Pre-shoot Consultations

20 February 2012 in Features, Portraiture, Product Photography | Permalink

Many assignments start with a pre-shoot consultation, during which I discuss a client’s requirements, timescales and delivery of the finished job.

For photography involving people, such as portraiture, lifestyle and event photography, we’ll sit down and chat about what you’re looking for and the environment in which the shoot will take place. With any such assignment it’s important for me to see the location beforehand so that I can get an idea of lighting, shooting angles and features within the environment that might be used to advantage, or those that may present difficulties. For Portraiture and Lifestyle Photography we’ll also discuss what you’ll wear and any accessories that you might use.

For product photography, a pre-shoot consultation gives me an opportunity to see the product and get an idea of how you want to use the images and the sort of results you want to see.

Another important part of the process is to establish a relationship with the client, something I regard as an important part of doing business.

The Seasons: Winter

8 February 2012 in Features, Landscapes | Permalink

There’s no denying that snowscapes present some wonderful photo opportunities. They also present us with some issues – specifically exposure. If you allow your camera to control exposure in the snow the chances are you’ll end up with some distinctly underexposed pictures. There’s also a good chances you’ll see a distinct blue cast. This is because snowscapes aren’t average scenes, and when a camera calculates exposure, it’s expecting an average scene. It’s expecting the distribution of light and dark and the balance of colours to be somewhere around grey. In a snow scene however, the average is pretty much white. So the camera needs to be told. The simplest way to do this is to bump up the EV (Exposure Value), which either slows the shutter speed or increases the lens aperture.

The picture above was taken with exposure set to Program mode, which calculated an exposure at 200ASA of 1/250th at f8. You can see from the image that the snow is less than white. Compare this with the photo below.

In this photo an Exposure Value of +1 was dialled in, resulting in both a larger aperture and slower shutter speed, 1/160th at f6.3. The difference is quite pronounced and gives us a truer representation of the scene.

Almost all modern digital cameras from dSLRs to compacts allow you influence the exposure using EV. Many use a dedicated button on the back of the camera, usually signified by a +/- symbol. You can use this creatively for any number of not-so-average scenes, from snowscapes to shooting into the sun. So if you find that using the cameras n=built in metering gives photos that are to dull or missing shadow detail, think about using the EV control to adjust the exposure.

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Staff Awards Ceremony

31 January 2012 in Events | Permalink

Yesterday evening I covered a staff awards ceremony for the Hertfordshire Probation Trust. The event took place in a large function room at the County Council’s base in Stevenage and featured speeches and presentations by the Chief Executive and local dignitaries, including the High Sheriff of Hertfordshire, Lord Charles Cecil.

The brief was to photograph the speeches and presentations, take general shots of the event and to provide digital images for web and media use, together with prints of each award-winner being presented with their awards, in presentation folders.

As with all such assignments, I visited the venue  a week or two before the shoot to get an idea of the environment – lighting, availability of space, potential shooting locations and angles, as well as practical things such as the availability of power sockets should I need to use my own lighting. As it was the room was modern and spacious with plenty of of lighting, as well as a few specialist stage lighting units (which you can see in use in the above photo). The only potential issue with the stage lighting was colour temperature, with the stage lighting being tungsten, whilst the ambient lighting was closer to natural daylight. However, this didn’t present to much of a problem as the zones they served didn’t interfere with each other from a composition point-of-view

The wider shots of the general event I covered from the side of the room, whilst for the speeches I chose to shoot from behind the audience using a long lens. I positioned myself both directly behind the audience and to one side, giving me a nice 45 degree angle that included slides accompanying the speakers. Other shots from the rear showed speakers addressing the audience.

For the individual presentations themselves (not shown here), each award comprised a list of nominations, followed by announcement of the winner, who was then presented with a certificate and glass trophy. Following this I would swiftly come on from the wings and position myself immediately in front of the audience to capture a posed shot of the winner with their award, flanked by the High Sheriff and Chief Executive. This had to be a fairly swift exercise so as not to interrupt the flow of prioceedings, so I took just a couple of shots using flash, typically a wider shot and a second close in. This provided a pair of composition to choose from, with hopefully at least one with no-one blinking!

