Portraitur

Batmanda Out of Costume.

I love shooting cosplay. It’s where I got my start in photography but it’s also good to do other things. I’ve shot a lot of my Geek friends in costume as well as in street clothes but I never got around to doing it with Batmanda until now. We picked a grungy almost goth theme, she brought a couple different outfits and we just played around with it. The big thing that I wanted to do was brush up on my directing a posing skills. Batmanda is easier than most to direct and pose simply because we’ve worked together so much already and in terms of personality we are relatively on the same page in terms of sense of humor and attitudes. That kind of connection makes for some amazing images.

Photographing Albuquerque Comic Con: The Challenges of Low Light and Crowded Spaces

This past weekend was Albuquerque Comic Con (ACC) and as previously mention I went to to cover the event in a photographic fashion. This year the event was being held at Hotel Albuquerque down in Old Town and while it was a great venue it came with some of the hardest conditions to shoot in. 2 factors played into making this assignment challenging .1) The lighting was awful. It was a dimly lit hotel all over the show floor using mainly tungsten light bulbs with some areas letting natural light in through windows. 2) Incredibly tight spaces with a large turnout made crowding and moving about the area difficult. Both situations were manageable however with just a little know how, patience and letting go of some nit picky things.

The main thing I needed to figure out was how I was going to deal with the low lighting. Being that the light was so low I pushed the ISO to 6400 on my D600 and was shooting at a wide open aperture. The workhorse lense I was using all day was my 85mm f1.8g and it pretty much never came off the camera body. Ideally I would have liked to stop down to f2.8 or f3.2 to get some added sharpness and depth of field but I needed all the light I could get so wide open at 6400 was where I had to go.

OnTheFloor-7

As a result I had to sacrifice keeping slight amount of grain out of the images and the risk of missing focus on the subjects in order to get properly exposed images and cut down on motion blur. As an added bonus for shooting at f1.8 I created some excellent Bokeh (out of focus areas) to cause awesome subject isolation. Now a lot of other photographers that were there covering the event were handling the low light differently by using a flash. There is nothing wrong with using a flash but I personally don’t like using an on camera flash that is going to cause some awkward shadows in the background and not to mention being that I wasn’t there shooting in an official capacity I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself while I was on the floor. (Note: I was aloud to shoot this event I just wasn’t there for a publication or affiliated with the con itself.)

So the main thing I did to handle the crowded spaces was to stick with my already tried and true style of shooting candidly/journalistically. As previously mentioned in a past article on convention photography you see that a lot of people will stop the cosplayers in the hall and ask them to pose or take a photo with someone else. At this event especially it caused some problems with blocking traffic and resulted in some missed opportunities to capture moments as opposed to posses. So by shooting in aperture priority and high ISO and keeping tabs on what shutter speeds I was getting I just kept shooting on the go. There were times when I would miss focus or get some annoying backlighting messing up my exposure but for the most part this style served me well. I couldn’t quite nail focus on every shot I took but being that I was shooting candidly and not posed portraits I didn’t lose much sleep over not having the sharpest image possible.

Now it wouldn’t have been a convention if my cosplay friends hadn’t asked me to take some portraits of their cosplays. This is how the final challenge of the con took place, finding a secluded area to shoot that has useable lighting. Long story short I was able to find a place outside with no people around to get some portraits of my friends. Now I could lower my ISO to low and noise free levels and stop down my aperture to f3.5 and f4 to get that added sharpness.

OnTheFloor-3

Overall it was a great event and I got some stellar images out of the whole thing. So far I’ve been getting incredible feedback and it’s always great to shoot cosplay.

Family Photography: Patience is a Necessity.

Patience is one of the most underrated qualities a photographer can have when it comes to shooting. Especially when it comes to shooting some difficult subjects, in this case children. Children seem to have this unlimited tank of energy that is feeding into their motors at all time. A quality that I feel most adults still envy. But because of this constant energy it’s impossible to get them to hold still and keep them in one place long enough to get a shot.

