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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…”
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 »
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.
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.
For the most part, the buisness of photography, careers, sucess etc, is really about luck. All we can do is the best we can, work hard, keep our heads down, our noses clean, and hope that someone might notice us for what we love to do.
It doesn’t really matter what it is that we as individuals choose to do with our lives, but the fact is that “to whom much is given, much is expected.”
Jo, a yoga teacher here in Boston
Richard, CB, and I have all been very fortunate this past year by staying busy. It is for this reason, that we are making an effort to volunteer as much as possible.
This week, we volunteered our services to shoot portraits at the local yoga studio. The portraits that they have up now on their site are a hodge podge of home snaps. I thought I would be nice to have a nice uniform look, so we offered to shoot all their instructors. The head shots will make a nice addition to their web site, and is something that they wouldn’t be able to spend money on.
The point is, get out there and volunteer. At the very least, you will keep your skills sharp, and at the very best, you will be helping spread some good karma!
Best of luck!
Shawn... (my favorite instructor)
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.
There are lots of tips that one could relay to young photographers who are looking to get started with their business. And out of all of these nuggets, probably the single best thing I ever did when I got into this crazy lunatic race was to open up an American Express Platinum Card.
I wish that I could take credit for this nugget, but alas I can not. Years ago, when I was working as an assistant, I worked for a photographer called Russ Schliepman. (it was Russ that probably influenced me the most in terms of style and the use of color. We traveled the world, shot lots of amazing images, and I learned a TON! So thanks Russ.)
Please don’t misunderstand now… I am NOT swinging a plug for AmEx. I make it a point NOT to be commercial with my posts, but this really was an important step the building of my career and its worth its conveyance.
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….”
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
We tend to do a lot of aerial photography, and one of the resources we use in the preparation for a shoot is ATIS or Automatic Terminal Information Service.
ATIS is a continuous recorded broadcast of important information used by pilots to help operate their aircraft. The most important bit of info that we need to know is the actual weather at the airfield. Cloud ceiling, wind direction, and wind speed will all play a part on how are shoot goes.
Lots of airports these days have a telephone number you can call into in order to listen to the broadcast, and every morning before we fly, we call in and give a listen.
This gives us a heads up on the exact conditions at the airport where you will be operating from. If you have not done a lot of flying, you may or may not realize that different airports may have drastically different weather. Sometimes they can be very close together, but be totally different.
