h3. Intro Dubbed "Hansel and Gretel" by my friend C, she's right - it's fairy-tale, slightly sinister and magical. It's all in the light. This shot is pretty much straight out of camera. Scroll right to the bottom if you want some tech notes, and hover over the picture for annotations. h3. Background I’m in Presidio, a spectacular part of San Francisco, staying with our buddy Pilot Pete, and it’s my birthday. So I wander off out for a short walk to see what’s around. The location is stunning: old trees, tall trees, and very few people. It’s the shortest day of the year, the winter solstice, the sun is in an interesting position, but I can’t really tell, because it’s raining cats and dogs. But one never knows what’s next… h3. The tech 85mm was all I took out, but it’s an excellent lens, fast and sharp. What else does one need in a lens? ISO 800 might seem excessive to some, but it’s my all-purpose general ISO ever since Snake Eyes, which I blew up to A1, put it on exhibition, and couldn’t see any noise. And undoubtedly it’s not as clean as 100 ISO, but that only adds to the texture of the image. It’s sunset, and the light is low, but the sky is quite cloudy, dispersing the light somewhat. There’s a line – a layer, if you like – of trees to the right of the main group, and they’re chopping up the light into nice chunks. I don’t want anything flat here. I’ve chosen a spot where there’s a good set of highlights on the trees, and their shapes are interesting enough to form a tunnel-passage-like route to the horizon. I’ve placed the long lane in the shot, because I liked it, and the large tree on the right frames and balanced the left. I wanted to boot up the contrast too, so I underexposed by 1.7 stops, to flatten the shadows and emphasize the light. There wasn’t much correction needed at HQ, it was quite fine on the camera LCD, but since Lightroom generally does its own thing with the image preview once you import, white balance is always going to need a tweak. I swing between (1) wanting to accomplish as much as possible in camera and (2) shooting as flat and low contrast as possible so I can see everything on the LCD in advance. Focusing into mid-foreground allows the background to drift into boke and smoothening out the texture of the picture. Deep hyperfocal is fine for making pretty pictures, but I’ve long thought that sharpness is more critical for the near points of a landscape full of fractal details – our brains can fill in for the far distance… perhaps someone has analysed this? |_. Kit|_. |_. | |Canon 5DII|Canon 85mm f1.8|ISO 800| |Exposure|1/2000|f1.8| |_. Other|_. |_. | |Faithful Style Setting||| 2010-01-17T06:31:16Z 1 true 649 2010-01-22T18:04:38Z h3. Intro The little baby is usually mistakenly thought a baby boy - I made the same mistake when I spoke to her parents. It's been compared to Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl, a marvellous compliment, but it's not in the same league. It might resemble certain elements visually - the eyes, the exotic subject - but the story behind that image of Steve's is what made it. h3. Background I'm at a village in the middle of Gujarat, Western India, working on a project about the nomadic and de-notified tribes of the state. I've been avoiding taking portraits, although that is the thing I like most, because I don't want this project to rely on my portraits. I want to watch, observe, learn, and try and build up some other strengths. So we're at this village, and I'm there to see an educational workshop aimed at the women of the village. It's a pretty big deal there, and I'm prowling around the place as usual, taking in what's going on at the main event, but also checking out that life outside of this workshop is carrying on as usual. This is my second visit to this village, and I'm keen to photograph this large cow with huge horns. I photographed her last time, not bad results, but I made the mistake of not including scale within the scene. Without that, it's just another cow with horns, there's no sense of how large they are. But I digress. Just as I'm heading off to scare the cows, I see a little baby running around with the most spectacular eyes. Quite mesmerizing, and particularly interesting, as her parents look nothing like her. Soon after, she's being put to bed in a nearby swinging hammock, so I speak to her father about taking some pictures later, and head off for a wander. Later, the workshop has finished, and I find the parents with the baby, who has woken up and is full of beans. It's a blazing hot day - it's hasn't been anything else since I arrived - and the light outside is terrible, and on top of that, this little portrait idea is becoming a headache - I've got kids all over me wanting to join in, and everyone wants to know what's going on. This is perfectly normal in India, and while it was a nuisance a year ago, the wonderful Steve McCurry showed me ways to deal with it. I bumped into him a few weeks earlier and he took me out shooting in the afternoon, and the man knows how to handle himself. Basically, he works with confidence, doesn't get stuck in conversation, and when the heat from people starts to get a little high, he "reboots" as he calls it, and walks away from the scene and starts again. h3. The shoot I handled it by shutting everyone out. I found a house, someone's house, not the parents' house, with a window in a room, bundled the parents + baby in there, and slammed the door shut on everyone else. Kids opened it a few times and tried to sneak in, but a few words to the adults outside and we were left in peace and quiet. Now, the baby's eyes were the focal point of this whole exercise, and they need to be lit properly. There's decent light coming in through the window, and the darkness of the room combined with the window gives us contrast on the subject. It's not too bright, though, and I'm struggling. It's a 50mm lens open at 2.2, 1/40 of a second handheld at ISO 400. This is not good, my friends. I could have, arguably should have, cranked up the ISO to 800, for the quality is fine, but I didn't. I wanted as smooth as I could get and I was making life very hard for myself. However, that is only my first problem. The second problem is how to get the subject to stay in one place and look at the camera. Baby, being a baby, has no idea, NONE, no clue as to what's going on. Dad is behind me on one side, mother is sitting down on the other side and we're all trying to get baby to look at me, and stay still. Baby, failing to understand this, is bopping around, pointing, laughing and I can't get a focus lock. The 5D is not really meant for fast-moving sports photography and that's what this is. I'm on a basketball court with a camera, trying to block and focus at the same time, while my opponent is ducking, diving, weaving, and looking at her father. My third problem begins at this point when I hear my chaperones summoning me - they're ready to leave, they're late and we have a long drive back, and I'm in trouble - I know that tone of shout when I hear it. The baby's still diving, there's now banging on the door to distract her, but twice she looks straight at, I fire off some shots and hope they're in focus. Two minutes later I give up, thank her parents and run like hell to the jeep - I don't even have time to get her name or their names. Back at HQ, I'm flicking through a stack of complete and utter rubbish, but I find a decent shot - hey, that's pretty good, looks sharp, that'll do. Mark it for later and shut down. Food. That marked picture is not so good in the cold light of day. Curses. Anything left? Well, what's sharp? Ok, flicking through, I look at the sharp ones and yes, there's a shot, needs cropping as she's slightly off-centre, but she's sharp, the eyelashes are razor and her expression, hmm, yes. It's Not bad. "Not bad," he said. I grew to like it. h3. Light and Luck This is about two things. Engineering the shot and actually getting it. Might be obvious, but I needed to look for my subject, not just look around. And then I needed to set it all up. Windows are an easy way of controlling light, and rooms with doors are an easy way of controlling people. You do what you have to. The window was just behind me to my right, slightly above me so my shadow didn't affect the light. The catchlight in her eyes is spot on and her expression is too. It's not posed, because she won't be posed, not today anyway. The luck is in getting that expression and focus at the same time. I could have taken hundreds of shots, but that is no guarantee. Fatigue, weariness, and boredom at kick in. But this is also about pressure. Without people hassling me, I might never have chosen that particular house and room. Without my chaperones calling for me, I might have been lazy or not tried hard enough. You never know. |_. Kit|_. |_. | |Canon 5DII|Canon 50mm f1.4|ISO 400| |Exposure|1/40|f2.2| 2010-01-22T03:22:42Z 2 true 622 2010-01-22T03:27:02Z