johnslaytor photography

Royal Art Society - portrait session

2011-09-26T15:45:00.000-07:00

Portraits of 22 artists, no more than 3 minutes each.

Below is my setup - a black backdrop to eliminate distractions. Incidentally, this worked well because many of the female artists wore colourful clothing which black accentuates.

The white boxes in the foreground were anchor points - I wanted to photograph the artists from various angles and having 'fixed' positions allowed me to systematically photograph the artists from different angles

The fill light is to the left - a soft box with a screen - this allowed me to put an edge on the subject's right side. By angling it towards the camera, the fill light also succeeded in separating the subjects from the background. The main light was very soft - a double screened 150 cm x 150 cm soft box.

The chair is comfortable and allowed the subjects to relax - nothing worse than forcing subjects to stand against a wall.

Generally, I used f18, 1/200 sec, ASA 200 except for the shots of the subject in the chair where the light fall off made me increase the aperture to f14.

To break the ice I asked each artist to identify their painting in the State Parliament gallery (I had photographed their paintings there the previous week). This worked brilliantly.

I took two shots of each artist - a 'head shot' and a 'seated' shot as I wanted to capture their hands, my reasoning being hands to artists are essential.

red beans

2011-09-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

I was commissioned to photograph beans, peas and lentils. Images of boring piles of dusty beans sprang into my mind and I was determined not to repeat this error.

My tools were water (to combat the association of dusty dry beans) and natural light.

The results are below:

Homage to Ernst Haas

2011-05-25T03:35:00.000-07:00

Sydney today, chilly autumn, and the liquid amber trees are beautiful.

John's christening at St Sophia Greek Orthodox Church, Paddington on 30 April 2011

2011-04-30T23:34:00.000-07:00

Despite the gloomy weather, John's christening was a joy to photograph.

To see more images from the day click on this link.

Japanese windflowers

2011-04-11T00:26:00.000-07:00

Japanese windflowers in my garden this morning. They can only be photographed in situ on windless days.

Sangria shots

2011-04-08T14:56:00.000-07:00

I recently photographed a sangria dispenser for Toros Restaurant in Darling Harbour, Sydney.

Time was short, about twenty minutes, and at first I was a little daunted by the look of the dispenser whose designer seemed to have been inspired by 1970's disco balls.

This is the first shot - the dispenser is in sharp focus but isn't inviting as the light is 'cold'. The background isn't blurred enough and detracts from the dispenser. There is also little in the background to add value to the dispenser. The dispenser itself also doesn't look good - given how dark the liquid in the column, it could be coffee. Similarly, the glasses of sangria are dull. In short, this photo isn't going to bring customers to Toros and it won't get me repeat business.

To make the dispenser's column appear interesting, I got the chef to fire a flash into it.

I then did the same for the two glasses. Next I used a wide aperture to blur the background which was too distracting. I waited until a diner at an adjoining table was drinking and then took the photo - this is because the diner acts a cue as to what to do with the dispenser and thus enriches the image.

Finally, I bathed the image in warm tones, again reinforcing the pleasant mellowness of an afternoon drinking sangria.

Below is the final image which merges four images.

Finally, this is an example of how the image was used by the restaurant.

Angled portraits

2011-04-07T16:53:00.000-07:00

When the face is at an angle, the portrait can be more flattering.

I am mulling over why this is - perhaps it is because we feel the subject is more relaxed. Then again, a head planted squarely on shoulders is a little like an oak tree in a field, strong to be sure but sometimes strength detracts from beauty.

Photography of inconvenience

2011-03-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

Too much of photography is based on convenience - a leisurely start to the day, which is sunny, take a camera, walk around, take a photo. Consequently, most photography, all the easy photography, has been done to death so if you want your images to stand out, a good way is to make sure you are photographing in less than convenient circumstances.

The last two days in Sydney have been terrible - torrential rain, dangerous surf, a month's rain in 24 hours. Going to the coast, Bronte specifically, in these conditions is to risk damaging your camera either from a freak wave, from the rain or from the salt spray which means that very few photos are taken in such conditions so those that are will be refreshingly original. To make photography more inconvenient, I used a tripod as I was shooting at 2/3 of a second, f22 most of the time with two neutral density filters to kill the light. The results are below.

The three elements of portraiture

2011-03-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

I want to enter the 2011 Olive Cotton Photography Prize so have been thinking about what elements are needed to make a portrait great. I have sought to understand why I resent images of Cate Blanchett being entered into photography competitions.

