2007 Kansas City Airshow

I received a lot of postive feedback in response to my last post about being in a funk. Thank you very much to all who offered ideas. I have resumed my medication and I am feeling much better now. =)

The air show was in town this weekend, so I grabbed the camera and headed out to take some photographs. For two reasons I did not go to the airport to watch the show. The first reason is that you have to shuttle in and once you get there, you are stuck until the show is over. They don't have any buses leaving until the show is over. The second reason is...I am cheap! I originally stopped at an area of town that is on a hill but it was too far away to get any good photographs.

There is another area of town called Quality Hill that looks down on the airport. I was on my way there, but on the way I passed an area of town that seemed to provide an equally good view. I was maybe a quarter mile from the airport which is pretty good considering I did not buy a ticket.

I chose the 70-300 lens as it is the longest one I have. I know from past experience this lens gets very soft past 250 so I tried to stay around 200mm. Now, a quarter mile does not sound that far, especially when you consider how much ground an air show covers. But, most of the action is designed to happen directly over the air field and even with a 300mm lens, a quarter mile is a long ways away. All of my shots had a LOT of sky in them. I cropped pretty heavy to get these shots and some of them show it. This was my first opportunity to film an air show, however, so I was happy just to be there. I did get a few opportunities when planes flew very close to us, like this shot of the Golden Knights jump plane.

I spent about 3 hours shooting photographs and went through two 1GB cards. These are my favorites out of the bunch, but there are a few others that I also liked and I put all of these up on my Flickr account.

I am eager to get a better telephoto lens. The poor quality of this lens is evident in the softness of some of these photographs. I also have to take into account the distance, however. I am not sure how hard you can push even an "L" series lens from that distance. In reality, I may just need to shell out the cash for a real ticket next year.

In a funk!

Lately, I find myself in a photographic funk. What is a photograph funk? I am glad you asked!

I hate every photograph I shoot. Nothing seems worthy of being photographed, and I can barely stand the thought of pressing the shutter release on another photograph, only to be disappointed with how it will look. My studio lighting system is driving me nuts. All my photographs seem soft and fuzzy. I spend hours setting up and shooting stills only to find flaws in my backgrounds. I have several ideas for shots written down, but either my studio (aka whatever room in the house I set up in) is inadequate for the shot, I can't find the right natural background, or I don't have the right equipment (flash guns, umbrellas, soft boxes, macro lens, etc.) For many of my ideas I need models, but I have no idea how to work with models, and without the right equipment I would just end up wasting their time for shots I will still hate.

Add to all that the amount of information bouncing around in my head that I still don't fully understand. Every potential shot now presents me with what feels like 100 different questions, each of which must be answered correctly, or the shot is a failure. Which lens should I use? What settings should I choose? Shallow depth of field or deep DOF? Zoom in or go wide? How should I frame the shot? Flash or no flash. If I use the flash, do I bounce it off a wall, use a bounce card, or diffuse with a cup? What about the flash exposure compensation, move it up or down? What ISO? Which is more important, to freeze action or risk noise? Where is the natural light (if any) coming from? How will this impact the photograph? I mostly understand each of these concepts separately, but putting them all together in a way that works requires experience I don't yet have.

I am in a funk!

OK. Enough whining. Every photograph is work right now, and that is not going to cut it. One of the great things about photography is how fun it can be. I need some of that back. I really do want to be successful in stock photgraphy, but the reality is most of my shots will have no commercial value at all. If I maintain that as a standard, I will continue to hate my own work until I have no confidence in my abilities at all (I am almost there now).

I think I am going to spend the next week or two just taking tons of photographs with no expectations on them at all. Maybe they will all flop, but maybe there will be a few that are keepers. Either way, I hope that gets me back in the saddle. Experience only comes from doing something a LOT, and I clearly need the experience that comes from shooting a LOT more photographs.

