Wednesday 21 November 2012

Success in Stranger After Dark Competition

After my night and day street photography workshop I had a few decent portraits of complete strangers.  I decided to enter one of them 'Zombie Boy' into a photo competition that was organised by book publisher Thames and Hudson.  The challenge of the competition was to take a portrait of a complete stranger during the hours of darkness.  You weren't allowed to take 'sneak' shots and the subject had to give you permission to take the photo.  Each photographer was only allowed to enter one image.

The results were announced two days ago and I'm really please to say my picture came in second! :)  My prize is a copy of Cardiff After Dark and Street Photography Now, two excellent books that should be on any photographer's shelf.  

The top nine entries, of the 70+ that were entered, are shown in order below starting with the winner:


Oktoberfest by Michael May


Zombie Boy by Me!


Bride Having a Fag Break by Dimitra Kountiou


Portrait by Yorgos


Stranger after Dark by Danielle Houghton


Untitled by Andreas Paradise


Bananas by Adam


Pink in Red Light Amsterdam by Henning Welslau


Untitled by Lukasz Nowosadzki



Monday 19 November 2012

Tricky Shooting: Animal Photography through Glass and Wire

Amongst some of the photography skills I've been practising recently is taking images through glass or wire fences.  For this post I'm going to share some of the pictures I took whilst at Exmoor Zoo last week and use them as an excuse to share some tips with you.  I used my Canon 5D Mk2 and two lenses - a Canon 24-70mm and a Tamron 70-300mm.

When shooting through glass I have only found one approach that gives a high success rate.  If the subject is away from the window then I can press my lens flat up against the glass.  This is an easy way to get rid of the distracting reflections that can ruin many pictures.  The camera should be able to focus automatically but in a few cases you may have to flick the focus to manual and sort things out yourself.  If the subject is close to the window then you will need a camera with a macro setting (or use extension tubes to reduce the minimum focussing distance).

In order not to clutter up this blogpost I've put a list of all the camera settings I used at the end of this article.

The following shot was the first one I took on entering the zoo.  This monkey could clearly see me through the glass and I think it could see its own reflection in my lens.  I also tried to treat my animal subjects as if they were human.  This meant that I had to concentrate on getting the eyes in sharp focus and, where possible, capture the animal with catch-lights in the eyes.

Can anyone resist those eyes?

If the subject is behind a wire cage and is sitting close to the edge then it can be impossible to blur out the cage.  Faced with this situation I decided to make the cage part of the shot.  This baby monkey was nervously moving through an overhead cage 'tunnel' that liked two large enclosures.  I feel that by including the cage in the following shot, ensuring that the majority of the face was visible, I managed to create an image that forces an emotion from the viewer.

Sometimes you can use the cages for more emotion

If the subject is away from the wire cage then it is possible to almost completely remove the bars by using a shallow depth of field.  This forces the camera to keep only a thin area of the scene in focus.  As long as the area concerned contains your subject then the closest bars will often almost completely disappear.  This can be seen in the image below:

Bad hair day

Where possible you should try and position the camera lens close to the fence in order to enhance the blurring out effect.  If this isn't possible you can use the bars for creative effect.  I thought that this monkey looked a little crazy and I loved the orange eyes and so with a bit of me shuffling around to get the bars in the right place I took this shot:


Here are two examples taken through glass.  This meerkat was enjoying the heat from a lamp and so was well lit in the dark enclosure.  The light meant that my camera had enough contrast to focus and so it was relatively easy to get the shot.  For the second image I used the telephoto lens and concentrated on getting the eyes in focus and with a glint in them.  I'm not sure why I chose such an usual angle for the second shot, it just felt right :)


Sunbathing Meerkat


Simples.  (Sorry)

It took a great deal of attempts to get the final shot of each animal.  For the following two images I took a total of thirty images.  The difficulties I had were shooting at a long distance, through glass, in poor light with two subjects that just didn't want to look at the camera.  Patience in these scenarios is a virtue.


Caracal


Maned Wolf


You may have noticed in the Maned Wolf image there is a vertical blurry streak to the right of the frame.  This was a tall piece of grass that was close to the window but i didn't notice at the time of shooting.  When shooting I rarely check my images on the viewfinder other than for a quick look to ensure the settings are correct.  It means I can spend more time looking for the 'decisive moment' but does run the risk of errors like this.

