Neil Danton

No compass required. That’s way too clever at the time of day I’m writing this post…

This Sextant isn’t the device used to navigate, primarily at sea, but a bar in Cork City

I was there to create some editorial business portraits of the owner for the biz-section of a Sunday newspaper:

I’d never actually been in the bar before. Listen, have you any idea how many bars Cork has? What a revelation. So many little nooks and crannies:

Really liked the little serving hatch out the back:

Didn’t have the opportunity to sample the beer, but I can tell you the coffee they serve is excellent!

Sampling the beer will definitely be on the agenda next time I’m around and not working, or driving…

TTFN

Leaf nothing to chance. Yew need willow power to get to the root of the problem

OK I’ll stop now

Quick post about a quick editorial shoot for the business section of a “Sunday”. Treemetrics provide 3D scanning of forests and the software to maximise the yield from it. Saves wastage, saves trees. *Obviously* the pic ed wanted something with a tree in then

Fortunately the guys knew a suitable location and the tree in this shot would have been just a tiny bit spooky later in the day or at night. Looks like something in a Harry Potter film or a cartoon where a tree comes to life (I know, I need to get out more)

TTFN

In the portion of my life where I still shoot as an Editorial Photographer, I’m often shooting business people, mostly for a couple of sunday newspapers.

It’s always a challenge to avoid the man-in-suit-with-laptop, or man-with-folded-arms type portraits, which need to be saved up for emergencies, as sometimes they really are just about the only thing it’s possible to do! However, I try my damnedest to avoid them.

So here’s a quick business portrait shoot where I managed to create a couple of images without using the “last resort”.

This CEO has a business, which although based in deepest, wildest West Cork is a global operation and there are clocks on the wall showing the various time-zones with some of the countries where they operate, so the first image I wanted to create was going to include those.

This was the starting point light-wise at the aperture, ISO & shutter speed combo I wanted to shoot at:

First thing to fix is the light on the background. Nothing too directional, just a 580EX flash firing into a white shoot-through umbrella, camera right (probably around 1/4 to 1/2 power, sorry, I’m a bit like a chef that cooks “by taste”, there’s not too many rules!).

That takes the background from this:

To this:

Next is to light the subject. This would be a 60cm (2ft) Ezybox soft-box, again with a 580EX fired through it, camera left:

In order to get the right perspective I used an 85mm lens, which meant I was pretty much jammed up against a wall, on my knees, but using any wider-angle lens would have “lost” the clocks.

Here’s a very approximate lighting diagram:

Still trying to avoid the “last resort” we managed to find another location for a 2nd image. Just the soft-box for this one. Get it back far enough and it’s going to light plenty of the general area as well:

Nice and relaxed. Nothing worse than business portraits that are too stuffy, or where the subject looks wooden (usually because they’re scared stiff of having their portrait taken!).

Oh, I didn’t leave the CEO sitting there all the time while I set up lights. The first image wasn’t actually shot first. It was a misfire from the Pocket Wizard on-camera when I started shooting for real.

*That’s because you hadn’t switched it on Neil*

Sshhhh

TTFN

So, having gobbed-off recently with a sarcy note on LinkedIn and my Facebook page, I thought I’d better explain myself some more.

For those of you who didn’t see my note it related to this (allegedly) true comment I spotted somewhere:

“Heard from a director of PR for a large company. She said one photographer’s excuse for some portraits they shot where people’s skin looked green was caused by the fluorescent lighting where the shoot was done”.

Why would fluorescent lighting make skin look green? Bear with me and I’ll explain in a mo’. For now just accept that it does, and if it’s tungsten light it will make skin look orange, but there are ways to stop this happening. One is to overpower or eliminate the effect of the ambient light in a situation by killing it with flash and using flash as the primary light source. The other is to correct the colour by adjusting the White Balance in-camera.

My gobby comment was that the photographer should have corrected this. I wouldn’t dream of shooting Corporate Portraits without using proper lights (flash or studio-lights) so maybe it really was that the photographer didn’t know what they were doing. As in all professions, there are “pros” and there are Pros.

On reflection though it could also have been that the budget or time allowed were insufficient to do a proper job. If the client’s attitude was “Come along and take a few snaps, our budget is 50 bucks” then maybe they got what they deserved. There is a difference between taking a photo, and creating an image. If the time/budget was actually the case, then apologies to the photographer. Partly.

