Julia's Secret Photographic Technique PART 5

[foxgrrl]

Composition

What you don't show in the frame is far more important than what you do show.

I see lots and lots of convention photos, where the photographer has used an ultra-wide lens to get an entire person in the frame, all the way from their head to their feet… But… nobody wants to look at those feet, they're just not interesting. You don't need to fit someone's feet into every shot with them. If the feet are interesting, then take a picture of the feet directly. Give everyone a good look at them, because when they're at the bottom of a person, in the center of the frame, you can't see them — you can't see that much else either. Choose what you want the subject of the photo to be, and only show that. Most people, being animals, find eyes and faces to be interesting. You won't go wrong using those as a subject.

Use a fast lens, at a wide-open aperture (f/1.4 to f/2.8 if you can) to blur out the background too. Nobody is interesting in the background, unless it is interesting. At a convention, the background is a hotel, which isn't as interesting as whatever drove you to take the photo.

The lens which I recommend for everyone to use is an f/1.4 50mm prime. To which most people say: "But! But! How will I zoom?!" The solution is very simple:

If you want to subject to appear larger, move closer to the subject.

If you want to subject to appear smaller, move away from the subject.

If you are at a party or convention, where you can hold a normal conversation with your subject, you don't need a zoom

Take these two photos for example:




I was speaking with veleda while I took these. For the close-up one, I moved myself and my camera closer to her. For the wider angle one^† I moved further away. If you could see that she was laying on a fold-up cot, near the ground, it would only detract from this photo. The subject is her, not where she's laying down.

You're not stuck in one place when you take a photo, move around.

In summary:

Showing less, is actually more. There is less to distract the eye and the mind from the purity of essence, of whatever it was you wanted to capture by taking the photo in the first place. Make your photo be about one thing, and one thing only. The totality of it's meaning should all be focused on it's message.

(I guess you could say "Take a picture, of what you're taking a picture of, and don't take a picture of what you're not taking a picture of.")

(Does anyone think that I should give a presentation on this stuff at FC? "How to take convention photos that don't suck")

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† Technically, from a scientific-optical point of view, it's all the same angle: 50mm.

Comments

[derekcfpegritz.livejournal.com]

Cute green-tinted girl. :) Always a good thing!

BTW: THANK YOU for mentioning this. I've made that point to many of my friends and students who want to do photography. When they first start, they want to remain completely static...I think because they're afraid of jostling their lenses and getting blurry shots. However, no one but GlamourShots likes completely static pictures! And besides, there's no point in using zoom--optical or digital--unless you absolutely have to.

[chirik.livejournal.com]

Something that I've pondered ... with dSLRs, there is usually a crop factor. Do you still use a 50mm, or do you use a wider lens to adjust for the fact that you need to step back to get the same shot? And then, of course, the wider lens results in a different look to the results. 35mm with a 1.5 crop factor is not the same as a 50mm. Either way, whether using a 50mm from further away, or a 35mm, your results will be different from a full-frame 50mm shot.

[secretsoflife.livejournal.com]

thank you for posting these, they've been very interesting reading :)

[anaisdjuna.livejournal.com]

Wow! This post behaves like a chair on convex sculpted feet!

I think you should give a talk on con photos that don't suck at FC. I think a lof folks would be into it. If you do & if you can... try to include ways that a financially challenged furry can take cool pix too. This leads me to my next question... Does one have to have a 1500$ camera to have such a lens?
Also, if you're ever up for it... A tutorial on f-stops might be of interest to umm me. Post numero six, peut-etre?

[calicatmerlin.livejournal.com]

I think you holding a presentation on the subject would be great.

I wish I had a digital SLR, but I do own a couple of old Nikons, one of which is an FM2. I forget what lenses I have for them, but certain I have a fast one of some sort but not sure if that would be a 50mm. Since I don't have a darkroom I haven't shot anything in quite some time. However, after seeing all the photos you've posted it makes me want to blow the dust of them and go shoot.

[wayakin.livejournal.com]

I Likey!

Everybody could do with a bit better photographic perspective, because then they're always just a *bit* more likely to look for beautiful things around them :) Also, anaisdjuna made a really important comment about the difference between SLRs of any type, and the more basic point-and-click digital or film camera.

