Neil Danton

…is not a camera setting to be used when shooting Caucasian people

This is one of the settings that a lot of people ignore, leaving a camera on “Auto” because they don’t understand it, or are just a teeny bit frightened of it.

I have no intention of going into too much detail about it at the moment, as it’s just a way of quickly referencing a couple of tricks I use on occasion, to jazz-up an image when I’m looking for something a little different.

Truth be told, I forgot to write today’s post, and so this is being done in a panic, waaay too early in the morning, before I head out for a busy day.

Before I go on then, a quick explanation of white balance (WB):

Light has a colour temperature. You might not think so, but that’s because the human eye is a wonderful creation, far more intelligent than all the electronics that camera manufacturers can jam-in to the latest cameras. When, for instance, the human eye receives a scene that isn’t natural daylight, it compensates for any colour shift and still displays white as white so it appears that the scene is “normal”.

Cameras can’t do that. Adjusting the WB setting on the camera tells it what is really white. The “auto” setting can do it to a certain extent, but not completely.

Light varies in colour temperature from warm to cold, with different types of light in different situations giving a different temperature. Even outdoor daylight varies, depending on whether it is sunlight, cloudy, shade etc. The “value” of the light is measured in Kelvin, with daylight being very roughly 5,000 to 6,000. Camera “Auto” can usually cope from about 3,000 to 7,000, but can still give differing results between one shot and the next. That’s why about 90% of the time it’s better to set the WB manually. At least then, even if the setting is slightly wrong, all the images are going to be wrong in exactly the same way, and can be easily fixed in post-production. Manually setting the WB allows a far greater range, from about 2,000 to 10,000.

An added complication is artificial light, tungsten & fluorescent, have a tint to them. Un-corrected, a scene lit with tungsten lighting will appear to the camera to be yellowy-orange, while a scene lit with fluorescent lighting will appear green.

When using flash as a primary light source it doesn’t matter an awful amount. Portable flash (strobes) are daylight balanced, so that will eliminate much of the problem.

Oh dear, I said it wasn’t going to get techie, and it’s starting to, so I’ll head myself off at the pass and move on.

The whole (original) point before I got distracted, was that occasionally I use a little trick to change the background of an indoor scene. This little trick (and the 2nd one I’ll mention in a moment) have to be used sparingly otherwise they start to look ridiculous.

Trick 1 then is to set the camera to tungsten WB when in daylight, or a mix of artificial light and daylight, which has the effect of turning the scene blue. Of course any people in the scene turn blue as well, even if it’s not very very cold. The solution to that is to light them with flash, and fire the flash through a coloured gel. In this case it’s a CTO gel that I use. CTO = Colour Temperature Orange, orange being the opposite end of the colour spectrum to blue. Oh dear, getting techie again.

So, turn an industrial scene with dubious lighting blue, light the subjects with a gel-covered flash shooting through a white umbrella, et voila:

Used sparingly it gives another option to change a scene.

Another trick, again occasional use only, is to use a wacky lens. In this case I mean a fisheye. You can usually tell when someone gets one of these as a new toy, because every image they produce will look like someone has bent every straight line in the world. I use mine 3 or 4 times a year I’d say, no more, but sometimes it works:

That’s it, got to run…

TTFN

…the Caption –

is not a Press Release!!!

No no no no no, and NO. Did I mention “No”?

It may vary with small-circulation publications, where one man, a small dog and a packet of fruit pastilles are putting the whole publication together, but any publication which is large enough to have a picture editor do not want to see “PR speak” in an image caption.

Any of the following, which may have been included in the press release, do not need to be detailed in a caption:

“Exciting”, “Wonderful”, “Fantastic”, “Not to be missed”, “Sensational”, “Brilliant”.

A journalist or sub-editor can take the facts from a breathlessly-excited press release and translate them into copy that fits with the publication’s style, but the image editors don’t want to read through the BS.

To quote from Sgt Joe Friday in the classic old American TV series Dragnet: “All we want are the facts ma’am”.

That can be summed up as Who What When Where and Why.

Before I go through those, just a brief rewind to explain exactly what a caption is, because not everyone knows. I’ll try not to get too “techie” here, but the basics need to be understood.

Prior to the invention of digital cameras, photographers used to shoot film (imagine that!). The process of getting an image onto the page of a publication included making a print, which was used to make up the page of said publication. The caption (or detail) regarding the content of the image, was literally written out onto a label, and stuck to the back of the image. That way, anyone who came across the print could just flip it over and read whatever the image was about.

Then technology moved on and via a very unwieldy and painful process (before the interwebthingy and broadband) images started to be transmitted via telephone lines for faster delivery to publications (newspapers being the prime example of the need-for-speed). Trouble was, you couldn’t transmit a label through a phone line, so having the information regarding the content of the image somehow had to be transmitted along with the digital version.

