On looking for inspirations outside photography

I have experienced already several times the situation that my adventure with photography was kind a stuck. Somehow the energy wasn't there.
Internet is full of the similar stories with tons of advices on how to get out of there. I have tried quite a lot of them and they helped. So I could move on and continue to enjoy photography.
But there are another aspects of "moving on" with photography. For instance - set a new direction, try completely new genre, abandon some techniques in favor of the new ones.
I think that it is more difficult to start such movement since it often requires an inspiration from the outside world - something that opens the new perspective.
I don't think there is a general receipt about how to find something inspirational, but I can tell what worked and works for me very well. It is a dialogue between a writer and a photographer.
A friend of mine is a writer and she publishes regularly on the internet. Once she came to an idea of illustrating her stories with my photos. I liked it very much so I started contributing to her blog. From the photographer point of view it is a very enriching experience. After reading her texts I had to look at my pictures in a very different way - taking not only technical aspects of the photos, but foremost the much less obvious elements, like symbols, items that on one side match the story but on the other are not too obvious.
This caused me to start thinking about my photos again. Sometimes when I couldn't find anything good I took a camera and made a completely new picture.
What can be more inspiring?
Well, it turns out that such dialogue has also other part, originating from a photo. Sometimes my photos inspired her to write a new story. Which to me means that at least some of my photos probably contain something more than an illustration or snapshot of reality. Again, this forces me to think about the photography in a new way. Looks like adding a new dimension to my photographic journey.

Speaking about journey - we continue this exciting dialogue between writer and photographer but we'll try slightly different form. From now on I'll be publishing my photos on a separate site: The Quest Never Stops. I am looking forward to it.

On practicing the "semi-professional" photography - take the chance of an assignment

Doing a 'real', professional photo session is something I always wanted to try. There is however a problem - how to get such assignment not being a professional photographer? One solution is to actively search for them, starting in your own environment. Look for the opportunities by asking your family, friends, close acquaintances. It has some clear advantages: you are known to them, most probably they probably know your work, so you are not completely out of the comfort zone.
I have tried this approach lately. Everything started with an e-mail from my relative, asking for sharing of  a web shop of the jewelry made of glass, amber and metal.
When I saw the page I noticed two things: a real beauty of the offered products and not so good quality of the pictures showing them. So I thought "hey, I can do it better".
So I shared the page but asked if the jewelry maker wouldn't like to have better photos of his products.
After getting a positive answer I had my assignment.
I have arranged the session at the 'customer' premises and spent couple of hours photographing his products. We both had a lot of fun; I learned a bit about his craft, he was really thrilled by the results of my work.
It wasn't the real professional work, since I haven't earn a penny. But it was a "win-win" situation anyway. I have learned new aspects of photography, he got decent pictures of his products.

Next assignment will be much more challenging - a wedding of a good friend of mine. I'd better do it right, because I don't want to loose a friend :-). So I've been practicing for several months already.

First photography DIY project of 2014 accomplished

Recently I have started the DIY project, which should end in the big (1x2m), sturdy  frame with detachable light diffuser or reflector, depending on the used fabric. The project is finished, and the result looks quite nice:

Front side

Back side

To check the quality I took several shoots using different materials: a shoot-through umbrella, a diffuser and the combination of two. All shots have been taken with the light source placed 1 meter from my face. I have used one SB-900 speed light flash, working in iTTL mode. I have compensated the light strength of the iTTL by -2 stops. The photos are not super sharp, because I had to operate the setup alone, using the remote trigger. So the lens focus was locked and I tried to keep the same distance from the camera during consecutive shots:

Shoot-through umbrella

Diffusser

Shoot-through umbrella + diffuser

First photo is the least successful in my opinion (let's not discuss quality of the model :-)). Note the blemishes on the chick and relatively high contrast around the ears. Second picture, taken with the screen only improves the blemishes.

The combination (putting the speed light behind the umbrella and the screen) produces the results which are to me most pleasant with respect to the softness of light. The idea of combining both light modifiers comes from Joe McNally (one of his online courses). Just to give an idea of the setup:

The diffuser gives a slightly warm color cast comparing to the umbrella, but it is not a big problem.

I have ended up with the budget for the whole project of about 70 EUR. Not bad, I'd say, considering the final effect.

First photography DIY project of 2014 started

There is a light-shaping tool that I really would like to have in my bag. It is a big light diffuser/reflector/screen. By "big" I mean something with the dimensions 1x2 meters, for instance.

There are dozens solutions available on the market which one can buy. It is an option, but the available solutions are quite expensive (starting from around 200 EUR). So I decided to give a try and create such tool by my own. 

Basically it consists of a frame with a proper dimensions, a handle and the fabric which is stretched on the frame. Depending on the fabric the tool can be used as a reflector, diffuser or a screen.

There are many descriptions of how to make it on Internet, I have used this one as a starting point.

