A Closer Look: Anastasia Taylor-Lind

To continue my Closer Looks this week, I’m looking at the absolutely beautiful work of Anastasia Taylor-Lind. It’s important to look at a female photographer and her work because I personally feel that women are a little under-represented in photography. To follow through with this theme, then, I will be looking at Anastasia’s series “Women of the Cossack Resurgence” – a fascinating look at Cossack revivalism.

I won’t get too far into the ins and outs of the story and background of the series, for fear of making myself look a bit stupid and publishing inaccuracies. It would be much better if you scooted over to Anastasia’s site and had a look at the flavour text to fully acquaint yourself with the background behind the series. What I want to do with this article, as a portrait photographer, is attempt to get a bearing on just how she achieves such beautiful images.

Anya Romanova (centre) and her Year 8 friends at Ataman Platov Cossack Cadet School. This image was featured in the Taylor Wessing Photo Prize 2010.

With portraiture (and photography in general) preparation is key. The image is not just the click of the shutter, it is all kinds of preparation approaching that moment. For these images, Anastasia spent a week in the school with the girls, attending their classes, sleeping in one of the dormitories, being one of them. The benefits of this were twofold. First, it would allow her to connect, identify with and get to know the girls, so that the resulting images more accurately portrayed their character. Second, it would mean her subjects would relax and be used to the camera.

Another preparation that was important here was kit preparation. Anastasia used a 6X6 Bronica with a waist-level viewfinder. Compared to your normal DSLR, this allowed Anastasia to take the camera away from the front of her face: now they were talking to her and not to a camera with someone hiding behind it.

Recently, I have often felt there is something of a barrier between myself and my subject when I raise the camera to take a shot. My own approach to alleviating this problem is to practice being able to effectively compose more quickly, making sure I take the camera away from my face as often as possible, to let my subject know I’m still there and haven’t been taken over by a large metal facehugger. That human connection is very important, in my opinion.

Many of the shots in the series explore the bond between the girls in the school. There are images of the girls dressing each other’s hair, embracing, spending time together in the dormitory at bedtime and, in one of my favourites of the series, possibly whispering secrets to each other. I feel as if these images have been included because they resonate with Anastasia as a woman.

I’m not saying that a male photographer wouldn’t have noticed this connection between the girls, but I wonder whether the moments would have been captured as intimately. Maybe I’m wrong, but I do think there is something to the idea that your best work is borne of an emotional connection of some form with the subject. Again, this reinforces the importance for me of Anastasia staying with the subjects of her portraiture for several days – it’s as much to prepare her for the images as it is to prepare them.

Galina Prokopenko, 75 year old great-grandmother and black-belt karate instructor.

To finish with, I want to look at an individual portrait from the series and tell you what I like about it. I honestly feel like going through every portrait in the series, because they’re all beautiful, but we all know how much of a waffle fiend I am (imagine having to sit and listen to me waffle – at least you can just close your browser when you get bored), so I’ll limit myself to one.

By which I mean two. I was torn between the image of Galina Prokopenko, the 75 year old Karate instructor and the basket-weaving class image. Aside from being allergic to concision, I chose these two images because they are stylistically similar and hold qualities that I, whilst not wishing to be overly gushing, find absolutely wonderful. Putting aside the fact that the subjects are both totally relaxed, natural and bursting with character, they share a compositional style that I am very interested in at the moment.

Anastasia manages to balance the image of the subject in the frame with background detail, without taking focus away from the subjects themselves. If we look at Galina first, there is a beautiful balance between her pose and positioning in the frame with the floral wallpaper. The table tells us a little more about Galina without being an intrusive object in the scene. The lighting appears to be natural window light and the gentle vignetting draws us to Galina (who is a striking enough character to be drawn to in the first place, to be fair to her).

There are similar elements at work in the basket weaving portrait. The positioning of the girl in the frame, combined with the angle of the basket and its outreaching strands, the bottom of a plant creeping in on the image and the small wooden ornament make for an interesting composition. The lighting is again quite beautiful, the face being the most prominently lit feature in the image, focusing our attention on her expression of concentration. There is just enough of a hint of attention in her expression to suggest to us that she is listening to instructions from a teacher to the right of the camera.

A basket weaving class at the Ataman Platov Cossack Cadet School

Although the qualities described above would be enough to class these two images as excellent examples of portraiture, the true magic for me comes from the way everything is subtly visually linked. In the portrait of Galina, the pink of the floral wallpaper links to Galina’s pink lipstick. Similarly, the floral pattern on the wall links through to the floral pattern on the teapot and to the one on the tablecloth. I love how this is contrasted by her military appearance: it shows us that the personas of great-grandmother and soldier can both exist in one person.

Similarly, there is a very strong visual theme of flora and nature running through the basket weaving image: the hanging leaves link to the leafy pattern on the wallpaper, which is linked to the floral ornament on the wall, which is wooden, linking us to the basket itself, linking us to the camouflage pattern of the girl sitting, which is of course intended to mimic colours found in nature.

These are the qualities that take these portraits to the next level. I will cease my trademark waffling now, I hope you have enjoyed looking at these portraits in depth as much as I have.

To wrap up on a personal note – I’m really very glad I’ve written these two “Closer Looks” on a couple of my favourite portrait photographers. My intention was to get you lovely readers geared up about portraiture but, as it happens, I’ve also reinvigorated myself on the subject. It can be all too easy to fall into the trap of only taking photos when you’ve been commissioned to do so: this is a mistake. I don’t know about you, but I’m off to set up some portrait sessions just for the love of it. I suggest you do the same.

Shoot Report

To ease us into the second half of the week, I thought I’d provide you with a little light relief (and, hopefully, a little entertainment) by writing a shoot report. Now I was perusing my recent shoots in an effort to decide which might provide the most entertainment. One of my corporate headshot gigs? Nah, too dry. Perhaps a published editorial portrait? The last couple ran too smoothly to be exciting (for a change). How about…men in spandex? No, really.

