My first family photo shoot – 5 lessons learned amongst friends

A few months ago, Adriana and I had some of our friends over for a get together.  My friends Grant and Nicky attended with their son, we’ll call him A.  While we were catching up they asked if I would be open to the idea of doing a family photo shoot for them.  Pros are too expensive and they just wanted to get some quality pictures to hang in their house.  Needless to say I jumped at the chance – these are the sorts of things that turn into real learning opportunities.  So I took them up on the offer and away we went!

This was a first for me.  I’d never done any formal portrait work so I did a lot of research beforehand.  I spent a lot of time reading tutorials online and watching some guys on YouTube talk about outdoor portraiture.  I have a shoot through umbrella that I bought a year or two ago when I was learning about off camera flash, and also some cheap wireless triggers that I bought through ebay.  So I bought extra batteries, cleaned my lenses, packed all my stuff and was off to meet them Saturday morning.  We decided to go to a nearby park to get the photos; I wanted them out of the sun with a nice background (forest/trees) for the photos.  We tried a few different poses and ways of sitting, crossing our fingers that A was in the mood to play.

The first round of pictures we took while sitting on top of a log – I thought it would be a nice place but A was still tired from his nap, as you can see below.

For the beginning of the shoot, I had the umbrella setup camera left to throw some extra light on the family.  I used a CTO gel as well to give a little glow to their faces.

I wanted to make sure we tried lots of different setups, but I was also conscious of the fact that with a little kid it’s really about spur of the moment photography.  It’s difficult to get a toddler to look at the camera, smile, etc.  And what I also learned is that it’s sometimes hard to even get the parents to look at the camera!  Seriously, I have a ton of photos where A is finally looking at me and smiling but either Nicky or Grant were looking elsewhere or not smiling.  If I had to do it over again I would have tried to communicate this up front (but of course I didn’t know and wasn’t really aware of it until looking at the photos later).

The last set of photos with the shoot through umbrella were pretty entertaining, as A threw leaves at Mom and Dad while they laid on the ground.

When that was done, I took down the umbrella and we began a more informal session.  A was really into his ball, running around all over the place and playing with it.  It was so funny to watch but really hard to photograph as well.  I set my camera to AF servo and did my best to track the little guy as he ran this way and that, kicking the ball, and generally having a blast.

I took a picture of the ball with A running towards it in the background.  I thought this was a fitting shot, because the ball really played a central role in the day and I wanted to make sure it was remembered.

All in all it was a great, great day.  I learned a ton.

Here are the top 5 things I learned from my first family portrait session –

1. Prepare – yeah, I know.  It’s not rocket science.  But I spent a lot of time researching online, reading some of my old books and making sure that all of my techniques were clear in my head.  I bought new batteries, cleaned my lenses, tested my equipment before the shoot, etc.
2. It’s all about the kid – similar to shooting a wedding, when you do a family portrait like this you’re pretty much going to live and die by the kid (or the bride in the wedding of course).  When A was in a good mood, the parents were happy, I was happy and we were off and running.  When he was aloof and not really in the mood for photos, the entire thing sorta stalled.  One of our friends was there and did a tremendous job in entertaining A.  That was a colossal help and in hindsight is something that really saved my bacon, because it’s really tough to focus on your photography while trying to entertain a toddler!
3. Shoot with an appropriate aperture – I wanted to get the background out of focus so I was shooting with a pretty tight depth of field; my aperture was like f/4.5 or f/5.0 for a lot of the shots.  And it wasn’t quite enough – I wish I’d set it to f/7.1 or f/8.0 to ensure I had focus throughout the frame.  There’s a few photos where A and Nicky were in perfect focus but Grant is just a teeny bit out.  Lesson learned for next time.
4. Editing matters – I had to wait for the new LR 4.1 update so I could work with my RAW files; once this came I edited the photos and spent a fair amount of time on each one.  In particular I whitened the eyes in many of the pictures and made sure that they were sharp on the edges but overall soft so as not to be too harsh on the faces.
5. Think – Finally my last lesson learned is to remain calm and think.  While I was there I felt like I was the photographer so I had to keep shooting.  In hindsight I wish I’d spent a little more time making sure that my aperture was set accurately; I went back and forth between shooting in Manual and Aperture priority mode and I could have done a better job in having a mental focus on the exact picture I was trying to take at the moment.  Again I think this will come with time.

