You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'Cool Tips' category.
So far it’s not looking good for Data Robotics and their new DroboPro product. (see last post)
First let me explain how we intended to use the new DroboPro…. In a nutshell, I don’t think that the DroboPro is nearly fast enough to use as a primary storage device for professional use. Even when you can speak to a Data Robotics expert, they will admit that hands down transferring data via an internal bus (i.e. and internal RAID such as in our MacPro’s) is leaps and bounds faster than via an external bus such as the DroboPro.
Knowing this, we decided to upgrade all the internal Macintosh RAID’s from 1TB drives to 2TB drives. This would effectively double the internal RAID capacity from about 1.8TB to somewhere in the 3.5TB range for each workstation. With respect to our “EditOne” (the main video work station which has both the internal Macintosh RAID as well as a 3Ware Sidecar,) upgrading to all 2TB drives would effectively raise the internal RAID capacity from around 3.8TB to roughly 7.5 or 8TB of primary editing space.
To make this move however, we would need to first move the data off the existing RAIDs, upgrade the drives, and then transfer the data back to the new, larger arrays. (getting confused yet?)
This is where the DroboPro comes into play. The idea was to set up a 16TB array, temperarily park the data onto the array, and then move it back to the newly expanded internal RAIDS. Once this was completed, we would hang the DroboPro in the rack with the XServe, and have it act as a TimeMachine back up of both “EditOne,” as well as “PhotoOne,” (my primary photo workstation.) In effect, this would give us double redundancy. All data would be protected on each workstation via a RAID 5 array, and then it would be further protected via a TimeMachine back up on the network. For data storage above and beyond the local RAIDs, we would count on the rock solid reliablity of the Promse RAID connected to the server. If the DroboPro seemed to work out, a second unit would be fitted in the rack for even more storage space.
When shooting photos for clients, especially when they are going to be used for the web, it is always a great idea to shoot lots of detail shots.
These detail shots will not only be good for illustrating concepts, but they are great for backgrounds and web banners. Plus… designers love to have this stuff to play with.
We always say: “give em what they want, then give em more…”
Often times when we begin to study photography, we get really stumped as to where the hell to place the light.
As artists, we have all sorts of choices, and these choices determine the style and feeling of the photograph. A light in front will give a flat, uninteresting picture. A light below will make a subject look goolish, where as a light 90 degrees to a subject will create intense drama.
A good trick to start understanding where to place your light is to start to train your eye to figure out where others are placing theirs.
In the photo above, we hung a soft box directly above and slightly behind the subject. This caused the face of the person to become a bit darker while still illuminating his hands (where I wanted the attention to be drawn.) This photo is less about the engineer, and more about the process hence the darker face. Also, having the darkness around all four edges of the photo pulls your eye into the center of the frame without allowing it to stray outside. You can also see a bit of a Dutch angle (as I talked about in a previous post.)
In order to dicern where the light is placed in photos, start looking for the shadows. You can see a shadow under the green thingy at the bottom left of the frame. From this, we can tell that the light is above and a bit to the right.
Extreme Dutch angle
From Wikipedia: “A Dutch angle is achieved by tilting the camera off to the side so that the shot is composed with the horizon at an angle to the bottom of the frame.” (Its really a good article, and worth giving a read…)
One of my favorite techniques to use is the Dutch angle. If you look through my body of work, you will see this style come up time and time again. In a nutshell, it tends to build tension and draw the viewer into the frame. Read the rest of this entry »
Sometimes as a commercial photographer we are asked to tell a story when there seemingly is no story. This is a common theme, and is one that you will be confronted with time and time again.
During this last days work, we were asked to illustrate a scientific paper.
The solution was actually very simple and easy… Out came the 60mm macro and the softbox, and we went to town. Keep the light down low opposite the camera, maybe put some folds or rolls in the papers, and you are off to the races!
Here is one of my favorite “secret” tricks when shooting technology in a lab…
There is always a bit of mystery surrounding good photographs of lasers. Either people are flummoxed as to how to shoot the shot, or they think they are experts and talk about using smoke to illuminate the beam.
We first have to understand that we cant see the light in the laser beam, we can only see the particles it is hitting whilst traveling through the air. When we try to photograph the laser light, we get nothing. The dust particles in the air simply don’t reflect enough light to make the beam show up.
We are shooting in a very cool world these days…. Because the newest generation of digital SLR’s have such keen images at high ISO’s, we can often time shoot with a hot light like a Lowel Tota.
1000w Lowel Tota in a small Chimera
The question is: Why would we do this over strobes?
Switching between stills and video is easy with the Tota Light
This isnt a solution for every job. If you want really high quality and need the resolution, you will still want to blast the shot with a strobe, but if the stills are being used on the web, or are not being blown up out of sight, then you can start to think about hot lights.
Pelican cases are our first choice when on the road
There are so many choices for equipment cases these days, it is often hard to figure out exactly what the hell to buy. This is especially true early in a photographers career when one has to make smart decisions with the wallet.
Really there are two camps to choose from. On one side you have the hard case, and on the other, the soft.
