Photo Tips and Stories (Page 12)

by Sean Setters

As I have gotten older, I have come to appreciate the many benefits of being well organized. Why is that? Far too often, I have experienced the consequences resulting from not being very well organized or thorough in my planning. And that's an ideal segue into the following story.

Our small family was planning on spending the long Easter holiday weekend with some friends and their two kids in Gerton, NC (about 17 miles southeast of Asheville, NC). As I contemplated what photography equipment to bring, my wife advised me that the Honda CRV we would be taking was going to be very full, so I needed to "think carefully" about how much camera equipment I brought along. Typically speaking, I like to bring the kitchen sink, so to speak, when photography is on the agenda. But in this case, there wouldn't be room in the car for the I-maaaaay-use-that type of gear I typically bring along.

Knowing that the gear I packed had to be versatile enough to capture indoor/candid portraiture as well as landscapes/waterfalls didn't make the job any easier, especially since I wanted to also bring some off-camera flash gear to take formal portraits of our hosts' kids (as well as my own, possibly) if given the opportunity. So, here's what I packed into a medium-sized photography backpack the night before we set off:

• Canon EOS 5D Mark III with memory cards
• Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Lens
• Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens
• Canon EF 35mm f/2 IS USM Lens
• Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens
• Canon Speedlite 580EX Flash (forerunner to Speedlite 600EX RT-II)
• Female Hotshoe with Miniphone Jack
• 3.5mm Male Miniphone to 3.5mm Male Miniphone cable
• Radio Receiver
• Flash Gels
• Neutral Density (ND) Filters (77mm, 2/10/15-Stops)
• Circular Polarizer (77mm)
• Step-Up Ring (67-77mm)
• FEISOL TT-15 Mark 2 Mini Carbon Fiber Tabletop Tripod
• X-Rite ColorChecker Passport
• Microfiber cloths
• Extra AA batteries

I knew I wouldn't be shooting enough to exhaust the two camera batteries stored in the camera's battery grip, so there was no need to bring the LC-E6 battery charger. I considered bringing an LCD Loupe and a rocket blower, but there wasn't enough room in the bag and I thought I could make do without them.

In addition to the backpack, I also stowed the following lighting gear in another part of the automobile:

• Manfrotto 5001B Nano Black Light Stand
• Westcott Rapid Box - 26" Octa Softbox
• Westcott Optical White Satin Diffusion Umbrella (43")

At this point, sharp-eyed observers might have noticed a vital omission from the items I packed if I wanted to use the off-camera lighting gear. However, I didn't notice what I had forgotten until we were all eating dinner the first evening of the trip. For some reason, I was going through the gear I had packed in my head when it hit me. I turned to my wife and said in astonishment, "I forgot to bring my radio trigger and the 5D III doesn't feature a pop-up [master] flash. The off-camera flash gear I brought is completely useless."

Of course, "completely useless" was a bit of an exaggeration, as I could still use the flash on-camera and bounce it off a neutral colored surface if shooting indoors. But in essence, forgetting the tiny radio trigger meant that I had packed several of the items in vain, a frustrating revelation to say the least.

Thankfully, the first floor of the house where we were staying had a large bank of windows that provided ample soft light in the family/dining room and kitchen areas of the house, as evidenced by the picture atop this post and the one below.

However, the mistake did get me thinking about how I could avoid a similar issue in future photography outings. The simplest solution – a checklist system – seemed to be an adequate solution to the problem. Of course, there are many types of photography, with different subjects requiring different types of gear. With that in mind, I've put together a few sample checklists that you may want to use as starting point when packing for your next photo adventure.