Sometimes it is just not possible to get the perfect image in camera and I may have to tweak the image later. I use the excellent Lightroom 4 software for the majority of my quick fixes.  Below I've shown two images I took of 'The Beast of Exmoor'.  I was shooting through thick glass that was partially frosted.  The leopard was pacing around it's enclosure and I took a few minutes to work out where the best light was and the pattern of the animals routine.  I only managed to get one usable image of the animal.

The first is the image as it came out of the camera.  The second image shows what can be done with a few simple clicks.  I increased the contrast, darkened the blacks and adjusted the vibrancy and white balance.  It meant I was able to take an image that looks like it was taken through a steamy bathroom window and turn it into something acceptable.







Some of the most complicated shots I took were of the zoo's two cheetahs.  There is a viewing platform available but I wasn't happy with the 'shoot down' angle that this created.  It was impossible to make eye contact with the animals and so I moved around the enclosure.  One of the keepers came out to feed them and give a talk about the animals.  This proved a good distraction for the cheetahs and meant they stayed still for a while.  The downside was that my new location was behind two widely spaced layers of mesh fencing.  The camera could not auto-focus and so I had to focus manually.  Using the eyes of the large cats as aiming points I was able to blur out the fences - but look closely and you can see the pattern of the fence causing a visual disturbance in the images.

Drooling watching the other cheetah eat

And pouncing on the remains of lunch seconds later

And a final flurry of images for you to look at - all taken in difficult circumstances:

Golden Headed Tamarin

Abyssinian Hornbill

Emperor Tamarin

Howler Monkey
Professional Help

If you are still struggling with taking pictures of animals in the zoo it may be worth checking to see if the zoo can help.  At Exmoor Zoo you can hire the help of a pro with prices that start at £75.  It doesn't necessarily give you any more access than as a normal visitor but you may find it helpful to have someone point out opportunities that are being missed or settings that are wrong.  I haven't used this service so can't vouch for it but you can find details HERE if interested.

Settings


Where possible I used the camera in Program mode  - this allows the camera to pick what it thinks is the best setting but gives me creative control over speed and aperture with a simple click of a thumb wheel.  I set the camera to ISO 400 for the whole day.  This allows the camera to shoot faster and so reduce camera shake, important when using a zoom range at maximum length.

1.  Monkey Eyes   70mm  f3.5  1/125sec
2.  Baby Monkey  300mm  f5.6  1/160sec
3.  Bad Hair  300mm f7.1  1/500sec
4.  Eye Target  271mm f8.0  1/640sec
5.  Meerkat    81mm  f4.0  1/80sec
6.  Meerkat Portrait  259mm  f5.6  1/80sec
7.  Caracal    300mm  f6.3  1/400sec
8.  Maned Wolf  300mm  f5.6  1/320sec
9/10.  Leopard  84mm  f5.6  1/160sec
11/12.  Cheetahs  300mm  f5.6  1/250sec
13.  Golden Tamarin  209mm  f5.0  1/80sec
14. Hornbill  300mm  f5.6  1/250sec
15. Emperor Tamarin  190mm  f5.0  1/30sec
16. Howler  60mm  f2.8  1/60sec







Monday 12 November 2012

Gregory Crewdson - Amazing photographer!


There are a few photographers who were an inspiration to me when I was starting out and Gregory Crewdson is one of my favourites.




Much of Crewdons’s elaborated staged work is set to look like small town America.  His images often feature disturbing, surreal events and rely heavily on subtle lighting.  The characters appear sweaty and grimy and nearly always seem dazed and unhappy.
 
I would love to have the sort of budget that Crewdson has.  He works with a large crew to take each photo and after an initial planning phase it can take anything up to 5 weeks to construct a set for each of the images and take shots to get one final picture!  All of the images in his recent series, Twilight, and Beneath the Roses have a very strong cinematic feeling to them.  Crewdson sites various films as inspiration for his work and these include, Close Encounters of the ThirdKind, Blue Velvet and Vertigo.

Crewdson, talking on Ovation TV, says his images “portray a collision of the familiar and the strange.  There is an unexpected sense of mystery or strangeness”.
 