Along came a bunch of brainy people including newspapers, agencies and software gurus, and created the IPTC. While that sounds like the abbreviation for a Trade Union, in fact it stands for International Press Telecommunications Council. This led to the standard method of including a caption, EMBEDDED INTO a digital image, known as the IPTC or Metadata information. With the appropriate software, anyone could now read the information relating to an image, including photographer details, copyright, and the “facts ma’am”, as detailed above.

This leads to an important point regarding PR images. In larger publications a press release and an image may go in different directions but will need to be tied back together at some time, so need to refer to each other. More on that in pt06 – The Distribution.

So what does the IPTC information look like? I’m glad you asked, because I’m going to show you. It depends on the software you are using to view, but basically all the information will be available, just in different formats.

The version I’ll show you is from the software I use to sort, select and caption my images – Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits. For me, and many pro’s worldwide, this is the bees-knees of photo software for fast editing. There are of course other types of editing software, and I’ve used quite a few, but for me Photo Mechanic is the daddy of them all.

This is a view of the application open on my desktop computer:

If we zoom in a little and highlight one image we are going to look at:

We can then click on an icon to see the IPTC info. This is the lower half that contains nothing of interest at the moment:

and this is the top half that contains the caption:

So back to the point of Who What Where When & Why. If we zoom in further to just the Caption field…

The “Who”:

The “What”:

The “When”:

The “Where”:

The “Why”:

On occasion, where an image might not be accompanied by a press release it is acceptable to include further information than the basics. Personally I add this after the main caption and my own details, and clearly label it as “EXTENDED CAPTION:”.

Remember that at the end of the day, the caption is the information that should be displayed underneath or at the side of an image in a publication. A novel is not necessary. In most publications there is generally only sufficient room for a couple of sentences – at most.

Previously: PR Photography 101 pt 04 The Shoot
Next up: PR Photography 101 pt 06 The Distribution

TTFN

…Don’t They?

Apologies if you’ve just used a search-engine and are looking for the 1969 Sydney Pollack directed film about a dance marathon, but this is nothing to do with it.

This is about me shooting horses, actually more about shooting a horse-trainer, and only shooting with a camera.

I was assigned last week by one of the “Sundays” to head out into the countryside early on a very cold morning to shoot a feature on former jockey, now trainer, Jim Culloty. Jim won many races as a jockey, including the Cheltenham Gold Cup three times in succession aboard Best Mate.

I met up with the journalist and we arrived together, so while the interview was taking place, I was off scouting locations and setting up lights.

By the time the interview was finished, I had my shot-list sorted out in my head, and lights set-up in two locations.

First up was a shot in the Yard, one-light with a mini softbox:

Then there was an archway that led from the Yard to the Gallops and I wanted something there. This was going to be quite difficult to balance the daylight coming into the arch from the Yard, with the darkness underneath the arch itself. I had set-up two lights on stands behind the conveniently located doors that hid them, both firing out towards the entrance at about 45deg. As best I could guess I had the power about right, at least that’s what the images of the back of my hand were telling me!

I had my subject lead a horse through the archway, and believe it or believe it not, I’d nailed the flash-power with the 1st image:

I made another couple in different locations, here’s one:

The one that was used was actually taken in one of the stables, no lights, just subject interacting with one of the horses. Out of about 6 frames I chose this one to transmit and it was used pretty-near full page width:

That was it. 15 minutes to set-up lights, 20 minutes shooting, 5 minutes to pack-up lights and 30 minutes & 20 miles down the road before I could feel my fingertips again.

TTFN

…the Shoot.

So, you’ve figured out what you need publicity for, and you’ve booked the photographer, but take a step back for a moment and just review whether you actually need your own photographer.

There is another way to get your event/launch/whatever covered, and that’s to organise a photo-call where you invite media publications to send their own journalist and/or photographer.

The advantage: Costs you nothing in terms of outlay.
The disadvantages: 1) Nobody turns-up. Publications will rarely give a commitment, let alone a guarantee, that they will send someone along. Even if you get a grunt of commitment, whoever has been assigned to come along could well be diverted. 2) The images are only going to the publications that send someone, not distributed to wherever you would like. 3) You might not get the type of image used that you would really like. In the event of someone tripping over, pulling a stupid face or any other slightly embarrassing incident, that could be the image that’s used. 4) You will have no usage of images for your own purposes.

If you decide to commission your own photographer, then BEFORE you actually arrange the shoot you should really be discussing the best time of day/week/month with your photographer, because they should be able to advise you on that. It can make a huge difference in getting images used. Your photographer should also know the best time of day/week/month to actually release (distribute) the images for best effect too.

If you go with your own photographer then there is no need to invite publications to send their own person as well. One thing guaranteed to wind them up is if they send someone and then find out they would have received images anyway, when their own person could have been doing something else useful. If you do send notification of an event, then also inform them that images will be supplied. They do appreciate that information.

Also, unless it’s the red carpet at the Oscars which wouldn’t be the same without a battery of cameras, more than one camera is going to distract the subject(s). There is little worse than seeing 2 or more people in an image and they are looking in different directions.

