and so are family portraits. Great, now I have something new to figure out? The great surprise is I actually love weddings and family portraits. All the things that drove me to photography to begin with exist in weddings and portraits. I love people! As long as I get to photograph them, especially if it’s at a big party, I am happy.
So what you know or learn today might not matter in 5 or 10 years… this maybe true. But what doesn’t change is your vision and your desire to create. You love making photos right? You can’t imagine not doing it…… Now you know how the kids feel at school, they constantly have to learn new things. It may be a little easier for them, they are not as old and scared of change. So you know how to eat an elephant don’t you……. one bite at a time.
Well this is a loaded question isn’t it? Unfortunately, not my title but the title of an awesome documentary I just saw on women artists. Check out www.whodoesshethinksheis.net. Just recently I found myself defending my artist to a gifted, female photographer. I was happily second shooting for her in Hawaii. Anyway, we were shooting this wedding in Hawaii….It was gorgeous, the couple was gorgeous…..I like to call this scenario “shooting ducks in a barrel.” So, I was trying to tell her that I was a goddess photographer and not a soccer mom. She gave me a once over and pointed to my crocs, my Capri’s and most incriminating of all, my necklace made of photos of my kids and said have you looked in the mirror lately. And, don’t you drive a minivan, and doesn’t your daughter in fact play soccer? Yeah… but, well… Okay maybe she had a point.
This film challenged all that. Just where do we as women, get off, trying to do art, mothering, marriage and god knows what else? Society tells us that we can’t have it all, we have to choose. I know I assumed a soccer mom couldn’t be a cool artist. Well, didn’t we all learn what happens when we assume…. You can still drive a minivan and have something to say. “Who does she think she is?” follows the lives of 5 different artists navigating their muse, family, and life in general. My absolute favorite was this Mormon mother of 5 in New England that made these incredible sculptures from clay. She couldn’t have appeared any more normal. Jeans, t-shirt, quirky glasses and nice highlights. I can’t even imagine handling 5 children and then finding the time to make the most outrageous creatures often with several heads birthing other creatures with multiple heads. Then the film showed a clip of her ten year old daughter saying, “It would be nice, if when my friends came over these things weren’t in the dining room.” It was just fantastic that these objects came out of this woman. Her story was unfortunately one of the only ones with a seemingly happy home life.
The first thing my girlfriend said to me when the film was over was that she wanted her friend, an actress to see it. Also, it was a shame that all the women in it were destitute or divorced. I actually didn’t notice that part at first…but that’s just me… glass is always half full. What I noticed first, is the amazing work these women were producing. Also, how strong they all seemed. I particularly related to the fact that they always had a drive to create but it was somehow magnified after childbirth. I have always considered myself an artist… but it wasn’t until I had my kids that I truly got it. Got how important it was to create for myself. Maybe the act of creation itself flicks the switch. I remember watching my brother and his wife when they first had their twins…. and thought, wow this is it… this is what it is all about… kids, family. This was before I had my own kids. It is just that they had longed for them for years and now they just felt so blessed. It was a beautiful thing to witness. I knew I always wanted to have kids but it was more like something I was going to get to eventually, after the list of other things I was doing. I don’t mean that to sound callous. I cannot imagine life without kids, without my own precious children. But, I also can’t imagine life without creativity and art. It is like birthing a baby. It is a long process that is very intricate, many things can go wrong. But, in the end it is so right, and couldn’t have happened any other way.
So who do you think you are? Are you a soccer mom with a camera and a vision? Embrace it, be the best damn artist, mom, spouse, friend, woman you can be. Nurture it. Follow every whim. Write down your ideas. Assign yourself projects. Rub shoulders with other artists. Go on a play date with yourself. Read a book, journal, jog, knit… whatever it is find time to express yourself because if you don’t you will feel less capable to handle everything else that comes with….life.
TheMommaRazzi.com was started because as women photographers it’s hard to find a place to learn the art of photography that is safe and free from criticism. The concept behind TheMommaRazzi.com is simple create a community of woman only shooters where we can learn from the resident experts, but also each other. (more…)