I have set some requirements for the final product before start:

1. It should be substantially cheaper than available products

2. It should be lightweight,

3. It should be portable,

4. It should be easy to mount (with limited number of parts)

5. It should be extendible and flexible (i.e. I wanted to be able to easy build frames of different sizes if needed, like 1x1m, 2x2m.

First part is accomplished. This weekend I have finished building the frame:

My requirements are realized, at least for the products based on a frame:

1. It cost 44.60 EUR (in the Netherlands). The price of similar products of Lastolite or Sunbounce are at least twice as much. 

2. The frame weights less than one kilogram.

3. It fits in a bag of 115x30 cm

4. It consists of 7 elements:

5. With the current set I can make a 1x2m frame as well as 1x1m:

The next step is to prepare the materials. I'll start with the diffuser.

Final note: there are collapsible reflectors/diffusers available on the market in the similar dimensions, starting from 49.95 EUR (google for Godox 150x200 for example), which are all-in-one packets (flexible (collapsible) frame, fabrics, bag). My project cannot compete with them on price. 

But I think that the frame is more versatile, since you can mount it on a stand. And it is easier to hold by a person if required.

Sometimes the most difficult in photography is to pick up the camera and go outside

There are periods when I am less active with my photography. It comes because of the busy times at work, other activities, bad weather and many other more or less important factors. But there are also the moments when I think there are not enough interesting topics to take photos (or I cannot photograph them in an interesting way). I think it overcomes many people that do creative hobby. Finding a remedy for such 'mental block' is the personal process and can in some cases take time. Sometimes, however, finding the passion back can be very simple. What works for me is just to take a camera and go outside, despite the weather conditions, other pending activities and day to day pressures. Like yesterday. It was a cold, foggy, grey, autumn day. I was struggling what to do: my camera was just back from the reparation, I'd like to test it very much. But on the other hand such day didn't promise a lot with respect to photography. Anyway, I took the challenge. I drove to a park nearby and started shooting.

After few minutes the fear of not finding interesting locations was completely gone. I actually couldn't stop shooting, despite bad weather and rather bad light.

After 2 hours of this photowalk my enthusiasm for photography was fully restored. 

And, after coming home, the warm coffee was delicious...

9 tips for efficient and safe photography during holidays

It has been a while since my last post, but I had a very good reason for it. I have spent together with my wife great holidays in the USA. We were travelling through South Western USA for three weeks, admiring magnificent landscapes and the nature of this area. During preparations and actual trip I have collected (or learned hard way, more on that later) some simple, yet efficient tips on how to organize a photo equipment, shooting sessions, preparing for unexpected situations, etc.

1. Take a tripod with you 

Doesn't matter which camera you have, using tripod is invaluable especially when shooting in early morning and early evening. Tripod makes possible to use longer exposure times while using low ISO values and small apertures. It results in turn in more sharp pictures. If one plans to create HDR images in post processing, tripod is actually a must have. 

2. Never, ever leave your photo camera on a tripod unattended

This is a lesson I have learned rather hard way. After a shooting session of the Horseshoe Bend in the morning I put my camera (mounted on the tripod) aside and walked several steps to get my bag. At this moment a sudden blast of wind put my camera down, which hit the rocky ground. After all I had a lot of luck, since camera and lens were operational, so I could make use of the set. But the autofocus system was at least partially damaged (only a few out of 51 autofocus points were working correctly). So the camera needed to be repaired after the holidays. Which brings me to next 2 tips.

3. Get your equipment insured

There are different forms of financial insurance. Either you can buy a separate insurance for the camera body (or even lenses), or choose a travel insurance which covers the photo equipment. In case of theft or damage it will save a lot of money. Since my camera is still in reparation, I don't know how much the reparation will cost. But since I have insured my equipment, I don't bother that much.

4. Bring a reserve photo set with you

If something really bad happens with the camera you still want to be able to take the photos, don't you? That is why it is very convenient to have a backup. During my holidays I had actually 3 cameras with me: 2 DSLRs and one compact camera. Next to that I had 11-16, 24-70, 70-200 mm lenses and as a backup the 18-200 mm lens with me 'just in case'. The 2nd DSLR body and 18-200mm lens I have hardly used, but at least I was prepared for unexpected.

5. Scout the place to visit in advance

By scouting I mean actually studying the locations to be visited before the trip, via Internet. Use Google Maps, Street View, discussion forums, travel blogs, and of course books. This is necessary, in my opinion, for two reasons: first, a holiday travel is packed with a lot of places and activities and typically planned to see as much as possible. And it means that the time spent on location has to be used optimally. Second, scouting location in advance increases the chance of finding an unique place to photograph that is not noticed in the first instance by the rest of the crowd. Sure, if it is a really iconic spot, it will probably be photographed by some other people, but still it is worth looking for it.