When I have the time and a paying client, I venture into the world of wrestling photography. Usually, this takes the form of busting out the studio lights to provide a series of portraits for use in programs, on flyers, posters and roster pages for websites, as well as photographing the show itself. While I can understand that most people wouldn’t even consider tackling this subject, I would argue that it is a really interesting, unusual challenge to set yourself.

A 50mm prime was used for intense close-up shots

Preparation

After seeing some of my previous work, I was contacted by my client with the request for a full day’s shooting. It was indeed to be a full day: up at 7am, home at midnight. I was commissioned to reshoot the promotional portraits for the entire roster and then shoot the show itself in the evening. I was given pretty much free reign to shoot the portraits as I saw fit, with the only requirement being to shoot them against a white or light background, for ease of cutting out for posters and the like in the future.

I spent the week prior to the shoot communicating with the promoter about each wrestler’s persona. This meant I would have my pose ideas in place beforehand, allowing me to work quickly. I purchased a new paper background in “Arctic White” (surely that’s just white? You can’t have shades of white), which I added to the expenses.

On the day of the shoot, I arrived and set up my background in a nice, big gym hall that was to be the changing room and general hanging-out area for before and after the wrestlers’ matches. I was acutely aware that adjusting lighting would take up a significant portion of my time over the day, so, to minimise that, I set a marker on the floor with a couple of pieces of sticky tape for the wrestlers to stand on, setting up my lighting based around that.

The Shoot

One of the less threatening members of the roster...

So far, so good. Except we hadn’t shot anyone yet. Wrestlers, whilst generally a good bunch of lads and lasses, aren’t models or professional posers, as it were, but generally aren’t nervous of the camera, either. This is both a blessing and a curse. It means they generally take direction fairly well, but if one of them turns up on set with this brilliant idea they have that will definitely look really cool and not at all silly and embarrassing, you have to handle that situation in a certain way.

I bring this up because it can apply to any posed portraiture session. Often, you may find that your subject suggests something that you either know won’t be used, due to the brief you have been given, or is just a horrible, horrible idea (it’s often the latter). It’s important that you indulge your subject at this point, within reason, because you want to keep them open and relaxed. If you listen to and try their ideas, it keeps the flow of the shoot going and makes them happier, even if you don’t use the shot. If you shut them down too often, they will most likely close themselves off to you: why should they try your ideas if you’re not willing to try theirs?

And no, “because I do this for a living” is not a fair point in their opinion.

To be fair, it’s always worth trying an idea your subject brings up: sometimes you can be surprised by how an idea which doesn’t sound so great on paper ends up looking great in practice. Your subject isn’t aware of the ‘rules’ of photography, so when they gleefully break them all without even realising, you sometimes get an unusual shot that actually works. Even if it’s not perfect, you can make suggestions to adjust the idea, explaining why you’re doing so, which will bring you to a great shot that you weren’t expecting to end up with.

This man is frightening.

For this shoot, my plan was to grab the closest person, get them in front of camera, shoot a range of ideas, adjust the lighting as quickly as possible without compromising the quality, and move on to the next person, keeping a rough “10 minutes per person” time limit in my head.

Although these shoots can be manic, I love seeing the difference in reactions and approaches from person to person. Some come in with their own ideas because they know their own character well. This can go one of two ways – guy turns up, does a variety of entertaining poses, I let them get on with it and make sure the technical side is covered, they’re done in 3 minutes and we have a set of great shots. The other, bad way, is guy turns up, thinks he’s got it down, doesn’t need your help, strikes a series of terrible poses. It’s then down to me to adjust their approach without getting them bent out of shape (emotionally as well as physically), which is a case of dealing with fragile egos to get them a better image without crushing their confidence.

I feel an extreme case of the waffles coming on, so let me fast forward you through the 8 hour shoot with some snippets of choice moments.

Time Lapse of Events

• “Please don’t backflip so close to my lights” *clunk*

• “I don’t want to come across as a cartoon character” (said whilst wearing neon, multicoloured lycra with tassles and facepaint)

• “I don’t need pose suggestions, I’m pretty good at this sort of thing” (guess what happened next)

• “OK now give me a bit of a sneer. You’re a bad guy, so look mean. That’s….not really a sneer – that’s more of a kissy face”

• “Right, really tense up now and snarl right into the camera, as intense as possible. Good, brilliant, more more more…OK stop now. No really, stop. I’m pretty sure you’re about to faint”

A bit more freedom with lighting and post-prod allows for more dramatic shots.

Wrapping up / Post Work

To finish up with a little technical detail, Lightroom saved me a heck of a lot of time here. I make my own presets based on the general setup of the lighting that day and apply them to a selection of images. The client then chooses their favourites and I run those through Photoshop for the full treatment, carefully editing and tweaking as much detail out of them as possible. With the wrestling promo shots, I tend to do quite a bit of post work, as the wrestlers need to look larger than life, like action heroes, so I’m a little more liberal with curves and sharpening than I usually would be, for that “movie poster” effect.

Finally, it’s a case of adding logos and sending to the client and we’re finished. One camera, one background, two lights and three hundred plus photographs of men in their pants: just another average working day.

International Day for Street Children

April 12th marks the global launch of the International Day for Street Children. The idea behind today is to show governments around the world that recognising the rights of street children is just as important a task as recognising the rights of children with homes. To celebrate the launch, cities across the world are doing a wide variety of things. In London, we’ll be using the power of photography to get the message across.

For one night only, there will be a photo exhibition marking the event. This one is a little different to your usual gallery viewing, however: the photographs will be projected onto the face of the National Theatre on the South Bank. The images themselves will highlight the daily struggle that street children across the world must live through every day.