Partly, because the photographer should have realised that if the time/budget wouldn’t allow for doing a professional job, then maybe they should have walked away from the invitation to do the job in the first place. Nothing positive has been achieved. A pissed-off client. No chance of future work for the photographer from that client, and a bad reputation for the photographer with everyone that the client speaks to about the shoot.

So what is this White Balance thing then?

Well, it’s not a reference to the ability needed by a Caucasian person to unicycle on a high-wire across the Grand Canyon. No, it’s a function thoughtfully provided by the manufacturers of digital cameras that enables the colours in digital images to reproduce correctly. It does this by ensuring that the white in an image is, how can I put this…. white.

Spookily, if the white is white (and the black, black) then the other colours will, like brain-washed zombies in a cult, follow along and be correct also. In the “olden days” of film, we had to do this by using filters in front of the lens. It can be done in post-processing as well, and is much easier and more accurate if shooting RAW rather than JPEG, but why bother doing it on every image after it’s been shot, when you can eliminate the problem at the shooting stage by getting it correct at the time?

So why is this necessary in the first place? Well the problem is colour temperature. The combination of the human eye and the brain is a wonderful thing. When the eye sees something white in an environment where the ambient light is affecting it, the brain says “Hang on a second, I know that’s white” so it “appears” white to us.

Cameras on the other hand, although nowadays jammed full of electronics, aren’t that clever. Score one point for us versus the machines.

So what’s Colour Temperature? 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 expression “In the cold light of day” comes about for a reason. In early morning the “daylight” is colder than it is in the afternoon but they are both “Daylight”.

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 wildly 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.

Most camera manufacturers though provide a way of correcting this problem, and it’s one of the most under-used features of a camera even amongst Pros, the White Balance setting. Standard settings are usually provided for Auto, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash, Degrees Kelvin and the Mother of all settings – Custom WB.

The Tungsten & Fluorescent settings are great if indoors and the scene is TOTALLY lit by that type of light. It starts getting complicated if daylight is mixing with the artificial light. Similarly, the flash setting is only used in a studio situation when all the light on the scene is lit by studio lights. Portable flashes (strobes) are daylight balanced anyway so are perfect for fill flash outdoors. The Kelvin setting can (although I never have) be used for example in a theatre, where the colour temperature of the lighting is known. Every time I’ve ever asked, nobody knows.

The saviour of all mankind therefore cure for the problem is the Custom White Balance Setting. Do you want me to explain that? OK then, here we go:

It’s very complicated which is why so few people use it. Set the WB to Custom. Shoot something white (A4/letter sized piece of paper for example). Review the image on the camera. Set camera to use that image for White. Takes all of 30 seconds. Told you it was complicated.

We want an example. We want an example, I hear you cry. OK then. I’ll really show-off with this one to prove my point.

This (spookily convenient) image was taken on Saturday evening. It’s basketball (obviously) in a stadium where the light sources are: Tungsten AND Fluorescent AND SODIUM. Try and let the camera sort that out on Auto! Sodium lights are the ones you find in old gymnasia, the ones that glow with an awful orange colour and produce horrendous colour-casts. No flash used, just the stadium lighting. No colour change done in post-production.

EDIT: I was going to use an image here that wasn’t shot by me but reproduced from the publication it was used in. However I decided that wasn’t quite fair, so I’ve tried to replicate what that image looked like with mine, altered to suit. Despite my best efforts though, this isn’t as bad as an image looks like when shot on auto. No REALLY.

Here’s the one I produced using Custom WB:

See the difference?

Apart from the White Balance, the difference is I care. It was “only” a sports assignment. Pretty much anything would be, and is, used in some of these publications. It meant dragging myself out on a Saturday night to earn a fraction of what I’d earn on a Corporate or Commercial commission. I just can’t do anything slap-dash though. I believe that as an Editorial Photographer my clients should receive the same care & attention as when I’m wearing my other hat as a Corporate Photographer, regardless of the detail of the shoot, the complexity of the shoot, or the fee. That’s just the way I am, barking mad conscientious to the point of being pedantic.

So let’s leave the Little Green (or orange) Men on Mars where they belong.

I bet you never realised I knew about all this stuff. I’m not just a pretty face you know.