I’ll be doing another photoshoot with a different friend of mine who’s son will be celebrating a one year birthday pretty soon.  After I get a few of these under my belt who knows?  Maybe I’ll get to a point where I can charge some money for the work and have people just buy the photos directly from Smugmug.  Until then I’ll continue to take advantage of my friend’s for free learning opportunities!  Thanks Grant and Nicky!

Xian – Ancient warriors in 21st century smog

After our adventures in Shanghai we took a flight to Xian; we meant to take a sleeper train to get an element of real adventure but it ended up that the agency we were working with weren’t able to secure us a ticket.  So instead we bought a last minute flight (which wasn’t too painful) and flew to Xian.  When we arrived I thought something was wrong – it smelled like the plane’s tires were on fire or something.  We calmly grabbed our bags and walked out the jetway into the airport, and that’s when I realized the smell wasn’t going away.  Well it turns out the “smell” was the pollution in the city.  It was nuts.  I don’t smoke, but I wanted to buy a pack of cigs just to get some fresh air.  Yep, it was that bad.

We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel in the middle of the city; the taxi ride was pretty crazy.  It was night time and with all of the pollution and smog (call it what you will) I don’t know how the driver knew where the road was.

In the morning we got up early and had a guide take us to the Terracotta warriors.  One piece of advice when travelling in China – you need to be VERY CLEAR on what it is you want to do and see.  We got in the car in the morning, agreed that we wanted to see the Terracotta army, and they proceeded to drive us to the site.  Three times they offered to stop – at a Jade Museum, a Terracotta Army “factory” and some other god forsaken place that I forget.  They get commission for taking you to these sites, so you need to very clear if you don’t want to go.  They’re basically tourist traps and will do anything in their power to sell you anything that catches your eye.  This is where I become sort of a dick when I travel.  I fully appreciate these people are trying to make a living like everyone else, but when I have one day to see a site I really don’t want to have to sit for two hours to some guy trying to sell me a Jade trinket – I just have no interest.  Anyway, rant over.  We succeeded in getting to the right museum, and it was well worth the minor frustrations.

The museum gives you some background on what they’ve uncovered so far and has some of the highest quality pottery warriors.  They’re covered within glass cases but I was still able to get some decent pictures.  I took some close-ups to try and capture the detail in the pottery work; each one is unique.

After walking through this initial museum you then walk into one of the three primary dig sites.  The first one is in it’s early stages, and is not quite as big as the main one.  It’s covered and sort of resembles a big warehouse as you can see below.

It was a bit tough to take pictures here because of the low light, and needless to say flash was frowned upon.  I used my 70-200 f4 IS lens.  It was perfect for the scenario; I set the ISO to anywhere between 1600 and 3200, then let the IS (Image Stabilization) do the rest of the work.  I kept the aperture set to f4 the whole time, letting in as much light as I possibly could.  My 50D does fairly well with noise but many of the images shot at 3200 required some noise correction.  For this I use one of two programs, either Lightroom (which in LR 3 really improved their capability around noise reduction) or a program called Dfine.  The latter probably does a better job but I only use it on occasion as it tends to lengthen my workflow.  I’m pretty pleased with the way the pics turned out, I think the one below is my favorite from this particular dig site.

All of the pottery warriors look like this when they dig them out – I was surprised to find of the thousands of warriors that they’ve found so far, only a few of them were found in one piece.

When we entered the main chamber it’s pretty awe inspiring.  It’s vast and has hundreds and hundreds of the warriors in various levels of completeness.  I also saw a group of archaeologists working on their latest discovery.

Now – our guide stated that there were possibly as many as 200,000 warriors buried throughout the area.  Yep, that’s right – 200,000.  Now if you read (and believe) Wikipedia it’s stating more in the range of 8000.  Who knows, I leave it up for debate.  But I did find it interesting that they haven’t opened the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China for whom all of this is for.  Must’ve been a pretty popular guy.

