Seeing the Light

A big part of successful photography is pre-visualization. PBS put together a documentary on Ansel Adams where Ansel talked about his images. Instead of using the phrase "take" a picture, he described how he would "make" a photograph that would capture the image he saw in his mind's eye.

In this photograph, elements of strong lighting and linearity bring together dramatic elements that help make the image pleasing to the eye. When I pre-visualized the picture, the elements that stood out to me in my mind's eye were the two triangles formed by the sides of this "urban canyon" as it recedes back to the vanishing point. Shape and balance and depth all play a role in making this image aestheticly pleasing. None were obvious to the casual bystanders, who for the most part took snapshots of their friends with their backs up against the railing instead.

Urban Sunset

Our stormy weather of late has produced some fabulous clouds. The day that the storm breaks us is the classic time to get the best scenic photos, and the golden light of the last hour of the day caught me struggling with rush hour traffic on the way back over the hill from Hollywood. There really aren't a lot of special tricks to getting good sunset pictures. Just basic fundamentals. If you're looking into the sun, your optics better be nice and clean, just like your windshield needs to be for a sunset commute. Watch your shutter speed, and be ready to put your camera on a tripod once the light levels go down. I like to shoot sunsets using aperture priority and the right amount of exposure compensation. Digital cameras make it so much easier than the old days of film. Take a test shot, check the histogram to make sure you're not running off either end of the scale, and then fire away. This sunset shot was made using a gradient filter that reduced the amount of light hitting the bottom portion of the image, which gave me the little bit of foreground detail I was looking for. Like many landscape images, previsualization helps you be able to make a picture that caputures the feeling of the event as you see it in your mind's eye.

Portraits

I love portraits that tell a story. Here, the story is the intense concentration of the young musician. The bow coming across the face, the eyes, and the deep shadow area between the neck of the instrument and the player all help keep the focus on the intensity of his concentration. The lighting setup was straightforward, and actually more simple than a lot of other portrait shoots. A single, point source was used, set a few feet higher and to the left, where the music stand would act as a scrim and keep the light from falling on most of the top surface of the violin. This draws the eye to the strings, which now stand out from the dark background.

This is one of those shots where a large pair of softboxes, which typically are used to give nice catchlights to the eyes, would have made the shot ordinary. The lack of catchlights in the eyes and the darkness of the instrument itself is what makes this shot work.

A small aperture was used to provide the needed depth of field to keep both the subject and the instrument in focus, but also to let the blackground fade quickly to black. Once the image was capured, there was very little post production, just a little tweaking the levels and some dodging of the background and the rail of the bentwood chair.

How To: Capturing Action

The key to capturing a sense of action in your shot is picking the right shutter speed, and then panning the camera to follow the action. In the shot of the motocross rider, a shutter speed of 1/250 freezes ALMOST all the action. You want a little bit of motion blur somewhere, so the rider doesn't look like he's suspended on a string. 1/250 lets the spokes of the wheels blur, but keeps the rest of the image sharp. Most digital SLR's have "continuous focus" modes and a mulifunction button on the back that will let you pick which part of the image you want the autofocus to lock in on. I selected a zone on the right side of the frame, then turned the camera vertical to get the shot. With continuous autofocus tracking the rider, the camera fired off 4 shots of him in the air, and two more of the landing, all perfectly focused. Not all shots lend themselves to autofocus, however.

In the bottom shot of a motorcycle roadracer, the bikes moving away from me at over 100 mph were more than the autofocus in my Nikon 300mm f2.8 lens could handle. I picked a spot at the apex of the corner, and prefocused the camera on that spot using manual focus. When the rider came down the straightaway, I panned with him, keeping the rider centered in the frame. When he got to the apex of the corner, making sure to keep panning, I fired off a this shot at 1/500 .
A 1/500 shutter speed usually will freeze anything, but these bikes move at airplane speeds, and there's still enough motion blur from the panning to capture a sense of how fast these guys really are.

Life in the Fast Lane

In preparation for the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Celebrity race, celebrities including filmmaker George Lucas, sportscaster John Salley, actress Emily Procter, and tennis champion Martina Navratilova get in some hot laps at the Fast Lane Racing School. The "battle of the sexes" event pit them against a host of other celebrity and professional drivers. Over the years, the event has raised over 1.3 million dollars for charitable causes.

How To: Event Photography

A lot of wedding and event photography is about posed shots, but spontaneous moments may erupt at any time. The shot on the top captures the flower girl's apprehension as they get ready for their grand entrance into a room full of people at the reception.
The shot on the bottom came in the middle of a bunch of posed shots. On hearing "Let's do one with a kiss," the father of the bride, standing in the background with his wife, humerously announced "We can do that!," and this shot was made just at the moment the bride turned back toward the camera again after looking to see what the commotion behind her with her mom and dad was all about.
Always be ready to caputure those unexpected moments!