Overall the evening was a great success and I’m happy to report that the client was very pleased with the results.

For more information about corporate and family functions and events please visit my website at www.stevebeeston.co.uk.

Olympus SP560

27 January 2012 in Cameras, Product Photography | Permalink

Despite now being some five years old, I still occasionally use my Olympus SP560-UZ, an excellent camera with a wealth of features and a good lens.

Being an ultra-zoom camera, the standout feature of course is the 18x zoom lens, equivalent to 27-486mm on a 35mm camera. There’s also the macro and super-macro functionality that allows you to focus as close as 1cm, which for me can be very handy when doing product photography with smaller items and need to show detail.

There’s also a wealth of other features, including aperture and shutter priority, as well as full manual exposure; optional 3×2 aspect ratio, ISO sensitivity up to 3200 and RAW mode. The digital image stabilisation is also very good.

As well as the useful macro mode, I like to take this camera out when I want to use something a little better than my point-and-shoot Canon IXUS but without the weight and bulk of my dSLR.

The Birthday Party

18 January 2012 in Events | Permalink

Whilst my last post talked about wedding photography and why I don’t offer it, I also highlighted those family functions that I do cover and an assignment I attended last Friday illustrates this.

The event was a 50th birthday party held at a The Hoxton Hotel & Grill in Central London. Attended by around 40 people, the brief was to capture the evening and present an online gallery for the client and guests to view shortly after.

Due to the relaxed lighting it was necessary to use flash, and here I used a flashgun with diffuser. I’m no fan of flash photography  as it can produce somewhat flat and unnatural images. It can also be quite intrusive if you’re taking a lot of photos, especially if your also using auto-focus assist illumination, which immediately distract’s the subject. Once you’ve drawn attention to the fact that you’re about to take a photo, the subject’s attention can be shifted to you, rather than enjoying the conversation or whatever they were engaged in, hence you’ve lost the element of surprise and a natural photo. This does however depend on the subject and how they react. Some people will tense up a little whereas other will ignore you. In spite of the these issues, I was able to get some excellent shots.

The even itself took place in the corner of a London Hotel and Grill, having been set aside for the event. I always try to make a point of being as unobtrusive as possible (notwithstanding the flash issue). I also like to vary angles so that whilst some shots will be head-on, others might be taken with the camera held up high (can be a bit hit-and-miss) and others from lower angles. I’m also keen on taking photos discreetly over people’s shoulders.

My choice of lens was a kit 18-55mm lens. I would normally use a longer lens for such events but the lighting issue precluded this.

Overall I was pleased with the results, and most importantly, so was the client!

For more information about photography for family functions, celebrations and anniversaries, please visit my website at www.stevebeeston.co.uk.

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Not A Wedding Photographer

6 January 2012 in Features | Permalink

Many people ask me if I do wedding photography. I do not.

Wedding photography is a highly skilled area that involves not only photography, but dealing with large numbers of people as well. You have to be prepared for whatever is thrown at you in terms of environment, weather and “personalities”. And you have to get it right first time, every time. You can’t take chances by asking an inexperienced wedding photographer to cover such an important event. I have no such experience and therefore I don’t do weddings.

However, I am more than happy to cover informal family functions, such as anniversaries, christenings etc. And if you’re looking for a photographer to informally cover your wedding reception without the wedding photographer price tag, I’m happy to do that as well.

To find out more about the photography packages I offer, please visit www.stevebeeston.co.uk/photography-packages.asp.

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Portraiture On Location

30 December 2011 in Portraiture | Permalink

The time and weather often dictates the schedule when it comes to location photography. Any outdoor setting is going to be subject to the weather so it’s always a good idea to keep an eye on the forecast in the days before a shoot and to have a secondary location in mind.

Good outdoor locations include parks, fields, rivers, stately homes and gardens, ancient ruins, farms and churches.

You can add interest by using bridges, walls, steps and trees either as a backdrop or as part of the composition. Needless to say, lighting isn’t going to be much of a challenge with most of these locations, unless you choose dawn or dusk to take the photos.

Indoor locations that provide a good setting include churches, where you can use pews, doorways and balconies to good effect; abandoned buildings and railways for drama or mood; and the interior of stately homes or grand buildings for elegance.