Angel, Rag Picker, 6 years old, Mexico. Image credit: Marcus Lyon

The campaign is backed by Liverpool and England footballer Steven Gerrard, by Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle and is supported by Aviva, whose Street to School programme aims to get 500,000 young people back into education or training by 2015.

So why is it important? Street children are those who sleep on the streets, work on the streets or spend a significant amount of time on the streets. They are some of the most vulnerable and marginalised children in the world and, as such, have no support or protection from the state or parents / families and, as a result, have no voice.

Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle said:

“Filming Slumdog Millionaire opened my eyes to the horrendous conditions that street children in India are forced to endure on a day to day basis – an unimaginable mix of poverty, hardship, cruelty and abuse. That’s why I’m supporting the International Day for Street Children and the Louder Together campaign. These children need a voice and need to be heard by the international community I urge everyone to go online and pledge their support at www.streetchildren.org.uk.”

Photo by Dan Lynch. Projected image by Marcus Lyon.

So make a quick visit to www.streetchildren.org.uk today and grab a free ‘Louder Together’ Twibbon to pop on your Facebook or Twitter profile – it only takes a sec, it’s free, and it’ll help raise the awareness of International Day for Street Children.

Don’t forget to pop down to South Bank and watch the projection on the face of the National Theatre. It will take place today (12th April 2011) at approximately 7:30pm.

A Closer Look: David Chancellor

The more observant of Small Aperture’s loyal readers may have noticed that my blogging on Small Aperture has increased as of late. Well I have further bad news for you: I’ll be looking after our dear litle blogging site for the whole week. As a portrait photographer, I’m kicking off the week by looking at one of many portrait photographers whose work I enjoy, in the hope to inspire you, help you get more out of portraits and, ultimately, explain to you and to myself why I am particularly attracted to looking at and creating portraiture.

David Chancellor was the winner of 2010′s Taylor Wessing National Portrait Gallery Photo Prize – a wonderful exhibition which was displayed in, you guessed it, London’s National Portrait Gallery. I’m not going to look at his winning entry, “huntress with buck” – instead I’ll be looking at a portrait series of his, entitled “Boxers”.

Daniel 'the mover' Avenir #I, from the series boxers, before and after

What I love about “Boxers” is the simplicity at the heart of the idea. It has that “why didn’t I think of that?” appeal to it. On the basic level, it’s a “before and after” spot the difference affair, showing each fighter just before their fight and immediately after their fight. This series has a quality that I see in many excellent pieces of portraiture (and any photography, for that matter): a simple, strong idea that has been executed exceptionally well.

From a technical perspective, they are absolutely beautiful – the lighting separates the boxers from the background so that they are especially prominent in the image. Another important detail is that the boxers are situated in the same position in the frame in their before and after shots (or, at least, those who were still able to sit up straight afterwards are!) which adds to the intensity of the “after” shot, as it almost seems like no time at all has passed between the two images, as they don’t appear to have moved anywhere in the interim.

So we’ve briefly examined the setup of the shots, but what takes a portrait from a pretty picture to something that holds your attention and gets you thinking beyond what you can initially see? To achieve this, we need a story.

The boxers in these images are not professionals. They are part of a phenomenon in South Africa known as “White Collar Boxing”, where men and women who have white collar jobs train for around three months to take part in a special boxing event against others of the same background. Not only that, but the boxers in this series are about to have their very first fight. Armed with this knowledge, whole new areas of intrigue are opened up to us, and this is where a well-lit, professionally composed image begins to turn into a real piece of portraiture.

Daniel 'the mover' Avenir #II, from the series boxers, before and after.

Now, we are scrutinising their expressions prior to their fights. You can see the nervous energy they are harbouring under the surface, the kind that only builds up prior to a tense situation such as a physical fight, especially your first ever fight. Look at how some try harder to hide that nervousness, or indeed tackle it head on, especially for the camera. In a way, to point a camera at you the moment before your fight is the non-verbal equivalent of someone saying “how are you feeling about your first fight?” to which they answer non-verbally. I know that sounds a little pretentious, but go back and look at them with that idea in mind – they’re answering the question for you with their expression. Isn’t that just magical?

The “after” shots are similarly rich with story and intrigue. Did they win, or lose? What injuries do they have? Some of the boxers look so utterly exhausted, it gives across a feeling of relief and release, especially when compared to their “before” images, packed with nervous energy. My personal favourite is Steve “the paratrooper” Burke: the expression of absolute defiance and confidence combined with the pose is incredibly imposing and powerful.

I’m pretty sure he won.

The final sign of a great portrait or series of portraits is what it leaves you with, or what questions it makes you ask that go beyond the initial image. What fascinated me is considering what drives these “ordinary”, office job people to step into the ring and do something that, in my opinion, is incredibly daunting and frightening. Were some attracted to the thrill of the idea and the danger involved? Was it a result of feeling bored and stuck in a 9 to 5 driving the need to do something different? Was it the need to challenge themselves to instil a sense of progress and improvement in their lives? Bearing in mind that David tells us that White Collar Boxing is hugely popular across South Africa, it brings you to ask questions about the human condition, about what drives us.

Steve 'the paratrooper' Burke, from the series boxers, before and after.

David allows us to come to these conclusions and ask these questions ourselves, which is an important distinction to make. I’m all for setting up a series of portraits with a little bit of flavour text to tell you what you’re looking at, but it’s important to strike a balance. I have an intense dislike for photo projects where the photographer has written three pages of text to accompany the photographs, telling you what colour schemes to look out for, how the images all link to each other and which of your preconceptions will be challenged. This should all come across in the image: you shouldn’t be told how to feel (or what your prejudices and preconceptions are, for that matter).

