Headshots for the Sackville Photo Club

Seeing as how I've been borrowing the Sackville Photo Club's lighting equipment for various photo shoots lately, it seemed fair that one of the organizers of the last meeting asked me to bring along my camera to do some portraits for the incoming executive team.  What I didn't expect was that I would shoot basically the entire team!  

Not that it would be a technical problem (one light setup for everyone), but I knew that the challenge was in getting a useable shot from each member of the executive that they were happy with.   I basically had about five minutes with each person, which is hardly enough time.  Luckily, I know most of the people anyway so getting a fairly natural looking headshot wasn't too painful.

Here are some important things to remember if you are getting a headshot done for a professional package, such as business cards, company publications etc.

1. Relax.  Deep breath.  It's only a picture, and the photographer is there to help make you look your best.  When they tell you to tip your head back, or to the side, it's not to torture you, it's to help you look good!
2. If you want to smile, think of something you think is funny, or try to remember something that will help you feel good.  
3. If the photographer is operating in a space where you can see the process, observe it.  Watch how the photographer interacts with their sitter, what kind of actions are expected.  It makes it so much easier if you walk into a set with a clear idea of how it works and what you might want to try.  
4. Don't be afraid to have a little fun.  As I said before, you're only getting your picture taken.  
5. If you know you'll have your photos done, be sure to wear your favourite shirt, jewelry or other items that will help you feel more confident.
6. Guys: Shave.  If you have a beard, trim it.  
7. Girls: Makeup shouldn't be overdone, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't wear any.  The camera can be ruthless on skin, so feel free to do foundation, cover up, and some clean mascara (no clumps).  

There are tons of resources online for how best to prepare for shoot, but I wanted to cover some basics.  

If you're interested, here is the lighting setup used on the photos above.  As you can see, it's a three-light setup with a softbox as my key, umbrella fill on the right and a gridded deep reflector acting as a rim/hair light.  For the photos, I shot exclusively with the 85mm lens, somewhere around f/8. 

Oops, I broke my Tripod...And It's dusk.

When one of my friends from the Sackville Photo Club asked me if I wanted to join him downtown one chilly April evening for some night photography, I grabbed my tripod and hit the road.  It wasn't a clear night, but the blue hour was playing off the cloud cover and we had some wonderful tones in the sky.  

What I didn't expect, however was that when I went to put my camera on my tripod, the screw-on top had stripped, and the head wouldn't stay on the legs.  In my defense, this was an ancient tripod, something I'd been using to avoid having to shell out several hundred dollars for a new one.

The newly constructed Nova Scotia Power Inc. Building, in the foreground is the arbor on the waterfront.

It had to break before I could make even one shot too.

As a result I scrounged about for platforms that were sturdy enough to hold my camera, and used my lens caps and batteries to prop the lens upward.  It was a bit of a guerrilla exercise, trying to find interesting things to shoot while also getting an interesting vantage point without the flexibility that a tripod provides.  I also had to use mirror lock up and the short two-second timer to get the photos steady enough. 

Bicycle parked near the Garrison Brewery.  

In the end I wound up with some shots I'm very happy with.  It took time to set up each one either on a garbage can, on a bollard or even in the middle of the street!  I even managed to capture some light trails from passing vehicles.

Halifax Seaport Farmers Market.  The statue with the light trails around it is Samuel Cunard.

Cheers!

Making the best of a No-Show Sunrise

The Sackville Photo Club had organized a trip to Hayes Garden for a sunrise photo several weeks ago.  The trip was a bust for a sunrise, but the resulting photo turned out okay.  I had to do my best to make a non-ideal situation into something worth processing in Aperture. 

So when the field trip coordinator set up a trip to Rainbow Haven, another local beach for a sunrise, we were off again on another adventure!  This time we'd get the sunrise shot for sure!