When taking the pictures in the exhibit I tried to create a sense of repetition, to give the viewer an idea that the number of warriors is vast if not infinite.  Using the f/4 aperture helps by ensuring the depth of field is shortened and creates a more intriguing picture, having the eye immediately focus on one warrior and then extending out to the others.

After the Terracotta warriors, we went back home and walked around the city a bit.  Xian is a small city by Chinese standards – only 8.5 million people.  🙂  The pollution remained, and created a pretty surreal environment for us as we tried to check out the famous Bell Tower towards the middle of the old city.  You can vaguely see it through the smog below.

Here’s a pic from the Bell Tower – I like the composition here as there’s obvious symmetry, and the smog actually creates some interest as the eye looks down the central line.  And the biker in the forefront shows that China still has some steps to take towards modernization.

Finally, we walked along the famous Xian wall.  Honestly this is pretty cool – it’s an ancient medieval wall that’s been up for a long time, with it’s current incarnation dating from the 14th century.  It’s wide, and quite honestly blows away most of the medieval walls I’ve seen in Europe (particularly in England – sorry York).   We walked around for a bit and took a few pictures, the entrance to the area was rather cool as they had these red banners flying in the wind that created a pretty cool tunnel like image.

And finally as we were atop the wall, the smog provided an excellent atmosphere.  Not that I’m promoting pollution, but I do like the way these images turned out as it sort of captures that de-saturated, ancient, foggy look.  We don’t need to know that the fog is actually created by millions of tons of coal burning throughout the country.  Just keep that to yourself.

This wraps it up for our trip through Xian!  It definitely gave us a different view of China; getting out of the big tourist hotspots of Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing and instead getting a view of what a “normal” Chinese city is like.  The Terracotta warriors were pretty amazing and something I’d always wanted to see, and I’m happy with many of the images and memories I captured as part of the trip.

Next will be the final stop on our Asian trip – we go to Beijing to see the Forbidden Palace and of course the Great Wall!  Until next time I hope you get to take some great pics….

The new device – Canon 5D Mark III

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Canon 5D Mark III!

It’s been a long time coming and I’ve been saving my pennies for several years.  I bought the Canon 50D a few years back, literally weeks before the 7D was announced.  I stuck with the 50D and it served me well for many years, but “Full Frame” continued calling and I decided to wait for the Mark II’s successor instead of investing in the current version.

The camera absolutely rocks – I’m blown away by the image quality in general.  The few pics I’ve taken thus far have been really impressive, but it’s the ISO capability that really will change my photography.  The other night when I was out taking photos, I was able to use ISO 3200 without breaking a sweat.  For my 50D this was unheard of – ISO 800 was noticeable and 1600 was getting a bit rough.  Now I can take cleaner low light images without introducing blur.

I took a few pics of the camera – one of the features you can see below is a little button on the top of the control dial.  This needs to be pushed down while you switch modes (for example going from Aperture to Manual).  It prevents the dial from shifting while it’s in your bag, which I find useful because this happened on a pretty regular basis with my 50D.

The focus capability is the big piece of technology that has been completely revamped on the camera.  It now has 61 auto-focus points (the 50D had 9) and the options available to me are staggering.  There is an entire menu system available to tweak the AF, particularly for tracking objects in motion and variations on sensitivity as you can see below.

I’m not one to really write reviews – there are plenty of great reviews out there on the 5D Mark III but I will try to do an ISO test in the future.  I was thinking it also might be interesting to write a little post on how I took these photos; some basic off-camera flash knowledge and a light tent can work wonders for product shots like these but I’ll write about that another day.

I leave you with a great joke that was sent to me on email, unfortunately I don’t know the originator of this so can’t give credit but it made me chuckle.  I think it’s written more for the smartphone syndrome that many of us have but if I’m honest with myself they’ve nailed me on the Mark III as well!

Begin joke that I didn’t write and take no credit for 🙂

With the holiday shopping season officially under way, millions of consumers
proceeded to their nearest commercial centers this week in hopes of acquiring
the latest, and therefore most desirable, personal device.

“The new device is an improvement over the old device, making it more
attractive for purchase by all Americans,” said Thomas Wakefield, a
spokesperson for the large conglomerate that manufactures the new device.
“The old device is no longer sufficient. Consumers should no longer have
any use or longing for the old device.”