And that, dear readers, is why I love “Boxers” and why I love portraiture. I’ll be taking a look at another portrait story later in the week.

We’ve included a couple of David’s “Boxers” images in this article purely for editorial and critique purposes. I hope my article has already moved you to do so, but please go and explore the full set on David’s site. Here’s a direct link – http://www.davidchancellor.com/docs/photos.php?id=3:5

Improving your post-event sales with PicsCliq

If photography is your job, the world of wedding photography can be tricky to break into, especially if you’re looking for it to be your main source of income. Maybe you’re great at shooting the stuff but have no idea how to get decent sales from what you produce. All those wedding guests are potential customers: if only you could interest them all in a getting a print of their own. Basically, we’re talking about post-event sales and how PicsCliq can help boost those sales.

So, how do you get the most out of your post-event sales? Now I don’t do weddings but, as far as I know, barricading the church door and only letting people out once they’ve bought a print is frowned upon and considered “a bit unprofessional”. A big frustration of many event and wedding photographers is that they find it hard to connect with their potential customer base once they leave the venue.

This is where PicsCliq comes in. PicsCliq is, essentially, a service designed to drive sales for your work following an event by taking advantage of social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. A service like Facebook is handy for increasing awareness of the images because, it can be safely assumed, a large chunk of the attendees of the wedding will have an interest in looking at the wedding photos put up by the happy couple. The downside of Facebook is that once a photographer uploads their work, it’s hard to control how and where it is used.

My wedding portrait of a (sickeningly photogenic) chum of mine.

PicsCliq integrates with Facebook, filling in what is missing from uploading on your own: control of the images and, most importantly, sales options for those who are viewing the image. This is the gap that PicsCliq is looking to fill, allowing you to take proper advantage of the exposure social media can offer you. PicsCliq refer to themselves as a “full service solution”, as they handle everything, from the initial generation of traffic, right through to the printing, packaging and shipping of the work.

It’s free to sign up and upload your images to PicsCliq and they only make money if they actually generate sales for you, so it’s certainly worth a punt.

Personally, I think this is ideal for new professionals looking to start making money from photography. Although PicsCliq are currently focusing on weddings, they do plan to expand into all kinds of events in the near future.

Go and find out more at www.picscliq.com.

Flash! Flash Gordon? Flashdance? No, flashgun photography

What do you mean by flashguns, Gareth? Are you talking about ostentatious weaponry?

To be fair, I’m sure you’ve heard of flashguns before, but I needed an excuse to start with a bad joke. This week’s Photography Concept on Friday is about flashguns, and why you should consider taking the plunge and buying one.

Flashguns come in a variety of shapes, sizes and prices, each having their pros and cons. They all share the same selling point, though – a flashgun allows you to have much greater control over the power and direction of your flash.

Most flashguns fit snugly into the hotshoe on top of your camera (that metal thing that sort of looks like a giant staple… sort of… ) and give you an immediate creative advantage. Here’s an exciting bullet point list of what you can do with flashguns that you can’t with most built in flashes:

• You can angle the flash to fire in a direction other than directly at your subject
• You can manually alter the strength of the flash
• You can add a diffuser to your flash
• It reduces the chance of red eye, as explained in an earlier PCoF by our very own Matthew Druin.

Now you may be wondering ‘Why on earth would you want to fire your flash somewhere other than at what you’re photographing? That’s a bit postmodern isn’t it?’ As a portrait photographer, I’ll use the example of a headshot to explain why it’s beneficial to be able to control the direction of your flash.

When you point your flash directly at someone’s face for a headshot, the quality of light is often both too strong and too ‘hard’. This can create nasty big, sharp shadows on someone’s face. Direct flash can also have one of two other effects: your subject either ends up looking very shiny and sweaty, or their entire face is bright white, save for their irises, as if they were part of some kind of benevolent alien race.

A flashgun allows you to bounce your light off the ceiling, wall or other object by taking advantage of its ability to swivel and move. This diffuses the light and allows it to spread before reaching your subject, giving them a more naturally lit appearance.

With a flashgun, you can manually set the strength, or power, of your flash. This is an advanced technique and will take practice but the results can be fantastic. A common example of manually setting the strength of a flash is when shooting a portrait with a bright light source behind the subject, such as the sun (a fairly bright light source, I’m sure you’ll agree). A small amount of what’s known as ‘fill in flash’ will allow you to do just that – fill in the light that will be missing from the front of your subject. Now, a shot that would usually result in a sihouette has turned into a dramatic, interesting portrait. Good eh?

If that sounds daunting, don’t worry – most modern flashguns have what’s known as a ‘TTL’ or Through The Lens mode, where your flashgun talks to your camera (not literally – if this is happening, go see a doctor) and automatically sets the correct flash power depending on your camera settings and direction of your flashgun.

Adding a diffuser to your flashgun provides you with even greater control over your light source. They’re not too expensive but are, essentially, glorified yoghurt pots that have been shaped correctly to fit over the head of the flashgun. When bouncing the light off an object with a diffuser attached, you get two stages of diffusion, making the quality of your light even better.

I didn’t even get to off-camera flash yet or the idea of using multiple flashguns to light a scene, but I think that’s enough for you to digest for now. I’ll leave you with an example of a portrait I took using a flashgun:

Suda51 of Grasshopper Manufacture, photographed using a flashgun.

As an on-location portrait photographer for magazines, a flashgun is absolutely essential for me. In this diptych, I used a flashgun with diffuser attached. The flash was pointed upward and was bounced off the ceiling, back down onto the subject. What you will notice is that aside from the small dot of light within the pupil, it isn’t apparent that a flashgun was used at all. This is the sort of effect you’re looking for.

Now have you taken all that in? Promise? Good. Off you pop, then.