*Nobody in a million years would ever describe you as a pretty face*

Shuddup.

TTFN

It’s yet another in the “not another executive with folded-arms series”.

I was on my way back from a lovely magazine shoot recently, complete with home-grown garden goodies for my belly – more on that story after publication – when my fave “Sunday” called and asked me to shoot an executive for the business pages.

An image had been supplied, and this is where the post title comes into play, but it wasn’t suitable. There was nothing wrong with it per se. It was correctly exposed, in focus, and not an arms-folded shot! Everything you’d expect really as it was taken by a pro (a pro I actually know, and whose work I like), but it hadn’t been taken for editorial use. I’m assuming it was a “filer”, an image kept on file for when a image needs to be sent out quickly to a publication, or it could have been for a corporate website or brochure. Not quite right for editorial use in a quality broadsheet though. The background was too dark background, and was a studio or cloth backdrop and so was too plain.

Suits me quite nicely then, thank you very much, I’ll do something more in keeping with the publication’s style:

Generally if it’s at all possible, I like to shoot and supply a left, a right, and a vertical (maybe even a left and a right of those too), each with a different background. A left and a right refer to which side of the image the subject is on, or which side the are facing. Some publications always like to have images of people facing “towards the fold”. On occasion it’s possible for them to flip the image if it doesn’t face the right way, but care needs to be taken then if there is any text or branding in the image. I’ve seen images that have writing in the background that is reversed, like looking in a mirror. Not very professional looking and something that should be picked up by a sub-editor, but sometimes they slip through!

TTFN

Another in the “not a man with folded arms corporate announcement image” series (which isn’t really a series, but an occasional musing).

Could also be filed under the WTF am I going to do in this instance category, where nobody (including me) has any real ideas initially on how to portray someone when there is no physical “thing” for them to hold, stand next to / in front of etc.

My subject has been appointed to a 3rd-level (college) institution as an Entrepreneur in Residence. He’s more than qualified to do so with a very impressive CV (resumé) in founding some extremely successful companies.

Anyway, for my part, it’s once again trying to figure out how to create an image that isn’t man-with-folded-arms (please, no), or man-with-laptop (please please, no) or man-at-desk (please, shoot me now).

The location, which I’m very familiar with, didn’t used to have a real focal point that identifies it to a viewer (unlike the other 3rd-level institution in the city) but not too long ago a new area was constructed and it is a definite identifier, but unfortunately, it’s too big. There’s still no way of using the whole area as a backdrop, so I just chose to use part of it as the weather was good (OK, it wasn’t raining, that’s counts as good here).

No, I wasn’t laying on the ground to get the image, he’s on an elevated area, which brought into play a rather unique piece of equipment (this is the techie bit) a WTL.

As you may or may not have realised by now, shooting with on-camera flash is a no no for me 99% of the time. In this case I was using a Ranger Quadra rather than a Canon flash, which fits nicely onto a lightweight stand, but the stand was never going to be high enough to get above my subject. That’s where I sometimes have to use a WTL, which come in all shapes and sizes. A WTL is a Walking Talking Lightstand, sometimes referred to as a human being. “Would you mind lifting this thing up and pointing it towards that gentleman? A little higher. Perfect, thanks a mill.”

TTFN

A lot of business people don’t have much time available for a portrait session. More time might be allocated if it was for their own corporate or commercial use, but when it’s an editorial shoot for a Sunday newspaper you have to work fast.

This was for the Business section of a Sunday newspaper and the feature usually calls for an upright (portrait) image so that’s what I shot, but I also shot each image horizontal (landscape) as well. Requirements have a habit of changing.

Subject was the Chairman of a company that produces bed-side medical gizmo thingamajigs and fortunately the company have a mock-up hospital room with the device.

Slightly tricky lighting for this, as the “monitor” didn’t show up very well in the very bright ambient light level in the room, so for once too much light was the problem.

The solution was to kill-off all the room lights and set the exposure so that some detail was visible on the display. The rest of the scene is completely lit by a small amount of light coming through the blinds-fitted window, and an Ezybox softbox.

Total time from walking my gear in the door was 20 minutes to set-up, shoot and dismantle. That gave me 7 different images in 3 different locations. If I go any faster I’ll have the job done before I get there – and I can just sit at home all day drinking coffee.

TTFN