Element one - dialogue

Oscar Wilde wrote "Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter" and this is equally applied to photography. Simply put, what you choose to express about your subject is what can be compelling in photographic portraiture and this leads to the interesting puzzle of finding out what there is that is worthy of expression and in what circumstances that expression can be revealed. A way of solving part of the puzzle is to consider the face as an inert and dull object, accepting that it is the complexity of expression and not the face itself that creates the dialogue between the photographer and the portrait sitter and the more the expression says about the human condition, the more it is a compelling portrait (Rembrandt's self-portraits come to mind).

In the photo below, there is a strong dialogue; it feels like there is a connection between the photographer and the sitter and the emotion expressed is deep.

Element two - Context

A portrait without environmental cues, whether they stem from the background (e.g. buildings) or the sitter (e.g. clothes, hands, jewellery) is unlikely to be as compelling as the same portrait with them. Ricahrd Avedon's portraits of vagrants in Nevada are strong images but in my view had they not being photographed in a white light tent they would have had that much more power because they would have allowed the viewer to reconcile the context of the images with the sittter. The above portrait, in my view, fails to provide any context and this lack of knowing where this portrait was taken makes it less effective.

In the image, below, the building behind the subject adds value, if only because it then makes the viewer puzzle about the context. Another way of thinking about context is to consider how different the image would have been had the background been a beach.

This portrait also provides additional context by showing the girl's hands and paradoxically, the lack of jewellery, makeup and costume provides additional information about the subject. However, in my view, the portrait fails as there is little dialogue; the subject's face is almost inert and in its inertness it reveals little about the human condition.

In the photo below, think of how the observers in the photo enhance the mood. They provide context and in doing so, emphasise the sitter's plight.

Element three - light

Light is too beautiful a medium to ignore especially given its ability to emphasise elements within an image such as mood and ambiguity. Bill Henson comes to mind when using light; its presence or absence can make a portrait more interesting.

In the image below, the theatrical gestures of the man are enhanced by the 'stage' lighting (which happened to be late afternoon sunlight).

Using a third image of the same man, the lighting in this instance is bland and safe. This is consistent with this type of photo.

Conclusion

Without dialogue, context and lighting, a photo of a person's face can never be a portrait.

Context can be arranged in advance just as lighting can be controlled.

Dialogue is the mystery factor and Cate Blanchett clearly has the ability to create dialogue at will. This skill has made her one of the world's greatest actors but, once you have access to Cate Blanchett, her skill must make her one of the easiest persons to use for your portraits.

In my view, photography portrait competitions should bar the entry of portraits of such actors since their use is akin to cheating, a bit like catching fish in a barrel. My logic is flawed since I don't apply the same logic to lighting (if I were, I would ban the use of artificial lighting insisting on natural light only).

A Macedonian christening from a different angle

2011-02-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

A Macedonian christening in Sydney yesterday - while waiting in the church for another christening to finish, I decided to photograph that christening but try different angles.

A timeless photo

2011-02-08T13:37:00.000-08:00

I photographed a funeral last week.

At the wake, I spoke to the 93 year old mother of the son who had died and learnt about how she had immigrated to Australia from The Netherlands after WWII.

I asked if I could photograph her and she agreed. I asked because the funeral photos were for family in The Netherlands who were unable to attend the funeral so it was very important for them to be able to see her. I also photographed her because I was conscious that this might be the last beautiful photo of her.

I can look at this photo for hours.

not stopping at the second hurdle

2011-01-28T16:58:00.000-08:00

In the pre-digital camera era, purists would rage about never cropping images, somehow believing that the 35mm format was the perfect aspect. These purists would claim that they had framed the perfect image before they clicked the shutter in order to produce an immaculate print.

In the digital era, more images are being taken than ever before and many photographers have adopted this purist approach, unconsciously or otherwise. They look at their images and are disappointed by them. Or maybe they are disappointed by themselves, feeling that as amateur photographers they are incapable of taking outstanding images.

A more positive approach is to regard the image as a rough diamond which needs to be cut and polished in such a way as to maximise its potential. Enhancing images is best be done in Adobe Lightroom; its bigger brother Adobe Photoshop is far too complicated to learn for most photographers.

The photos below demonstrate the polishing of one image. All enhancements were done in Adobe Lightroom under ten minutes.

