Early Morning Drive

So I'd intended to go into Durbanville and out the back end into the surrounding countryside - I was in search of cows - but I ended up going through the Du Toit's Kloof tunnel and through its grime into the sunshine on the other end. I'd love to shoot in the tunnel. I'd love to take a scraping from it's thick black walls. But I'd need a gas mask. And I have a feeling it's illegal to stop. And I watched a double tanker petrol truck come through and it had a fire emergency truck that had to follow it. So I drove through to where the sun was up in the other side, stopped for coffee at a dodgey little hole in the wall and then came back over the Du Toit's Kloof pass. I passed baboons - a troupe of about thirty - with the alpha at the back sheperding his females with their clinging babies across the road. And I got yelled at by a big farmer in a Toyota bakkie for stopping on a blind corner (the things we do to avoid making roadkill of wildlife and to get a good photo!) I didn't get any good photos of the baboons - it would've involved getting out the car again and that big boy alpha looked pretty fucking mean. But I got a change to pull over a few times on the pass - I love those rest stops - they always look like relics from the 50s and 60s. And then I saw the coolest limo I've seen in ages. The number plate said Baby Lim and the front end of it was made from what looked like an old Mazda. The back end definitely came from a late 80s early 90s Toyota Corolla. And the middle bit was of an indeterminate origin, but the central door had lights around it, like you'd put up around a vanity mirror. I was way too scared of the mean men inside to ask them if I could photograph their ride but I am wondering if it was worth being safe instead of grateful for a really cool photo.

Enjoy the pics. I was feeling fairly dark this morning. Hence the exposures. If you'd like to see more of my landscape photographs have a look at my website.

Photography Lessons: Aperture and Light 2 (working with aperture priority)

Okey dokey. So you should've taken a few pics in aperture priority. And hopefully - because you're an observant visual person - you should've noticed a few things. The first one is slightly harder to spot than the second but I'm going to start there anyway.

A large aperture (low number) throws the background and some of the foreground out of focus.

A small aperture (high number) keeps the the foreground, middle ground and background sharp.

Why is this important? Because of the artistic control it allows you. (Images to follow during the week!)

The second thing should be fairly obvious: there's a relationship between the aperture setting and your shutter speed.

(Shutter speed is how fast or how slow the shutter in your camera opens to let in light. If it opens slowly you let in more light, if it opens quickly you let in less light. Shutter speed is not assbackward like your apperture settings so a big number = a fast speed and a small number = a slow speed.)

If you've been working in aperture priority then you should've noticed inside your camera that each time you change your aperture there's an opposing change in your shutter speed. The relationship is a very simple one.

As you let in more light through your aperture so your shutter speed will slow down to let in less light.

As you let in less light through your aperture so your shutter speed will increase to let in more light.

Why does it do this? Because your camera is determining the ideal exposure for you. It assumes that you'd want everything at about 17% grey. Don't ask me who decided it should do this, but I suppose they had to have some form of standard and 17% grey is what they went for.

So here's your camera with it's built in predisposition towards a light grey. When you have your camera in aperture priority it assumes that you want that photograph to be it's beloved light grey. So every time you change your aperture to let in more light, the camera will change your shutter speed to counteract the extra light you've just let in and it will increase the shutter speed effectively cutting off that extra bit of light. If you change your aperture to let in less light your camera counteracts the impending gloom by lowering the shutter speed to let in more light.

When you're in AV mode and you look at your exposure reading in your camera you'll see that it always stays right in the middle, 'perfectly' exposing your images to 17% grey no matter what changes you make.

So what's the problem.

Essentially that you're not in control of the decision making process. And that, of course, not everything in this world is 17% grey. Photograph black on black or white on white in aperture priority and you'll have an exposure that is wrong. In the case of black it will be too light; in the case of white it will be too dark.

