Built For Learning

Since my last post was about some work for the magazine, I figured I would do top it off with another.

Not much to say about the photo - I like it, it's a panorama stitched together in Photoshop, etc. - but I do have to give mad props to the designer of the page layout. I think it looks great like that. So...props.

Archeology

The archeology department at James Madison was working on a project and the Magazine wanted to cover it - I didn't have a clue where it would end up...

Here's how it worked on the inside:

The shot wasn't really a single shot at all - it was two stitched together using our favorite program - Photoshop. You can do it in almost any version (automate, photomerge). There's a strobe off to the left of the group, but not fired to light their faces up, it's fired to light the group and the side of the dig site.

Oh, and don't forget the details, you'll never know where they'll end up too...

Accordion Man...?

These sets of images (including the post titled 'Piano Man') are for an upcoming Madison Magazine article on undergraduate research. I'm posting a few of the shots here and there because I'm not certain of what they'll be using. Either way, here are some more.

Shooting William was tricky because of, you guessed it, lighting. When isn't that the case? These were all shot at ISO 1600, 50mm, f/1.8. and I still only reached around 1/40 sec for each shot, which required some real steady shooting on my part. I couldn't use flash because we were in a restaurant, and that really would have messed with the environment, so I did what I could. I contemplated bumping the ISO up to 3200 to reach above the coveted 1/60 sec, but it would have made the images colorless, contrastless (not a word, I know), and noisy.

Good thing William didn't care much about his personal space. I'm literally at his feet, shooting up.

And one for the road.

A Reason to Wake Up at 4:00 AM

There's the reason. Believe it or not, that sun comes up mighty fast. I took about a hundred of these, and the one above was one of the ones I planned on throwing away when I first took it - I was frustrated when the birds got in my frame. Good thing I didn't delete it in-camera.

Now this one was taken before the sun came up. Even at f/22, I still needed a neutral density filter to get a 5 second exposure. I wish I had more than one ND filter on me, the waves were moving slow.

There's a nice shot for Sea Isle tourism...

Same dock, different angle - completely different mood.

End of the day, approaching night. 1/2 second exposure.

And finally:

Nothing like early morning surfing.

Another Drop in the Bucket

I've posted some water drop photos in the past, but I really think these take the cake. 

And one more - as simple as it gets:

The setup is a great deal simpler than you might think:

-Tall glass of water
-Some measuring spoons for making the water drops - various sizes for smaller/larger drops
-Studio backdrop (for the neutral background) - could even be done in a softbox
-Two lights on either side of the glass to light it up
-Cable release

For these, I used a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, all the way in at 200mm to get that close. The tricky part with shooting that close with f/2.8 is the setup - finding your focal point can be a real challenge. Take your time, be patient, and don't give up. You can't see it in the camera because you are too busy making water drops - trial and error go a long way.

White Balance

A little white balance shift goes a long way. The sun was on its way down, I just gave it a little extra help.

This one is, obviously, not how the image was captured, but I really like it the way it is now. Just pull the temperature slider down to around 2000 or so, that should do it.

The photo above has nothing to do with white balance. It was taken on the same day and I figured it would look nice here. It's a 360-degree panorama - the clouds make the photo, not the mountains.

Piano Man

William here is a phenomenal pianist. He's also a fun subject to shoot who's incredibly aware of the camera.

Case in point.

Lighting in this sort of situation can be very tricky. There's a strobe off to my left triggered wirelessly, I'm shooting at f/1.8, ISO 1600, and I'm still squeaking out 1/60 second. We've all shot in less-than-ideal lighting conditions, and this is a great example of shooting with an off-camera strobe and still getting that balance in the background.

I like this shot, but I'm the first to admit it's flaws: no set focal point, slight camera shake, and some blown highlights. But that's OK - I still like it despite those mishaps. This was one of those shots I took and didn't think about actually using - but after I browsed through the shoot - I couldn't throw it away.

View From Above

What a sight! Gigantic, huge, beautiful, elaborate, amazing - these words don't even begin to describe it.

Here's a view from a little lower:

That gives it some perspective.

Now for some more:

Can you imagine...?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - lighting these gargantuan homes would take a lifetime. Use the ambient light, bracket 7 frames, and post-process. Either that or spend your day (and lots of money) playing with lights.