Liferals

2011-01-16T14:13:00.000-08:00

I have specialised in funeral photography in the Sydney region for the past three years.(http://www.thefuneralphotographer.com.au) I don't fully comprehend why funeral photography is sometimes regarded with incredulity. Part of me thinks it is because our society does everything we can to avoid dealing with death and the last thing our society wants is permanent evidence that it is a part of life; paradoxically our society is perfectly happy to witness other societies' deaths (usually in the form of natural disasters and civil war).

Last month I photographed beyond the grave - the 80th birthday party of a family matriarch who had had a health scare months earlier. Her extended family decided to pull out all the stops for Ismeme's 80th birthday party by making it a retrospective of her life.

Below is a link to the photos of Ismene's birthday.

liferal photos

Ismeme was far from embarrassed at friends flying in from interstate, her grandchildren playing musical instruments, and being able to declare to her family just how important each and every one of them was to her.

Ismene gave a beautiful impromptu speech which is now included in the book and preserved for posterity. A grandson wrote a limerick which is now in the book. The book also captures her relationship with her friends and family and thus says so much more than could a single portrait of her.

Listening to a grandson's violin recital

Listening to a granddaughter's piano recital

Watching her namesake's theatrical performance

It is often said that funerals are for the survivors - the beauty of photographing the person during the 'retrospective' of their life is that the images may also help the survivors in that they capture photos of the survivors with the loved one in a beautiful setting. This is in contrast with photos of the loved one in their final days where they may be in a pain or in a less than ideal environment such as a nursing home.

Paul Hassing is championing 'liferals' which he defines as an "Organised event to celebrate love, friendship and the joy of living "Opposite of funeral.." and it's worthwhile visiting his website to learn more about them. http://www.liferal.com

more musings on portraiture

2011-01-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

I think I'll struggle with portraiture for as long as I am a photographer. The extraordinary challenge of capturing the essence of a person. At the moment I am mulling over the term subject - as soon as someone is your subject, they are effectively trapped and/or controlled so there is no chance whatsoever that they will be revealed. How can a prisoner ever be themselves? A slightly extreme analogy but very rarely do I see a revealing portrait in circumstances fully controlled by a photographer.

To some recent images and why I think they work.

Males are generally not good at not doing things so if they are engaged in a task of their own making, they'll reveal themselves. The trick for the photographer is to be ready by anticipating the technical requirements of the image.

The image below, taken at a wedding, succeeded technically because it has frozen the sitter (1/350th of a second), knocked out the background (200 mm, f8.0). The image succeeded aesthetically because of the beautiful contrast between the foreground and background. The image succeeded as a portrait because it is so vivacious.

The portrait may also have succeeded because I had met and chatted to him the day before at the wedding rehearsal in the church.

And just after the wedding ceremony, I photographed him skylarking and this enabled our rapport to develop, at no stage did I try to control or censure what he did and this may have given him the freedom to play, to be himself.

National Photographic Portrait Competition entry

2010-12-26T20:36:00.000-08:00

My entry into the 2010 National Photographic Portrait Prize run by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra is one of 55 finalists from more than 1200 entries and is now in the running for the $25,000 prize that will be awarded in February 2011. The exhibition will be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery from 25 February to 17 April 2011 and tour to selected venues throughout 2011.

Like all of my portraiture, this image stems from my philosophy of searching out beauty in everyday life and demonstrating its presence through my photographs. I want people to appreciate that beauty is not reserved for media celebrities since beauty has little to do with the material world.

For me the beauty of the portrait, ‘Young girl in a dance class waiting to be photographed’, stems from the honesty and innocence of the young girl. She is not cloyingly sweet, she has not smiled or performed for the camera and she is not trying to be anyone other than herself. There are no material possessions in the portrait that distract the viewer from appreciating her honesty.

It is no coincidence that I specialise in funeral photography for mourners, being tender, compassionate and thoughtful are too beautiful not to be photographed.

An example of one of my wedding books

2010-11-04T23:35:00.000-07:00

Like my christening books, the book cover can be leather, silk or buckram. In the cover below, the album cover is leather and has a debossed image.

Pages can contain one image that 'bleeds' (goes to the edge of the page) like this:

Or this:

Sometimes a large border suits the image:

When dealing with family shots, they can be a little repetitive so it makes sense to make a pattern out of the repetition:

When considering double spreads, it's a good idea to have the left page relating to the right page.

It's fun to have a large 'lead' photo with smaller detail shots on the left

Finally, toning can bring out the mood in the photo: on the page below, the toned image has been placed to signify the end of the formal portrait session - the next page introduces the reception.

