Princeton, NJ May 29, 2007

In May of last year my father asked me to take his passport photo. He wasn’t going abroad but needed to get a passport as an ID for work he was doing within the United States. At the time it dawned on me that this was the closest I had ever come to making a formal portrait of him.

He arrived dressed, pressed and ready but was a bit taken back that I had set up lights. “What’s with the lights? We don’t need those.”

It had been years since I shot a passport photo, last time was when I worked in a camera store in high school. So, prior to his arrival I double checked the photo spec’s and rules on the US State Department web site.  Head position, lighting, image size, etc.  I had printed out the information and showed it to him.  ”Eh, you didn’t have to set up lights.”  Sure I did.  The photo had to be up to my standards and to meet the regulations.  When your father raises you to be prepared and to take such things into consideration – you don’t cut corners.

Jack Roemer, 1934-2008

Princeton, NJ, 08/04/08

Photographing multiple executives is never easy.  You’re trying to get  good expressions from everyone, ideally in the same frame, and there may be politics or other issues lurking beneath the surface. With a single subject portrait you can pick an environment that will work for any subject and then finesse it once you see the subject’s body language.  Four subjects multiplies the issues, well, four-fold.

The above is an outtake but it’s nice to catch a moment like this where everyone relaxes, laughs and lets their guard down.  It means the subsequent images, even if they are more formal, will not be too stiff.

This image is a continuation of the Game Changers post from August 10th. Here, I’m again taking advantage of those Profoto AcuteB 600r battery-powered packs and using all three.  One with a grid spot to rake down across the stone; one right next to it with a Profoto Softlight, grid and a 1/4 cut orange gel to be the main light on the subjects; and one to camera right bouncing off of the white underside of the exterior entryway awning to add some fill.

My kids have been completely ensconced within Harry Potter for some time now.  They read and re-read each book multiple times.  I have not read the books, much to their dismay, but I have enjoyed watching the movies with them.  As a photographer, one detail in the movies (and I assume the books as well) can’t escape your eye.  Whenever a print image is shown (newspaper, flyer, framed print or poster on a wall) the image within it moves.  It’s not meant to be full video.  The motion is jerky and just like a radar loop on a weather map it constantly repeats itself.  In photos loved ones can wave, in the paper it can give a bit more information than a still image.  It’s a very striking effect and one that would seem to be confined to the author’s imagination. Well…

This fall Esquire magazine will be producing electronic covers using technology from E-Ink.  The covers will be black and white, just like Harry Potter.  The basic elements of the page are the same as traditional print with the addition of a thin film, I assume a chip of some sort and an extremely thin battery.

Recently, in the photo world there has been talk of convergence.  The convergence of cameras already here or soon to come, ones that will shoot high quality video and still imagery simultaneously.  The inferred belief that in the future commercial still photographers will have to learn video.  If this Esquire cover technology takes off, goes beyond being a novelty, what will that mean? Are we slated to have a moving image for all commercial work whether we like it or not?  Somehow that’s doubtful.  A magazine filled with only movable images will probably come off as too busy and too noisy (not sound noise but visual overload noise.)  But then again, if the norm is a movable image, will the client insist on both? “Just in case.” There’s also the green factor.  Is print embedded with moving images created via additional materials moving in the right direction?

As photographers do we want to go through another transition?  Can’t we rest, at least for a bit, having made the transition to digital?  In the end, we’ll probably have no choice in the matter.  The market and tools will determine how things progress.  No matter what happens though, having two infant technologies point in the same direction at the same time is interesting indeed…

NPR story on E-Ink and Esquire’s upcoming covers

Recent portraits from a story on one of the youngest owners of a lumber yard in the United States.

Hopewell, NJ 07/22/08

Hopewell, NJ 07/22/08

Once in a while you get equipment that is a game changer.  It changes the way you think, the way you shoot. This past fall I switched from Dyna-lite strobes to Profoto.  My Dyna-lite gear was all AC powered but my new Profoto gear is a mix of AC powered and battery powered strobes.  The Profoto battery units have been the game changer for me.