The other half of it is knowing how to post-process correctly. Don't overdo it. The goal here isn't to make something look fake/HDR-like, it's to make it look real. If you've done any research into HDR, you know that the human eye can observe a much greater dynamic range than your camera. So you walk into a home like this and your eyes can adjust for the windows, for the shadows, for the mid-tones, for the overall tone of the space in an instant. Our cameras don't have that luxury - they expose for grey (18% I believe). If you are in evaluative/matrix metering, your camera meters the whole frame and exposes accordingly - most of the time, the highlights coming from windows throw the metering out of whack and send the rest of the space into darkness. The camera thinks it did a good job, believe it or not. 

I'll be writing a much more in-depth critique of Exposure-Fusion/Exposure Blending vs HDR in an upcoming post, so stay tuned. Oh, and the critique won't feature math, benchmarks, noise ratios, or any of that other 'junk' - it'll be a comparison of images. Imagine that.

A Little Height

This post isn't a jab at either her height or mine (we're both short) - it's about the difference between shooting straight-on and shooting from about 3 feet above. Look below to see what I mean.

Don't get me wrong - they are both good. I like each of them in their own way - but the funny part is that they each tell their own story - and their stories are different.

Here's another from the shoot:

OK - in reality, the shoot was not as serious as it seems. Almost all of them were full of bright smiles and laughter - but that's not exactly what we wanted for the magazine. 

Don't forget the details:

Macro Studio, Part 2

So here's the exciting conclusion.

I think that flowers are all fine and dandy - but a little water goes a long way. I took a few shots of the rose without water drops, and it didn't tell the same story. Call me crazy, I just like it this way a little more.

This next one isn't really 'macro' per se, but it was done in the same environment.

This one had a great deal of post-processing. Not to change the shot, but to get the desired lighting I couldn't seem to get right during the shoot. Obviously, I put s pretty large 's-curve' on it, followed by a few curves adjustments to get the color of the flower a uniform hue. Looks good now.

Lastly, a different frame.

Macro Studio, Part 1

This will be a two-part post focusing on macro photography - specifically, it will discuss the importance of how creative solutions triumph over expensive lighting equipment any day of the week. Well, I guess creative solutions plus expensive lighting is better, but who's arguing?

Both shots for this post were done with a small bowl, water, a spoon for water drops, a single flash, and some post-processing to top it off. Oh, and a boat-load of trial and error. 

No, the images don't come out of the camera looking like that - I didn't add the water drop, but I did crop it and add some color.

Expensive solution: super-expensive macro lens and super-expensive lighting.

Creative (Cheap) solution: Lots of cropping and a single flash.

Call me crazy, but I like the second option a little better.

Firelight and Light-Painting

Sometimes you get lucky. Josh here is standing in front of a fairly large camp fire, hence the orange-glow. It was shot at 50mm, f/1.8 - I needed all the light I could get. The amazing part is the fact that it was taken at a whopping ISO 3200 (I'm sure I'll laugh at that a few years from now). Even at 100%, the detail is still there - the only significant noise I got was some color noise, barely noticeable though - surprising too. I didn't bump the ISO up to 6400 because I knew my results would come out dirty - stopping the action wasn't as important as actually getting the shot. It's always a compromise...

Now for the light-painting.

No, this isn't a tutorial on light-painting, you can find those just about anywhere else. Our group here was having fun char-broiling marshmallows so we decided to put them to good use. Long exposure, ambient light, and some fun people - that's about it.

Oh, I should also mention that neither of these shots were even touched in post-production. I really didn't see a need. No cropping, curves, or saturation adjustments, just organic shots.

Young at Heart

This young lady is a great subject. She just had a procedure done on her heart that tested her blood flow and we found out that she's a mutant. Well, not really, but kinda. See that horizontal squiggly line along the bottom of the picture she's holding? That, believe it or not, does not exist on 'normal' hearts. Apparently, something went wrong on one side of her heart and her body adapted by actually creating an artery to feed the weak side. Insane, I know. Anyways, she's a killer subject and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to photograph her.

There's a strobe with a snoot on a chair to my left, directed at the wall, and some soft window light on my right - shot at 10mm. The whole shoot took less than five minutes.

Here are two out-takes. She was laughing the entire time.

Here's the lighting diagram.

Transition to SqareSpace

Hey all - this post marks Miriello Photography's successful transition to SquareSpace. w00t. We'll celebrate with a photo. 

How fitting!