In addition to the timing, your photographer should also be able to help with advising who to put into the images, and who not to! It’s a subtle art.

Lastly, have a discussion with your photographer about ideas for the shoot well in advance of the actual time. It may be that other factors need to be organised in advance. It’s somewhat surprising the amount of time and effort goes into organising an event/launch/whatever, but the thought process regarding the photography, the one thing that will probably be remembered, is reduced to making a booking and commissioning the photographer and expecting something miraculous to happen.

Personally I start thinking up ideas the moment I receive a commission, some work out, some don’t, but a little interaction and ideas from the client works wonders too. Modern camera equipment is fantastic but doesn’t yet come equipped with a magic wand that gets the images used front-page.

If both the client and the photographer are trying to think up something interesting in advance, then there is a far greater chance of a successful outcome.

Previously: PR Photography 101 pt 03 The Photographer
Next up: PR Photography 101 pt 05 The Caption

TTFN

…including completely flooding the basement of the prestigious Lewis Glucksman Gallery in University College Cork. Kind-of created a bit of a problem, as that’s where artworks are stored when an exhibition finishes, before being returned to their source.

It rains a lot in Cork of course, but this was ever so slightly over-the-top rain. It was like India in monsoon season this past winter, and so when an already just-about-breaking-it’s-banks river had a gazillion tons of water released into it from the dam up-river, the city ended up like Venice on a bad day (and I know Venice on a bad day, I lived near it for some time).

A couple of months later and I was assigned by one of the “Sundays” to create some images for one of their magazine supplements. This was to be a “How is it now?” type feature after most of the art that was damaged has undergone a conservation process. Not much to be done on images showing the actual conservation, but some of the work was back on display, and that would do me. Of course I’d need to add a yooman-been into the images as well, as that’s what I mostly do, make images with yoomans in them (well apart from wedding images of course, I’d rather eat a bucket of s…..).

So, luckily for me the Director of the gallery was available to be photographed. Pause for a moment now, while you imagine some kind of mad-professor type (like astronomer Patrick Moore) wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches.

Fortunately, SHE is nothing like that. There is one problem with her though (it’s OK F, don’t panic), she wears glasses (eyeglasses for U.S. readers). Very nice they look too, BUT, glasses as with anything reflective, can create a problem when using flash lighting. I want to see my subjects eyes, not a big flare from the glass, so particular care is needed when making images with a subject wearing glasses.

So here’s a little look at how I lit this assignment. For once I kept quite a few of the setting-up and testing shots to give me enough ammunition for this post.

So here’s one of the images (the one that was used in the magazine btw):

Looks simple enough right?

Except, this was the starting point at the aperture & shutter speed I wanted to work at:

I started off with half an idea that I was going to try and get away with the one-light approach, but in reducing the flare on the painting, I was starting to get too much of a side-lit portrait. That’s not too bad if the subject is a man and you want dramatic lighting, but for a lady? I don’t think so. There was too much “fall-off” to the right side of the painting as well:

I really needed to get some separation as well. No, not as in “Six Degrees of Separation”, I just needed one degree, subject – separation – painting. The separation is basically just getting some light behind the subject in order to “lift” them away from the backdrop, so they don’t merge into too much of a “flat” image.

So, I was going to keep the one-light (Ezybox softbox) as the key from left, but add a second light as the fill from the right. Hmm, small problem, there’s a wall in the way.

Time I think for the famous napkin lighting-diagram, except I can’t find a white paper napkin, so it’ll have to be kitchen roll:

As is customary with extremely accurate and highly complex Technical Plans & Drawings, I offer the following warnings:
Not to scale.
Double-check all measurements.
If in doubt ask.

That gave me just about what I wanted:

And the final image again:

The umbrella just put some nice soft light between subject and painting. If you want to see it larger it’s on my website in the Editorial section. Can’t put a permalink to the specific image as I move things around in the portfolio, but it won’t be far from the start. I think the image really “pops”.

I then went for something slightly different, and put subject and a part-restored piece on the floor, softbox on subject, and umbrella into ceiling bouncing back for art-piece. Shame it still needed to be covered as part of the conservation, but we rotated it until there was enough clarity to see what it was:

In between those two images, I made another one, but I saved it until last, as it’s my favourite.

There was a wall where there was some descriptive text regarding the conservation. This was the ambient light that I had to work with:

Similar lighting problem to image-one there though. Too much direct flash and the writing would disappear. Not enough and it would be too dark to see that any writing was there at all. Solution was similar to the first image, except softbox and umbrella reversed like this:

And the resultant image:

So there it is.

The Glucksman Gallery is a fabulous place to visit if you happen to have some time when in Cork. Wonderful location, fabulous (award winning) building, great exhibitions and ADMISSION IS FREE!! (make a donation though, it’ll cost you less than a couple of cappuccini). Open every day except Mondays. No-one gets in on Mondays, unless you happen to be a photographer on assignment .

TTFN