Added Wakefield,
“The new device will retail for $395.”

Able to remain operational for longer periods of time and occupy a
demonstrably smaller three-dimensional space, the new device is so advanced
when compared to the old device that it makes the old device appear much older
than it actually is. However, the new device is reportedly not so radically
different as to cause confusion or unwanted anxiety among those familiar with
the feel of the old device.

“Its higher price indicates to me that it is superior, and that not
everyone will be able to afford it, which only makes me want to possess it
more,” said Tim Sturges, owner of the old device, which he obtained 18
months ago when it was still the new device. “I feel a strong urge to
purchase the new device. Owning the new device will please me and improve my
daily life.”

“It’s difficult to remember how I ever found enjoyment in my old
device,” Sturges continued. “It is no longer appealing to the
eye.”

In addition to aesthetic and technological enhancements, manufacturers claim
the new device comes equipped with a wide range of desirable features,
including fewer buttons for pressing down and holding; a new wire for
connecting to larger, less-portable devices; and fewer device-related errors
and frustrations.

The new device will also be available in blue.

“Not only will I be able to perform tasks faster than before, but my
new device will also inform those around me that I am a successful individual
who is up on the latest trends,” said Rebecca Hodge, whose executive job
allowed her to line up for several hours in the middle of the day in order to
obtain the previously unavailable item. “Its attractiveness and
considerable value are, by extension, my attractiveness and considerable
value.”

Consumer Robert Larson agreed.

“I’m going to take my new device wherever I go,” said Larson,
holding the expensive item directly in the eyeline of several reporters.
“That way no one on the street, inside the elevator, or at my place of
business will ever mistake me for the sort of individual who does not own the
new device.”

Added Larson, “The new device brings me satisfaction.”

Despite the visible excitement among most consumers, some claimed to be
exercising caution, choosing instead to sit back and wait for a newer version
of the new device to be released before making a purchase.

“True, it appeals to my most basic insecurities, but this new device
will ultimately be replaced by a newer device, rendering it completely
undesirable and utterly repellent to my personal tastes,”
device-enthusiast Ryan Janosch said. “Also, I should start saving my money
for the next latest device, which will replace the newer new device a couple
months after that.”

End joke 🙂

 

The Bund and Pudong – Photographing the skylines of Shanghai

After spending a couple days in Shanghai and working out how to get around in the city, it was time to start some serious photography of the incredible skyscrapers.  I was pretty impressed with both Hong Kong and even Singapore despite the latter being relatively small, but I was really looking forward to our last significant cityscape of the holiday.

First things first, the reason we ended up waiting a few days to take these photos is because we found out the hard way that the Pearl Tower’s lights actually go out after 10:00 PM (I’ve heard some say 11:00, but for us it was definitely 10:00) And it just so happened that the way our schedule worked, the first day on the Bund we were exhausted and the second day we were having a late dinner and not out before 10:00.  So our last day it was our one and only focus – to walk the Bund, get over to Pudong, and take some great pics from either side.

Before I really get into the pictures, let’s take a moment to describe what I mean by the Bund and Pudong.  The Bund is on the north side of the Hungpao river and is essentially a mile long embankment; the picture above gives an idea what it looks like.  The street is filled with older colonial buildings from foreign embassies in the 19th century, and was primarily a British district 100 years ago.  The embankment itself is for pedestrians only, with a great wide sidewalk to enjoy the scenery and the large buildings on the other side, which takes me to Pudong.

Pudong is on the other side of the river, and this is where the famous skyline of Shanghai is continuing to be reinvented on a regular basis.  The whole area used to be swampland – this picture sort of shows that and also gives you an idea of the rather un-impressive skyline of the Bund (I believe the buildings are restricted in height along the Bund due to the historical buildings).

One of the more noticeable buildings is the Oriental Pearl Tower.  This behemoth is pretty unique as far as famous buildings go and at one time was the highest building in China.  It’s a TV tower so it all has all the normal “stuff” associated with a big building that they’re not sure what else to do with – observation decks, shopping and a revolving restaurant. The Oriental Pearl Tower is shown below.

