WBF Photography Tips!
- Thread starter amirm
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well I know John Krasinski from the Office does VO for Verizon and IIRC Sam Elliott does as well. The photo doesn't really look like either except for the huge "stache that Sam Elliott sports
David Monzingo, really nice and talented guy -- just got off Cowboys and Aliens with Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig.
A big part of the film is the reveal where this whole disguise comes off and we see who the character really is.
A big part of the film is the reveal where this whole disguise comes off and we see who the character really is.
Go Abstract!
One of the things I try to avoid is what we call shooting "postcards." You know, the typical shots people have seen better than anything you are going to try.
One way to do that is do the opposite. Instead of shooting the subject as a whole, try to find patterns in it, or use selective focus, blur, etc. Here are some examples:
First, the "postcard" :
Canon EoS 1D MKII, ISO 100, 180mm Macro, f4.5, 1/250sec
Now for the abstract:
Canon EoS 1D MKII, ISO 200, 180mm Macro, f5.6, 1/400sec
Quite different, no?
Another variation of the same:
Canon EoS 1D MKII, ISO 200, 180mm Macro, f5.6, 1/400sec
What do you think this is?
Canon EoS 10D, ISO 100, 24-70mm Zoom at 70, f16, 1/10sec, handheld!
Can't guess? These are hallways in front of the rooms in each floor of the hotel in China! If you looked down, you would see all the way down to the lobby.
As an aside, note that this was done with now obsolete Canon 10D camera (6 megaxpixels). It was $1,000 in its day but probably $100 on ebay. This was the camera that convinced me digital was the future.
One of the things I try to avoid is what we call shooting "postcards." You know, the typical shots people have seen better than anything you are going to try.
One way to do that is do the opposite. Instead of shooting the subject as a whole, try to find patterns in it, or use selective focus, blur, etc. Here are some examples:
First, the "postcard" :
Canon EoS 1D MKII, ISO 100, 180mm Macro, f4.5, 1/250sec
Now for the abstract:
Canon EoS 1D MKII, ISO 200, 180mm Macro, f5.6, 1/400sec
Quite different, no?
Another variation of the same:
Canon EoS 1D MKII, ISO 200, 180mm Macro, f5.6, 1/400sec
What do you think this is?
Canon EoS 10D, ISO 100, 24-70mm Zoom at 70, f16, 1/10sec, handheld!
Can't guess? These are hallways in front of the rooms in each floor of the hotel in China! If you looked down, you would see all the way down to the lobby.
As an aside, note that this was done with now obsolete Canon 10D camera (6 megaxpixels). It was $1,000 in its day but probably $100 on ebay. This was the camera that convinced me digital was the future.
Obviously depends on what you're after, what you want to take home with you and perhaps put up on your wall. As for postcards, if you have an eye, the dedication to developing your craft, and get yourself to appropriate locations, you have a shot at matching postcard photos, and even selling to stock houses or mags if that's your goal. Personally, I'm not that interested in macro/still life photography, so that's not what I pursue when I'm looking for a shot or out snapping to capture and remember a moment.
Time of day is tremendously important, and you have to scout this. James Wong Howe, one of the great cinematographers, used to sit in a chair at the locations he was going to shoot, and take notes every half hour. There are always some surprises w/light that can be transformative to a picture or film, but you have to put in the time to find that perfect time and perfect spot. Not so much for postcard or landscape photography, but interesting to watch is how some of the nature videographers got what they did in the 'Planet Earth' series. Tremendous planning and patience, among many other things. As an aside, it was interesting to see the amount of motion control work that went into many of the shots.
I've been fortunate enough to go to some relatively extreme places, outskirts of Burma, Tibet, Everest, etc, and have sold to National Geo., some other mags and stock houses. Now and then I've walked into a great shot, but the stuff that sold was not surprisingly of the scouted/planned variety.
When in doubt, keep clicking!
I used to buy a lot of photography books when I got started in this hobby. Reading them, I was always amazed that the writer had shot both good and bad shots while in the field to show the better way to do things. Then it hit me. Maybe they weren't as good as they say they were and what turned out to be a bad shot, was not taken on purpose that way.
