Twin Geeks Photography

So, Terence does all these D-I-Y posts on framing and flash repair and so on; I’m introducing my own new little section, Anatomy of a Photo, where we’ll take some specific photo and deconstruct all the steps that were necessary to create it. So to start with, we’ll use my panorama of Edinburgh, Scotland taken from Arthur’s Seat in Holyrood Park.

(For full effect, you need to view that shot in full size, though that’s only 19% of the full resolution of the image.)

Obviously, half of a good panorama is finding a really striking point to shoot from. In this case, I decided beforehand that I wanted to get a panorama of Edinburgh from up on Arthur’s Seat. For those not familiar with Edinburgh, there’s a large park with a set of hills (really, almost small mountains, as they have cliffs suitable for climbing) in the city. And Holyrood Park is dominated by Arthur’s Seat, the largest of these hills. The Seat towers over Edinburgh, tall enough to be seen from neighboring towns.

A local photographer actually warned me off this shot beforehand, saying that if you go completely up to the top you can’t get a good panorama and that if you go only partway up you will probably have much of the city blocked by the rest of the Seat. He was completely right, but I decided to try this anyway because I felt there was a good view to be had. I’m glad I did, so my second point in ‘finding your shot’ is that it’s better to try a shot and fail at it, than to go ‘well, no, I won’t bother’ and always regret it. Especially when traveling, when you might not get another shot! Some of my favorite shots of mine — this panorama, the picture of the sunrise through the ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi — are pictures I gambled on getting, while traveling.

Once you’ve found the shot you want to take, of course, the next step is taking it. I was a bit of an idiot in this case; I only needed the tripod (Manfrotto CXPRO3), the camera (Canon 5D Mark II), the lens (EF 50mm f/1.4) and the pano setup (ReallyRightStuff panning clamp and nodal slide), but I carried the entire camera bag from Edinburgh Castle down to Holyrood Park, then halfway up Arthur’s Seat. Without water. Do not try this at home. Or while traveling. Or, really, ever. Be smarter than me; at least bring a water bottle!

The panning clamp is important, obviously, since you can keep the camera level but still rotate it. However, it’s not /absolutely/ necessary in all cases (my ball-head also rotates at the base, in a pinch I could have used that). However, the nodal slide is /vital/ to getting a good panorama like this. ReallyRightStuff has an excellent page on why, but the short form is that you will have distortions (and a lot more work to do in editing) if you aren’t pivoting the camera around the focal point of the lens.

Of course, you need to specifically calibrate for a given lens. We’ll be writing a more in-depth tutorial on how we do this, but ReallyRightStuff has an excellent page on the basics, in the meantime. Generally, you want to calibrate for a given lens /before/ you’re out in the field shooting with limited time, if you can. Trying to calibrate the 50mm up on Arthur’s Seat would have been a logistical nightmare; to get far enough away from the camera, I might well have fallen off a cliff trying to do it. Not really ideal. But Terence and I had already calibrated the 50mm for panoramas long ago; I knew precisely where to position the camera on the nodal slide.

So once I was all set up to take the panorama itself, I metered the scene and set my exposure manually. You need the exposure to remain constant across a panorama, or else you will have weird issues when you try to stitch them together. In this case, I chose to take 20 panels. Each panel was 3 exposures; the main manually set exposure, then two others bracketed +/- 1.5EV. Each panel overlapped the neighboring panel by 50%.

For the sake of smooth shots, I set the 5D2 to fire on a 2 second timer, and set the Auto Exposure Bracketing accordingly. Then I merely lined up the shot, hit the shutter and waited two seconds, and the camera fired off three shots without my hand there to introduce any vibrations.

Here is a sample of the first two panels in the panorama. You can see the three exposures at each of the positions, and then the combined HDR version of that panel.

The HDR was done using Photomatix Pro — batch processing keeps me sane! — and a bit of tweaking in Photoshop to add my own tweak or, as Terence calls it, “Secret Sauce” to give that sort of dreamlike quality I wanted in this case. I only stumbled across this particular “secret sauce” in the past few days, and will quite possibly go back and redo some of my other UK HDR shots using this technique. If you like doing HDR, I recommend finding your own specific ‘look’ that you like; in this case, I think I finally found mine.

Once I had 20 TIFF files for the panorama, I started up Photoshop CS4’s “Photomerge” tool and dropped the 20 panels in. Photoshop ground along through a percentage bar for a while, and spit out the final panorama. Then it was just a matter of cleanup and tweaking to ensure the result was satisfactory, a reduction in size to 19% of full (for purposes of posting the panorama), and adding a watermark. And, of course, blogging about this.

I probably could’ve made a better explanation of the process here, but feel free to post questions if you have any, and Terence or I will try to answer. Otherwise, enjoy the photo!

The following shots of fire spinners are some of the more challenging shots I’ve taken with off-camera lighting. Here’s my thought process involved.

First of all, until PocketWizard’s ControlTL and RadioPoppers came along, off camera flash for the most part was a 100% manual affair. This may seem intimidating to beginners, but really, with a few simple rules, setting the exposure isn’t that difficult.

Let’s get the technical details out of the way: these shots were taken on a Canon EOS 5D Mk ii, with either the EF24-70mm f/2.8L or the EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS. Lighting was provided by a single, film era Nikon SB-25 ($60.00 used). The flash was gelled CTO and the camera’s white balance set to daylight. Balanced against daylight, the flash’s output takes on an orange tinge – making it appear that the subjects are lit by fire light.

