Class 2 of Commercial Photography

New Class

The end of Advanced Photography

Well, Advanced Photography is done.  I'm awaiting my grade in the class, but I am not to worried about it.

We had our final on Monday night and turned in our 'Portfolio'.  Our Portfolio consisted of 10 pictures (divided between 2 categories or genre's of photography).  I choose Architecture and Commercial photography as my two categories.  I used previously taken pictures for my Architecture shots and took new pictures for the commercial shots.  You can checkout my photos for this at Flickr.

I am currently unsure if I am going to take a course this next semester.  There are some interesting things that are happening in my life right now that will determine my schedule for the spring.  I will update this more as it develops.

Also my plan for this next year is to attempt to do a "Photograph a Day" to document my journey through photography.

Digital Photography

So Monday night, we started discussing digital photography.  We got into how sensors work and what noise is and all that 'fun' stuff.  To me it is interesting to know some of the technology behind a camera, but there are some days I don't care how it works as long as it does.  I will admit, before digital cameras came out, I wasn't into photography all that much.  But eversince I got my first digital camera, I have absolutely fallen in love with photography.  It is a fun way to express myself and capture memories. 

So on this journey through photography knowing the difference between a CCD and CMOS sensor is interesting, but not necessary to take a picture.  The process of taking a good picture that causes someone to say "Wow" is not reliant on the camera.  It is a result of how the photographer sets up the scene, whether in a studio or out in the world.  To many people get caught up on the type of camera, the lens, the number of megapixels, etc.  These might aide in the capture of the scene or moment, but it is the photographer who takes the photo because he/she is moved by what they see.  So I encourage everyone not to worry about what type of equipment you are using (film or digital, point n shoot or SLR), just get out there and shoot.  Have fun, enjoy this process of taking a picture.

Photos from Studio Setups

Here are the photos that I promised from the two studio setups that we had.

Standard Portrait Setup Photo

This setup has the main on the right side of the scene (from the photographers perspective). 

High Key Setup Photo

This setup had the main light on the left from the photographers perspective.

Advanced Photoraphy 11/12/06

Last night we discussed the zone system developed by Ansel Adams.

My understanding of the zone system is this:
The zone system deals with the tonality of the subject matter based upon the amount of reflected light.  So whenever we use our TTL (through the lens) meter we are in essence using the zone system of tonality.  Where this really comes into play is the fact that your TTL meter wants to make every 18% gray so no matter what you focus on, your camera will try to make it 18% gray.  This is where we get into trouble and where the zone system can help us out.  There are 10 zones in the zone system.  O - IX designated by Roman numerals.  Some key zones to remember are:

IX - Pure White, there will be no texture here
VII - White with some texture, imagine snow in the shade, it will still be white but you can make out the texture of the snow
VI - This is the zone where caucasion skin tones are
V - This is 18% gray
O - Pure Black, there will be no texture here.

One thing to note here is that every zone is exactly 1 stop apart from the previous zone.  So this means that Zone VI is one stop or twice as much light as Zone V.  So this will help us when taking a picture of a person.  If we want there skin to be the right tone and the TTL meter gives us a reading of F8 at 125 we know that we need to open up one stop more to get the correct exposure.  So we could do F5.6 at 125 or F8 at 60.

The resources that we were giving to help us understand the zone system better are:
http://www.zone2tone.co.uk
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/zone_system.shtml
http://www.creativephotography.org/education/guides/aaguide/zonesys.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_system
http://www.srphotography.co.uk/srpzone.html
http://www.normankoren.com/digital_tonality.html

Advanced Photography

Last night we went over our test and our umbrella project.  I did well on the test and I think I did well on the umbrella project.

We also started going into the setup of studio lights.  We went through 2 styles of setup:  standard portrait and a high key setup.

 

Standard Portrait Setup
The aperture settings here are just good starting points.  You can adjust them as you need to achieve the desired affect.

High Key Setup
The purpose of a high key setup is to achieve an ethereal look.  You normally want your subject in white.  This setup will give you a pure white background with good detail on the subject.  An example of use for this is mother and baby pictures. 

I will post some sample shots from both of these setups in the next couple of days.

Umbrella Project Part 4

Photo 7:
This shot was a random one noticed by my wife.  We sprayed the umbrellas with a mist of water to achieve the rained upon effect, when she noticed the neat look it had with the water and the shadows.

Photo 8:
I wanted to capture the water streaming down this one, so my wife was spraying it with the water hose as I was snapping shots.  I had to use a neutral density filter on this shot to get a long enough shutter speed to achieve any motion in the water.

Photo 9:
Once again my dog, Bridgett, agreed to be my model.  It took a while to get her to sit still with the umbrella, but I think this photo captured her attitude very well.

Umbrella Project Part 3

Photo 5:
Once again my lovely wife agreed to be a model in my project.  This time my dog decided to join her.  I like this shot because both of them are gazing out of the scene.