Prior, when I needed battery powered lights I relied upon Canon speedlites. You can be very creative with these smaller lights as evidenced by sites like the Strobist.  Where these smaller systems fall short is in the quality of the light, overall stability and recycling issues. Speedlites do have a place.  They are portable, doable when you are working without an assistant and they can be used in cramped spaces where running cables or setting up traditional strobes is not possible.  They are also affordable and for a beginning photographer they may offer the best flexibility for the price.  All that said they can be an exercise in frustration if the wireless is acting up, if they overheat or if the grip equipment is not up to par.  So, there is a tipping point where they go from a viable tool to inappropriate.

In switching from Dyna-lite to Profoto I went from four power packs to two AC powered Profoto packs, Acute2R 1200’s, and two battery powered Profoto packs, AcuteB 600r’s.  The AcuteB 600r’s have become integral to the way I work, enough so that I bought a third one.  The AcuteB 600r’s are 600 w/s and have a Pocket Wizard receiver built in.  They come in a kit with one head (they can only run one head) and a battery.  The battery is good for ~160 full power flashes.  In use they are powerful enough, with a 35mm based system like the Canon 1Ds Mark III, to overpower the sun in daylight and they are flexible enough to be used in settings where you want to mix a tiny bit of flash in with the ambient light.  They go down to 9 w/s and through a modifier like an XXS Chimera softbox, at 9 w/s, you can get F/1.8 or so.

The quality of the light they put out is wonderful and the AcuteB 600r’s take the same light modifiers as the rest of the Profoto line.

The first image above is shot with the AcuteB 600r through an XXS Chimera softbox with a fabric grid plus a 1/4 cut orange gel.  I was able to shoot at f1.8 to keep the limited depth of field I wanted, keep the mix with the ambient looking natural, and light the subject enough to make him pop.

The second image uses all three of my AcuteB 600r’s.  One on each side, using standard Profoto reflectors to light the lumber shed, and one on the subject in a Profoto softlight plus 1/4 cut orange gel.  When setting up I envisioned a different shot.  I liked the shed, loved its detail and wanted the reversed painted “7″ in the image.  I thought I would use the shed as the background, filling the frame, but at that time of day it was too muddy if I only showed the shed and it was too backlit if I included some sky.  The shot did not look right, it wasn’t working.  As we set up and tested, though, the clouds got better and better.  It seemed a shame not to take advantage of them.  We quickly changed course. The two lights on the shed were at full power; I shot at 1/320 of a second at f/5 getting nice light on the subject and holding the sky.  When that little blast of sun came through the hole in the clouds and the subject looked down it was perfect.  This image received no burning or compositing to retain the clouds.  I did use a bit of highlight control in Aperture along with vignetting to darken the corners.

As useful as the AcuteB 600r’s are outside, they have proven themselves inside as well.  On a corporate shoot and need an extra light in a hallway? There’s no power available or no time to tape down an extension cord… use the 600r. Need a light close to subject but don’t want to have to shoot at f/8 or f/11? Use the 600r.

Here’s another image using the AcuteB 600r to overpower the daylight and here’s an inside portrait using it to light a subject but still use limited depth of field.

Profoto makes bags that hold the power pack, head and an extra battery.  It makes for a small, compact kit and it’s easier than AC powered lights to setup quickly.  The bags are fine for car based work but not for air travel.  Profoto provides a mini-reflector to go with each head but they are of minimal use. They’re too small to be effective.  You are better off using the standard reflectors.

ShareLink:  Email • Twitter • Facebook

This is hot off the press and could affect all photographers returning from assignments abroad.  U.S. Federal agents can seize electronic devices and printed material at the U.S. border for indefinite periods and without any cause.  The list includes laptops, hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, video tapes, audio tapes, books, pamphlets and any other written materials.  Though they are not listed one would have to assume CD’s and DVD’s are included.

So, if you are coming back from an assignment out of the country and you have your images on your laptop and you’ve been good so they are backed up on compact flash cards, DVD’s or external hard drives – it can all be seized.  Gee, it’s not like there are going to be a ton of photojournalists and print journalists coming back from China, let’s say in late August, right?!…

Reuters’ story on the new policy from the Department of Homeland Security.  It turns out the policy has long been in effect but only disclosed in July.