Fast forward a few years later. I am sitting at a conference with the president of Kodak (before film died) giving a speech. Half way through, he points at the photographer taking pictures of him and said, "the biggest difference between him and casual photographers is that he takes a lot more pictures!" Implying that is how he achieves the few good images.
So don't be overly impressed by the images I have shown in this thread
. They are a few good images out of a sea of bad ones. In a typical day shooting wildlife images, I take about 1,500 images. Out of those, there are 30 to 40 decent ones and only a handful of great ones! My entire photo library has 120,000 images in it :.
One of the great things about digital is that it doesn't cost anything to shoot multiple images. Get yourself a larger memory card. Put your camera on continuous shooting mode if it has one. And fire away when there is an exciting moment. Even when the situation is slow, like a portrait, I take many shots as even split second timing difference can result in an image with drastically different feel. Check these examples:
All shot stats the same: Canon Eos 1D MK II, f4.0, 1/250sec, ISO 500, 70-200 zoom at 200mm.
In the first, the focus is on the hat and scissor through it. The next two are classic portraits but one is carefree and happy with the lean back stance and the other, the eyes sharply look through you. These three images are probably out of a dozen I took. In other cases, I have 50+ images of the same girl, hoping to capture that rare and priceless expression.
Now you might say I lack talent to take that right image with one or two frames. Well, that would be true. There are people who take very few images and make them count. For my defense, I would say that we have horrible tools to achieve that. How the heck do you see minor facial expressions through that quarter inch viewfinder or the low res LCD? It is easy to examine them on your computer here. Not so when you are in the field and struggling as I was through the crowd to capture those nature shots amongst many alternatives.
Thank heavens the cost of memory has come so far down. I remember my first 2 Gig and 4 Gig flash cards both cost $1,000 each! People used to be in shock when I would pull them out of camera. But that large card gave me extreme freedom to take images and maximize my chances of coming home with a good image. It is not like to you can go back to Tokyo the next day and take the above shots.
I used to buy a lot of photography books when I got started in this hobby. Reading them, I was always amazed that the writer had shot both good and bad shots while in the field to show the better way to do things. Then it hit me. Maybe they weren't as good as they say they were and what turned out to be a bad shot, was not taken on purpose that way.
Fast forward a few years later. I am sitting at a conference with the president of Kodak (before film died) giving a speech. Half way through, he points at the photographer taking pictures of him and said, "the biggest difference between him and casual photographers is that he takes a lot more pictures!" Implying that is how he achieves the few good images.
So don't be overly impressed by the images I have shown in this thread
. They are a few good images out of a sea of bad ones. In a typical day shooting wildlife images, I take about 1,500 images. Out of those, there are 30 to 40 decent ones and only a handful of great ones! My entire photo library has 120,000 images in it :. One of the great things about digital is that it doesn't cost anything to shoot multiple images. Get yourself a larger memory card. Put your camera on continuous shooting mode if it has one. And fire away when there is an exciting moment. Even when the situation is slow, like a portrait, I take many shots as even split second timing difference can result in an image with drastically different feel. Check these examples:
All shot stats the same: Canon Eos 1D MK II, f4.0, 1/250sec, ISO 500, 70-200 zoom at 200mm.
In the first, the focus is on the hat and scissor through it. The next two are classic portraits but one is carefree and happy with the lean back stance and the other, the eyes sharply look through you. These three images are probably out of a dozen I took. In other cases, I have 50+ images of the same girl, hoping to capture that rare and priceless expression.
Now you might say I lack talent to take that right image with one or two frames. Well, that would be true
. There are people who take very few images and make them count. For my defense, I would say that we have horrible tools to achieve that. How the heck do you see minor facial expressions through that quarter inch viewfinder or the low res LCD? It is easy to examine them on your computer here. Not so when you are in the field and struggling as I was through the crowd to capture those nature shots amongst many alternatives.Thank heavens the cost of memory has come so far down. I remember my first 2 Gig and 4 Gig flash cards both cost $1,000 each! People used to be in shock when I would pull them out of camera. But that large card gave me extreme freedom to take images and maximize my chances of coming home with a good image. It is not like to you can go back to Tokyo the next day and take the above shots
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