Microstock Photography

I took my first faltering steps into the world of microstock photography this last week. For those of you not familiar with stock photography, this is the arena where photographers sell photographs commercially through an intermediary. Stock photographs usually sell for $10 - $200 or more. Obviously, these need to be some really good photographs. The catch is that a photographer may submit hundreds of photographs, and only a few are purchased at any given time. Still, these photographs usually don't go out of date and any given photograph may continue to sell for years providing a nice income over time.
Microstock photography is the same concept, but the photographs sell for much less and they are royalty free. Microstock photographs sell for a few dollars or even less. There are many sites online that sell microstock photos. A few of them are:
www.istockphoto.com
www.shutterstock.com
www.dreamstime.com
www.bigstockphoto.com
www.fotolia.com

Each of these sites has slightly different criteria for the photographs they accept. Some are more picky than others. I have read that istockphoto and shutterstock are more picky than some of the others, so I started with dreamstime, bigstockphoto and fotolia. I chose 9 photographs and submitted them to each of these three sites. The results were mixed. Fotolia accepted all but one. Dreamstime rejected them all as having low commercial potential. Bigstockphoto has not reviewed my submissions yet making them the slowest of the three sites to review photographs.

Still, I am excited about this. For me, this is the acid test of my photography skills. When I can consistently shoot photographs with good commercial value, I will know I am making genuine progress. I have many ideas of photographs I want to shoot and submit. Now I just need to discipline myself into doing the work of setting up the photographs and actually taking them. This no small task in itself as several require models and careful background selection. I will share some of these in future blog entries as I build up my portfolio of stock photographs.

On Scene at a Barn Fire

I was on my way home after spending some time at work this morning, when I saw this huge plume of black smoke off in the distance. In this area farmers often burn trash or brush, so a plume of smoke on the horizon is not unusual. However, the weather has been very hot lately and the conditions are pretty dry, so burning anything is not a good idea. I twisted the throttle on my bike and headed off in that general direction to investigate. As I crested the hill, my heart jumped in my throat a little as I saw the thick black smoke was coming from behind a small white house. My first thought was that someone's house was burning down which would obviously be disastrous for them. This was back on a country road with no shoulder so I could not pull off immediately to investigate further. As I rode past the house I could see the house itself was not on fire but the barn behind it was completely engulfed in flames. I could already hear the fire trucks in the distance so there was no need to call 911. I pulled off the road at the nearest driveway, grabbed my camera, and ran along the road toward the house.

A million thoughts are going through my head...do I use the polarizer?...ISO100 or 400?...stick with the kit lens or switch to the zoom?...how close can I get without getting in the way?...did I forget any key settings?...The first fire truck pulled up just as I got to the house. The house is on private property, and I did not want to be in the way, so I made sure to stay as close to the road as possible. Even so, I moved along the length of the property several times looking for the best places to shoot. I started out with the kit lens and the polarizer. The sun was straight up, and I like having the polarizer on to keep from blowing out any parts of the sky. I took several shots, but quickly realized I was not getting as close as I wanted to. I fell back behind the firetrucks and switched to the zoom lens. In the interest of time, I did not move the polarized filter from the kit lens, which I think worked out OK. More firetrucks were arriving and there were at least 10 firemen on the scene by now. I was very careful to stay out of their way and they did not bother me at all.

I saw several intersted bystanders and one lady even had a video camera. But, this one lady came up and I could tell she was obviously distressed. I asked if that was her house, but fortunately she said no. She also confirmed no one was inside or in danger. She and her husband leased the barn which they were using to store hay. They had almost 300 bales of hay in the barn along with their hay elevator. Now, this may not sound like a huge loss, but hay is in short supply this year and is selling for an abnormally high price of about $4.50 per bale. That is easily a loss of several thousand dollars in hay and equipment. Mrs. Suiter was very kind and gracious in the midst of her crisis and we talked for quite a while. I gave her one of my business cards and told her if the insurance company or anyone else could use any of the photographs for any reason I would be happy to provide them.