The other problem with letting your camera determine the shutter speed is that eventually you will end up with a shutter speed that is simply too slow for either your ability to hand hold your camera or too slow to capture your subject's movement.

Most people can hand hold at a 60th to a 30th of a second (depending on the size and heaviness of their camera and lens). Very occassionally when I'm feeling particularly zen I can get away with an 8th of a second. I wouldn't recommend this if you're on a job though . . . and I have to admit to a belief that I'm shooting in between heart beats . . . and yes I'm a nut job and I did watch a Discovery showcase on Olympic ski shooters who shoot in between heart beats and the idea that I do something similar makes me feel extra special at night! ;)

But at an 8th of a second chances are your breathing and heartbeat are going to make the camera shake. At a 5th of a second, or at 3 seconds, or 30 seconds, you can absolutely depend on that happening unless it's on a tripod. If the camera shakes you don't get a sharp image - you get fuzzy crap. Fine for the occassional art piece but not fine for most commercial applications.

Also, if you want to freeze your subject in motion then you have to make sure that your shutter speed is moving faster than they are. Imagine you're trying to take a photograph of someone running towards you and you want that picture to be crystal sharp. In almost all lighting conditions you'd need to be shooting at upwards of 200th of a second to make sure that their movement is sharp.

For me, I like AV mode because it's a great way to learn what aperture does: it controls your depth of focus; and because it begins to show you how aperture relates to shutter speed. Beyond a learning tool though I've never really found it helpful and even shooting on weddings when you have to be extrememly quick in making exposure decisions I don't use it.

So the ultimate goal with these lessons is to gain control of the camera, not to let it control you. The next lessons will be on shutter speed, and then the third member of our triumvirate, ISO. In the meantime go back to shooting in AV mode and this time shoot specifically for the following:

1. A high aperture where everything is in sharp focus (easiest outside with relatively bright light if you're shooting in AV mode). Whatever you decide to shoot make sure that it makes sense for the subject to have such a high level of detail.
2. A low aperture where you specifically throw your background out of focus. Again, make sure that it suits your subject to not have all areas clearly defined.
3. Try and shoot in dark areas and take note of what happens to your ability to hand hold your camera. (And shoot without flash!).
4. Try and shoot a fast moving subject under relatively low lighting conditions - what happens to your ability to keep the image sharp? Look out for great accidents on this one, where the blur works for you instead of against you.

Monitor Callibration - how to test if your monitor is properly callibrated?

This is something that I've always struggled with - whenever I read anything about it I get bored senseless and fall asleep! By the time I've woken up the world has moved on and my monitor is still deliriously uncallibrated.

So I thought I'd post on a few photography forums for some help. I asked for short sweet and simple. So far the best has to be: "Get a Spyder". Which leaves me to wonder how an arachnid is going to fix my computer.

No, I'm not that stupid, but I am that facetious. I don't really know what a Spyder is or how it works which is partly what I was hoping to get out of posting in the first place.

In desperation I re-searched for Spyders and screen callibration and came across this dandy article http://www.imaging-resource.com/ARTS/MONCAL/CALIBRATE.HTM on how to check if your screen needs callibration (I'm happy to say that I didn't fall asleep and the world has not moved on and left me behind). I haven't read the link on that page about Spyders (I am weary of a creeping sloth that seems to slither over me when my mouse goes near the link) but I think it might be worth brazening out. I'll let you know if I make it through alive!

Photography Lessons: Aperture and Light

In the last few weeks a handful of friends have asked me to teach them to take decent photographs - maybe I'm nuts but I agreed, and being the good ex-teacher that I am I decided that I should come up with some sort of syllabus and figured that while I'm at it I may as well share my five cents worth with those that care to read it.

So the major thing about photography (apart from those other minor things like the right gear, a decent subject, composition, time, money etc) is light. Light, light, light, light, light. If you don't have light you have a plain black block. If you have too much light you have a plain white block.