An example of one of my christening books

2010-11-04T22:20:00.000-07:00

An enquiry from a prospective client today made me to realise I should have images of books I have designed on my website. Whilst there is nothing like seeing one of my books to appreciate their quality, a photo is better than a description on the phone.

To the cover of one of my christening books, these can be leather, silk or in the photo below, buckram and I can also include a debossed photo on the front cover.

A good idea for the inside front page is to include the christening invitation.

Images on pages can fill the page to leave no border.

Or a single image can be laid out with a generous border

Two images can look terrific.

It can be fun having a 'lead' image with smaller images to the left.

Smaller images can also be placed to the right of the 'lead' image.

Or the smaller images can be below the 'lead' image.

In summary, when I design my books, I consider whether images 'belong' together, their significance and if there is sufficient difference between the pages to make them visually interesting to the viewer.

photographing dance classes

2010-11-02T01:06:00.000-07:00

I was asked if I wanted to photograph a primary school dance class - well thirteen of them actually , to be photographed on a Saturday morning at a school in inner-city Sydney over 4.5 hours. I thought of all the boring photos that I had seen of ballet classes and thought why not give it a go- I decided to make the shoot exceptional by energising the kids and lighting them beautifully.

The kids were energised by one of the parents, Zoe, whose energy levels were contagious - she really sparked up the kids.

I provided the lighting - two Elinchrom remote controlled softboxes, lights large enough to allow the kids fairly large leeway as to where they wanted to stand. Since the lights were wirelessly triggered, it was safe for me, Zoe and the kids to move around. The lights were also 'fast' enough to freeze the kids in action.

The lights were bright enough to illuminate all the kids, not just those in front.

As for the individual shots, the kids choose what they wanted and that was fine because the lights were flexible - one girl wanted to do the splits on the floor, which meant the lights had to cover her - no problem - another girl wanted to leap into the air - again, the lights could easily deal with this.

Little fairies will always be little fairies!

Or rappers!

Or posed.

Or thoughtful!

In short, with today's lights, dance photography no longer has to remain stuck in the 1970's so if you want good dance photos, drop me a line.

Thoughts behind an image promoting a Blue Mountains B&B

2010-10-23T19:16:00.000-07:00

In Sydney it was 26 degrees and gloriously sunny and with perfect weather there was nothing stopping an ideal shoot for Bilpin Springs Lodge, a terrific self-catering hotel in Bilpin catering for families. But as we drove closer to the blue Mountains, the weather turned - 11 degrees, cars had pulled off the road to shelter under trees to hide from the hail - the nets above the apple trees in apple orchards along the road were weighed down by hail. In other words, a typical photoshoot that always presents challenges no matter how much you plan.

The photographic brief was to photograph interior shots including two family rooms, two bathrooms and some exterior shoots so initially I focussed on interior shots such as the image below to allow the weather to improve.

Normally I avoid shots like this when photographing restaurants and hotels - I call them Marie Celeste shots - beautifully empty rooms - my reasoning is if I saw an empty restaurant I would never go in so why do restaurant and hotel websites never include people in their images? However, bathrooms and bedrooms can be devoid of people, common areas such as hotel foyers and restaurants should never be.

Finally the weather cleared so I was able to work outside- the client wanted an image of the back of the lodge to show guests there was lots of grass for kids to play on.

I could have settled for the photo below.

But it lacks life though it does show green lawns and a car nearby to placate any guest who feared they would have to walk miles from the carpark.

To inject life, my client acted as a model.

This photo adds lots of value to the brief of showing the lawns behind the lodge. It shows that the lodge is dog-friendly, that cars can be parked nearby, there are horses but they are safely behind fences and that the proprietor is friendly.

But the photos is not without flaws since it was a spontaneous image taking only minutes to set up. There is light on the horse's foreleg causing the viewer to look there and not just on the happy (i.e. friendly) proprietor. The dog is in shadow, the man's forearm is too bright, the jeans and base of the shirt are illuminated, the horse's face is a little too dark, the fence post is intrusive, there is too much emphasis on the car, there is a distracting light on the porch and worst of all, the proprietor looks a little apprehensive and this is a bad message for if the proprietor is wary of the horse, maybe it would be too dangerous for families to stay there?

So with a little bit of photoshop, the image has been enhanced and the client can guarantee increased bookings for his lodge!

Why portraiture is usually superficial

2010-10-19T23:50:00.000-07:00

A Macedonian christening in Sydney - lots of family and friends, a peaceful and kind family gathering.