Always Bring

• DSLR/Mirrorless Camera(s) with at least (1) lens, memory card(s) and a sufficiently charged battery (or batteries)
• Color calibration target (i.e., ColorChecker Passport)

Portraiture, Natural Light Checklist

• General purpose or prime lens
• Circular Polarizer
• Filter wrenches
• Reflector
• LCD loupe
• Camera strap

Portraiture, Flash Checklist

• General purpose and/or prime lens(es)
• Flash(es)
• Extra flash batteries
• Proprietary flash trigger (for flash units with built-in receivers)
• Radio Trigger (or Transceiver)
• Radio Receiver (or Transceiver) for every flash + backup
• Triggering cables
• Hot shoe/cold shoe adapters
• Extra batteries for trigger/receiver
• Light Meter
• Flash gels
• Light stands
• Super Clamp and Justin Clamp (for attaching the flash to different surfaces)
• Umbrella swivels
• Modifiers - soft box, umbrella, beauty dish, grid
• Sand bags
• Neutral Density filters (useful if flashes are not capable of high-speed sync)
• Circular Polarizer
• Filter wrenches
• Gaffer tape

Landscape/Cityscape Checklist

• General purpose and wide-angle lenses
• Tripod with head (ensure the camera has the appropriate plate/means for attaching to the head)
• Neutral Density filters – variable, 10-stop and/or graduated
• Circular Polarizer
• Filter wrenches
• Rain cover (for both the camera and the camera bag)
• Intervalometer (if not a built-in feature of the camera)
• LCD loupe

Architecture/Real Estate Checklist

• Camera with high-end exposure bracketing
• Ultra-wide, wide angle and/or tilt-shift lens
• Tripod
• Possibly off-camera lighting gear (see "Portraiture, Flash")

Sports Checklist

• Camera with advanced AF, light flicker detection, fast continuous burst rate and a large buffer
• General purpose and telephoto/telephoto zoom lens
• Monopod and/or camera strap
• Circular Polarizer
• Filter wrenches
• Rain cover (for both the camera and the camera bag)
• LCD loupe

Make your checklists now so that they're ready when you need them, and keep your lists updated as you find additional items necessary for your particular endeavors. Doing so will help you avoid forgetting a vital piece of gear and the resulting embarrassment/frustration caused by the slip-up.

by Sean Setters

My wife, Alexis, rarely asks me to take a photo for her. She is generally satisfied with documenting everyday life with her smartphone, so when she asks me to photograph a particular subject, I usually take notice and fulfill the request as soon as possible. But I admit to dragging my feet a bit when my wife noticed one of her aloe plants blooming and said, "You should take a picture of that."

Personally speaking, I didn't find the aloe plant's bloom to be very intriguing, which is probably why I didn't immediately rush to photograph it. It doesn't feature colorful petals or otherwise interesting elements that typically make blooms ideal photographic subjects. To my eye, the aloe bloom's shape reminds me of a tall, thin pine tree, a not-very-compelling subject, especially considering the background context provided by my back yard (again, not very photogenic). However, when my wife sent me a reminder the following morning, "You should take a pic of that aloe bloom!," her use of an exclamation point was a clear sign that she was very serious about the suggestion. So, I dropped what I was doing to satisfy her request.

To photograph the bloom, I moved the aloe plant's pot from the back porch to a spot in the yard where sunlight would be hitting the bloom but not the background, allowing me to use the difference in luminosity to make the subject stand out. With the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro mounted to my Canon EOS 5D Mark III, I also used a wide f/2.8 aperture and a distant background to further accentuate the subject/background separation. Other than moving the plant (which was actually quite cumbersome and somewhat heavy), the image was relatively simple to capture. I proudly sent her the result of my efforts, having precisely fulfilled her request.

First, she hadn't asked for a photo of the plant with the bloom. She had twice asked for a picture of the bloom. Plus, from my perspective, the plant doesn't change very much day-to-day. If she wants to see the plant, she can just open back door and walk the 10 paces to its home on the porch. The bloom was what made the plant different from its typical appearance, that is what she asked me to photograph and that is indeed what I documented.