6. Start your visit in a local gift or post card shop

Sounds maybe strange, but visiting a local post card shop will give some inspirations on what to photograph. It can be invaluable especially in the less known places where you don't even have an idea how it would look like. To give an example: we have been confronted with the U.S. government shutdown during our holidays, so most of the iconic places located in National Parks were unaccessible for us. The first closed park on our way was Arches. While looking for alternatives we have seen a postcard of Corona Arch, being located outside the park, so available to public. So we knew immediately where to go the next day and what to photograph.

7. Talk to the "locals"

One one hand people living at the place have the knowledge that they absorbed over the years. They can tell about the places in their neighbourhood a lot of interesting stuff. On the other hand they have the most actual information about the location; something that often obsoletes the information in travel guides, or even on Internet. Many of them are also hobby or even professional photographers and (at least it is my experience so far) they eagerly share their experiences. 

8. Have your equipment prepared for the next shot

This is important in the situations when the equipment is twisted a lot: lenses are changed frequently, filters are placed, camera settings are manipulated. So, suppose you are photographing a close-up of the beautiful granite mountain with 70-200 mm lens, to reduce the reflections you have placed a polarizing filter in front of your lens, set your camera in bracketing mode to capture different exposures. Then you are done, pack the camera back in the bag, move on. Few kilometers further you have a different scenery, changing very quickly. You grab the camera to capture the moment, and... oh, filter has to be dismounted, bracketing switched off. Seconds are elapsed, scene is gone.

To deal with that I have developed a discipline to always bring my camera and lens to a kind of 'default' state after I am done with a certain composition or location. So after shooting I take some time to put the filters back in the bag, restore camera settings to those that I use as a starting point. With some cameras it can be done very quickly. Default settings and setup cause that I don't need to think about a starting point while preparing for next shot and reduce the time needed for adjustments. 

9. Plan your day with photography in mind

To take a nice photo you have to be on location when the light is nice. Being ready for shooting at sunrise or at sunset increases the chances for good lighting. Which means that it is good to know the times of local sunrise or sunset. Those two periods of the day definitely determined our daily rhythm during this holidays. Another aspect worth close observation is weather. Clouds during the day can create beautiful, interesting scenery and lighting conditions. So checking weather reports for an area to be visited is also my habit during the photo travel.

Landscape photography - my approach to increase the chances for a successful session

In the previous post I have written about my not so successful approach to photograph a specific landscape. It gave me some food for thoughts about the more systematic approach to the landscape photography that would increase my chances of taking a good picture (or pictures) during the session.
Here some of my findings so far, that have worked during my last two sessions and I will keep using them in the future.

Choose the theme, scout for a location

I found out that pre-selecting the theme in advance helps a lot to keep on focused during the whole process. For instance, for my last two sessions I took the river as a main theme. It limited my location scouting area to the banks of the rivers I wanted to photograph. But why is the scouting important at all? Isn't it just enough to select a point on a map, go there and try to take a shot? In my opinion, it does not work because it introduces too many uncertain factors during the actual shooting resulting in less time spent on actual photographing and composing the pictures.

I start scouting by determining a time of the day of the session. For instance, knowing it will be in the early morning I can start looking for a right place being in a radius of, say, 1 hour car driving. Once I know the approximate location, I start studying the maps of the area to determine the following aspects:

- is the terrain accessible for walking?

- how far from the location can I park the car?

- what would be a location of the sun at the location?

While first two questions are more technical, the third one requires some kind of pre-visualisation of the scenery I'd like to photograph. I wanted to take some photos where the sun would be directly visible on the picture, together with a river and its banks and a deep perspective. And I wanted to take photos at dawn. It determined the orientation of the river in the approximate direction of  east-west. 

To make it more accurate, I also checked the azimuth of the rising sun at the planned day of the session. To determine the azimuth of sun I use a smartphone application called Astroid which is simple to use and accurate (other applications, like Sundroid would also do the job). 

Having all those factors in mind I started studying the maps (by using Google Maps) looking for the proper location:

Don't forget to check if the Street View mode is available for a given location. It can give you a lot of information about the terrain.

Be on time, have a reserve location (plan "B")

It doesn't matter how well one prepares the location, the actual situation can be unattractive and disappointing for shooting. So it was in this case. On location I have found really flat, boring landscape:

Since I have planned my trip to be on location about 45 minutes before dawn, I had some time to take a corrective action. I knew by studying the maps that a few kilometers further there is another place with different landscape. So I took a quick decision to get into my car and go there. And there I have found the good spot:

Look around, think about future sessions

After the main shooting was done, I have taken a small round-trip ride in the neighbourhood of the location looking for the interesting places. And I have found enough places to plan another assignment:

Take notes after shooting

After successful session I take notes describing the places photographed, conditions on location, conditions in which a photo has been taken. I do it on the day of shooting, after coming home, while the memory is fresh and full of details.