Until the brother-in-law flips, maybe the booze, no one really knew.

A tragic event that bounded everyone present including me, the photographer. Consequently, the commonality of experience between me and the family gave rise to portraits like this one of the godfather.

I didn't create this portrait. The circumstances did.

I also didn't create the portrait below which was taken when the christening was still an innocent gathering.

One of her nine year old cousins took this photo - I set up and then held the camera (a 2kg beast) but that was it - so the image is about the relationship of two girls who have known each other for a lifetime.

To sum up, most images I take at family gatherings are superficial (how can they be anything else when I know nothing of the subjects) but occasionally they have meaning. To minimise superficiality, I avoid direct portraiture and focus on the relationships between key players at the family gathering, whether it be a wedding, a christening or a funeral. Possibly my greatest insight as a photographer is to understand portraits have true beauty when they reveal character and only rarely can my relationship with the sitter be of sufficient depth to bring character to the surface.

pro bono work

2010-10-04T21:37:00.000-07:00

It's nice to do good. The cards below have photos on them taken during an afternoon in West Bengal. If you want to buy them, they are available at Kolkata, a fair trade shop in Brighton, England.

With many images to choose from, it helped enormously to decide the six cards needed a common theme to make them greater than their individual components. So I settled on the theme of joyful play and hopefully, they will do much to raise money for Suchana (www.suchana-community.org).

wedding album design - how to determine the size and number of images on a page.

2010-10-03T04:30:00.000-07:00

One wedding, three pages showing three layouts.

When an image is very strong, it needs no additional images.

But sometimes it's fun to have a record of images leading up to the large image.

In the last page, the images are weak in their composition but strong in their emotion so there is no one dominant image. The images are placed to emphasis the diagonals to lead the viewer from, for example, the bride to the groom.

Wedding photography 101

2010-09-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

A weekend in Sydney in the late afternoon, the guests are waiting for the bride to arrive. The light is harsh and sallow.

I walk three hundred metres from the garden to the awaiting bride. This is not the time to be fussy about the light or meticulous about posing her. All that's important is her happiness and excitement. Any problems can be dealt with after the event. Indeed, given this is the first encounter between the bride and the photographer on her wedding day, it is vital for the photographer to appear to be confident and any fiddling with camera dials will cause the bride to doubt the photographer, and that look of scepticism could contaminate every subsequent photo.

This is the photo as it was shot.

This is the photo after tweaking it.

Before you take any photos, tell her she looks wonderful - she will, but it's nice and a relief for the bride to hear it from the person who is going to record the event for posterity.

How to photograph a school play

2010-09-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

Your child is in the school play, the star performer, but will your photos be stellar? This blog explains how to take great photos without flash.

First of all, you need a DSLR camera, your iphone or point and shoot camera will be too 'noisy' given the poor lighting conditions or it will try to compensate by triggering the flash thus disrupting the performance. Your lens should be able to zoom as much as possible e.g. use a 18-200mm lens rather than a 18-55mm lens. I normally use a 70-200mm lens.

Secondly, you need to change the metering mode of your camera to spot metering. Your camera takes a reading of the ambient light levels in order to calculate exposure but typically in a play, your child is illuminated against a dark background and your camera's light meter is tricked into thinking your child's face is dark so the camera will overexpose the scene and your child's face will be 'burnt out'.

Thirdly, you need to set your camera to manual mode. Then select at least 1/180th second for shutter speed because the actors are typically moving on stage and a shutter speed slower than this will result in blurred faces. Also set the widest aperture your lens offers (e.g. f4 v f22) - you need a wide aperture because the scene is dark and the wider the aperture, the more light will reach your camera's sensor which is necessary to avoid noise. Finally, let the ASA 'float': I generally find the ASA floats between 2500 ASA and 6400 ASA when I set the shutter speed at 1/250th sec and the aperture at f2.8.

Fourthly, you need to decide if you want more than one actor in the frame and if you do, you need to hold the camera very still, focus on one actor and then without moving the camera, focus on the other actor/actors you want in the frame. This is because when your aperture is wide open (e.g. f4) there is a very shallow depth of field so it's unlikely anyone other than the actor you are focussing on will be sharp.

When you get home, merge the two images into one using a program like Photoshop. The photos below demonstrate the before and after results using this technique.