But that's not what she – in this case, the client – wanted. And if I had been more inquisitive from the get-go, I would have had more context and could have discerned exactly what she desired in the image. As it turns out, this particular aloe plant used to be her grandmother's who passed away a couple of years ago. And in all the years her grandmother owned the plant, the family had never known it to bloom. So while the bloom was indeed special, the plant itself garnered feelings of great sentiment, giving the bloom much more important context.

After realizing exactly what my wife wanted, I dragged the plant into my studio for a formal portrait session involving three studio lights, two shoe-mount flashes and my favorite mottled gray collapsible background. So why not photograph the plant outside? Because the increased camera-to-subject distance would require an increased subject-to-background distance to achieve a similar background blur, and the background distance, in this case, wasn't variable. I was already using nearly the full width of my backyard when I photographed the isolated bloom; photographing the whole plant would have left the backyard – including my neighbor's house and fence – too recognizable.

The resulting studio image can be seen below.

Of course, the initial failure to capture what my wife really wanted did not have devastating consequences as I was able to rectify the situation with another (more complex) photo shoot the following day. However, the lesson learned from this ordeal is quite clear, and it will surely pay more tangible dividends down the line. Don't take seemingly simple requests at face value; always dig deeper to ascertain the precise needs of your client, potentially avoiding the wasted time, effort, frustration – and dissatisfaction – resulting from not fulfilling those needs the first time around.

by Sean Setters

During their visit this past weekend, my wife's parents bought us an orchid that now resides on our dining room table. While we often have an orchid around the house, the intriguing pattern on this particular orchid's blooms along with its conspicuous location meant that it wouldn't take me long before I was motivated to drag it into the studio to see what I could do with it.

In terms of difficulty, I'd rank orchids in the medium range as far as flowering subjects go. I find flowers with deeper structures to be more difficult to capture in a captivating way, but the unique shapes found in orchid blooms, along with the blooms close proximity to one another, can make them challenging to photograph.

So what trait makes an orchid an excellent subject for the budding (pun intended) flower photographer? In a word – longevity.

Typically speaking, an orchid will bloom once or twice a year and those blooms will last anywhere from 2-4 months. To put that into perspective, a rose bloom typically lasts only about a week (to be fair, though, some rose plants bloom repeatedly). Even the low end of an orchid's longevity range provides a busy photographer with ample opportunities to photograph the plant before its blooms disappear. In fact, one of the busiest photographers I know often uses orchids in the sample photos of his reviews.

For the image atop this post, I used a Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Macro Lens set to f/8, 1/160 sec, ISO 100. I captured 19 incrementally focused frames using Magic Lantern's Focus Stacking feature (use Magic Lantern at your own risk – the Canon EOS RP has a focus bracketing feature built-in). The lighting was provided by two radio triggered studio lights placed to the left and right of the camera (the right one was behind the subject) with gridded strip boxes.

For a larger resolution version of the image, check out my Flickr photostream.

by Sean Setters

With the sun shining, not a cloud in the sky and the local vegetation finally awakening from its wintry slumber, I thought it would be a good time to venture out with my Super Color IR-converted EOS 7D to see what I could find. Not wanting to stray too far from home, I ended up at a nearby defunct dairy farm where – fun fact – they filmed a couple of scenes from the movie Forrest Gump. One of the greatest things about having a camera in your hands is that it feels like a you have passport for exploration, sparking the impulse for embarking on new adventures.

Unfortunately, my exploration on this day revealed that the area is not as scenic as it was at the time the movie was filmed. A nearby dike failed many years ago flooding the low-lying areas with salt water, killing many of the trees such as the one above, the catalyst for my spending a few minutes capturing its curvy branches in isolation against a distant background and rich, blue sky. I had originaly planned on desaturating the yellow tones so that the vegetation would appear white (the more traditional IR look I had in mind when setting off from my studio), but doing so resulted in the tree no longer standing out as well, so I instead opted to leave the grass and shrubs yellow after switching the red and blue color channels (more IR image processing in the IR Conversion Review).