Some critics have expressed a dislike for his style.  David Frankel writing for ArtForum.com believes, ‘a photograph that looks like a film still has a built-in issue, namely, that it is a photograph that looks like a film still… he succeeds only in reminding you that a film director must invent and oversee literally thousands of such images to fill the allotted ninety minutes and still can end up with a mediocre movie’.  In a way I can agree with Frankel but Crewdson has much more time available to create just one image and this comes across in the quality of the detailing of each element within the frame. 




In the Twilight series Crewdson has deliberately shot his images during the morning or evening twilight period to add a further sense of mystery to the images.  I was a little disappointed to learn that much of Crewdson’s work goes through some expensive and complicated post-processing.  I intend to try and replicate his style but do as much of it ‘in-camera’ as possible.  The video below is a bit of an advert for Epson printers but there is some great stuff from Crewdson talking about his images. 




This final video clip is Crewdson talking about his work creating the series Sanctuary, black and white images created in an abandoned film lot.




It was Crewdson’s image with William H Macy that served as the inspiration for the title image that I use on this blog and regularly on my facebook page.



You can find more information about two of Crewdson's images on the Aperture website.

The Gagosina Gallery has some great images from Crewdson and a full biography HERE.


Monday 5 November 2012

Taylor Wessing National Portrait Photography Prize Winner announced

Congratulations to Jordi Ruiz Cirera who has been announced as the winner of the Taylor Wessing Portrait Photograph prize.  Information came hot off the press via the British Journal of Photography's great iPhone App.

My prediction was correct :)

Read about the short list and see some of my favourite shots in my previous post HERE

Margarita Teichroeb, from the series Menonos - © Jordi Ruiz Cirera
























In second place, shown below, was Lynne, Brighton by Jennifer Pattison

Lynne, Brighton - © Jennifer Pattison

Pro photographers with really cheap cameras

Tonight I thought I'd share some light entertainment that has a serious message.  Most photographers are guilty of camera envy.  I have a lovely full frame DSLR and yet still want a medium format camera.  Photographers starting out are often quick to blame the camera for rubbish pictures.

This series of YouTube video clips gives different professional photographers really, really bad cameras and challenges them to get the most out of the kit.  The results may not win Photographer of the Year but I was very impressed by the images that could be produced from cameras as simple as an iPhone 2 or a Lego Camera!

Each video is around 10 minutes long except for the one with Chase Jarvis as his runs to twenty minutes or so.  Watching a professional in action is well worth the time and effort.  The videos all start with the same set up so you can probably skip the first few minutes once you've watched one or two.  If you want to try it yourself you may have to search on eBay or your local charity shops for an obsolete cheap model.

The final video is a switch, they give one of the models a fantastic Nikon D3S camera to see how she gets on.



Carsten Schael uses a Yashica EZ-F




Hermann Lee uses an iPhone 2G




Eric Wong uses a lovely pink Rollei compact point and shoot




Mark Chung uses a Vivitar 8027 and a non-professional model.



Chase Jarvis uses a Lego Camera, hell yeah!



Hong Kong Model Garcia shoots with a Nikon D3S.  She's a little annoying but does pretty well for a complete novice.















Thursday 1 November 2012

National Portrait Photography Short List



The short list for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 have been announced.  I made an effort to enter the competition this year but, understandably, failed to make the final cut.  I completely misjudged the criteria for this competition but will try again next year using articles like this blog for research.

After yesterday's somewhat text heavy blogpost I've kept today's much more viewer friendly.  Enjoy the images, all taken from the short-list, and see if you can pick the winner - it will be announced on 5th November.  My personal favourite is the last image shown below:



Lynne, Brighton - © Jennifer Pattison



Mark Rylance - © Spencer Murphy



The Ventriloquist - © Alma Haser



Mo, from the series Young Hollywood - © Hana Knizova



Displaced Migrant Worker from Libya #1, from the series Trapped in Transit - © Antoine de Ras



Dhalia, 7 weeks, from the series Family Portraits - © Mark McEvoy



Kitty, Christine and Kiraa - © Lydia Panas



Margarita Teichroeb, from the series Menonos - © Jordi Ruiz Cirera