Learn to See with Tunnel Vision

Sometimes, my clients tell me exactly where they want me to shoot. Other times, they say things like, "Just pick a spot and shoot."

When I'm at a location house and I can shoot wherever I want there's a number of things I'll consider when deciding where to shoot. (For this update, I'm focusing strictly on interior areas of a location house.) My decisions, of course have more to do with backgrounds and environments than anything else. Sure, available light, i.e., daylight coming in through windows or skylights, might be part of that decision but, even then, the background/environment is the #1 factor. Plus, I'll be artificially lighting my confined shooting environment so available light generally matters even less.

When I say, "Learn to see with tunnel vision," as this update's title suggests, I'm talking about rectangular tunnels, not round tunnels or tunnels with one or more sides rounded or curved. In other words, tunnels that match the dimensional aspects of your viewfinder.

Since I mostly shoot glamour, odds are I'll be using short to medium telephoto lenses when shooting the pretty girls in front of my camera. That means my tunnels are fairly confined. Human eyes see what's in front of them with a wider panoramic view. Human eyes see similarly to a fish eye lens's field of view but without the distortion. The human eye, combining it's forward and peripheral vision, offers a wide angle perspective. A lens like, say, an 85mm prime, "sees" what's in front of it with a much narrower field of view, i.e., as if "seeing" through a much narrower tunnel.

As I roam about a location house looking for suitable places to shoot, I have to put my imaginary blinders on. I need to make myself see with a narrower field of view. If I don't do this, I might automatically discount places in the house that might be great places to shoot even though, when looking at them with my normal human vision, that is, my normal field of view, they might not seem like such good and worthwhile places to shoot.

The image of Anna, the "pretty in pink" model at the top, is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. (Click to enlarge.) It may not look like it but it's the foyer of the house I was shooting in. What looks like a wall or some sort of panel on the right and behind her is actually the front door of the house. The panel behind her in the center is a frosted and tinted glass panel next to the door. The panel behind her on the left is an interior wall which sits at a 90° angle to the glass panel and the front door.

The pink and off-white piece of furniture Anna is sitting on is a couch. I decided to keep her at one end of the couch and only reveal less than half of its length. I was shooting from the living room with a focal length in and around 75mm. There was one step going up from the living room floor -- where my ass was plopped on an apple box -- to the entrance way's floor. This helped me get a little lower without having to actually kneel, sit, or lie on the floor. I wanted a slightly low angle, especially with the model also sitting. If that step wasn't there, I would have had to get down on the floor... getting down on the floor while shooting is something I prefer to avoid, mostly because I'm a lazy ass.

So that's it. When you're looking for good places to shoot inside a house or the interiors of many structures, try to put on those imaginary blinders and make yourself see with tunnel vision. I think you'll find there's many good places to shoot in almost any location as long as you envision those places with a narrower field of view.

What a Difference a Light Makes

Yesterday, while shooting at a location house high in the Hollywood Hills, I experienced a few technical problems. The first set I shot was out by the home's pool. That's the San Fernando Valley, by the way, in the background in the two photos above. Also by the way, on the other side of those mountains faintly seen in the distance lies the Santa Clarita Valley. That's where I live.

The two shots, side by side, are of Anna, my model for the day. Both images are unprocessed. That's how they came out of the camera save for resizing them for the web. I didn't adjust levels or do anything else to them in post. The image on the left is one where my main light failed to fire. Obviously, the snap on the right is one where it did fire. D'uh, right? I suppose I could do something with some of the images like the one I posted on the left if, and this is a big "if," I were shooting some sort of quasi art nudes. But I wasn't. I was hired to shoot pretty girl pics, i.e., glamour pics, for a web site.

By the time Anna got out of hair and makeup it was about 11 A.M. or so and not the most ideal time of day to shoot exteriors in bright sunlight. While Anna was in makeup and I was setting up my lights -- a 4' Photek Softlighter for my main and couple of smaller Softliters for kickers -- I discovered one of my cables, one that attaches my Pocket Wizards to my strobes, was missing. Bummer! That meant I'd need to rely on the built-in optical trigger for one of my lights, and I was going to have to rely on it in bright daylight.

