88. Portrait - February 15-21, 2015
Kevin-
I took a couple of cracks at capturing a different type of portrait. Both had similar challenges. The image you will see is of my friend Tom Conrad. Tom and I met about 15 years ago when he was the Chief Operating Officer for Magnolia HiFi in Seattle. Tom has been retired for a while now but he has long written about and reviewed jazz music for publications like Jazz Times and Stereophile. Tom is considered one of the world’s premier authorities on European jazz and is often sent to attend and write about jazz festivals in places like Serbia, Umbria, and Estonia.
I wanted to capture a photo of Tom doing what he often does, which is listening to a jazz recording over and over while writing about it. The result may be a review, an article or perhaps liner notes for a CD release.
The challenge of the shot was the window behind Tom. Expose properly for the exterior and the inside of Tom’s place is far too dark. Expose for the interior, and everything outside of the window is far too bright.
So it was time to pull out the Nikon flash units. I used a total of four lights, all with TTL metering. One was a broad light bounced off the ceiling. Two were directed specifically at Tom. The fourth added a touch of extra light to the audio components in his system.
Nikon D3s tripod mounted with a 14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens set to 20mm. ISO 200, f/8, 1/200th of a second.
I took a couple of cracks at capturing a different type of portrait. Both had similar challenges. The image you will see is of my friend Tom Conrad. Tom and I met about 15 years ago when he was the Chief Operating Officer for Magnolia HiFi in Seattle. Tom has been retired for a while now but he has long written about and reviewed jazz music for publications like Jazz Times and Stereophile. Tom is considered one of the world’s premier authorities on European jazz and is often sent to attend and write about jazz festivals in places like Serbia, Umbria, and Estonia.
I wanted to capture a photo of Tom doing what he often does, which is listening to a jazz recording over and over while writing about it. The result may be a review, an article or perhaps liner notes for a CD release.
The challenge of the shot was the window behind Tom. Expose properly for the exterior and the inside of Tom’s place is far too dark. Expose for the interior, and everything outside of the window is far too bright.
So it was time to pull out the Nikon flash units. I used a total of four lights, all with TTL metering. One was a broad light bounced off the ceiling. Two were directed specifically at Tom. The fourth added a touch of extra light to the audio components in his system.
Nikon D3s tripod mounted with a 14-24mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens set to 20mm. ISO 200, f/8, 1/200th of a second.
Byron-
This is a portrait of Erleen. She was not injured in the shooting of this photo. I did not hold her head underwater until I got the lens focused. That is a vicious rumor. I held her head underwater until the stobes recycled. No, neither of those scenarios is true. Nobody held anyone’s head under water. It was a pleasant evening. I started this process a bit early because even though there was no direct Sunlight it was too bright at first. We waited until it darkened some more and I mounted a Neutral Density filter on the lens because my maximum flash sync speed is 1/200th second. I became too impatient to wait until it got much darker so I could shoot it at f1.4. I am pleased with the result.
I used a technique that I learned from Joe McNally. I’m outdoors so of course I set the White Balance to Incandescent. I also changed the exposure to give me -1.7. That means the background will be dark Blue. Next I used 2 strobes with an Orange filter on each to make the light incandescent color. I have one light off to the left, on a stand, with a ByroSnoot mounted. The other strobe was shoe mounted with an Orange filter and tilted up about 45 degrees. It was the commander. It triggered the other strobe and provided some fill light.
The ISO was 100, 55mm, -1.7, f/5.6, 1/60 sec.
This is a portrait of Erleen. She was not injured in the shooting of this photo. I did not hold her head underwater until I got the lens focused. That is a vicious rumor. I held her head underwater until the stobes recycled. No, neither of those scenarios is true. Nobody held anyone’s head under water. It was a pleasant evening. I started this process a bit early because even though there was no direct Sunlight it was too bright at first. We waited until it darkened some more and I mounted a Neutral Density filter on the lens because my maximum flash sync speed is 1/200th second. I became too impatient to wait until it got much darker so I could shoot it at f1.4. I am pleased with the result.
I used a technique that I learned from Joe McNally. I’m outdoors so of course I set the White Balance to Incandescent. I also changed the exposure to give me -1.7. That means the background will be dark Blue. Next I used 2 strobes with an Orange filter on each to make the light incandescent color. I have one light off to the left, on a stand, with a ByroSnoot mounted. The other strobe was shoe mounted with an Orange filter and tilted up about 45 degrees. It was the commander. It triggered the other strobe and provided some fill light.
The ISO was 100, 55mm, -1.7, f/5.6, 1/60 sec.
Deron-
I went back to a recent subject of mine. I was lucky enough to have a few minutes granted to me by 'Vulture' Morgan, the award-winning Australian Adventurer. He was on his way to the western Amazon to save the African Elephants from raccoon poachers, when he had me meet him in the northern regions of France, where we ate southern fried chicken at the East Orient Cafe. After a five minute photo shoot, and a plate of thighs, he grabbed the skid of his helo and was off on another adventure, leaving us all with this portrait.
