On Father's Day

My father has been gone for almost 19 years after dying of a heart attack while on the road from Pretoria to Kuruman, both in South Africa, doing what he loved most, delivering cars to a client. He was a man who could sell anything but cars were his passion. While he was so filled with passion for work, his boat, his dogs and his work (have I already mentioned his love for his work?), a few images come to mind when I think of him.

I remember the times my grandmother would visit and beg my Mom and Dad to play duets (Mom on the piano and Dad on the violin), the Christmas I got a spinning top as gift and Dad was playing with it, but the foot bounced and went into his pinkie (it screwed up his violin playing), him singing in my Mom's choir at Berea Methodist Church, standing on his shoulders in the pool, going body surfing with him at Orient and Nahoon beaches in East London, South Africa and learning how to water ski. The image that comes to mind most readily however is a photograph from grandmother took of us after church one Sunday.

My only regret is that I never knew the man who was my father. I want to follow in his footsteps. I wanted him to be proud of me. I wanted to hear him say, "Well done. I'm proud of you". Those words never came from his mouth. While today is a bitter-sweet day for me, I'm thankful for the memories and the good times I had with him and thankful to be a father and to be able to tell my children how much I love them, how important they are to me, how proud I am of them, where they are in their lives, and are the inspiration that propels me to life a rich, full and happy life.

Happy Father's Day Dad wherever you are, and thanks to my children Sean, Dane and Shirley-Anne for giving me the opportunity to be a father and to learn first hand just how hard it can be at times, to learn what it means not only to say "I forgive you", but "I'm sorry, please forgive me." I love you all.

Lighting with Zack Arias

Wow, what a weekend I've had! I've had so much information that it almost feels as though I've been run over by a truck. At the same time, I have gained so much knowledge that I can't wait to share it with you.

Permission to use the image above given by (c) Wilfredo Valle.


In a previous blog I mentioned that the folks at CreativeLive are helping people all over the world improve their photography skills at no cost! Yup. You heard right. All you need is a decent internet connection and a desire to learn and you have a front seat from some of the best in the world such as David DuChemin, Zack Arias, Chase Jarvis, John Greengo and many more.

This past weekend, Zack Arias with a team of over 30 people, taught lighting for 3 days, starting Friday and going through to Sunday. Talk about a marathon session! He pulled out almost every piece of equipment that anyone could ever desire to own or want to use and demonstrated how it different from other types of lighting that he used. All these images and more will be posted up on his blog (www.zarias.com) in the coming weeks.

Permission to use the image above given by (c) Zack Arias.

There is no way that I can ever begin to summarize what Zack taught, but I managed to find a tentative schedule of topics for the weekend on his blog:


Friday

• My personal philosophy of having a studio space
• Considerations for getting a space of your own or turning a space you have into a studio space.
• The basics of exposure when using flash in studio. We will be using hotshoe flashes and strobes.
• Working with multiple lights and working with different lighting ratios
• Using a light meter and how to figure it out on the fly without a meter
• Overview of the modifiers we will be using over the weekend. Those include: Straight flash, Umbrellas, Softboxes, Octabanks, Beauty dish, Ring flash, Grids, Flags/Silks/Reflectors, DIY modifiers
• Q&A

Saturday

• The many uses of white seamless. I’ll be walking you through the entire process of shooting on a white seamless and getting the most out of one simple background
• Post production on the white seamless
• Q&A
• (lunch break somewhere between 1pm and 2pm.)
• Building a set. It will already be in place. I’ll just talk about the basic modular set pieces that went into making it.
• Grip equipment. How to put stuff together and do stuff with that stuff.
• Slowly moving away from the seamless and onto other background choices. IE: Fabric/Walls/Sets
• Working with subjects. Interaction and Posing. (I’ve had a lot of questions about this so I’m spending a lot of time on it.)
• Musicians. Duo and Trio. Group shots plus individuals. White seamless and other backgrounds + a simple set.
• Q&A

Sunday

• Quick recap of previous day and previous information about exposure. Not going to spend a lot of time on this but just a quick recap for those just joining.
• If I don’t cover the grip equipment on Saturday I’ll most likely do that Sunday morning.
• Art Direction! I will be pulling people from the live audience and giving them assignments to see what problems they run into and guide them through the process.
• More shooting. Different modifiers. Improv.
• Q&A
• (lunch break somewhere between 1pm and 2pm.)
• Working with a four piece band.
• Individuals and group shot.
• More shooting. Whatever we decide to do making sure I’ve used all the modifiers from the list above.
• Q&A

The good news is that YOU can (actually, you NEED to) buy this marathon lighting class from CreativeLive. It's a mere $129 for 25+ hours of a lighting workshop. So, instead of buying crappy equipment that you're going to have to replace in a 6 months, or struggling to get the "look" you wanted and then beating yourself up cuz your lighting sucks, just do yourself a favour and buy the download. It will be money well spent!  While you're at it, sign up to get notified of upcoming classes.