Guess what?  There wasn't any sun.  In fact, initially you couldn't see much further than 200 feet in front of your face due to the early morning fog.  Once again, we had to do our best to get some worthwhile images from a poorly lit and very sandy beach.   I took some more long exposure shots and a few portraits while I was there.  Then I went home and took a nap.  Here are my results from the rainbow Haven Field trip:

Test Driving the New 500px Portfolios

I got an email over the weekend that said I was selected for Beta testing the new 500px portfolios.  Finally, I could modify what I wanted, move things around and build a fantastic port that would impress and wow everyone who looked at it!  The question is though, has 500px been able to deliver?

First up, if you want to build your portfolio through 500px you need to have their "Awesome" level account.  It's not too bad, only $75 per year and it comes with a number of other benefits related to the site.  So is it worth it?  I'm not going to get into the competition too much but I do have a list of features that I'd like to see from 500px in the near future.

The portfolio back-end is accessed from a sub-site of 500px, and as of yet cannot be accessed through 500px's main HUD.  I'm sure they will add a button and allow users to quickly access their ports from the "Settings" page or the Organizer.

You are given the choice of several themes off of which you can design your page, and from there you launch into the actual control panel.  I'm really happy with how they've arranged this part: you can edit the bio and contact info, move images around, and tweak the actual code (HTML, CSS and JavaScript) to suit your needs.  You certainly don't need to, but it's nice to be able to modify things like font styling if you need to match another of your sites.

The following features I like:

- HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing. Big points here allowing fine-tuning for advanced users.
- Simple and effective themes for less tech-oriented users. The themes are pretty good.
- Images displayed are crystal clear, very high res and look fantastic. (This is a double-edged sword...see below)
- Themes are easily customized to your needs. Within the control panel the photographer can modify colours for the background, text, and lines.
- Easy to rename the domain to suit your needs.  If you want timlingley.500px.com, you get that as a stock name.  No big deal, but if you want timlingley.com to be your portfolio, you simply buy the domain name and  tell 500px that you want to use that.
- Everything is automatic.  I mean that when you organize your photos in the organizer, that's the order they appear in.  The same goes for portfolio headers.  This makes it very easy to move things around and tell a story.

This is the bad stuff:

- You can right click on the images in the new Beta portfolios and save them.  500px's main site has a bit of script that prevents this from happening: you right click on the image and a little dialog box pops up and tells you "Hey! This image is Copyright Tim Lingley".  It is a mild deterrent, but it is effective, and would be nice to see implemented on all of the beta portfolios.  There really is no way to protect your images totally on the internet, but as the old saying goes: "A lock keeps an honest person out".   This is especially important since the photos are displayed at a pretty high resolution.
- Some of the themes do not translate well to different platforms.  I customized and built my portfolio on my Macbook, then loaded it up on a windows machine, only to find that the nice, sleek scroll bar on my mac transformed into a hideous blocky nightmare on the windows screen.  It gets worse: my port isn't really optimized at all for mobile devices.  I can't view all of my portfolio images on my phone because I can't scroll.  I'm not an advanced phone-operator, but neither is most of the rest of the world.  I need my portfolio to be quick, accessible and easy to use.
- The high res images do take a bit of time to load. I understand that there are trade-offs, but if you go somewhere like Scott Kelby's Portfolio (powered by SmugMug) it loads lightning fast and it's pretty high-res.  Let's see some of that efficiency on the 500px portfolios.
- I was expecting more themes for beta. This will come in time, but I think the themes could use some more work.
- I want to be able to use the mouse scroll wheel to scroll horizontally through my pictures. (this one is exclusive to the horizontal theme) It makes sense that you would be able to do this since the screen is only as tall as the native resolution, and doesn't have a scroll bar in the vertical direction.

My Wishlist:

More themes.  The ones that are available at the time of writing seem like rehashing the previously available themes.  I know there are more ways to show off my photos and I haven't quite hit the mark yet with any of the 500px themes.
The ability for the portfolio viewer to buy my photos as prints. I think there may be a way to do this now that I have access to the code itself.
I want to be able to put a button(s) on every page of my portfolio that links to my twitter, google+, facebook and blog.  Everything should be linked, and not necessarily just on the contact page.

I've tried to cover everything I noticed while working within the new portfolio interface, and I'm sure there are many more ups and downs.  I'm also pretty confident that if I knew HTML and CSS better I may be able to add the features that I want rather than whine about them on my blog!  I'd rather spend time learning how to take great pictures.