I hooked up a PW to each of my kickers hoping they would trigger the optical sensor on my main light. It worked great! Until, that is, I slightly moved my main light. It seemed the two kickers would only fire the main light if the main light was exactly where I serendipitously placed it when I first set up my lights. (Wow! It's not often I get to use a word like, "serendipitously.")

The solution, of course, was simple, if not perfect: Keep the main light where it was when I first set it. As usual, I was under time constraints for each set I shot during the day so I didn't have much time to spend overly dicking around with the placement of my lights. I needed them to consistently fire more than I needed them to in the EXACT spot and angled EXACTLY how and where I'd prefer them to PERFECTLY be doing so.

As it turned out, out of a set of about 150 exposures for this first set, my main light only failed to fire about a dozen times. Later, back home and while editing the day's work, I realize some of the photos (where the main light failed to fire) represented some good examples of what my kickers were doing, on their own, when they fired. Since I'm always looking for something to write about, I thought a photo where the main light failed to fire, shown alongside one where it did fire, and with the model engaging in nearly identical poses, might be a good way to illustrate what I often do with my kickers.

I'm a big fan of three light setups. The most common 3-light setup, also called triangular lighting, utilizes a main or key light, a fill light, and a back light. For glamour, I often use a variation of the standard 3-light setup but with a main or key light plus two kickers or back lights. Often, I set my kickers, or back lights, at 45s behind the models. Sometimes, I might decide to move one or both forward, almost on the same axis as the model, to provide more highlights on either side of her body. That's a taste thing, a personal preference thing, and there aren't rules or anything else that tells me when to do that. I just do it if when the photo spirit moves me to do it.

In the image at the top, the kicker camera-right is closer to the axis of the model while the kicker camera left is positioned closer to a 45 behind her. Why? Because I felt like it. BTW, when I want to add front fill, I usually do so with a reflector of one type or another rather than adding a 4th light into the mix. For the shot above, I didn't use anything for fill opposite my main. There was plenty enough ambient daylight to keep the image free of too many shadows on her front side, not that there's anything wrong with shadows per se. There's not. But again, I didn't want to see much shadow for these shots... you know, just because.

As I already mentioned, the just about completely naked pretty girl at the top is Anna. (Click to enlarge.) I captured Anna with my Canon 5D with a Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di lens hanging off the front of it. ISO 100, f/8 @ 160th. The kickers were set to fire with about a half-stop more power than my main.

Here's two more from yesterday's shoot with Anna. These images do include some processing, but not a whole lot of it.

Darkness and Light

If you have 90 minutes to spare and you haven't already seen it, a great way to spend that hour-and-a-half would be viewing PBS' 1995 American Classics documentary, "Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light." Even if you have already seen it, it's worth a second viewing.

"Richard Avedon: Darkness and Light" isn't so much a biographical film about Richard Avedon. It is Richard Avedon himself. And much of it in his own words! (And, of course, the words of others as well.) This Avedon documentary is required viewing, or it should be, for every photographer intent on bettering their work, specifically portrait work. I've seen it twice. Both times, Mr. Avedon taught me new things, new ways of looking at my photography, new ways to approach my work and the people in front of my camera.

Avedon reminds us those people, our models and subjects, aren't just there being photographed. They're giving us gifts. Not just gifts of their likenesses, but gifts in the form of moments where they share something more about themselves with us, allowing us to occasionally photograph them, if we're lucky or clever or deserving of the gifts, in ways they may not often share with others.

If you're interested in people portraiture, whether it's glamour, fashion, commercial, art, or something else, I can't recommend enough you view this documentary. If you don't come away from this learning experience with new ideas or new ways to approach your work, you weren't paying attention. If that happens, I'll gladly refund the price of admission. Oh. Wait. You can watch it for free! Forget about the refund. None required.

The young lady in her PJs below is one from a set I shot last night. When I arrived at the location and set up a single light, my client asked me, "Jimmy, where's your other lights?" Fortunately, he's a good friend of mine so when I answered simply by saying, "I'm only using one light tonight," my friend looked at me for a moment and said, "Okay." (Albeit with a bit of hesitation in his voice.)