First communion session part 4: summary and lessons learned

 This is the last entry of the series of posts (part 1, part 2 and part 3) about my first organized photo session. In a couple of days I'll hand the printed album over to my "customers". So it is time to look back and take some final notes.
First of all it was a lot of fun. Not only for me, but also for the photographed family. It was also the assignment that learned me a lot of new things and gave insights on how to make it better in the future.

What to keep

• The proposed timeline of the whole process was right (roughly 1 week from the session the photos were available on the Internet for review, 2 weeks from the session photos were chosen for the album, after 3 weeks the album layout was discussed and finalized, after 4 weeks the album was sent from the printing office). Note that I did the whole assignment in my free time. Full time photo professionals work (as they have to) much faster.
• Communication with the photographed people. I think they appreciated it much and we could organize everything very efficient and in a good atmosphere. 
• Planning and scouting the photo location in advance. I will be doing it in the future since it gives me more confidence. Besides knowing the location enables me to operate more professionally since I can concentrate on photographing and not on which scenery will emerge behind next corner.
• Planning the session flow in advance.
• Selection of the high quality printer and its materials. Solid, paper album made out of high quality paper just feels right. Blurb simply delivered good stuff.

What to improve (lessons learned)

• Variation of scenes could be better. I have chosen 6 different locations and I thought it would be enough. But during post processing I realized that it would be better to have 2-3 more. On the other hand the session took roughly 1 hour, so we spent 10 minutes per scene on average, which  means that the tempo was quite high. Probably the session could e longer to capture more locations.
• Watch depth of field (DOF). I have quite some shots where the DOF was not enough, so I didn't have all persons sharp in the picture. This is something to improve and keep in mind that adjusting the aperture is necessary.

• Work more on posing. Give more direction. I had quite some shots where people look in very different directions, leading to photos that are not appealing. To improve it some more direction would be necessary from my side (just letting people know where I am and that I am about to take a photo). On the other hand a balance must be kept between posing and natural look. I don't have clear answer how to achieve it. Next time I will try to direct people a little bit more (well, in amusing and funny way).

• Take more photos. It is slightly related to the previous bullet and is probably the only way of capturing the right moment when arranging the posing is not possible or practical. It works well with children that are active and very mobile.
• Don't spend too much time on something that does not work. I has some scenes in my mind and I wanted to try them all. But not all of them were working. It is tempting to pursue own vision, but if it does not work, just skip it and move on. After all, photographed people are not professional models and are supposed to have fun and good time during the session. How to judge if the concept works? It is difficult to generalize, but for me it was enough to look regularly at the participants and see how they react on my proposals and how do they interact with me.

I am looking forward for the next assignment. Let's hope it will come soon.

First communion session: part 2 - taking pictures

After some preparations the actual session finally took place on a sunny and windy afternoon in one of the parks in The Hague. I will not write in this post about all technical aspects of the shooting, because there are people who already did it and they did it, in my opinion, very well (Photography Life, Cliff Mautner, just to mention some of my inspiration sources). Instead I'd like to share some observations that are rather specific to the interaction with other people (especially children) during the session.

Avoid "programmed smile mode"

Children (and adults, by the way too) are nowadays trained to smile as soon as they see a camera pointing at them. Smiling is of course a very nice and desired gesture, but sometimes it takes kind of a programmed form, which makes the portrait looking not so natural. Two pictures below illustrate this.

On the first photo the girl took the 'directed' smile. Cute, but it is not her gesture. 2nd photo looks much more better because of her smile is just natural. 

How to avoid this phenomenon? I don't have enough experience to give here a generic advice, but during this session I applied a few things:

• I gave the children (and their family) some time to get familiar with the fact that I was in front of them, pointing with a big lens. After a quarter or so they paid less attention to me, giving me the chance to take natural-looking shots,
• I was joking a lot. It helped,
• During the session I gave children some simple assignments, so they could focus on something else than posing only. For example, I have asked the little brother to find a flower for her sister (more on that later).

Stick to the plan but be ready for unexpected all the time

During preparations I have assumed 5-6 different locations and several different configurations of photographed people. In any case to have enough material to create a paper album which would be appealing and interesting for the readers.
So the plan consisted of:

• Portraits of the girl (alone)
• Portraits of the girl (with her brother, mother, father),
• Family portrait (with parents and grand parents),
• Photos with sacral attributes associated with first communion

Since I had just one hour, I had to watch the time and operate sometimes rather quickly. Nevertheless taking pictures was not continuous. We moved from place to place, I discussed the ideas with participants, etc. And many interesting photos I took exactly during such break. There were moments that children start to play with each other, but also the parents didn't pay much attention to me behaving more natural:

Direct the show but let participants play

As I predicted, the participants expected from me that I would direct them during the session and tell what they have to do, how to pose and what will be the next steps. Which is fine, but on the other hand I think it is important not to 'over direct' everything, since at the end everyone wants to look natural on the photo. In this case the task was easy, since children were involved. And they don't let anybody to direct their behavior (at least not for the long time). So I was able to get some pictures expressing true emotions. For instance, I asked little brother of the girl to give her a flower. He actually liked the idea very much and long after the 'flower scene' was finished, he was bringing her other stuff as well, giving everyone a lot of fun:

Observe interactions, make use of it

During the session I have discovered that the girl likes her cousin very much. They apparently had a good time playing together. So I decided to take an additional session with those two children.  Whether they will be chosen to the album, I don't know, but to me they are my favourite shots of the session:

On organizing the photo collection - take the notes about a photo location

When taking photos during a holidays, business trip, or in general at the locations I don't visit often I try to take notes about the photographed objects. There are different ways of doing so, but most of the time I use a GPS data logger that I keep switched on all the time during my photo walks. I use the GPS logger called AMOD GPS data logger. It is a standalone unit that registers every second the current GPS location in its internal memory, together with a timestamp of the registered position. The timestamp registered by the unit is very accurate, since it comes from the atomic clock of the GPS satellites. 

On the other hand the camera registers the time of capture of each photo. If the time of camera's internal clock is accurate as well, it is possible to assign GPS locations to the photos during postprocessing. The software just takes the time of capture and looks for the geolocation registered in the GPS log file with the timestamp closest to the time of capture. That is why it is important to keep the clock settings of the camera accurate. If the time in camera deviates from the actual time too much,  the locations of the photos will be shifted along the path one walked.

Having the location attached to the photo I can locate it back on the map and take more information about a place from the Internet.

On the technical side: I integrate GPS data with my photos in Lightroom (which has a dedicated Map panel for that purpose since version 4). Since Lightroom requires the GPS log data files in a .gpx format, I need to convert the original log stored by my GPS logger. I use the application called GPS Babel, that can convert pretty much everything to anything on the GPS area.

Of course the whole process of geotagging is much more simple if one uses the units dedicated for the specific camera (like Nikon GP-1 for most of the recent Nikon cameras). For me however the price of the Nikon unit is too much and the comfort of use doesn't compensate for the price difference ($199 for Nikon vs ~$60 for Amod).

And last but not least: nowadays we have a very wide choice of taking geolocations: from dedicated units to smartphones. Just take anything that suits your needs and budget.

When GPS is not enough

There are (rare) situations when a GPS data is just not enough to successfully memorize the information about the place. It happened to me lately, during my short holidays in Switzerland. On my way I took a snapshot of a lovely church:

And the registered geolocation indicated the place:

The thing is that even having the exact location, I couldn't find anything about this church in Google Maps! I have looked for the street name, churches in Geneva and yet got nothing specific. Thanks to my camera's high resolution I could read something from the church's information board:

Now I know that it Chapelle des Crets. Now I had the information I was looking for. But it was only thanks to the good circumstances: the presence of the information board in front of the church and the excellent quality of my camera and lens. Next time I might not be so lucky. Time to take some notes for the future

The lesson learned

1. It is worth to take some time and look at the additional information in the vicinity of the object like information boards, names. Just take a photo of such board and you don't even need to look at the GPS data,
2. Gather the information early after the trip, when the memory is fresh. The brain can recall much more details about visited places,
3. Use the photo metadata (EXIF fields like caption or description) to store the captured information.

Introduction to lighting in photography - a workshop scenario

Today I had opportunity to organize and conduct a workshop about photography for the students of the Polish school in the Hague. It was a second workshop given for more or less the same group as the first one.
Since it was a continuation of main topic, which is "Basics of photography" I took the chance to explain the basics of lighting and some techniques used to play with light.
The workshop was divided in three parts: theoretical introduction, practical session, constructive critique and selection of the best photos.
While preparing the workshop I was thinking about a theme of the practical session; it should be interesting for the children, but on the other hand it should give the possibility of learning new aspects of photography. I decided to choose a "Profile photo" as a main topic of the workshop. Main motivation was driven by several aspects:
1. Taking a profile photo of a school mate is fun both for a photographer and a model being photographed
2. Seeing how the light falls on a face of a model is very inspirational and instructive
3. Taking a photo of a school mate implies working in pairs which gives everyone an opportunity to play both roles (a photographer and a model) and keep the session interactive.