In addition to the Pearl Tower there are a slew of other towers and skyscrapers in Pudong; no doubt that it’s the up and coming district of Shanghai.  The World Financial Center is now the tallest building in the city (and I believe it’s the tallest in China now, if you don’t count Taiwan).  Apparently though the World Financial Center will be surpassed shortly by yet another tower being built in Pudong, the Shanghai Tower.  So as you can see all of these things you’re reading in the news about how incredible China’s growth is – yeah, they’re right.  The place is growing like crazy, and the sheer sprawl of the skyline behind Pudong is incredible.  Below is a pic taken during daylight hours that captures the skyline.  You can easily see the Pearl Tower and to the right side (and the tallest building) is the WFC – it looks like you could pick it up with it’s handle (if you were half a mile tall).

Below is a similar photo to the one above (and also my featured pic at the top) that shows the famous Pudong skyline at night.  Both this and the one above are HDR photos, and the map at the bottom of the post will show you exactly where I took all of these photos to make things a bit more clear.

I processed this picture in the same way as shown in the Singapore tutorial.  One interesting processing technique that was required was to shift the towers in Photoshop.  The towers in a picture like this have a tendency to “lean” towards the middle due to lens distortion.  So in Photoshop you can use the Transform tool (I used Skew) to sort of drag the top two sides of the photo apart.  This keeps the tower(s) straight and corrects the photo.

From the Bund we wanted to get across to Pudong to get up to the WFC observatory.  Now there are various ways to get across – you can take the underground, you can take a taxi, or if you’re ready for the experience of a lifetime you can take the “Bund Sightseeing Tunnel”  Now I’ve gotta tell you, this thing is a complete piece of shit.  It’s like a bunch of deranged and drugged out Disney rejects decided to give it one last go.  You ride on a little cart and there are weird lights, the most bizarre voices saying the most bizarre things, and it’s just the strangest experience I can imagine.  If you were high, drunk or a combination of all of the above there’s no doubt it would be outstanding.  To me it’s one of those things that I would encourage you to see just to have a laugh about how bad it is.  Anyway the pic below is Adriana getting ready to enter ( fuzzy and out of focus, sorry).

From the Pudong side of the city we went up to the WFC.  I was surprised but they didn’t say a word about me bringing my tripod to the top.  Once I got up there I was able to take some pretty cool pictures of the surrounding area, including the Jin Mao Tower where the Grand Hyatt is.  You can see the Pearl Tower in the background.

What’s also pretty cool is the view of the Bund that you have from this observatory.  The photos below are images of the Bund.

Finally a panorama to give you a full idea of what the Bund looks like (in miniature).  If you look in the back you can actually see the Radisson Blu mentioned in the Nanjing Road post that gives some other great views of the city.  For a larger version of the pic below click here.

All in all we had an outstanding time in Shanghai – I didn’t expect a whole lot from the city and was pleasantly surprised.  During our time there the weather was great with no pollution, the people were nice and we simply had a wonderful time.  The architecture is awesome and it’s easily a place you could spend many days taking incredible photos.  I’ll close with the pic of the two of us below and then a map to give you an idea where the other photos were taken from.  Next stop on our trip is Xian!

Finally the map to pinpoint exactly where I took my photos.  Hope you find it useful.

A walk along Nanjing Road Shopping District in Shanghai, China

While spending a few days in Shanghai we spent one evening walking down Nanjing Road, which is the primary shopping street of Shanghai.  We had strolled down the street during the day but after walking for a while we decided it would be a great photography walk at night.  The buildings are lit up in fluorescent lights, reminding me of Macau (or Vegas for that matter).  But more interesting for me was checking out what they had for sale in some of the stores.  Despite all the places we’ve traveled, China was still a country capable of giving me a significant jolt of culture shock to make me feel like an alien on my own planet.

One of the stores that we walked into was sort of like a dry goods grocery store.  They had all kinds of things that looked … foreign.  Things that looked like taffy, various animals that almost looked like they were “candied” (see the pig face below) and some things that were less appetising – yes, that’s right, less appetising than a candied pigs face.  They were also selling what looked like petrified meal worms, but in reality are called cordyceps and are actually sold for huge amounts of money.  While researching for this post I found a great write-up of some of the stuff I was seeing, you can read about it here.