You can find a higher resolution sample of this image on my Flickr Photostream.

by Sean Setters

Years ago, you could expect good reasonable customer service from almost any photography gear manufacturer. Today, however, that isn't necessarily the case. Therefore, we like to draw attention to companies that offer more than just great products, but seem to go above and beyond the competition to support their customers' needs.

Today's case in point: Matthews Studio Equipment.

Backstory

I recently posted an image of a surfer taken at nearby Tybee Island. While I experienced many technical difficulties during that session, one thing I didn't mention was what I noticed as I loading up the car and getting ready to leave. After brushing the sand off the Matthews Maxi Kit Steel Stand I had been using, I placed it in the trunk of my car. As the light stand hit my trunk, sand started pouring out one of the legs. That's when I realized an end cap on one of the light stand's legs was missing. After all of the frustration I had endured throughout the session, I didn't really feel like combing the beach to find my missing end cap. Regardless, back to the beach I went.

The rising tide which had been encroaching on our shooting location shortly before packing up had erased the telltale signs of the exact spot where my light stand had been. There was no hope of finding the relatively small plastic end cap, assuming it had been lost on the beach and not somewhere else before I had arrived. I gave up after only a few minutes of aimless searching.

Once I arrived home, I immediately put a ring of gaffer tape around the leg that was missing an end cap to alert me of the missing accessory which could result in a scratched surface if the stand were used on certain types of flooring. While doing so prevented me from using the stand on a floor where it may cause damage (wood, tile, etc.), the gaffer tape obviously didn't fix the problem. What I needed was another end cap.

My Experience with Matthews Studio Equipment's Customer Service

When I called the Matthews Studio Equipment phone number, an operator answered the phone and asked which department I would like to be connected with. First off, an actual operator answering the phone was a refreshing change from the typical automated answering service that I end up screaming at in vain before my call is finished. I told the operator my problem, and she politely said, "You need the parts department. I'll connect you now." Well, that was easy enough. Unfortunately, with Matthews Studio Equipment being in California, it was roughly lunchtime when I called and no one answered. However, the mailbox message requested that I leave my name and phone number and that someone would call me back, which I did.

Fast forward to the end of the California workday (5:00pm their time, 8:00pm Eastern Time) and I get a call from Stuart in the Matthews Parts Department. I told him that I needed the end cap for a Matthews Maxi Kit Steel Stand, part #387485 because one of mine was missing. He said, "Ok. I have a few of those right here. What's your email? I'll need you to send me your mailing address."

At this point, I'm a bit confused. I realize the plastic end caps for my light stand are probably not an expensive accessory, but I'm wondering when he's going to tell me the price of the items, how much shipping will be and how exactly I will pay for the desired gear. I assume all the details will be in the soon-to-arrive email. A few minutes later, Stuart's email arrived with no subject line and a simple "Hello" in the body, to which I replied with my address and the following:

Just let me know how much I owe you and the preferred method of payment and I'll make it happen.

Hello Sean

I will mail these out to you today free of charge. No payment needed.

Have a good day

My replacement feet arrived a few days later. My light stand is now whole again, and I take comfort in knowing that Matthews Studio Equipment's reputation for excellence and commitment to its customers is well earned.

For your light stand and other studio equipment needs, Matthews gear should be at the top of your short list. They'll take care of you.

by Sean Setters

Being a surfer enthusiast in Savannah, GA is a rough life; the waves found along Tybee Island (the nearest beach) are rarely conducive to "hanging ten." Such is the story of Dagny, someone who loves to surf but rarely finds conditions here favorable for her pursuit. On this day, however, the waves were "ok" and Dagny had just finished about an hour of surfing along a nearby shoreline. She had obviously been having fun. I, on the other hand, had been plagued by one issue after another since arriving at the beach at 9:00am. Let me explain.