Before the session some theoretical background was given in a form of a computer presentation and some simple experiments with a photo camera.
First of all several examples of the same scene lit by different light sources was presented. Just to show how powerful the light manipulation can be.
Then the dynamic range limitations of a digital camera were explained. The exercise was simple yet convincing. I let one of the students sit by the window (lit by the diffuse daylight), facing the rest of the class. I asked the rest to look at the student and describe what they see. They could recognize facial details of the student but also the details in the background (i.e. the view outside window). Then I took the picture of the scene, from the same viewpoint as the class. And yes, while the model was properly lit, background was heavily overexposed. After exposing for the background, I got the subject dark (every photographer knows it, but it was not obvious for most of the children).
One technical note here: to make quick illustrations I have used Lightroom in tethered mode, so the photos that I took were immediately visible on the screen.
The message at the end of exercise was twofold: first, it showed that even very good cameras cannot render the whole dynamic range as good as a combination of our brain and eyes. Second, it is possible to tweak camera settings (or manipulate light) to overcome the limitations.
Then an explanation of aperture, shutter and ISO was given. To simplify things I have made a schematic picture of a camera (showing lens, aperture, shutter, sensor) and explained how the light travels through the camera. Then I have shown effects of both settings by taking some images with varying shutter speeds and apertures.
Next I have introduced the term of exposure and explained that most of the cameras have the options to influence it even simpler than manipulating the aperture and/or shutter speed.
Then I have explained depth of field and how the aperture influences it.
After this introduction students were asked to look at their cameras and discover how to set the aperture or shutter speed (or exposure in general) in their cameras. When needed I helped them to find the settings.
Finally I have shown my own approach of taking a portrait photo. I emphasized the role of proper composition, role of light to make the subject the most dominant element of a photo. Finally I have shown how to use simple light modifiers like a reflector.

Thereafter students started to shoot the photos. Some of them went outside the class looking for the proper location. Apparently they had a lot of fun.

During the critique part we have looked together at the taken photos. I let the students talk about their photos and explain why they like the photo (and why not). I have also encouraged them to think about what they would do different in case they didn't like the photos.
At the end everyone was able to select at least one photo that was accepted by the photographed model as the profile photo.

Organize a big portrait session - optimizing the flow

This post is a continuation of a series about shooting portraits for a school. I described briefly in one of previous articles about the general idea. In this post I am going to describe some human-related aspects of such session and give some tips on how to make it successful for the children, school staff and the photographer. To give you some context let me just summarize the challenge:

• The session takes 3 to 4 hours
• During this time 70 to 100 children gets photographed
• Each child is photographed twice: one photo is in a full-length pose, one as a close-up (depending on the situation either upper half of or head and shoulders
• Some children want to be photographed together with their brothers or sisters, school friends, etc.
• Each group is photographed as a whole together with their mentor teacher.

In short, such a day is intense and the border between intense and chaotic is thin. But it is the responsibility of a photographer to deliver the photos, so he need to ensure that the workplace remains decent during the day and such session doesn't turn into chaos. Here's an approach I have developed over several years. I am not telling it is perfect, but it works quite well.

1. Realize that you as a photographer are the director of the whole event. So think ahead about the possible scenarios and have a plan for different cases.
2. Get in touch with school staff in advance. Ask about their schedule, try to fit the session into school's rhythm. Ask for the school schedule during the day of the session. Plan the order in which the groups will attend the session.
3. Agree in advance how the teachers and parents will assist you. It is absolutely necessary to have help of the school staff or/and the parents. For a number of reasons: first, it is legally mandatory that teachers are present during any activity of a 'stranger'. Second, they are invaluable when guiding the group of children. They simply know how to do it efficiently. Third, children, especially the younger, feel more comfortable and safe when they have a trusted adult person close to them.
4. Prepare all your gear before starting shooting. Be on a location on time, way before the planned start. Keep in mind that setting up the background, lights, test shooting cost time (in my case it takes 90 minutes, because I need to iron the background).
5. After setting everything up look around and try to visualize how the children would walk (or rather run) on and around the setup. Then protect your most important parts! Put a chair, a table, anything that would stop the most active and enthusiast children from ruining into the arranged studio. I always stay in the front of setup, in the direction of the incoming group. As soon as I see them running I make some gestures to stop them and explain quickly how they should move and where to watch out. Then I keep them (together with a teacher) out of the actual scene, letting them stay or sit around the setup.
6. Be decisive. Children get quickly excited but they get bored also very fast. So it is important to start shooting immediately - just start talking to children, ask who is going to be first (for 100% there always will be at least one), put them in the marked place on the scene, explain what you are going to do (2 photos) and shoot. One, control, two - ready. Next child. Everything should take no more than several minutes.
7. Remember, you are a director. So when individual photos are ready, start to organize group photo. Depending on a group size decide about the number of rows, who will be in front, who in back (a rule of thumb is: smaller children in the front). 
8. Once the group photo is ready guide the group out of the scene. Remember again about securing your gear and the setup.
9. Control the setup in between the groups. Is the background still ok? Are all the lights operational? Do the assistants know how it works and how to proceed?
10. Be flexible. Sometimes you need to spend a bit more time with a child; either he/she is shy or requires some more attention during posing (like children wearing glasses). In this situation communicate to a teacher or parents so they know what is going on.
11. Ask the teacher or parent in case there is some intervention required during posing. Like fixing the hairs, clothing, etc. Again, it is about building the trust. Children trust their teachers and parents, not you. I always discuss this question in advance and ask assistants for help in such cases.
12. Have a couple of jokes ready. Use them when a child or group needs to be cheered up.