The police began arriving on scene at this point and one officer said I needed to move down past the last firetruck. This was down the hill and about 500 yards from the scene. There was no way I was going to get any more photographs from there, so I was pretty much done at this point. The temperature was 100 degrees. Combine this with no lunch, nothing to drink, and the adrenaline starting to fade and I decided it was time to be finished anyway.

I did several things right this time. I remembered to get all the information at the scene this time, and even worked up the courage to speak to the victim, which really was not that hard. I also made sure to park a pretty good distance away so I was not in the way of any of the emergency equipment. I fumbled through my camera settings and lenses OK, but I can see how important it is to spend time practicing with all the settings. In a pressure situation like this you fall back completely on how you have trained. The brain can only concentrate on so many things at once, and with everything else going on at the scene, working the math on specific camera settings was not going to happen. I can see how an experienced photographer will "feel" his way through a situation like this and adjust his camera to the conditions based on what has worked in the past. One of the things that was new to me was the need to switch to manual focus for several of the shots. The autofocus kept focusing on the wrong things, and it was faster to switch to manual.

The good news is no one was hurt. The barn was completely destroyed, but the white house on the property seems to have escaped any damage and Mrs. Suiter believes her insurance will cover all of their losses on this.

Studio session with light tent

My last studio session with the flash left me very frustrated and disappointed. I submitted a few photos to my peers for critique and Bosela from the Morgue File suggested using a light tent. The Strobist has an excellent article on how to build one of these very cheap and useful tools. I was very impressed with the photographs on the Strobist's website, and built one of my own. I used a much larger box that was almost 2 ft. cubed. I purchased some tracing paper that was 14 in. x 17 in. and used four sheets on each side and on the top. For a background I started out with some poster board as per the Strobist's recommendations, but since my box was so much larger, the poster board was not big enough. Instead I purchased a roll of banner paper and cut a section that was 22 in. wide x 48 in. long. This worked perfectly. If you would like more information about building one of these, you can read the article at http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html.

I grabbed my work lights from the garage and placed one set on each side. This is what the setup looked like in my studio (aka my living room).

In order to get a good baseline, I used some of the subjects from my last studio session, the model carriage and the old book with the antique glasses. The results were much better! The shadows were almost completely eliminated and the light from the light tent was very soft and even. The paper background worked great and did not compete with the subjects at all.

I was very happy with the way these turned out, but my favorites from the session were the bottle of cherry vinegar at the top of this entry and this one.

This technique does a great job of isolating the subject and makes it especially easy to for publishers to paste into their layouts. Special thanks go out to Bosela and the Strobist for sharing this technique with me.

Studio work with hot shoe flash - First session

I invested in an external flash, the Canon 480EX, and decided to do a little studio work on some still subjects. Now, if anyone thinks there is a steep learning curve when starting to use a DSLR camera, just wait until you add an external flash. If you just put the flash on, and point it at the subject to light it, and start shooting, your subjects will definitely be lit, but they will look horrible. Straight on flash is too bright, causes horrible reflections in glasses and skin oils, and just looks horrible. The short answer to this is to bounce the flash off the ceiling, or a wall, or a bounce card. There is something called the Better Bounce card (see the link in my Photography Links section) that is also used to help tame the hotshoe flash. I built one of these to use with my new 480EX. Even so, there are many other factors to take into account such as how much flash exposure to use, what to bounce the flash off, and how to balance the flash against existing ambient light. All of that is in addition to choosing the proper settings on the camera. In short, it can be very complex.

I started by erecting a quick makeshift studio. I bought a white polyester cloth from a fabric store, taped two corners to a wall and let the rest drape over a card table. I wanted to isolate the objects I was shooting so they did not compete with a more complex background. I set up my camera so the external flash was pointing straight up with a better bounce card on the back. I started by leaving the bounce card pointed directly at the subject, but was immediately unhappy with the distinct shadow I got behind the subject.

I needed to get more light behind the subject and balance that against the light being directed on the top and front of the subject. I took two pieces of aluminum foil and glued them to a piece of cardboard to build a reflector. I put the reflector on the right-hand side of the subject and directed the flash at the reflector. I also bumped the flash exposure up to +3. Now, ideally I would have multiple soft boxes and multiple off-camera flashes to work with, but I don't. I have one hotshoe flash, so I have to make due for right now.