Top tips for sports photography

Chances are, there’s some sport that you’re interested in, dear reader. Even if football, rugby and the like isn’t for you, there’s always table tennis, trampolining or tiddlywinks. Even if you’re not much of a sports fan, sports photography can be a lot of fun and can seriously challenge your skills, giving you a chance to improve. We’ve put together a little handful of sporty tips, tricks and techniques to give you the edge.

Technique – Panning

Canter by Daniela Bowker

Panning is a technique that is mostly found in motorsport photography. It involves tracking your subject as it whizzes past you at speed. The desired effect is to keep your subject in focus but allow the background to blur, getting across that sense of fast movement. Essentially, the key is to keep your subject in the same position in the frame for the entire duration of the shot. This keeps your subject sharp. It’s not easy, but it’s worth mastering, as it looks fantastic. You can almost hear the car going “VROOOOOM!”. Maybe.

Technique – Manual Focusing

Ugrás / Jump by Peti_205

You’ll mostly see this technique being used in motorcross, snowboarding and biking – basically anything with a ramp for those braver (and crazier) than you or I to fling themselves off. You’ll see most photographers manually focus on a ramp or a bump in the track. Then they can get their framing and composition right, and just wait for the shot to come to them. It’s a tried an tested technique which can yield brilliant results. So give it a go!

Tip – Become A Clairvoyant

Played On, by Jim Campbell

Don’t worry, you won’t need to buy any dream catchers or crystal balls – I’m talking about learning to predict where the action will be. It helps, of course, if you’re familiar with the sport you’re shooting. If you can work out where the action is going to be, you can get yourself into position before it even happens. Then you wait. the last thing you want is to be fumbling around, missing great moments. Get there first, get there early.

Tip – Don’t Just Go Where The Ball Is

Aggie Women's Tennis - 51 by StuSeeger

Often, it can be a good idea to check out what’s happening around the action, there are some great photos to be had when you nab a shot of a furious footy manager on the sidelines, an ecstatic crowd reaction following a goal, or the jubliant player celebrations. Sometimes, the story isn’t just where the ball is.

Tip – Pay Attention To Faces

Photo by Gareth Dutton

Admittedly, this isn’t much use in motorsport, because you can’t see their faces, but when shooting anything else (alright fine, not fencing either) a good photo (OK, nor Formula One) can be turned into a great photo when you capture an expression in there too. Anxiety, joy, despair – there’s nothing like sport for making grown men cry.

Ten Awe-Inspiring Apples

So, what did you do for National Apple Day yesterday? Nothing?! Nothing at all?! You mean to tell me you didn’t graze on a Granny Smith? Gobble a Golden Delicious? You didn’t so much as bother a Braeburn? For shame. Next you’ll be telling me you didn’t partake in the annual apple-based food fight – it’s a bit like the Spanish Tomatina festival, except with significantly more injuries.

OK, so I’ll admit, I didn’t do anything for National Apple Day, either. I’m feeling a wee bit guilty, so I thought I’d alleviate that guilt a little by trawling through the Flickr dungeons (so you don’t have to) and finding some interesting, beautiful or generally noteworthy apple-themed images. You wouldn’t believe how many people have inserted some rather distinctive white headphones into an apple. None of those images will feature.

That said, here are ten of the best. Chomp away. You can count this as part of your five-a-day.

1 – Paradise Lost

Paradise Lost by petervanallen

2 – The Untimely Death of Granny Smith

The Untimely Death of Granny Smith by Mr. Moog

3 – Rinfrescante…Refreshing…Refrescante

Rinfrescante...Refreshing...Refrescante by Oceano Mare

4 – Qué

Qué by Ibai Acevedo

5 – Apple Jumping Out of the Water

Apple Jumping Out of the Water by AHMED

6 – Frost Crab Apple in the Garden

Frost Crab Apple in the Garden by Steven House Photography

7 – Apple

Apple, by Dragan*

8 – Temptation, Taste, Venom

Temptation, Taste, Venom by dogfaceboy

9 – Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy

Pools of Sorrow, Waves of Joy by au tum n

10 – Wet Fruit

Wet Fruit by Leo Druker

All photos used in this article are used as ‘fair dealing‘. If you have strong reservations against your photos appearing on Small Aperture, please contact us, and we’ll get them taken down. Please support the artists creating these photos by clicking on the photos to take a closer look at their work!

Photographing in the dark

Photographing in the dark can seem a daunting and difficult task when encountering it for the first time, but here at Small Aperture we have a few quick pointers to help you out. Hopefully this article will, wait for it, shed some light on the subject (I’m so, so sorry). So what can we do to combat low light photography? There are, thankfully, several options available to us.

Use a larger aperture

I shot this at f/2.8 at ISO 1600 - the shutter speed needed to remain high.

One option is to work with a larger aperture. What is aperture, you ask? Well I’m shocked and appalled, quite frankly, that you haven’t already read up on our article about it. The bigger your aperture, the more light you’re going to be letting in. Of course, sometimes, you can’t afford to / don’t want to lower your aperture. Whatever shall we do? Well, you could always…

Increase your ISO

Increasing your ISO will increase your sensor’s sensitivity to light, which will help make the most of what little light you’ve got to work with. What are you talking about Gareth? What are these kooky letters you’re putting together? As always, we have it covered – nip over to our guide to ISO and then come back to me when you’re up to speed.

All done? Good. So, increasing your ISO can help you capture those precious, delicious slivers of light skulking around in the darkness. But what about all this horrid noise? It’s spotty and grainy and yucky – this won’t do at all. Well, how about we only increase the ISO a tad and look at changing some other settings?

and this one required all three - ISO 1600, aperture of f/2.8 and a shutter speed of 1/100. Take THAT, low light!