All of these need proper assessment before the shoot to get an idea of their suitability and to identify any risk factors.

Attention should also be paid to backgrounds and lighting. Indoor locations particularly need to be checked for combinations of natural and artificial lighting and unwanted distractions.

Compressed Perspective 2

23 December 2011 in Features, Product Photography | Permalink

Back in July I wrote a piece about compressed perspective and how it can change the apparent relationship between near and distant objects. I couple of photos I took a few days ago demonstrate this further.

You’ll notice in the picture below that one bottle of shower gel appears slightly larger than the other. Specifically, the yellow bottle on the right is slightly larger than the lime bottle on the left.

However, this is a good example of how compressed perspective can fool the eye. The yellow bottle is actually a lot smaller than the green bottle – it just looks larger because it’s much closer to the camera.

Here’s another image showing the bottles side by side.

As you can see, there is a big difference in size! The green bottle is a standard Original Source bottle, whereas the Lemon and Tea Tree is a travel pack size.

In the first picture the larger lime bottle is about a metre behind the smaller lemon bottle. I used a small aperture and manually focussed on a point midway between the two to ensure that they were both in focus, thereby making them appear as if they were positioned next to each other. The illusion is helped by the fact that the proportional relationship between the bottle and label are the same on both bottles.

Night Photography

20 December 2011 in Landscapes, Places | Permalink

Every once in a while I like to get out in the evening and take some night shots. I particularly like this shot of a boat on the river near to my home. This was taken on my Nikon D40, a camera I love for it’s simplicity. I often use the D40 when I choose to leave the more expensive kit at home. It’s a highly capable camera despite its entry-level spec.

Needless to say I used a tripod for this shot, with the white balance set to tungsten. I also used a Nikon ML-L3 infrared remote to fire the shutter.

Fawlty Towers

24 November 2011 in Stage Photography, Theatrical | Permalink

It’s been a busy month for theatrical photography. Earlier in the week I photographed three episodes of Fawlty Towers at Hertford Theatre. The three acts features The Hotel Inspector, The Germans and The Kipper and The Corpse.

Many productions have their own special challenges and this was no exception. The first and obvious challenge is that the action comes thick and fast. This is partly offset by the fact that the plotlines are well known, but the principal characters are quite animated, so there’s lots of movement (with the exception of The Major, Miss Tibbs and Miss Gatsby of course). So, relatively fast shutter speeds are the order of the day, and this means wide apertures and/or high ISOs. Given that the lighting was in general very good, I took a risk and chose ISO400 and shot in Aperture Priority. This typically gave me speeds of around 160th or 250th. I might have chosen ISO800 or even 1600 but I wanted to minimise noise, albeit at the risk of a few blurry photos!

The second challenge was the set. The action of Fawlty Towers takes place in a number of locations, including the lobby, dining room, bar and bedrooms. In this production, all of these locations were incorporated into a single set, using zones for each room.

Photo of the set for Fawlty Towers at Hertford Theatre

The centre of the stage represented the lobby, whilst the bar and dining room were set to the left and right, with view of the kitchen beyond the dining room. Cleverly, the bedrooms were quite literally on the first floor. All of this made for some interesting sightlines, not to mention giving the lighting technicians a few challenges.

I shot the bedroom scenes from the top of the raked seating at the back of the auditorium using a 55-200mm lens (APS crop-factor of 1.5 and a 35mm equivalent of 300mm). This gave me an adequate view of the staging, which is probably more than could be said for the audience in the front row.

Some of the bar and dining room scenes presented issues due to the restricted space and lighting at the very edge of the stage, but I was able to capture some perfectly good groupings nonetheless..

There was also a short scene set in the kitchen, where only the characters heads are visible. This again, was shot from halfway up the raked seating, allowing views over the top of the saloon doors. Unfortunately I didn’t get an ideal view as I should probably have been a little further up.

I find that setting the colour balance to tungsten often works well for stage lighting. The lighting angles during this scene created some quite strong shadows so I used Photoshop to raise the levels a little. The green cast represents the way the scene was lit.

If you like to find out more about the theatrical photography services I offer, please visit www.stevebeeston.co.uk.

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