As an engineer, I approach setting the correct exposure as an algebra problem. For any off camera shot there only exists 4 user-controlled variables:

* The output intensity of the flash (as seen by the subject)
* Shutter speed
* Aperture
* ISO

Just like solving an algebra equation, we try to nail down the unknowns. The first one I tackle is the flash’s output. I know that to have any chance of getting good shots, I need to shoot *a lot*, given the unpredictable nature of the dance subjects’ movements. So, having to sit around and wait for the flash to recharge (2-3 seconds) is probably not acceptable. My choices are really M1/4 and M1/8 – quarter and eighth power. I know that I’m going to be trying to drag my shutter speed (more below) out to possibly 1 sec exposure, so M1/4, and being mindful not doing a “spray and pray”, would be my good starting point.

Once I set my flash output, I arrive at preliminary numbers for 2 more variables: ISO and Aperture. By now, the sun had set and the sky’s rapidly darkening, so for a first order approximation I can afford to ignore the ambient light. From experience, I know that the combination of a gell and a diffuser is about 1.5 stops of light being taken out, so I started at f/2.8 and ISO200. the exposure is decent and so I run with it.

Now, my last variable: shutter speed. this really depends on the dancer i’m photographing. I want to capture as much of the fire trails as possible, so i experimented with various speeds, from 1/6 to 1 second.

Occasionally, the amount of fire being spun creates a large enough “light source” that it contributes to the ambient exposure and blurs my final images. when that happens, I up the flash output to 1/2 power or full power, and then stop down my aperture the corresponding 1-2 stops to compensate. this way, the ambient light contributes less to the overall exposure compared to the flash pulse – and thus a sharper, more well defined image.  See here – notice how there’s a lot less ghosting of the face, etc.  The flash’s much stronger pulse is what’s recording the face, but the aperture, stopped down to f/5.6, means that the ambient light sources isn’t recording much onto the sensor for the rest of the exposure.

Sometimes, having the flash misfire isn’t a bad thing.  The flash failed to go off for the following image, but I really liked the results.  It also gives you a good idea of what the ambient only contribution to the image is:

Two shots taken at the Fremont Sunday Market with off-camera flash using the PocketWizard ControlTL system. I’ve been experimenting with off-camera flash more often, lately!

This shot of a shipwreck on the Oregon coast was shot as a single RAW file, then turned into a psuedo-HDR with Photomatix to bring out the details better, then turned into a black-and-white image with Silver Efex Pro.

A lot of work for an effect I probably could’ve gotten by just bringing the film body and shooting Ilford HP5, but… hey, whatever works.

Fawzi Benhariz, known as Benny, the Rock-Man, or ‘the Stonedancer,’ is an interesting figure in our neighborhood. Benny started making sculptures out of rocks when he was a six-year-old boy back in Libya, whenever he was upset. He says he always found peace in finding the energy of each rock that let it fit well with other rocks.

After coming to the United States about three decades ago, Benny attended Loyola University to get a degree in philosophy. While in school, he’d work through his stress by constructing balanced rock sculptures along the levees in New Orleans.

Benny’s been through some rough times; eventually, he ended up on the streets in Seattle, building his sculptures to find peace in his life and in hopes of earning donations from passers-by. He’s had some dark spells, but he’s making some efforts to turn his life around now. He’s got a place to stay, a website and is working on finding ways to monetize his art — selling posters and postcards I’ve made of his work, for instance — so as to get his life back together.

This picture is one I took yesterday, of Benny resting his hand on one of the balanced-rock sculptures he was working on. The black-and-white of the bright sun and dark shadows, and the masking tape wrapped around the injured fingers, made a very dramatic image.

To make up for forgetting to post for so long, here are THREE photos! At the Brews & Views meetup last night, Paula brought some bendy smiley men, who became the subject of several photographs. They celebrated May day (or possibly spring, or maybe just “hey, we’re at a pub!”) by gathering around various objects. The salt shakers, the vase of flowers on the table, people’s cameras and so on.

Made for an odd little set of pictures, because the light was awful (and I’d forgotten my Speedlite), but in the end the quality of light kind of worked for the shots in question.

Of course, it’s important to find some refreshment after a long shoot, too…

Haven’t posted in a while… oops! This is a black-and-white I took at the Seattle Public Library’s Central Branch, the rather distinctive huge glass geometric blob in downtown Seattle. Up on one of the upper floors, I saw this lone student engrossed in their studies, and had to snap a picture. I do love playing with natural backlighting when the opportunity arises.

Took a break during today’s film photostroll to shoot this with the 5D2; I shot +/-2 EV from my target exposure, combined the three shots into HDR with Photomatix, and then turned it back into film-esque black and white using Silver Efex Pro.

Eventually I’ll actually get my black and white film from today developed, too!

Posters on a wall below Pike Place Market make an interesting subject for an almost abstract image. (I didn’t photograph the Sunday Market this week, so I have no market challenge to discuss. Any ideas for next week are welcomed, though!)

Some pictures just require a certain treatment. The original color image here was less compelling or interesting… but a square crop with a black and white Holga-style conversion, and suddenly the image is a more poignant moment caught in time.