New year - new approach to enhance my photography

When I looked back at my photos taken last year I quickly come to the conclusion that many of them could be better. I think it is a good observation, since awareness of own deficiencies is the first step on a way to fix them.
Here's how I am going to tackle some of the issues I have with my photos:

1. Study work of others more carefully
   This is something I need to do more systematically. I am going to keep it simple: look for inspiration on the sites like 500px.com, viewbug.com, read the books about photography (in 2013 I will concentrate on landscapes - one of the types of photography I do a lot), find best landscape photographers on the web and follow them
2. Shoot, learn, shoot again
   As simple as that: take a theme to photograph, see what can be improved, repeat. One example here: begin of January I went with some guys to Rotterdam for a photowalk. When I compared my results with the results of others I realized how I could do things better. So I planned to go back to Rotterdam in February and improve some shots. 
3. Learn from the professionals
   This is actually ongoing, since it has proven to be effective. I follow the courses on kelbytraining.com. They gave me a lot of insights last year, and this year I'll continue.

After my first Dutch Photo Walk - technicalities

Previously I have shared some thoughts about my participation in the Dutch City Walk. In this post I would like to share some technical aspects of the event. Note that most of my observations refer to the other topics, like "Street photography", "Shooting people", "Post processing".

Before

Check the proposed route in advance. It will help you to identify the potentially interesting spots and to pre-visualize the route.

Check the weather forecast. There is a couple of hours walking and you need to feel comfortable, without hassle of too cold, or too warm clothing. And, if it is going to rain, don't forget to take a proper stuff for protecting your gear. What I take with me is a rain sleeve, a small towel and a lens cleaning cloth. 

Obviously, take enough memory cards and fully loaded batteries.

More tough questions to answer are: which lens (or lenses) to take, to take or not a tripod. Before the photowalk I wasn't sure so I have asked other co-walkers. So learn from each other.
Finally I took the 24-70/2.8 lens (which, by the way, became my workhorse) and as a reserve a 18-200/3.6-5.6 lens. I didn't take a tripod because the interesting indoor places (like churches) were either in renovation or closed.

During

Personally I like to work lately with a predefined theme (and for this photowalk it was Delftware.

So the pictures like these were taken:

But in practice it is a walk and interacting with other people. So the photographic theme evolved during the walk. And it is a city, so I got inspired by a lot of interesting stuff:

My advice is also to look every now and there what other co-walkers are doing. You can learn a lot, and sometimes take interesting shot of them:

On the technical side: I tried to keep the camera settings as simple as possible and as universal as possible. Each moment something interesting can happen and I didn't want to ruin my photo just by having wrong settings. Here's what worked for me: the camera in the Aperture mode with auto-adjust ISO settings and with the second command dial button set for exposition compensation.

Every now and then I have switched the bracketing on, but kept it very simple (just 3 shots, under-, normal-, and over-) exposed with the F-stop distance between them set to 1. One important note,

I learned to switch bracketing mode off practically after each shot taken. For very simple reason: I wanted to be prepared for the next shot, starting from the stable set of settings. Forgetting to switch off bracketing can cost you unexpected under- and overexposed images.

So I kept the camera settings actually quite basic and simple and was able to focus more on the composition of my photos and on looking for the interesting places.

After

Generally first thing that I wanted after the event was to share the photos with the rest of the group and see what other did. And because group was so enthusiastic about the photography, first results were published the same evening. Discussions about the photos started, +1 on G+ were given.

For me it was important to see how others see the same places I saw through their camera. Again: a great learning moment.

After my first Dutch Photo Walk

Today I have participated for the first time in a Dutch Photo Walk event, organized by +Nikola Nikolski. It was a very nice day. A group of 18 people walking through the Dutch city Delft taking pictures and looking for a composition for the main theme, which was "Delftware" (or, in Dutch: Delfts blauw).
Since a city walk was for my a new photographic activity, let me share some thoughts of 'a newcomer'.
First of all, take part of it if you have a possibility! You will meet other people sharing your passion (photography) and will be able to learn from each other. The last one is a funny part of the experience: I have learned a lot just by watching what and how people take their shots. Suddenly I have noticed today many interesting subjects on the way that I probably would skip if I were alone. And by having conversations with the co-walkers I got some insights in their approach to photography.
More on some technical aspects in later post, now I want to work on the photos from the walk.

Project D800E - how much money extra do I need?

Today's post is kind a intermezzo on exploring the D800 options and possibilities. Instead I am going to present a short resume of my expenses next to the new camera body, which are related to switching to a new gear. Since I have made a rather big jump (by going from Nikon D80 to D800E) my case can be seen as a 'worst case' scenario where only a very few accessories from the old gear could be re-used with the new one.
Of course completing the set of photo accessories can be an endless process. But I will focus instead on a bare minimum that is in my opinion a 'must have' set for the kind of photography I do.
So here is the list of the accessories I always take on location with me:
- An extra memory card,
- A spare battery,
- A tripod's ball head plate (to mount the camera on a tripod),
- A shutter release cord.