Lower your shutter speed

Lowering your shutter speed can also help your camera gather more light for when there is little to play with. Guess what? We have this one covered, too – take a look here. The longer we have the shutter open for, the more time light has to get in. Too low a shutter speed can lead to image blur, however, and unless you’re going for that look, images that aren’t sharp are, well, unsharp. Image still too dark? Well, I’m afraid that’s all your options exhausted. Bummer. Or is it…?

Get yourself a tripod

Go on, do it now. Open a new window in your browser, go to Amazon, and get it ordered. Unlike other things in your kit, a decent, sturdy tripod doesn’t really ever need to be replaced for a newer model and should still be useful for years and years to come. This means you’ll have to give it a name, of course. Mine’s called Trev. Trev the Tripod. Trev has always been there for me when I’ve needed him. The best thing about Trev is, when I need to lower my shutter speed to a duration for which I couldn’t possibly hold my camera still, I pop it on Trev and he keeps it perfectly still for the whole exposure.

Good old Trev.

You’ll mostly find a tripod useful for grabbing yourself some lovely sunset / late evening landscapes, which will afford you to work with a very small aperture AND a low ISO setting in order to get some lovely, low light landscapes.

Let’s summarise, then.

To defeat the low-light menace, try a combination of these factors:

• Use a larger aperture

• Increase your ISO

• Lower your shutter speed and, if it’s too low for a sharp image…

• …Use a tripod!

Depending on what sort of image you’re after, you’ll be using a combination of these for one image and maybe just altering a single factor for another. There is no greater teacher than experience, so get out there armed with this new-found knowledge and experiment! Seeing as it’s Friday, if your friends invite you to the pub just tell them ‘Can’t make it tonight, I’m afraid; I’m spending the evening in a field with Trev.’

Ten Scintillating Street Shots!

Well, they’re actually street and reportage, but then I wouldn’t be able to have my alliterative cake and eat it if I included that detail in the title. One of the most frequently explored areas of photography is what we might class as reportage, or street photography (if the photo has a street in it somewhere, obviously).

A street shot can be a historical document, a candid snap presenting us a slice of life, or a carefully thought out, tidily composed architectural piece.

Or, apparently, hundreds of HDR images of pigeons.

Now don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that good street photography is hard to do well – the best images have that little sprinkling of magic and catch your eye – so I thought it’d be nice to put together a small selection of street and reportage shots, old and new. Hopefully this mix of old historical images and more recent (as in “more recent than 1920″) street photography will inspire you to get out there and find that elusive killer image.

Remember, think laterally, not literally!

1 – One Simple Day in London

One Simple Day in London by Miodrag Bogdanovic mitja

2 – Untitled

Untitled, by Thomas.hwluxx

3 – Palmers Mysetery Hike

Palmers Mystery Hike

4 – Palmers Mystery Hike

Palmers Mystery Hike

5 – Untitled

Untitled, by Ocularis

6 – Ocean Wave Hotel

Ocean Wave Hotel

7 – London Bridge Tunnel

London Bridge Tunnel by Martino's Doodles

8 – The girl in the street

The girl in the street by **fly**

9 – Foggy Day on the Streets of Brussels

Foggy Day in the Streets of Brussels by Ben Heine

10 – This is London calling Bokehistan. Will you accept the charges?

"This is London calling Bokehistan. Will you accept the charges?" by Rogvon

All photos used in this article are used as ‘fair dealing‘. If you have strong reservations against your photos appearing on Small Aperture, please contact us, and we’ll get them taken down. Please support the artists creating these photos by clicking on the photos to take a closer look at their work!

Editing software doesn't have to cost the earth

Wow, that’s a really nice picture. It’s a shame about that big spot on her chin though. And she won’t thank you for that bit of hair she has on her lip there. Y’know, I think her hair is a slightly darker shade of red than that OH GOD IT’S WRONG IT’S ALL WRONG.

Now I admit, you can end up getting a bit OCD about image editing (see first paragraph). While this is true, take a portrait of anyone you know who is even the slightest bit vain and your vision of keeping them “just as they are”, complete with dark circles under the eyes from working late and that bit of spinach in the teeth from tonight’s dinner, might not be met with the standing ovation you were expecting.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to just tidy up those minor niggles that pop into your pictures sometimes? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to do it without sacrificing central heating and eating nothing but rice and “no frills” tinned tomatoes for a month, just to save up enough money?

Well read on, budding image makers, for I have tried and tested four different lower-price solutions for you. (Cos, well, we’ve already looked at the free ones.) As a portraiture photographer first and foremost, I decided to take the same, straight out of camera, unedited image and try to get the most out of it using these four different packages:

• Corel Paintshop Pro X3 – £79.00
• Nikon Capture NX2 – £113.61
• Portrait Professional – £69.95
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 – £77.46

I’ll be testing each one using the same four criteria: exposure tweaking / editing, retouching and sharpening, black and white conversion, and toys and fun filters. Here’s the image I’ll be using:

Corel Paintshop Pro X3

Upon first loading up, Corel had a fairly easy and clear layout, arranged logically. It’s essentially an organiser and image editor in one. After a bit of fiddling, I worked out how to bring up my image and start messing with it in the editor.

Exposure tweaking/editing

I adjusted the colour balance to make the image cooler, then used curves to alter the shadows, midtones and highlights. I have to say, there was little subtlety in the changes in tone and exposure. Another thing I noticed was that there isn’t instant feedback to the changes you make in the preview pane — it takes a good second, as if it were the victim of satellite delay on a news programme. It might be my poor brain being a useless, pickled mess but by that time I’d pretty much forgotten what my image looked like before the tweak.

Corel with sharpening

Retouching and sharpening

I used the clone brush to even out the skin tones, bringing the opacity down to even out skin tones and remove bags from under the eyes. This was fairly effective, but again not as subtle as I would have liked. There is a “makeover” tool which is fairly effective for removing individual spots and blemishes.