Photo 1 - the girl is in sharp focus but no one in the background is

Photo 2 - the boy is sharp but the girl is blurred

The merged photo - both actors are in sharp focus

Photo 1 - the boy is in sharp focus but the girl isn't

Photo 2 - the boy is not in focus but the girl is

Merged photos - the boy from photo 1 has been combined with the girl from Photo 2

Portrait photography - the three pleases

2010-08-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

On the weekend I photographed a twelve year old girl. Superficially she was a child but the looming clouds of adolescence weren't that far off so what to photograph?

Her mother preferred her as a child to an adolescent so the following photo was perfect for her.

The child wanted to be dark and mysterious so loved the following images:

I, on the other hand, am really interested in photographing what she will become when her features mature so I preferred the following photos:

So when photographing, always remember the three pleases - please the client (the one who buys your images), please the sitter and please yourself and all will be happy!

How to avoid making difficult choices when choosing prints from your photographer.

2010-07-25T23:20:00.001-07:00

Today I received an order for composite prints from the mother of a bride and I thought I would showcase them as they are a lovely way of solving the problem of which images to choose for framing - why choose one image when four can fit in the same frame?

Once a client has done the hard part, choosing the images, I design the layout to best suit them bearing in mind who they are for.

A gift for her husband

A gift for her son and his fiancée

A gift for her daugher

Why weekend amateur photographers should be thanked by professional photographers

2010-07-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

There is a lot of angst amongst some professional photographers at the moment - will the profession survive the onslaught of the weekend wannabes, amateurs who don't give up their day job during the week who then undercut the hapless professionals on the weekend?

The argument is that equipment is so good and so cheap that the market is dead. But are professional photographers as vulnerable as some fear?

Firstly, good equipment isn't cheap - a good lens costs in excess of $2000, my standard zoom costs $3000, and a good camera body is $3000+. The computer at the studio also has to be fast so it can process images (think $3000+) and the software has to be at least Photoshop and Lightroom ($1200+). To ensure your clients get stunning images, you have to edit your images on a high end computer monitor which is properly calibrated ($3000). As for printing, a good A2 printer costs around $3000. So when you add up all the $3000s, and allow for a backup camera and other lenses and flashes, you can easily spend $20,000.

But is the high outlay actually visible in the results? Buying a camera doesn't make you a photographer, knowing how to use the equipment is essential but if you are expert in using your gear, the results can be priceless.

As a society we are fully aware of how we present on camera and how we generally fall far short of desirable body and face types given how saturated we are with 'perfect' images by the media. This means we fear the camera and brace us ourselves whenever we see one - the result tends to be stilted artificial imagery.

To return to true photography, which for me is about capturing tenderness, images should be candid.

I think this type of photography can only be achieved in circumstances where the subject is oblivious to the camera which means not using flash and using a telephoto lens.

But events such as weddings and 21st birthday parties often have lighting which is less than ideal and I typically shoot at 6400 asa (most amateur cameras' results look very grainy above 1600 asa or two stops slower), 1/180sec and at f2.8 (most amateur camera's zooms would be f5.6 at this zoom length or two stops slower). In short, I am able to take photos in light conditions at least four times worse than what a typical camera could achieve.

The other way I prevent people from putting on their camera face is by taking along a portable light studio to weddings and parties. Since very few people have been photographed in a studio, they don't know what they will look like so they don't tend to fear the results. An added bonus of my studio lights is that they produce a beautiful light which makes people look great. True, the images aren't candid but they are very high quality and completely beyond the realm of amateur photography.

In conclusion, there will always be a market for excellent professional photography and the encroachment of amateurs has only been at the expense of mediocre professional photographers. I embrace the amateurs because they keep me on my toes and that can only be good for both my business and my clients.

Factory photography and why it isn't portraiture

2010-06-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

My daughter's school "photo" of her year turned up recently. To call it a photo is wrong - made of flimsy paper, it felt like a shoddy photocopy. As for capturing a unique moment, it was anything but that - instead of being Year 9 2010, it could easily have been Year 11 1992.

Yet parents like me bought the photo, but were they buying it out of nostalgia for a time when school portraiture had value?

I had a similar experience when I went house hunting last weekend. Actually, it wasn't so much house hunting but house peeping because a house I had always admired was open for inspection and I couldn't resist a peek. Inside the house, expected to go for $4.5m, were hideous portraits presumably of the various offspring. It wasn't so much that the subjects were ugly (they weren't) but there was nothing beautiful about the photos - dull light, thoughtless background and no engagement of the subject with the photographer. The images had the feel of photos taken with a mobile phone, only those are usually spontaneous and the subject is laughing or putting on a party face. But the the photos in the grand house were taken by an eminent photographer, one who proudly signed each one.