In the end, my client/friend was happy with what I shot. For most of it, I had the model go through all the usual glamour poses and expressions, in and out of the PJs. If you don't think a model can make wearing a pair of pajamas with rubber duckies on them fun and sexy -- and not by playing it like she's too young for such photos -- you're wrong. For a few shots, like the two below, I asked her to quit being the sexy, energetic, eye-candy model she usually is in front of a camera and let me see some stuff she doesn't often share. (Click to enlarge.)

Photography's Two "Cs"

When I view other photographers' work, I make subjective judgment calls about two things: The photographs themselves and the photographers who snapped them. I'm guessing many of you do the same. Possibly everyone does regardless of who or what they are: photographers and non-photographers alike.

For the most part, I lump my opinions of other shooters and their photos into two, overall categories: Craft and Creativity. Obviously, I'm talking about my opinions of them as photographers, not who they are as people in general.

I see plenty of photos which seem to reflect a goodly amount of creativity but, unfortunately, are sadly lacking in craft. Conversely, I see lots of images which reflect good craft skills but don't really score high marks in the areas of creativity. A lot of my images are that way: good craft skills, not so impressive creatively. Then there's those photos which reveal wonderful craft skills as well as heaping helpings of creativity. Those sorts of photos are the best!

My seemingly not-so-rosy assessment of my own work causes me to temper my judgments about other photographers' work. I do this by considering the intent of the photos I'm judging. Especially, when the work is paid work: anything from glamour or fashion pics to wedding photos to senior portraits and beyond. You see, for the most part, few clients hire photographers for their prodigious creativity. They hire them for their abilities to consistently produce competent work, craft-wise.

I'm not saying clients don't appreciate creativity, they mostly do. They just aren't paying photographers to be overly and wildly creative. They're paying them to deliver the goods and "the goods," in this case, are competent photographs with moderate levels of creativity applied. Actually, often a bit more than moderate amounts... but not *that* much more. That's why I consider photography to be more of a craft than art. Sure, there's some photography that's nearly pure art, but most of it is much more craft than art.

Even with art, be it painters or sculptors or writers or musicians or something else, creativity isn't the only criteria signifying great art or great artists. Craft, which has as a subset, technique, also plays a significant and important role. Often enough, especially with photography, craft plays the most important role. Craft, of course, is generally synonymous with skills: technical skills as well as artistic skills like composition and more. Things that have artistic elements, by the way, aren't necessarily "art," per se.

Many people believe artists are born artists. In other words, their creativity (expressed by their art) isn't something they were taught and learned. Instead, it's something they naturally have, as in a gift. For those people, teaching and learning is mostly designed to help them realize or maximize their full potential, a potential they, apparently, were born with.

There's probably much truth in that perception. Fortunately, that doesn't mean people who aren't born naturally-gifted artists cannot be great craftsmen in an artistic sense. But people like those, which comprises most of us, need to focus on elevating and enhancing skills, craft skills, while applying whatever levels of creativity they've been naturally bestowed with. Leastwise, if they hope to be successful craftsmen and women. Fortunately for all of us, those craft skills are something that can be taught and learned.

The two pretty girls at the top enjoying each others company are Ash and Tara. (Click to enlarge.)

Shooting Pretty Boys

A few years back, I was contacted by a local fashion designer's rep to shoot a new line of men's underwear the designer had created. The rep got hold of me via the recommendation of a makeup artist I had worked with a number of times. The MUA, it turned out, was a good friend of the designer's.

I'll admit I was rather amused at the prospect of shooting some pretty boys instead of my usual pretty girls... and in their skivvies!

Although I had shot many women in their undergarments (and less) this gig would be decidedly different. I asked the rep chick why they chose me, beyond the fact that the MUA had recommended me. She explained that, after looking at some of my work, she and the designer thought I'd be the perfect shooter for the job since, as the rep said, "You totally know what you're doing photographing skin."