When sharpening, the high pass sharpen wasn’t too bad, but left the picture a bit grainy. The unsharp mask (which is often used for a slightly more dramatic sharpen) was nowhere near as subtle as I’d have liked it to be, and bringing the slider up to any remotely significant amount was creating a weird ring around the iris; I’m quite sure that “weird ring around my irises” isn’t the first thing my clients ask for in their portraits.

Toys and fun filters

Your usual array of brush stroke effects and the like here but something I hadn’t seen before was quite a cool little feature called Time Machine. This runs you through a few different classic image making methods, from the Daguerrotype images of 1840 to a classic cross-processed look. And they don’t look half bad, to be fair. Plus there’s a paragraph explaining how each photographic method worked at the time, so you get a little history lesson, too!

Ooh, with toys!

Corel using even more toys!

You may have noticed that I didn’t include a black and white conversion section for Corel. That’s because there is a “black and white film” effect hidden away in the filters section, which oddly gives a much greater degree of control over black and white conversion than the other option on offer, which was a simple remove colour option. I found I made a better conversion using the black and white film filter.

Corel does black and white

Summary

A good variety of tools available for image editing, but not enough power and subtlety in the tools themselves. A bit like borrowing an old toolbox from your grandad ñ lots of stuff in there, but most of it isn’t worth using.

Portrait Professional

I will be putting all of the categories together for this one, as they all sort of happen at the same time. Plus, there are no fun toys or filters to speak of, nor are there any black and white conversion options, apart from sliding the saturation to 0. This piece of software is a little different from the others in that it is designed specifically for portrait images.

After loading up my JPEG image, I had to define where the eyes, nose, edges of the face, chin, sense of humour, likes, dislikes, opinion on Jedward all are in the subject’s face (some of those aren’t true, I’ll leave you to work out which they are), to create what can only be described as what might pass for a death mask in the TRON universe:

Portrait Professional

You are then taken to the editing suite, where everything is a slider. It felt a bit like create-a-character mode in a computer game, as I was able to adjust the shape of his mush in several ways, using a slider. None of them looked particularly natural, though.

The other sliders all deal with skin smoothness, wrinkle removal, spots and blotches, dark shadows under eyes and so on. Essentially, this program appears to be a piece of “quick fix” software to make portraits looks good. However, I’m really not sure who this software is aimed at – to professionally retouch an image requires a careful, complex level of attention, skill and patience, working on individual areas of the face for a significant period of time. There are no shortcuts, and this software can only do so much towards improving an image before the face you started with begins to look plastic and unreal.

Interestingly, I was also unable to save the image in the trial version. I decided to delve closer by zooming into the image and started to realise why they might not want us to save the image – the amount of detail lost when using the various sliders make the retouch job look amateurish.

Portrait Professional not doing such a great job

It looked like I had taken a wire wool scouring pad dipped in hydrochloric acid, held my subject down, and proceeded to scour his face until it was featureless and sterile. Actually, maybe that would save me time after the shoot in retouching – anyone fancy a free portrait session? No?

Like anything in life, there are no “quick fixes”. I personally would avoid this particular piece of software. If you’re serious about using photo editing software to get more out of your pics, there are much better programs out there for similar prices.

Nikon Capture NX2

What I immediately liked about NX2 was the fact that it didn’t take very long at all to load ñ it popped up on my screen and was ready and waiting without any fuss. I chose my photo and I was into the editing suite in seconds. There was a very clear and uncluttered layout and it almost felt like I had used it before. Each adjustment you made to the photo would be recorded as a “step”, so that could return to a step should you find it needed adjusting later on, which is a nice, non-destructive way of editing.

Exposure tweaking/editing

Editing exposure was very simple and effective. All was done from a simple “adjust” menu. The results were displayed very quickly, more quickly than in PaintShop Pro, which made it easier to make finer adjustments to the image. I was also impressed with the amount of fine control there was to be had over the exposure and other settings. As before, I used curves to edit the shadows, mids and lights and then altered the colour temperature to make the image cooler.

NX2 with sharpening

Retouching and sharpening

The auto retouch brush did a good job of removing blemishes without blurring the skin.Unfortunately, there was no clone brush I could use to smooth out skin tones. Looking in help, they suggested using a gaussian blur to smooth out skin tones. Unfortunately, this just gives you a picture of a dude with a blurry face. I used this in combination with the selection brush (works like a photoshop mask) in order to localise the blur to desired areas of the skin. Not the best solution, but it did help a little with skin tones and blemishes.

I used the same sharpening methods (high pass sharpen and an unsharp mask). There was a better fine level of control here than with Paintshop Pro but not as good as I’d have liked.

Black and white with NX2

Black and white conversion

There was a dedicated black and white conversion button, the sliders offering a good level of control again, although I felt the options were a little too simple. All in all, though, it was possible to get a good black and white conversion.

Toys and fun filters

None. Zip. Nuttin’. NX2 seems to be pushing itself as a very serious digital darkroom type thing, and you are very silly for wanting silly effects. Silly Billy.

Summary

To conclude, NX2 feels a bit like a beginner’s Adobe Lightroom, in a good way. It offers a decent level of fine control and immediate feedback. Both of these factors are very important when tweaking an image to get it just so. It’s a great place to start when learning how to get more out of your images. A few sessions learning with this program would definitely benefit your shots but at £113, are things getting a bit pricey?

Adobe Photoshop Elements 8

First Impressions

You knew it was coming, how could we not include Adobe? Photoshop Elements 8 (or PSE8 as I’ll call it from this point) is what you imagine it would be a sort of simplified, stripped down version of Photoshop. However, you are still able to make full use of a wide variety of tools and the layout was as clear and user-friendly as you would expect.