Thanks to Zack for an incredible weekend and for permission to use one of his images (the model on set with foot on apple box) in this blog. My thanks also go to Wilfredo Valle (www.wilfredovalle.com) who submitted a video entry and was able to attend the entire weekend at no cost (I hate the word free as it reminds me of a used car salesman!) and who has also given me permission to his image of Zack teaching the class.

That's it for another week! Have a great week.

John

Photographing Events

Photographing events can either be a very rewarding or a very tedious experience, but it is always tiring. Fortunately, a recent experience I had photographing the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) annual gala in Houston, Texas left me inspired and exhilarated.

Pre-event organization is key to a successful event. Contracts must be signed, advertising submitted, 2nd shooter (as well as a just-in-case-backup) lined up, batteries charged, lenses cleaned and compact flash cards formatted. The HRC event included well-known celebrities, including Tabatha Coffey, and I was asked to shoot not just the event, but to provide a station where portraits could be taken, which meant I needed to reserve studio lighting and make sure I had sufficient continuous 12-foot paper on the roll to use as a backdrop.


I picked up my friend, and 2nd shooter Ari, drove to the hotel and started unloading the vehicle. I had two 4’x8’ pieces of melamine board that had to carried up to the 4th floor, because they were too big to fit into the elevator.

HRC had provided a white 10‘x12’ backdrop with their logo on, and I set up the continuous paper behind the backdrop, pulled it down and under the HRC background, placed the melamine boards where I wanted people to stand (so no one would walk on and dirty or damage the white paper) and placed the lights. My idea was to light the background with 2 flash heads placed on either side of the paper and using barn doors to direct onto the background and limit the light. People would be lit using 2 umbrellas, each one facing to the opposite corner, placed slightly above so as to avoid falling shadows. I used a flash meter to make flash output to accommodate f/11 stop to minimize depth of field using ISO 200 at 1/200 sec.

I made a few adjustments to the flash heads, and then began to set up the lights that would blend the continuous paper and 10‘x12’ background only to discover that one of the two flash head extensions was missing. I could still work with one light, but the fall-off would be different to what I had envisioned. I placed the light, made sure the power pack was out of the way, went to plug in the power chord...well, there wasn’t one! My blood boiled. At this point, there was little value in pointing fingers. There was work to be done. Blame however, lay in 2 directions. While the equipment rental company hadn't packed full kits, I hadn’t checked the equipment. After all, they had never let me down in the past. Needless to say, I won't make that mistake a second time!

The shoot went off very well, except for the part where someone spilt a glass of red wine on the paper. Hotel personnel mopped up the spill quickly, but it left a huge stain which had to be removed by cloning in Photoshop, and which added at least 3 hours to the time i spent later processing the images. In retrospect, I should’ve stopped what I was doing, cut the paper, rolled out another 9 feet, smiled and restarted taking portraits.

Notwithstanding the drama, people loved having their portraits taken and the event was a huge success and I worked through the night to process the photographs. The wine-spoiled background paper meant I had a lot of post-processing. The photos were finally published to the site 3 hours later than anticipated, but the ended up costing me sales.



So, what did I learn?

1. Check and test all equipment prior to the shoot.
2. Rope off access to the set, allowing only one entrance. This will minimize accidents and ensure people do not walk on the paper thus reducing time that would be spent in post.
3. Ask organizers to place a table at the entrance to the set where people can place wine glasses, napkins, plates of food etc.
4. Have bottled water and napkins available for yourself. I perspire a lot when I shoot, and sweat pouring down your face isn't sexy.
5. If necessary, hire an assistant to tell you when you need to wipe your face, and to guide people onto the set.
6. Have plenty of business cards available. I had 300 on hand, and ran out.
7. If an accident occurs, act decisively. Stop, regroup and restart. It will save you time later on.
8. Deliver quality photographs on time and as promised.

That’s it for another week. Please leave your comments and/or horror stories.