I agreed with her even though this time it wouldn't be female skin. That I had a studio accustomed to hosting partially clothed and/or unclothed people and that I was completely comfortable shooting people in little or no clothing -- which generally helps make the comfort level of the naked and semi-naked people I'm shooting more, uhhh, comfortable -- probably didn't hurt my qualifications for the job either.

I did some research in preparation for the shoot. After all, I had never shot these sorts of pretty boy images before. Sure, I'd shot quite a few men. Usually they had been actors needing head shots or commercial portfolio pics or portraits of various other guys for a variety of reasons. But this was different. This was a fashion shoot. I'd never done that before, leastwise not shooting guys for fashion pics.

I didn't intend to mimic what's already been shot in the genre of men's undie fashion. Still, I wanted to look at what a few other photographers had shot before.

The first images I came across were a bunch of Calvin Klein ads, notably those featuring Marky Mark (Mark Wahlberg) and snapped by the legendary Herb Ritts. Like I said, mimicking what had come before was not my intention but I'll admit I couldn't help but be somewhat influenced by Ritt's famous shots of Wahlberg in Calvin Klein briefs.

The day of the shoot arrived. My client and his PR person showed up right on time and soon thereafter so did our three male models for the day: two white guys and one black dude. Rightfully, I had hired the MUA who suggested me to these new clients and she was already in my studio in the makeup/dressing room getting prepared to perform her magic on the models. Favors should always be paid back as best they can be. To that end, I had hired her for somewhat more than her customary day rate.

We, that is the designer and his publicity lady, had already decided to shoot the photo sets against a neutral background instead of giving them some sort of editorial flavor. I chose a slate gray seamless for the job. Other than using my Mola Euro beauty dish for a main light, I still hadn't completely decided on the lighting, that is, the accent lighting I was going to use... if any. I knew I was either going to go with one light or possibly two. I didn't want to glam up the shots by using 3 or 4 lights, edging the models with specular highlights and a sexy glow. In the end, I decided on two lights: A main light and one accent light to rake across the models' bodies. I could always bring in a reflector if I needed something on the fill side.

The designer, his rep, and I chatted while the first model was in makeup. I mentioned the Calvin Klein ads and the designer, who was familiar with Ritts' photos, asked if I could shoot some with the models doing the Marky Mark crotch grab. "Sure," I said. "But do we really want to copy those shots?" He thought it about it for a moment and decided we'd stay away from crotch grabs.

The first model, the black dude, was ready. Both the designer and his rep were off to the side on their phones. The model grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the shooting area. "Don't make me look gay," he said, putting some serious overtones in his voice. I laughed and told him not to worry. I wouldn't be making him look gay and I wouldn't be shooting him the way I normally shoot chicks. He smiled and high-fived me.

Funny thing, the other two models also both approached me privately and said the same thing to me before I shot them. That had me wondering if they'd all worked with other photographers who, in their minds, did make them look gay or feminine or whatever. Funnier still, one of the models, I'm pretty sure, was gay.

By the end of the shoot, everyone seemed happy. The designer and his rep loved the photos, telling me they were exactly what they were looking for. Each of the models privately thanked me for not making them look gay. Why they thought I might do that still makes me wonder. Maybe they thought I was gay? Oh yeah, the check cleared. That always makes me happy, whatever I'm shooting.

The non-gay looking black dude at the top sporting a pair of designer briefs and flexing his considerable muscles is one of the models I shot that day. I've since shot other pretty boys for various projects and, to my knowledge, none of them has ever complained they looked gay in the pictures... whether they were gay or not. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with looking gay. Hey! Whatever floats your boat. And I'm still not sure what those guys meant by "looking gay." But whatever it was, I guess I didn't do it.

For Me, the Ultimate PRT

A few days ago, I wrote an update about something I call Photographic Regression Therapy, or PRT. That update talked about the current craze -- if it is a craze -- of photographers using cameras, iPhones, or techniques designed to deliver or render a low-fi, "back in the day," film-look to their photos. Sometimes, they do it with modern digital devices. Other times, they do in the same ways and with the same gear that was used back then. Still other times, perhaps most often, they accomplish it utilizing digital post-processing techniques.