In my opinion, the two leaders in these camps are the Air Case by Tenba, and the Pelican Case. So the question is what to buy????
For me, the choice used to be very simple… Pelican!
Pelican cases are by far the most durable, environment-proof, kick ass cases around. They have traveled with me around the planet, and have never ceased to amaze me with their professional reliability. There is one small bug that has slowly crawled its way into into our sleeping bag, and that their weight.
I was bumping through some images last night tyring to gleen some inspiration for todays post when I came accross a photo we shot last summer.
The photo was shot on a 1988 Boston Whaler in the outer harbor (Boston.) We were shooting some life style images at sunrise, and set this photo up using a camera mounted on a boom off the gunwale of the boat.
Looking at the image suddenly brought back a flood of wonderful memories of shooting out on the water, and really got my juices flowing for the warm weather.
But as I examined the photo, I remembered why I loved this particular image. The fact is… the perspective is a bit different!
The point I am tying to make is this: Put your camera in a different place. Often times we grab our point and shoot cameras and take photos from a common perspective. This is usually lazily standing fully erect, with the camera to our eye. The net net is a photograph that everyone has experienced. Boring!
One of the real keys to making a unique image is to put that damn camera in a place that other people usually don’t go. This may mean laying down on your belly, climbing a ladder, or even being underwater.
A nice example is seen above. In the photo of the sail boat, I climbed the mast and shot the boat using an X-Pan from a perspective that we usually don’t get to see.
There are a lot of things that make this image interesting, but its the perspective that really makes it a great image.
On of the cooler effects you can do with a camera is to combine motion with a flash. This is called the flash blur.
In a nutshell, you use a long shutter to create the effect of the motion, and then freeze the action with a flash.
Normally, the flash goes off at the front of the shutter cycle, or as soon as the shutter opens. In the case of the fire photo above, I used what is called a rear curtain sync. This means that the flash goes off at the end of the shutter cycle, or just before the shutter closes.
Sometimes this can get a little confusing, so think of it this way… For the sake of this illustration, lets expand the shutter cycle to 10 seconds. We press the go button and the shutter opens. One, two, three, four….. nine, ten, the shutter closes. When your camera is set to “normal,” or front curtain sync, the flash is triggered on the one count.
Now imagine the camera is on a tripod, and a man is walking from left to right across the frame. As soon as we see him in the lens, we press play, and open the shutter. One (the flash goes off and freezes a bright, clear impression of the man on the left side) two, three, (the film is continuing to burn his image as he streaks to the right,) five, six, seven, (the man is still moving and his image is still being blurred as he walks. Nine, ten (the shutter closes.)
We do a lot of science and technology photography, and are often shooting scientists and their labs.
Of course it is easy when they have hand built some insane smoking platinum time machine, or have a grizzley robot that is controlled by mind rays, or are even spinning golden thread from crushed 55 Plymouth using a 40 foot prototype laser array.
These are the easy jobs, and obviously no one complains when there is a “cool” subject to photograph.
The real question comes into play when your mandate is to tell the story of a scientist that is involved with theory. What do you mean… “thought experiment?” “How do I shoot that?”
We had a great day back at Work N’ Gear yesterday. It was a nice mellow day shooting cloths on seamless. I really like shooting for WNG because we have such fun with their people.
We spent the afternoon with Chris Capella, one of their designers/art directors. (Thats him holding lazily holding the ladder making sure I don’t tip over… I think) Chris is actually going to be running a marathon a bunch of Sundays from now. And he’s never run before! Kick some ass Chris!
Chris is also a partner with our friend Gary Hedrick. The two of them run Elefhantworks, a design firm here in Boston. They too have a blog that is worth checking out if you are into design.
CB has found his soul mate...
Of course a day at WNG wouldn’t be the same without CBK. He makes the day run so smooth… Especially in the laugh department.
(BTW, I can only show the above photo as the blog is PG13. Keep it up CB!)
Chris laying down spring
A lot of folks have been following the Dominican Republic job that I have been posting about and really liking the photos. (thanks BTW…) But the thing to always remember is that it is the clients like Work N Gear who are the most important.
These jobs might not be as glamorous, there is no travel, no helicopters, no SCUBA gear, but they are the cleints that stick with you year after year, trust what you do, and love what you provide. It is important to never forget this, and take care of them FIRST, becuase they will be by your side long after the helicopter and sun drenched model jobs fade away.
Some of you may or may not know this little trick… but if you dont, it is a must have for your camera bag.
The circular polarizer is one of my FAVORITE filters of all time. I will let Wikipedia explain it better, but in a nutshell, it basically increases the contrast between the sky and the clouds.
Below are a couple of images that I made whilst traveling through Iowa this past summer. For each of these images I used the circular polarizer. Even in the case of the image with the crop duster (with no clouds) the filter darkened and saturated the sky. I did this as I wanted to play a deep blue sky against the bright yellow fuselage.
I tweaked the saturation very slightly in post, but for the most part, the images are out of the camera.
The effect is very cool, and worth the space in your bag! Give it a try!