When I arrived at the south end of Tybee Island to meet Dagny at 9:00am, there was a fairly dense fog along the shoreline. Dagny wanted to do some surfing but also wanted a picture, so the first question to answer was, "Which do we do first?" Since the waves were looking good to Dagny and the fog was looking questionable from a photographic standpoint, I told her to go ahead and surf and I would signal to her when I was ready to start shooting. This would allow me time to scout out a suitable location, set up my lighting gear and hopefully give the fog some time to clear. In hindsight, telling Dagny to hit the waves ahead of our shoot had another great benefit; it allowed me time to methodically work through the problems I was destined to face without having an increasingly impatient subject stare on with resentment for stealing her away from the best waves of the day.

When shooting at the beach, I generally prefer to transport only the items I intend on actually using to the sandy location. This approach lessens the amount of cleanup necessary once the shoot is finished. However, a downside of this technique is that if technical issues are experienced, one is required to go all the way back to the car to retrieve backup items. As I would come to realize, that's a pretty major downside.

After scouting out a good location on the beach, I went back to my car in a [relatively] nearby parking lot to plan out my gear needs. At that time, it was still quite foggy and I was unsure if it would clear completely before we started shooting. I decided that limiting the amount of space between the subject and me would be a good idea for optimal contrast. Therefore, I opted for a Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens on my Canon 5D Mark III instead of the Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM Lens I had originally planned on using.

Backup #1 [Lens]: Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens (for Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM)

To allow me to shoot at my max flash sync speed (for these studio strobes, that's 1/160 sec), I put a 4-stop neutral density filter on the lens knowing that it wouldn't be enough density to allow me to use a wide-open aperture at my base ISO (100), but it would allow me to use a wider aperture than I would have been able to without the ND filter in place.

I'm always leery about using a softbox and/or umbrella on the beach because, even with sand bags in use, the large surface area of those modifiers can cause significant problems when wind is added to the equation. However, I love the soft light I get with softboxes and umbrellas, so they are generally my first choices if the weather allows for their safe use. The beach wasn't as windy as it has been in the past, but... I still didn't think it was a good idea to attach what amounts to a sail to my light stand. Therefore, I opted to mount a Mola Demi Beauty Dish (with Opal Diffuser) to my White Lightning X3200 studio strobe, powered by a battery pack. The 22" diameter, sturdy metal modifier has proven to be a solid choice in the past in windy conditions, so I was glad I brought it.

Backup #2 [Modifier]: Mola Demi Beauty Dish (for Medium/Large Soft Box or Parabolic Umbrella)

After transporting my light stand, studio strobe, beauty dish, battery pack, power cord, radio trigger with cord and two sand bags to the beach, I plugged everything in, turned on the battery pack/strobe/radio trigger and pushed the "Test" button on my trigger to fire the strobe.

Nothing.

Ok Sean, let's work the problem. Are the trigger and receiver on the same frequency? Yes. Am I sure I turned on the trigger? It doesn't appear to be blinking (a sign that it's on). I pressed the receiver button again (which should trigger the strobe in addition to turning the unit on), but nothing happens.

"Ahh, the batteries in my receiver are dead."

So, off to the car I went. While I did have some extra batteries in the car, I chose instead to grab a different radio receiver as the batteries are somewhat difficult to replace in these things. And, back to the beach.

Backup #3: Radio Receiver #2 (for Radio Receiver #1)

With the new radio receiver plugged into the studio strobe (and blinking), and everything powered on again, I hit the test button on my trigger and... again, nothing. However, a quiet moment between the waves and various beach sounds reveals a barely audible beeping coming from my battery pack. It doesn't usually beep, so my guess is that it's trying to tell me something (later tests would reveal that my battery pack's battery had just failed). Once again, it's time to go back to the car with a nearly 20 lb battery pack so that I can return with its replacement (an identical unit).

Backup #4: Battery Pack #2 (for Battery Pack #1)

After returning to the beach with the new battery pack, plugging everything back in and turning everything back on, I hit the test fire button on my trigger.

Nothing.