I got the idea to write about PRT after purchasing a vintage rangefinder camera I spotted in a Craigslist ad, coupled with a few realizations, trend-like realizations, I've been watching going on in the photographic communities on Twitter and on photo forums and elsewhere.

Last night, I won a camera in an eBay auction. Personally, for me, this particular camera represents the absolute ultimate in Photographic Regression Therapy.

My winning bid was $23.06. I was prepared to pay more. Actually, a fair amount more! It wasn't that this particular camera is worth more. It's not. It was simply about something near-and-dear to my heart. The camera I won, a vintage, 1960s, Yashica Penta J SLR, was the camera that began my life-long love affair with photography.

On my 13th birthday, my Dad gave me my first camera: a Yashica Penta J. I wrote a chapter about this life-altering event in my e-book, Zen and the Art of Portrait Photography. The chapter talked about how that camera set me on the path of photography as a hobby and, later, a career. The chapter doesn't merely record the event marked by receiving a camera as a gift on my 13th birthday, but how it set the course for much of my photographic life by its lack of technology -- by today's standards or even standards of not too many years after its release -- and its all-manual functionality. In more than a few ways, that old Yashica SLR influenced my approach to photography throughout my life, right up till present day.

My Dad, Luigi, who many called "Big Lou" and not because he was fat, was a bartender back then. As such, he interacted with all sorts of people in the North Eastern area of New Jersey where I grew up... if you get my drift.

It didn't matter to me that my new camera probably fell off a truck and somehow ended up in my father's possession and then mine. All that mattered was I had this really cool camera which I took to like a duck to water. I don't know what happened to that first camera of mine. It was lost somewhere along life's way. But as I've recently become more and more aware of my need to engage in some PRT, I knew I wanted to replace it. And now I have.

For quite a while, I've been searching, mostly on eBay, for a replacement for my first camera: A working replacement. I didn't have much luck. Then, a few days ago, I tried altering my search words by omitting the "J" from "Yashica Penta J." Bingo! I found three of them.

One of them looked good cosmetically but wasn't in working condition. (Yet the seller wanted a $68 "Buy It Now" price for it.) Another, which the seller claimed was in working condition, looked like it had plenty of grime, rust, and dirt on it... altho the starting bid was cheap. Like ninety-nine cents cheap. The third one, however, caught my eye. The seller said it was fully-functional, that he was the original buyer in the early-60s (the camera was produced between 1961 and 1964) and that he recently pulled it out of a box that he had stored in a closet. The listing for this Yashica Penta J included the camera body, the original, Auto Yashinon, 50mm, f/2, M42-mount lens, the snap-on, analog, mechanical, exposure meter, and the original leather case. Starting bid was $15. I put the camera on my "Watch List."

Throughout the week it was listed no one placed a bid on it. That is, until the last day of the auction. When I spotted an opening bid, I checked the bidder's bid history. Everything this person had bid on, according to his or her history, was a vintage camera. The bidder was either a collector or a re-seller. I responded by placing a maximum bid that was considerably more than what the camera is worth. After all, I was being motivated by sentimentality. The actual worth of the camera didn't much matter to me. I simply wanted it for personal reasons and I'd be willing to pay more for it than what it is worth. That meant if the other buyer is a re-seller, there would be no profit left in it nor would outbidding me be considered anything close to a good deal.

Turned out I was right. The other bidder took me up to a whopping $23.06 and gave up. (I was prepared to pay quite a few times more than that much.)

I'm very excited about winning this replacement of my very first, 35mm, SLR camera! Can't wait till it gets here! I plan to shoot with it, assuming everything works properly, and not simply display it on a shelf or elsewhere. I might even purchase more glass for it: Probably a 28mm wide angle lens and perhaps a 135mm medium telephoto for shooting some portraits. There's plenty of all-manual glass listed on eBay that is of the M42, screw-mount variety. I might even limit my purchases to Yashica Auto Yashinon glass only. I'm not, as a rule, a purist. But I might become one in terms of this particular camera.

Like I said, for me this will be my ultimate PRT!

The pretty girl at the top is Jenna.