I took a few pictures in these stores but didn’t go crazy; I know some people will think I’m overly careful but I’m still a bit hesitant to just snap away in someone’s store with my DSLR.

The other thing I found for sale in some of the stores were calligraphy sets.  I find calligraphy a very interesting aspect of Asian history and culture.  While we were there we got a little sign made up for the “Millers” by this gentlemen below.  He did it right in front of us and charged us a few bucks.  I like the picture with him blow drying the finished product; it really was interesting to watch him do it and I think we even took some video of it (which I’ll eventually post).  To be clear the picture below wasn’t taken in Nanjing Road but rather on the illustrious “Bund Sightseeing Tunnel” which I’ll write about in my next post.

The store below was on Nanjing road and was super cool – it had a huge selection of calligraphy and painting brushes, stamps, inks, and all the material to take up and learn this ancient art.  It was fascinating to walk through and see all of these interesting things for sale.

Aside from the stores, we really enjoyed the street itself, particularly at night.  Nanjing road is largely pedestrianized, so you don’t have to worry about cars (although there’s a little blue train which you can see below that you do need to watch out for!)  The picture below is a 3 exposure HDR that I took with my tripod.  Yep, that’s right – I carried my tripod down Nanjing road and it was absolutely fine.  I never felt in danger or that we were getting too many strange looks, and I’m glad I had it because I don’t think as many of these pictures would have turned out without it.

As you can see the lights are just amazing.  And I like the movement of the blue train in the picture to offset the largely pink/red colors of the lights.

While we were walking down the road we took a few pictures of each other, on occasion setting up the tripod.  To take a picture like the one below I would first understand what settings provide the proper exposure for the scene in general, without Adriana.  Then I remember those settings (in this situation they were aperture of 6.3, shutter speed came out to 1/25 sec, and an ISO setting of 800).  So I set the camera to Manual, enter all of those settings, and turn on the flash (to manual) and set it to 1/8 as a start.  I snap the photo, check to see how she looks compared to the background light, and generally need to take one or two more to make sure I nailed it.  Once you get used to practicing it’s fairly easy, but I have to tell you it sure helps to have a patient wife (or partner) because photo’s like this used to take me 20 minutes each!

Notice the Radisson in the back that sort of looks like a flying saucer ready to take off?  Remember that – I took some other photos from there you’ll be seeing below!

Here’s another picture of my beautiful wife – in this one I zoomed in closer to her face for a tighter picture.  I think people often underestimate how effective a tight crop is – don’t be afraid to show a person’s face!  Sometimes I see people taking pictures from like 300 yards away – the end result is a human shaped ant that’s completely lost amongst the background.  Like all my little rants there are certainly times that this is very effective, for example to show the insignificance of man or to show scale.  But here it’s not what I wanted to do.

We walked around for quite a while, taking some pretty cool pictures of the lights, the people walking, and trying to capture the general ambiance of the place.

Now – remember the Radisson in the background of the Adriana picture?  Well we went up there to have a few drinks before our dinner that evening and …. you guessed it!  We took some pictures from the top!  It’s a rotating bar and at night that creates a challenge in taking anything that resembles a long exposure.  So I had to crank up the ISO and take at a much larger aperture (smaller number) than I wanted.  The two pictures below are the two best ones that I got.  It made me really wish that I had gotten a better viewpoint to try and capture a quality image.  One of the things they do in Shanghai is light their roads – you can see it below in the eerie blue light and after looking at some of the images on 500px or Flickr from Shanghai you can see how beautiful the lights look.

After having a few drinks we left and went to Mr. and Mrs. Bund for dinner.  This is a rather upscale modern French eatery, we honestly went for the view over the Bund but didn’t realize that the lights on the famous Pearl Tower turn off after 10:00!  So we focused instead on having a wonderful meal and good conversation – it wasn’t terribly difficult!  Below is one picture that I did take of the Bund (you can see the large walkway on the right) from the terrace of the restaurant.  It’s a nice teaser for the next post!

That’s it for Nanjing Road.  I definitely recommend taking a walk to check out the stores and the view from the Radisson Blu is pretty amazing.  Next post will be my final for Shanghai; I’ll detail the Bund and how we took some incredible pictures of the Pudong skyline.