The rules of good composition apply, even without the ability to blur backgrounds! Get in the kitchen and Ham That Up! sorry, got carried away by the corn ;)

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

I remember one photo that really made that pop for me was a photo of Muhammed Ali. It was done with almost a fisheye lens and from a low angle... About 90% of the photo was his fists. MASSIVE MASSIVE FISTS. Sure, he was the subject but those fists were his fame and how he's identified. They're what is really interesting. If you look at a snapshot of him, he's just a man. Maybe a bit well-toned but just a man. You might not know who he is. This photo tells a story. You didn't have to know who he was to know what he was.

I think maybe that's the real problem with people's snapshots. They are thinking about the photo wrong. For most people, a photo is a static and dead thing. It's meant to capture a moment and hold onto it forever. A good photo is a living thing. It is active. It tells a story. It invites questions and provokes thought and creates a mystery. A good photo does not capture an image to hold it forever. It creates a story that no one else has seen.

[solarbird]

I ended up keeping my old film camera body because I wasn't going to get enough money to making selling it worthwhile. I kept one lens from that kit - the Nifty Fifty. I cannot agree with you more about the many, many virtues of fast lenses.

[netik.livejournal.com]

Most SLR's have a crop factor around 1.6x.

So, 35mm lenses that are "non digital" lenses will appear to be a 50mm lens.

Canon makes this distinction on their EOS lenses between the EF and EF-S series.


I have a Canon 5D, so no crop issues for me!

[netik.livejournal.com]

While you're absolutely correct on use of lens and zoom technique, there are some issues with these images.

* Your color/whitebalance is off. I'm looking at your images on a color-calibrated monitor and there's a definite yellow/green cast to the image and they are too dark.

* At 50mm/f1.4, the focus area is approximately 3-4 inches. Notice how on the left image her eye and forehead is in focus, and nothing else is? Going below f/4 (well, maybe you can get away with f/2.8 if you're using average AF focus) isn't going to get the entire face in focus. f/2.8 will provide plenty of Bokeh (that lovely blurred background effect) and give you more of the face in focus.

* In the second image, I'm trying to figure out how you managed to get red eye, and have the image come out too dark at the same time. Did you stop the flash down?

Aside from these problems, the composition is very good.

[chirik.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm aware of this. But a 35mm lens has a different angle of view than a 50mm lens, even a 35mm with a 1.6 crop factor is different.

[katimonk.livejournal.com]

I always knew your photos were something special, this proves it just that much more. I never think of myself as photogenic, but *you* seem to do *something* to my pics so that even I like them! Neat techniques...I'd love to learn more!

[stillvisions.livejournal.com]

I always think more talks should be done on photography, so I'm for it...

...as for "zooming with your feet", well, that only goes so far - a head shot through a 24mm looks different than a head shot through a 50mm and it looks very different than through a 100mm lens. A lot depends on the effect desired and if one is looking to compress or accentuate perspective for a shot those things can really come in handy. Still, it's fair to advise to start with a prime, and preferably a fast one at that.

But yeah, agreed on the obsessive need to show the whole body. Often, it's just not necessary. When I'm doing a shoot for someone I try and take one for the preview or for their photo sake, but unless they really make the outfit, they're not needed.

[bovil.livejournal.com]

Most folks who learned to shoot film SLR tend to speak in full-frame-equivalent focal lengths because that's what we think in; I never remember what the actual focal length of my super-zoom (with a tiny CCD) camera is, but I know it's 35-400mm-equivalent.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Color calibration is a nightmare on the web. Last I checked, Firefox and IE both pretty much threw away any color profile image included in the image. Plus the usual Mac vs PC gamma issues may apply, depending on what you use.

There's definitely some colored lighting going on in the two images used as an example in this post, but the colors look fine on my Powerbook, and the contrast is fine.

[netik.livejournal.com]

Not to be exceedingly cranky here, but that's part of doing photography at low light levels - understanding how to produce a quality image with proper lighting, focus, and white balance under those conditions. I think foxgrrl's work is very good, but I'm offering examples to show that it's possible to get high quality images under bad or no light.

Case in point:

No flash, f1.4 @ 1/60th in a dark restaurant:



No flash, f2.8 @ 1/20th of a second (Image stabilized):

[kitten-goddess.livejournal.com]

Does anyone think that I should give a presentation on this stuff at FC? "How to take convention photos that don't suck")


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Yes, I think you should! :D

BTW, photos of people should only be taken from the waist up, because it will make the subject look slimmer than if you photograph the entire body.