Exposure tweaking/editing

Retouched and sharpened with Elements 8

I initially loaded up my RAW file which loaded up Adobe camera RAW, a sort of pre-import tool that allows you to mess with colour balance, exposure etc before loading it up into the editing suite proper. There’s no mistaking the difference in the subtlety of changes you can make here, with instant feedback on how it’s looking.

Retouching and sharpening

Retouching was simple and effective. I used the clone stamp on various settings both to even out the skin tones and remove blemishes. Although there is a dedicated spot removal tool, I would recommend doing it manually with the clone stamp. No real complaints here. As before, I ran both a high pass filter and an unsharp mask on the image. Both were the most effective of all the packages. There really doesn’t seem to be any better software for portrait retouching and sharpening at this price.

Elements does black and white

Black and white conversion

As with its bigger brother, Elements has a dedicated convert to black and white tool. It’s slightly simplified but essentially very similar to the “full” version. It has some presets you can meddle with to see how different mixes harbour different results.

Toys and fun filters

An extensive range of fun toys and filters to mess with your photos, from various sketch / brush effects to turning your image into a mosaic and adding clouds (for when you need that clouds-over-a-mosaic look). In case you were wondering, here is that much sought-after look:

And Elements has toys, too!

Summary

To conclude, PSE8 has everything you need to start practicing enhancing and getting more from your images. The price is on a par with the other packages on offer here and it will give you a chance to see whether you really need the bigger, more feature packed full version, for a fraction of the price.

And the winner is…

It was probably something of a foregone conclusion, but it seems that PSE8 has it, at least it does for me. Nikon Capture NX2 does a valiant job of providing an alternative to Adobe Lightroom at a slightly cheaper price, but not much cheaper than Lightroom 2, so I’m not sure it’s particularly worth dropping your pennies on, especially at over £100. In addition, I feel you can do most of what NX2 offers in Photoshop Elements 8.

And because I should probably warn you, it’s worth mentioning a program I downloaded the trial of which was going for around £25, called Pixbuilder. It was essentially MSPaint with (very bad) layers and curves options thrown in. If you’re wondering “how cheap is too cheap for my image editing software?”, the answer is “that cheap”.

You don't have to shoot weddings

Freelancing. You love photography but you’re not a hardcore businessman. You’re still figuring out what sort of photography you do. After being introduced by a mutual friend, a new acquaintance at a party politely enquires ‘Oh, you’re a photographer? What do you photograph?’ to which you can only respond with ‘Uhhh, anything, really…’

Then comes the age-old question; ‘Do you do weddings?’ At this point, you should make yourself as tall and wide as you possibly can, puff out your chest and shout ‘NO! NO I DO NOT!’ Unless you are a wedding photographer, obviously, as this would make for a lousy business model.

In essence, wedding photography is as much about being able to organise and herd people as it is about being able to take photos. I think if I did weddings (I do not do weddings), I’d bring a sheepdog with me.

I attended a friend’s wedding recently. The photographer was much more into band photography and this was obviously a sideline to keep the pennies rolling in. Now he did a fine job on the day, but the expression of mental anguish on his face when he was trying to organise a group of 80 or so people to pose on the lawn outside the church was distressingly apparent. He might as well have taken a marker pen and written ‘Oh god, why did I agree to this?’ across his forehead.

Well I have news for you, budding photographers, you don’t have to shoot weddings! If a sharp chill zithers down your spine at the idea of your work turning into a photo factory, churning out nightmarishly similar images of close-ups of wedding rings, monochrome babies’ toes with a shallow DOF, tightly cropped images of the backs of wedding corsets being tied up, I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way.

But you need to do at least a bit of it for the money, right? Nope.

Try this now; google for photographers in your area. Go on, I’ll wait here until you get back. See how many people are offering baby / pregnancy / wedding type shoots? See how similar they are? Your first reaction may be that this is the way to go if you want to stay afloat. I would argue that this market is ludicrously saturated and, if you want to photograph stuff for a living and enjoy it, you have to carve your niche.

To clarify, I’m not knocking this kind of photography, despite the slightly snide tone; people are photographers for different reasons. This is to those of you who want to do it for a living for more reasons than just for money.

So, what kind of photography is profitable if it’s not wedding photography? The answer is any kind. I earn my keep through a rather unusual mix of magazine work, promotional portraiture (for actors, singers, comedians, whatever) and pro wrestling photography. Yep, pro wrestling.

So what about you, what do you enjoy the most? Are you an architecture sort of person? Does portraiture excite you? Do you love trekking up mountains at dawn to catch a spectacular landscape? Sports? Abstract? Macro? Heck, you might even be genuinely excited by perfectly lit product photography – it’s not for me to judge (you nutter). You need to shoot what you love, and love what you shoot. That way, it doesn’t feel like work, and you’re much more likely to create something really special, because you care about the end product. The phrase ‘that’ll do’ shouldn’t be in your repertoire.

It’s going well – you undertake photography that interests you, in a style that you particularly enjoy. This creates an environment of self-motivated improvement – you like your stuff, you want to make it better. And better. And better. Now when someone asks ‘What do you photograph?’ or, more importantly, when you send emails to potential customers (you are sending out lots of emails, right?) you can explain what you do with conviction and with passion – ‘I mainly shoot architectural stuff, especially abandoned buildings or uninhabited places. I love the textures and shapes and looking for that perfect composition.’ Or ‘I specialise in portraiture, more specifically fashion-style shoots. I tend to do a lot of clean, high-key type stuff because I love the way it looks.’

Sounds better than ‘anything, really…’ or ‘whatever’, doesn’t it? Photography is everywhere, find a gap and fill it. Make sure you love what you do, because people will see that enthusiasm and get on board with you – it’s infectious.

And not a wedding in sight.