Photo 6:
This was an interesting shot to capture.  My wife threw the umbrella into the air quite a few times befor I got a shot that I thought I liked.  The problem was when I was going to review them my battery died and I did not have a spare on me.  But I loved this shot when we got home.

Umbrella Project Continued

Photo 3:
My wife standing on a pier.  This is one of my favorites from this project because of the reflection and the emotion it conveys to me.

Photo 4:
This is my good friend Maryah on her wedding day.  Since I was taking her photos for her she graciously agreed to model for my project.  This was taken at about noon, I use a reflector to add some more light back into her face. 

Umbrella Project

The project that we had for this week was to take creative pictures of umbrellas.  I did the best that I could, but sometimes the imagination just wouldn't work.  Or I knew what I wanted the photo to look like in my head and could never get it to translate to the real world correctly.

Here are my attempts at this project.

Photo 1:
An umbrella backlit by a CFL bulb in my living room.

Photo 2:
Another umbrella backlit by a CFL bulb in my living room.  This time with a twist (literally), my wife is spinning it while I take the photo.

Advanced Photography Class 6

On Monday, we discussed the photos that we have taken over the course of this class.  It was really neat to see my fellow students work.  We have some very talented photographers in our class.

Our next assignment is to photograph umbrellas.  We can do whatever we want - be creative is what we were told.  So I will see what I can come up with.  I have a couple of ideas right now and will start posting the photos as I take them and process them.  We are allowed to do photoshopping if we want.  I prefer to try to capture everything in camera and do as little as possible after the fact.  We will see how good I am to create the scene in real life as I have it pictured in my head.

This weekend I should have some opportunities to take some pictures, as I am going to Nashville for a friend's bachelor party.  Next Saturday I will be one of the photographers doing a wedding.  My job is to get candid photos and the ceremony.  Another photographer is taking pictures of people for the guest book. And another is doing all the formal (posed) pictures.  This should be an interesting experience as it is outside and at 2 in the afternoon.  If anyone has any suggestions, I would appreciate the advice. 

Advanced Photography Class 5

Last night, instead of having our regular class we had a guest speaker. Mark Mosrie is a commercial photography out of Nashville. He had a lot of really good photos and gave us a lot of useful information to get started in the photography field.

Ken also gave us some magazines to check out:

• LensWork
• Photoshop User Magazine
• Digital Photo Pro
• Shutterbug
• Phototechniques

Advanced Photography Class 4

We had a pretty interesting class last night. We started learning about the studio lights. Before I get into the lights here are the notes on light.

There are two types of light:

• Reflective - this is the light coming off from the subject. When you meter off reflective light your camera or your light meter want to make this 18% gray so you have to be very careful what you meter off.
• Incident - this is the light from the source to the subject. You must have a light meter to measure this light. Metering incident light is the most accurate way to get your exposure correct.

When you take a picture you are just recording reflected light. So the question you have to ask yourself with every picture is: What is the light doing? Color tonality is another important aspect of light. If you are taking a picture of a garden with a lot of different color flowers in it, your meter will tell you many different exposure values for the reflected light. The flowers might not turn out as yellow, red, orange, etc. as you know they are if you do not understand the tonal range of color (think a black and white print). One suggestion that was made to help understand tonal values of items is to get a 'tobacco' colored gel. Before you shoot, hold the gel to your eye, you will get a monochrome image that will help you understand the tonal value of the scene.

The studio lights are going to be fun to play with. We just got a basic overview last night. As I get more into it, I will post more.

10 - Scale

10 - Scale
Originally uploaded by Kortney Jarman.

This photo was my attempt to use the idea of scale. Here we see the large row boat and the size of the people carrying the boat.

9 - Layering

9 - Layering
Originally uploaded by Kortney Jarman.

This photo was my attempt to use the layering technique. My goal was to capture the 3 bridges and have them framed inside one another.

8 - Horizon Lines, Rule of Thirds

8 - Horizon Lines, Rule of Thirds
Originally uploaded by Kortney Jarman.

This was an attempt to combine a couple of the rules of compostion. I like the reflection in the water here and am overall pleased with the way this turned out.

7 - Rythm and Repeating

7 - Rythm and Repeating
Originally uploaded by Kortney Jarman.

This photo was another attempt at using a repeating pattern in it. I liked the way this one turned out, I just wish is was a little sharper.

6 - Leading Lines

6 - Leading Lines
Originally uploaded by Kortney Jarman.

This was my attempt at leading lines. In the first photo I took here, the sign was to dark, so I attempted to lighten it up some with my flash (hot shoe, but still mounted on camera). I think I got a little too much light into the sign, but it still looks pretty good.

5 - Rule of Thirds

5 - Rule of Thirds
Originally uploaded by Kortney Jarman.

This was another attempt at the 'Rule of Thirds'. I like the way this photo turned out. I do wish that the sky was more exciting but, you can only work with what is available at the time. This was taken a couple minutes before the official sunrise time and the sky was starting to light up very nicely.