So what's gone wrong? Why do people, even those with considerable assets, put up with such mediocrity? For me an appropriate comparison is factory farming. Not so long ago all chickens were organic, and they were a treat, not cheap, not to be thoughtlessly consumed daily. Overtime chickens became cheaper as their rearing became mechanised to the current era where they are ubiquitous, cheap and devoid of taste. Yet we continue to consume them.

So it is with portrait photography. If we take the example of school portraits, they are often run by large commercial studios and typically, the photographer who turns up at school is a photographer in name only. A bit like calling a burger fryer at McDonalds a chef. The photographer is on a schedule, this school today, another tomorrow, so the individual portrait sessions are set up with standard lighting, a tedious artificial background used since the 1970's and there is nominal interaction between the photographer and the sitter. Then the image is printed on thin measly paper and apparently, a portrait has been created.

I thought about this recently when I had to photograph five chefs and three front office staff for nilgiri's, an award winning Indian restaurant in Sydney. On average, I spent eleven minutes photographing each person .

My brief was to create portraits that would show off the team to the diners since the images would be hung in the restaurant. I interpreted this brief to mean photos that would make the diners feel good about the restaurant so they would be more likely to return. In other words, if the portraits were mechanical, the sitters would look wooden but if the sitters looked passionate, confident and happy, then the diners would think the restaurant staff were proud of what they did. In short, if the warmth of the sitters was forced or lacking, the portraits would fail to sell the restaurant to the diners.

What did I have to do to achieve the portraits I was after? Firstly, in advance of the session, I had to be totally confident about the lighting setup - it had to allow flexibility (the staff were of different heights and would stand). So I spent two hours getting the light right to produce two lighting setups- one open, the other 'Rembrandtish'. I used Swiss Elinchrom BXRI 500 lights with a large softbox on right, a smaller one on left and a reflector in front. These lights are wirelessly controlled which meant no worrying about tripping over cables. They are also 100% reliable and produce beautiful light. This meant I never had any doubt during the sessions - if I had, the subjects would have sensed my anxiety and not relaxed.

When each staff member arrived, I explained what I was trying to achieve - my message was simple, if you don't look happy, the clients won't come back and the restaurant would fail- nothing like a bit of pressure but done with humour, it made them realise that we had a common objective, to make the restaurant look good, and one that couldn't be achieved by me alone. In short, their unique personality was vital. Then I asked them about themselves, where they came from in india, if they had kids etc. None of this interfered with the shoot, it didn't take long but it created a dialogue and in so doing, stopped the subjects feeling like they were in a police identification parade.

The results are the photos below which I turned into posters to give diners more relevant information. Needless to write, they are printed on beautiful thick (270gsm) lustrous paper made in France.

In summary, if you are not moved by the portraits you have commissioned, stop using the photographer who created them because the fault lies not in you but them! As for the cost, my granny had a very wise saying "quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten".

How to get more work from clients by ignoring their requests

2010-06-10T16:20:00.000-07:00

I am currently designing a website for a brilliant award winning restaurant in Sydney, nilgiri's, owned and managed by Ajoy Joshi.

Ajoy Joshi making paneer in a cooking class

Integral to the website's design are images as they are a very efficient way of explaining nilgiri's which is far more than a simple restaurant - it offers cooking classes, a chef's table (a dégustation dinner presented personally by Ajoy), a Tiffin Room, external catering, hosting of functions, a spice shop, a range of simmer sauces, a Sunday Buffet etc. Consequently, I have been busy photographing nilgiri's.

Recently Ajoy asked me to create twelve framed images for the four private rooms at nilgiri's - each room has a theme, Earth, Fire, Air and Water and consistent with these themes, I could have supplied Ajoy with images like those below:

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia

Bondi Wave

Waterfall, Cradle Mountain Lake St Clare National Park

Glacier, Chamonix, France

Bay of Fires, Tasmania

But I reconsidered Ajoy's request - instead of themed images which would have effectively given me a captive audience, something every photographer desires, why not use the images I had already taken of nilgiri's to create a series of internal advertisements for the restaurant? To do this, all I would have to do is add a suitable caption to each image. So that diners could read the text and appreciate the images without having to peer closely, I made the prints A2 sized. As an added bonus for myself, I inserted my website address below each image.