I am fairly happy with the results, but even so, there are a few other issues I encountered. The first is the wrinkles in the fabric. You can see them very clearly in the top image. For the more obvious ones, I cloned them out, but I did not remove all of them. I need to find a way to smooth out my background more.

I also realized every subject I chose needed to be cleaned first. Every little bit of missed dirt, dust, or fuzz will show up in the photograph. For the photographs of the books and glasses I had several places where dust bunnies had followed the books to my clean white background, but I did not notice them until I was reviewing the photographs. I cloned these spots out, but I will be watching for this in the future so I can save myself some post processing time.

The carriage I used for a subject required a quite detailed cleaning. It has been sitting on a shelf for several years, and the top has been dusted, but nothing else. I had to get a q-tip and clean the leaf springs, axles, wheel spokes, and all inside the carriage. I am not very happy with the way these turned out, however. The photographs were not very crisp. I applied an unsharp mask in post processing that helped, but I still feel like the detail did not turn out as well as I would have liked. I took several shots from different angles but never found one I was really happy with.

This was a good exercise for me and I learned a lot. Mostly I learned that I still have a LOT more to learn. I will be searching for more objects to photograph. I also want to purchase a black velvet background for light colored objects.

If anyone is interested in seeing full size versions of these photographs you can see them on my Flickr account. The link to this is on the right-hand side of this page under "Photography Links". You can see all the EXIF data there also.

Now, go take some pictures!

Photographing my first accident scene

On the way home from shooting the Harry Potter book release, I noticed one of the roads was blocked off by flares. I immediately changed lanes and headed off in the general direction of where I was seeing lights from a police car. When I got to the scene, I found this vehicle surrounded by firemen. The police had blocked off the road and one man was handcuffed and sitting on the median. I thought the lighting in the bookstore was challenging, but that was nothing compared to shooting in the middle of the road at 11:30pm under an orange street light.
I was very hesitent to cross the street at first as I was afraid the firemen and police would tell me I had to leave. But, I could not get any shots from where I was standing as it was too far away. I noticed a pedestrian on the far side who was walking toward the accident, and no one was stopping him, so I decided to take a chance and move closer to the accident. I figured the worst that could happen was they would chase me off and maybe I could get a few shots before that happened. To my great surprise, no one said anything. In fact, I was largely ignored. Gradually I moved in ever closer until I was right on top of the scene. If they were gonna let me shoot, I decided to make the most of it and took as many photographs as I could think of.

I approached the firemen to see if anyone had been seriously injured and to try to guage the emotional level of the scene. They said everyone was pretty much OK, for which I was relieved. I don't know if I am ready to photograph a fatality yet (how one gets ready for that, I have no idea).

My photographic approach was pretty simple; try everything I could think of and pray some of them worked. The flash worked, but only up close. More than 10 feet away and the scene got to dark. Using the ambient light from the street light was the only way to capture the wider shots showing the firetruck. I liked the wider spots better because I felt they gave more perspective the situation. This required a slow shutter, however, and guess what I did not have with me...a tripod. So, what I did instead was lay flat on the ground and brace the camera on the curb. This allowed me to keep the camera steady enough to get the shots with just the streetlight.

After shooting the photographs, I had the presence of mind to approach the police and get as much information as I could. My thought was to get enough information to be able to present this as a news story to the local paper. I did call them and left a message, but I have not heard back from them. Once I got home I began processing the photographs, and even though they did not all turn out, I was quite pleased with a few of them. I converted this last one to black and white, and to me, it feels like accident photographs I have seen in the paper before.

I am never glad someone had an accident, but I am glad I was there to shoot this scene. I had one guy ask me which paper I worked for. Just looking like you know what you are doing counts for a lot in a situation like this. I plan to continue looking for opportunities to document these types of scenes as I encounter them.