Here's My Portfolio, created with the new 500px beta portfolios.

Cheers!

NSCAD Fashion, Part II

Janelle Brown and I got some time to finish up what we started.  Last week we completed the series of photos for her fashion line up, and I'm pretty happy with the results!  

Again, we were joined by make up artist Jamiraa Berry and hairstylist Jessica Lynn Wiebe, both of whom did a superb job in creating fantastic looks.  The models, Tasha MacDonald and Catherine Richardson were stellar.  We used the school for a setting, since it had a load of really great grungy textures in walls and floors.  I'm not saying that NSCAD is grungy, but it was easy with lighting and post to make some of the spaces look that way.  

Click on the first image below to bring up a slideshow.

The final group, showcasing all four of Janelle's works (click for a larger image):

Cheers!

Safety in Numbers: Halifax Street Photography

It's no secret that I've always been more outgoing and bold with friends around.  I think that most of us are.  I'm rarely comfortable pointing my camera at strangers, even in a group but at least then I've got someone to back me up, right?

On a Street Mentorship photowalk with some of my friends at the Sackville Photo Club,  I got bold and pointed my camera at some people.  I mean really bold.  I actually waited in some instances until people looked at me before I snapped the photo.  

So, what does this mean going forward?  If nothing else, I need to be more bold while I'm on my own.  There were only one or two negative confrontations, and they weren't anything serious.  I asked to take someone's photo and they said no.  I moved on.  Hey, wait a second, this wasn't a big deal at all! 

The thing is that more people didn't care whether I took their picture or not compared to those who did. A vast majority either ignored me or smiled back at me when I took their picture.  Maybe, just maybe this kind of photography might be possible while I'm on my own!

All of the photos were shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, 50mm f/1.8 II lens and processed with Silver Efex Pro 2.  

Click on the images below to bring up a slideshow:

This man didn't even see me, and provided me with this fantastic expression as he packed his things and moved toward the bus.

I tried to get the shot of this man sleeping on the barrier, but he sat up just in time to see me press the shutter.  I'm very happy with this shot.

I wrote in my last blog post about challenges with lighting while doing noon-time street photos.  This photo walk took place later in the day and it was beautiful lighting.

 Sometimes, I would get very intense looks when I was caught snapping.

Other times, when the subject realized they were being photographed they simply laughed and took it as flattery.  I was really surprised by this girls reaction when I crouched down in front to snap her photo!

I didn't just photograph people; the evening light provided some wonderful shadows to shoot.  I had to block the sun somewhat with my hand to keep away a nasty lens-flare. 

All in all, it was a great time to be out taking pictures and the results speak for themselves. I feel like I got a few really good shots, a few good shots and a lot of "eh" kind of frames.  I hope you enjoyed the best of them!

Cheers!

My Challenge with Noontime Street Photos

Overcast days are starting to become a good thing for me.  Doing my mid-day photo walks can be a challenge in direct sunlight, and at noon, there's only sparse areas of shade.  Otherwise I'm fighting with  incredibly harsh shadows and just overall poor light.

As I get out and work at shooting more and more, I keep getting frames.  I haven't been posting to this blog quite as often as I'd like, but I'm trying to make the posts count.  I want to show something new, and something that I really like.  

What I find interesting is the response I get with street photos.  Generally, only my photographer friends seem to get it, while my portraits and landscapes get recognition from lots of my "regular" friends (I think people in general like landscapes).

I still don't feel like my photos have the dynamic required for good street work though.  I don't feel like they're quite "In your face" enough.  They're obvious, they look almost clinical.  I guess I could blame my environment, my gear, or the subjects, but ultimately it's up to me to make the photos interesting.

Maybe I'll just shoot at night time like this shot.  

But interesting photos sometimes require interesting light.  Or interesting framing, or interesting subjects.  The best photos seem to combine all of those things.   So on my noon-hour photowalks, I'll keep hoping for overcast days.  Or, maybe I'll start hunting for shafts of light and shade.

Cheers!