This is getting old. At this point, everything I've replaced has been a validated problem. The radio receiver's batteries were dead and the unit was replaced with a working one. The battery pack's battery had failed (even though it had been charging all night). Now, even with those issues resolved, my strobe still wouldn't fire. In one last Hail Mary attempt, I dragged my White Lightning x3200 back to the car to replace it with a Whilte Lightning Ultrazap 1600 that I had also brought along.

Backup #5 [Studio Strobe]: White Lightning Ultrazap 1600 (for White Lightning x3200)

After returning to the beach with the new studio strobe, I once again plugged everything up, turned everything on and hit the test fire button.

Success! The flash fired just as Dagny was walking to our shooting location. She needed a break from surfing, and her timing could not have been better.

Camera settings for the shot atop this post were f/3.2, 1/160 sec., ISO 100 (with a 4-stop ND filter).

The fog had mostly cleared by the time this image was taken, so I wouldn't have technically needed to use the Sigma 50mm Art lens in place of the Canon 135mm f/2L, but I liked the view I was getting at 50mm, so I think it worked out for the best. I performed basic edits in Adobe Camera RAW and changed the color tones of the highlights and shadows and, after importing to Photoshop CC, I used the Content Aware Move Tool to reposition the three birds for better framing (they were originally more spread out and lower/closer to the left edge of the frame). I also used the Content Aware Healing brush to remove a very long zipper pull that was flapping in the wind.

If you'd like to see what it was like on the shoot after all the problems had been worked out, check out this behind-the-scenes video.

A larger version of the image can be seen on Flickr.

by Sean Setters

Holidays offer great opportunities for gift giving and flowers, although possibly a bit cliché, are still very often appreciated, which is why a bouquet of flowers has been sitting on our living room hutch since Valentine's Day. But while flowers are intended to be enjoyed by the recipient, there's no reason why we as photographers can't take advantage of the beautiful subjects at hand to add some colorful floral images to our portfolios.

A few evenings ago after my wife had retired for the evening, I took her bouquet into the studio to try one of my favorite techniques for photographing flowers – focus stacking. After perusing the options available in the bouquet, I settled on a type of flower that I've photographed before, a type of Peruvian lily. The colorful, elongated spots found on the leaves as well as the easily visible inner structures of these flowers make them ideal candidates for photographing.

I set up my Canon EOS 5D Mark III and Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM + 36mm extension tube on a sturdy tripod and Arca-Swiss Z1 ball head set to f/9, 1/160 sec, ISO 100 and tried several compositions with the Peruvian lily that caught my eye. A studio flash on each side of the bouquet provided the light required for a proper exposure at those settings, and Magic Lantern's Focus Stacking feature was used to increment focus for the focus bracketed images. After capturing all of the variations, I brought the images into Canon's Digital Photo Professional to see which one (or ones) might work well for further processing. Finding a series that I really liked, I opened the relevant RAW files in Helicon Focus (my preferred focus stacking software), compiled the images and output the result as a DNG.

Looking closer at the result in Photoshop CC, I realized that I hadn't captured enough depth-of-field in my focus bracket to fully cover the parts of the plant I wanted in focus. As such, instead of having crisp lines in places where I wanted to emphasize details, I had soft transitions that didn't seem to meld with the rest of the focus stacked image.

From a photographic standpoint, my attempt at a pleasing focus stack image was a failure. But then I had a moment of inspiration.

My wife is a huge fan of impressionist paintings. In fact, not more than a couple of weeks ago she insisted we see (aka, dragged me to) the impressionist art exhibit that was showing at the Jepson Center for the Arts ("Monet to Matisse: Masterworks of French Impressionism"). The nice thing about impressionism is that crisp details are not a notable quality of the creative movement; in the case of my image, I could use impressionism to hide the major flaw in my image. Keep in mind, rarely is an image made visually palatable if you have to "save it in post." But in this case, it seemed to work just fine.

After searching for several years for a Photoshop plug-in that could convincingly turn an image into a painting, I finally found Topaz Impression and never looked back. It's been an excellent find and has opened up a new door for monetizing my images. Or in this case, just saving one.