This weekend I was asked to do a shoot with someone I’ve worked with before and get photos of her and her daughter. The little girl in this situation was a perfect example of the previously mentioned motor with an infinite fuel tank. To the mother in this situation it seemed like a lost cause getting her to hold still and get photos but I assured her that I could get in done. When I shoot photos I’m looking for moments as opposed to posses and this shoot was a great example of that. As opposed to getting the images you would see out of a sears portrait studio I want to capture the interaction between the subjects and try to bring out relationship between a mother and her young daughter.

Containing a child’s personality is like trying to catch a bullet with your bare hands. The best you can do is get the child to feel like they’re playing along. While at a local park it can be very easy for a child to get distracted but instead of looking at this as a frustrating situation you should look at it as an opportunity to capture a great moment. There is nothing more nostalgic than a child treating the whole world as it’s playground.

I’ve always had more fun with photography by keeping it organic. Let things happen in front of you and you can capture things that are unique and different as opposed to something that feels staged and orchestrated. Why should shooting portraits be made to feel like your trying to make a family look happy. If you can get the right kind of interaction you will just naturally bring out that happiness by just letting them be themselves. To them mother it can be frustrating to handle a hyperactive child but it is still plain to see the love and care she has for her daughter.

There is nothing wrong with trying to get the perfect image but sometimes if you try to force it you’ll never get that image. If you show some patience and look for the right moment the perfect image will come to you. That being said you should also still go out and shoot. If you constantly sit there and wait for it to happen you’ll miss out on opportunity elsewhere. Sometimes you won’t even know you’ve captured a moment till after you got it. Sometimes you just need to dive in but you don’t have to do it with guns blazing.

Last Shoot with my First DSLR

Almost a year ago I got myself a Nikon D5100. I had originally gotten the camera for video purposes so that I could film better quality YouTube videos but through associations and professional opportunities I learned to use it as a proper camera and learned the ins and outs of the camera settings, Manual operations and the rules to follow (and break) in photography in the Year that I had the camera I also invested in full frame, Wide aperture lenses and other pieces of equipment thinking that they will be good now and great when I choose to upgrade. Well I’ve officially upgraded and gotten myself a refurbished D600, full frame DSLR.

The day before the new camera was delivered I decided that I was going to send it off with shooting a random set with my close friend Yasamin.

Yasmine does not have any real modeling experience to speak of and as such is a very shy person when the camera pointed at her. That being said she is one of the more energetic people I’ve ever worked and this was an excellent opportunity to work on my directing skills which is one of my weakest tools in my photography utility belt.

Being that she is such a high wired individual I had to approach this as not so much as telling her what to do but more along the lines of how I wanted her to behave. When I’m shooting portraiture I don’t like to spend and extensive amount of time positioning the subject into exactly where I want them to be. Instead I like to have them just flow freely and position themselves while I look for the best spot and the best moment to get the shot I want. Does it work every time: No but it’s more enjoyable way to shoot in my mind. This method has been great when I’ve worked with models who have been doing this line of work for quite a long time and know how to control their body language and expressions well in front of the camera. However this method isn’t nearly as effective when working with a more inexperienced model and proved to be a challenge. However after some trial and error I started to get the best out of the subject by just harnessing her personality.

This shoot proved to be a very fun way to send off a camera that has served me well over the last year and we’re both ready to move on to bigger and better things. Although it can be a smart idea to keep your older bodies as back ups I’m selling my D5100 to a friend of mine who actually owns and operates a local magazine out here in the land of enchantment and has some big plans for the camera. Me on the other hand will begin adjusting to shooting on a full frame camera where my focal lengths are going to start looking quite a bit wider and the noise in the photos are going to be a lot less noticeable. I’ve enjoyed growing as a photographer over this last year and I’m looking forward to what this next year brings me and my new camera.

TCK-Media

Realize Your Vision