Photography is about the artistic representation and the technical manipulation of light. In terms of manipulating light you can manipulate your external light and you can control the way in which your camera responds to that light.

Cameras don't see light the same way human beings do. We can access a huge range of light while a camera's light range is limited. What that means is that at the same time as being able to see very bright things we can also see very dark things. A camera can do one or the other but it typically can't do both at the same time.

So it's up to you, the person behind the lens, to make decisions for the camera about how it should record light.

A typical Sunday morning and all the animals are in the sun spot on the bed. Notice how the light areas have blown out (meaning you can't see detail in the blanket and duvet in the front of the image)? That's what I mean by the camera not being able to record light the same way we see it. We could see the whole scene perfectly - the bright sunlight on the bed and the darker room - but the camera only really records Ninja (our stripey cat) properly.

There are three major controls that your camera has in order to deal with light and they typically work simultaneously . Because I'm not sick, twisted or evil I'm not going to explain all three things together, but look at the three things in three different lessons and then talk in a fourth about how they all work together.

The three controls are aperture, shutter speed and ISO. If you're new to photography and you don't have a Scooby about what those things are, don't worry - we're all in the process of learning different things all the time and while I'm pretty good at photography I wouldn't try and perform knee replacement surgery.

The easiest place to start is aperture. Also referred to as f-stop.

Whenever you take a photograph a mechanism in the lens opens to allow light in.

That mechanism is your aperture or f-stop. If it opens wide then you'll allow in a lot of light. If it opens small you'll allow in very little light.

Unfortunately for people trying to learn this stuff from scratch some brainiac years ago decided that the numbering system we use to describe the size of the apperture should be ass backward! I can only assume it was a Frenchman who came up with that.

So what this means is: a very large open aperture (f-stop) that lets in a lot of light will be described by a small number, for example f2.8

A very small aperture which lets in a teeny amount of light will be described by a large number f32

Go figure, but that's the way it is.

So the first thing that you should do, now that you're armed with this golden McNugget of information is wonder around for a few days with your camera set to AV (which means aperture priority) and see what happens when you change your aperture from a high f-stop (small opening) to a low f-stop (big opening).

Chrissi in the light

I did this of Chris, a dear friend of mine, at a wedding we were both at (she as a guest, me as photographer). We were actually on our way to the loo and I got distracted by the lights which had turned a particular shade of dirty red from the fires (which I think have been in Grabouw and the smoke is coming all the way through here) and figured Chrissi's gorgeous dress would look awesome with that as a backdrop. So it was a slow shutter and freezing her face with the flash. Being in a hurry - to get to the loo before the speeches started - I just left the flash on my other camera, propped the whole thing (5D and 70-200 lens and speedlite) in a tree stump and set it to slave. The flash on my wide angle I just angled back (there was nothing behind me) and off we went. The hardest part was getting the slave to see its master, but it did eventually!

Same Day Different Mood

On the beach again

Dan and I were on the beach again. This time in the mist.

Dan's, "Please, call me Joe" expression (its from an episode of Scrubs . . . and had us smiling like dumbasses for weeks!).

I really struggle to keep my eyes open when the flash goes - majorly light sensitive!

Guess what we saw on the way out. I must've taken about 20 pics of him/her(?) and walked from about 10m away to within a metre and a half. By the time I stopped walking I was right on the edge of my 70-200's focussing limits (so you know just how close I was). He/she let me stay there for quite a while and then, after giving me the evil eye a few times, decided s/he had had about enough of me and winged off into the mist.

A Note

I found this on a scrap of paper in my bedside drawer. I think I wrote it towards the beginning of 2008, but I'm not entirely sure. It's a weird thing when you find something that you've done or written and forgotten about:

Sometimes I wonder about all those secret loves:
these films over things
- dust sheets preserving ancient memories, and dreams;
the porous reality of it all -
the skin flakes
and their dust mites.
And an odd, odd remember-sense
of being alive and beating.