In case of D800 I needed to start from scratch, i.e. to buy everything from the above list:
- I didn't have a CF memory card (only SD) and high resolution of D800 would require fast memory card (and CF is faster than SD),
- With D80 I used EN-EL3 type batteries, D800 uses EN-EL15,
- Ball head plate used with D80 didn't fit on D800
- D800 requires the 10-pin slot to connect the release cord, in D80 a different type was used.

So the first "must have" set of accessories ended up with the following budget:
- Extra memory card: 32GB 1000x from Lexar: 179 EUR
- Spare battery EN-EL15 from Nikon: 70 EUR
- Ball head plate (for Markin's ball ball-head it's P800U): 40 EUR
- Release cord (Hahnell HRN 280): 22,50 EUR

All together it is 311,5 EUR.


Of course, your mileage may vary but in a 'worst case scenario' it takes roughly 10% of the body price.

Project D800E -secure the shot in low light conditions

This is third post in the series of D800 project. Previous post you can find here and here.
Today I'll move the project a step further, from the general camera configuration settings to the practical shooting situations. I'll start with the low-lighting conditions.

Shooting in the low light conditions is one of the topics that are heavily discussed on Internet in photography communities in context of D800. D800 gives some interesting possibilities to achieve very good results in such situations. For me it is especially important since I take regularly shots of the different events that take place in not so great lighting conditions. If you can control it, you can boost your lighting, but if not - you need how to get the maximum out of your camera having only the ambient light.

So this post is a kind of a theoretical preparation before actual assignment I'll take next week.

When a camera calculates the exposure basically it takes three factors into account: aperture, shutter speed and the ISO sensitivity. Of course one can try to match all three factors manually to achieve the desired result. I will focus rather on the 'semi-automatic' modes that D800 (and BTW many other cameras) offer. Let's start with the most interesting mode to me, i.e. the aperture priority (A). This is the mode I use most of the time. The workflow is quite simple: when one fixes the ISO to an arbitrary value the camera will adjust the shutter speed to ensure the proper exposure. If the shutter speed is too slow, increase the ISO value to let the camera increase the speed. Nice, but as an event photographer I often don't have so much time during the assignment. Meet the Automatic-ISO mode.

Automatic ISO mode

In this mode the camera adjusts the ISO sensitivity in a situations when the two other factors (aperture and shutter speed) don't provide sufficient exposure. Here's how it works in case of D800:

Aperture priority mode:

First the shutter speed is decreased to meet the required exposure. If the shutter speed reaches the limit (more on it in a second) and the exposure is not enough, the ISO is increased (to a predefined limit). If the exposure is still not enough after reaching the limit of the ISO, the shutter speed is lowered further.

Important to note is that here one have two control options: minimal shutter speed at which the ISO starts to increase and the maximum value of the ISO. For the ones who rather prefer the graphs, the diagram below illustrates the whole process:

The two parameters that control the process are marked in red in the diagram.

The auto ISO mode can be set in the Shooting menu, option ISO sensitivity settings.

This menu opens a sub-menu where the Auto ISO sensitivity can be switched on and off and both parameters described earlier (Maximum sensitivity, Minimum shutter speed) can be setup.

The setup sequence is as follows:

1. Enable Auto-ISO:

Menu,,, -> ISO sensitivity settings,,->Auto ISO sensitivity control,,->On, Ok
2. Setup maximum sensitivity:
 -> Maximum sensitivity,, ->Choose value that suits you, Ok
3. Setup minimum shutter speed:
 -> Minimum shutter speed,, ->Choose value that suits you, Ok

The minimum shutter speed offer the Auto option. In this option the shutter speed will be set based on the value of the current lens focal length (or 1/30s for non-CPU lenses). So if for example the focal length is set to 50mm, the shutter speed will be set on 1/50 s. While it might be tempting in some situations, I would be cautious here. This rule of thumb may be not so well applicable for the D800 due to its huge sensor resolution and sensitivity to the camera body movement.

Last word about settings: Auto-ISO mode can be easily switched on and off by pressing the ISO button and turning the secondary dial button.

A final question is on how far one can crank up the ISO in case of D800. This of course depends on the scene, lighting conditions, the purpose of the photo, etc. My preliminary experiments show that setting the ISO to 2000 is a safe choice. Just one example. The photo below has been taken at ISO 1800.

Taking the 100% crop of the image reveals some noise grain in the background, but it is acceptable, provided that any noise reduction has been applied to the image. This amount of noise is easily removable in Lightroom.

For the assignment next week I'll start with the minimum shutter speed equal to 1/125s and maximum ISO 2000. We'll see how it works.

As said last time, I have the first version of the D800 cheat sheet ready. Please keep in mind that it is in a very draft status, with lots of empty (or even non-existing) sections. You can see it here.

Next time I'll look more closely at the Dynamic Lighting feature of D800 and the dynamic range of this camera in general.