Good luck-
Chris standing for tests
I know this might be a given… or maybe even a cliche. Regardless, in my opinion it is the most important part of a good commercial photography biz.
Tip # 5. Surround yourself with GOOD people. A good assistant can make or break a job. When you are on the road, they keep you sane, keep you from making a fool of yourself, and often keep you grounded.
Sukru the Crazy
One of the most important aspects of a successful photography career is good humor.
Although often times we are hired to tackle serious issues and solve complex problems for our clients, it is imperative that as professionals, we are able to keep this focus whilst still fostering an atmosphere of fun.
To achieve this, we often involve our clients in good natured fun during down time. This keeps everyone’s spirits up, and includes them in what can often be a long and focused day.
The series of photos above features our friend Shukru over at the Research Lab of Electronics at MIT. Sukru is a ham, and loves to get involved when we are goofing around. We shot these photos while waiting for a subject to arrive to be photographed. We had 24×24 prints made, and gave them out to his office mates. Everyone got a nice laugh.
One of the things that we (Americans) tend to forget when we are traveling abroad is language. Now of course I can only speak for my own experiences on the road, but I think this is an important one.
As English speakers, it has been my experience that we can sometimes take it for granted that everyone will understand us. (For the most part because it is true,) most everywhere we go on the planet you can find someone who can speak at least a little English, and I think we just expect that the person we are speaking to will at least partially understand. Even when we can speak the language of the country that we are visiting, when we get frustrated, we often just default right back to English.
“Donde esta el…..el….., la…., shit…. the bathroom….”
I have been getting several eMails asking about storage solutions, especially for the video work that we have been doing, so I thought I would share some of the simple technology we are using in the studio.
3Ware RAID
For my personal workstation, I use an 8 Core Power PC with a Mac hardware RAID. The Mac has space for 4 internal drives, and we use 1TB drives in each bay.
The down side of the new macs is that out of the 4, one has to be reserved for the start up. This leaves only 3 for the internal RAID, and when you configure for RAID 5, you basically net just under a 2TB volume. In a nutshell, you have two drives for storage, and one parity drive. (Wikipedia has a good explanation on RAIDS if you are lost)
With respect to our video editing suites, we are running two mac towers. One is a G5 Quadcore, and the other is a 8 Core Power PC. For all our primary editing work the data is stored on internal Mac RAID 5 array exactly like my personal workstation. This is the fastest and most reliable way to work. As I said above, the main problem is that the Mac internal RAID configuration is very limited on size, and is only about 2TB of space.
This is a post that I had written back in June when we were launching the new web site. For some reason it was saved as a draft, but never posted. Why waste it I say?
Join me back in time in early summer as we were just launching the new web site.
“back in time music…”
Well I have to say it’s about time! We have been working all out over the last two months trying to get everything ready to go for the new web site. The web site that is currently live is SO outdated. In fact, the flash programming is so old, that I cant even access it from my studio work stations because we are all on new Intel Mac Pro’s. In order to reference it, for some reason, I have to go down to the workshop and jump on an old iMac.
New Web Site
Richard has been giving me TONS of shit for the last 6 months about it not working right. A photographers web site these days is (in my opinion) the single most important tool we have. If you don’t have a nice clean site that is in good working order, you might as well just forget it. It is really that important.
Back seat of a Bell 206 flying search and rescue in Alaska, 1999
Tip number two… Don’t be afraid to hitch hike!
I have always been fascinated with aviation, and still get excited whenever I get a chance to set foot in a helicopter or airplane. Even flying commercially still makes me happy. Maybe its because its one of the few places on the planet where I can totally relax. It has to do (I think) with the fact that I am forced to just sit in one place. We are flying to Argentina on Monday, and I am so looking forward to the 14 hours or so I will spend in the plane. Seriously! People think I’m nuts…
Anyway… Here’s the tip. When your starting out, building a portfolio from the air is inherently problematic as it is a catch-22. You cant get jobs with out an aerial portfolio, and you cant get an aerial portfolio without getting up in a helicopter or airplane. And frankly, who has an extra $1200.00 per hour to hire a Bell 206 to fly you around the ball park in order to get some cool air to ground shots?
So heres the trick: Hitch hike!
Flying with "Wild Bill" into a gold mine in Alaska
I got an eMail this past weekend asking some advice on how make better photographs of children. Rather than reply to the eMail, I thought that this would be a better place to do so…
In a nutshell, the single most important thing to remember when shooting children is get down to their level! Remember, children are mini people and see the world differently. Its important when shooting kids to get your camera in a different place in order to convey their experience. At or below their eye level is best. Most times adults are just too damn lazy to bend down, thus, their photos are from THEIR perspective. This is the trick!
Sometimes I also like to “funk” out the world by working with colors and different lenses. With respect to the first image above, I wanted to give the feeling that you were seeing the world through the eye of the child. To do this, I used a fisheye lens to slightly distort the vertical lines, and then incorporated the vivid colors on the floor to give the candy-excited-wonderment feeling (new word I just made up) that a child might experience.