I used the 55-200 lens hoping to get a mottled background of cactus, palm trees or brown wooden tree stump, but I used the photo with the overcast sky as a stark contrast to his camo uniform. Not sure if this qualifies as a true portrait, but...
I went back to a recent subject of mine. I was lucky enough to have a few minutes granted to me by 'Vulture' Morgan, the award-winning Australian Adventurer. He was on his way to the western Amazon to save the African Elephants from raccoon poachers, when he had me meet him in the northern regions of France, where we ate southern fried chicken at the East Orient Cafe. After a five minute photo shoot, and a plate of thighs, he grabbed the skid of his helo and was off on another adventure, leaving us all with this portrait.
I used the 55-200 lens hoping to get a mottled background of cactus, palm trees or brown wooden tree stump, but I used the photo with the overcast sky as a stark contrast to his camo uniform. Not sure if this qualifies as a true portrait, but...
Paul-
I fall into these happy-go-lucky little moods from time to time…
I shot this in aperture priority almost completely stopped down. Hence the higher ISO which, incidentally, is twice what my Olympus was capable of. Tha
t'll show me.
My goal was to emulate the macabre mood conveyed by (my literary hero) Ray Bradbury’s book “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” I’ll not get into the particulars here. Do your homework: peruse the synopsis on Amazon, see the movie, or read the book. (I strongly suggest the latter, but Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce are in the movie so what’s not to like?) Anyway, my goal was to have the title of the background poster slightly shadowed, but still readable. And to throw in a little symbolism that I wished I could have conveyed a little better. Maybe it's obvious. Hard to say.
A lighting source is behind me to provide a small amount of depth and illumination for the poster—which was printed for an Oxford engagement in October, 1980—and a hand-held lamp is pointing up at my face. After a little work in Lightroom, I used an out-of-focus utility in PhotoScape for areas in the background. And, boy howdy, after 50 or 60 shots, I got a real appreciation for what happens when you photograph someone with spectacles…not…quite…right. Oh well. It was a (darkly) fun exercise in learning, lighting, and looming.
Our story so far…
Lions and tigers and bears were coming to town…and something more feral that would not be caged. Or captured. Not even with an 18-55mm lens (focused at 30mm); set to ISO 3200; 1/50 sec.; and f13.
I fall into these happy-go-lucky little moods from time to time…
I shot this in aperture priority almost completely stopped down. Hence the higher ISO which, incidentally, is twice what my Olympus was capable of. Tha
t'll show me.
My goal was to emulate the macabre mood conveyed by (my literary hero) Ray Bradbury’s book “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” I’ll not get into the particulars here. Do your homework: peruse the synopsis on Amazon, see the movie, or read the book. (I strongly suggest the latter, but Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce are in the movie so what’s not to like?) Anyway, my goal was to have the title of the background poster slightly shadowed, but still readable. And to throw in a little symbolism that I wished I could have conveyed a little better. Maybe it's obvious. Hard to say.
A lighting source is behind me to provide a small amount of depth and illumination for the poster—which was printed for an Oxford engagement in October, 1980—and a hand-held lamp is pointing up at my face. After a little work in Lightroom, I used an out-of-focus utility in PhotoScape for areas in the background. And, boy howdy, after 50 or 60 shots, I got a real appreciation for what happens when you photograph someone with spectacles…not…quite…right. Oh well. It was a (darkly) fun exercise in learning, lighting, and looming.
Our story so far…
Lions and tigers and bears were coming to town…and something more feral that would not be caged. Or captured. Not even with an 18-55mm lens (focused at 30mm); set to ISO 3200; 1/50 sec.; and f13.
Jerry-
Sometimes people give me things, like pocket watches, Argus cameras, stomach acid, and now a Pentax Spotmatic F with 28mm, 55mm, and 135mm lenses. This beauty is from the early 70's but has had light use and works great. Though when I compare it to my Nikon stuff from the same time period, it seems like a notch below. Dark viewfinder, hard to focus, screw mount lenses, but probably a bargain back then in comparison, and especially now as it was free. I put a roll of Kodak T-Max 100 through it and processed the film Friday morning. I then put the negative in a slide mount and slid that into the slide copier attachment for my D750. This photo of my wife Cindy and our dog Sam was taken with the 135mm lens, black background, monolight with umbrella to the left, 1/60 at f11.
Sometimes people give me things, like pocket watches, Argus cameras, stomach acid, and now a Pentax Spotmatic F with 28mm, 55mm, and 135mm lenses. This beauty is from the early 70's but has had light use and works great. Though when I compare it to my Nikon stuff from the same time period, it seems like a notch below. Dark viewfinder, hard to focus, screw mount lenses, but probably a bargain back then in comparison, and especially now as it was free. I put a roll of Kodak T-Max 100 through it and processed the film Friday morning. I then put the negative in a slide mount and slid that into the slide copier attachment for my D750. This photo of my wife Cindy and our dog Sam was taken with the 135mm lens, black background, monolight with umbrella to the left, 1/60 at f11.