The twelve framed images were delivered on a Tuesday and were an instant hit - diners in the Private Rooms found out that nilgiri's offered cooking classes etc and asked their waiters to tell them more. The waiters were thrilled as instead of having to break the ice with the diners, the images were doing it for them.

On Thursday Ajoy ordered eight additional images as he was confident the framed images would pay for themselves in no time at all.

The moral of this blog is to understand first and foremost that your commercial clients are buying images not as collectors of your art but because they think the images will boost their businesses and the more they are convinced your images will meet this purpose, the more work you will get from them. Yes, I could have chosen not to subjugate my own ego to the needs of my client, and quite happily given what Ajoy initially asked for, but by truly appreciating his needs, Ajoy is already a repeat customer of my work.

Wedding album design - how page backgrounds can enhance your images

2010-05-18T19:24:00.000-07:00

This article came out of my frustration with page backgrounds when designing wedding albums. I would place a terrific image onto a page but fearing the background would swamp or detract from the image I would make the background neutral, perhaps colouring it by sampling a colour from the image in the hope of making the background harmonise with the image.

But the wedding pages were dull, and try as I might, I could not find any primers to help me work out a set of rules. So this blog is about how to design backgrounds which unify and enhance images in a wedding album.

This blog could not have been written without the assistance of Peter Travis, Australia's foremost colourist, whose knowledge of colour is as great as his ability to explain how colour and layout can shape our perception of images.

1. Use of background colour as a metaphor

The front cover of my album was a stunning image which had predominantly dark tones.

The image size and shape was constrained by the type of album - whilst the album had 15" x 11"landscape dimensions, the front cover image was debossed (recessed) and its size was restricted to 7.5" x 6 ". The background of the image was the material used for the front cover.

When I originally chose a background I wanted a dark brown colour since I wanted to use leather and it only came in dark tones which I thought would make the image too sombre given it was already quite darkly toned.

Instead, I chose a light cream album cover that was consistent with the lighter tones of the bride's dress and got the following result.

But I should have stuck to my guns and gone for a dark background because metaphorically, a dark background is more appropriate. What do I mean? A wedding focusses on a couple and had I thought about the dark tones and the boxy dimensions of the image, then metaphorically, the couple is in a private box at the opera, she looking down at the stage below and he looking at her. So if the background to the image is dark, this reinforces the 'private box' nature of the image as per the image below.

2. Use backgrounds to emphasis the dimensions of the image

If your image has landscape proportions, then you should have a similarly proportioned background in order to emphasis the 'rectangularity' of the image. This follows the principle that repetition of image shapes is pleasing to the mind. This sounds easy to accomplish, particularly in a landscape dimensioned wedding album but what if your image is portrait dimensioned?

The spread below is from my original design:

As you can see, the left image is portrait dimensioned but the page isn't. By extending the background of the right image over to the left page, and by having skinny vertical columns either side of the image on the left page, the background becomes more in line with the dimensions of the image.

Other techniques to enhance the images include using a thin white line to break up the slabs of background colour to make it more interesting -there is nothing worse than acres of a single colour as background to a double spread. I also bleed the left image to the top and bottom margins of the page to avoid the sense that the image is hemmed in or constricted by the page.

3. Give images a sense of direction and movement to make them satisfying to the viewer

Different shapes convey direction differently. A circle gives the viewer no sense of direction, a square a little bit and a rectangle most of all. Similarly, the placing of a shape on a page affects the sense of movement; somehow, a rectangle placed more to the left than to the right of a page gives the viewer a sense the image is travelling. To understand these concepts better, contrast a circle placed dead centre in a page with a rectangle to the left of a page. Somehow, if images are too centred, they became neutral and static but if they are off-centre, they have a sense of movement which makes them more interesting to look at and their shape (rectangular as opposed to circular) enhances the interest by giving them directionality.

In the first spread below, the left page picture is square and almost centred but I wanted to convey the sense of movement - after all , the bride is being ushered by her father to the awaiting groom!

In the final spread, I have made the left image rectangular and placed it off-centre. I have also extended the background of the left page to make the right image more vertical and have added a thin white vertical line to add interest to the background which would otherwise be two slabs of colour.

4. Use graduated backgrounds to counter brightness of less important objects

Our eyes naturally go to the brightest part of an image. In a wedding, this is likely to be the bride's dress but the bride's face is more important and the image should somehow direct the viewer to her face.

The background can lessen the impact of the bright white dress and increase the visibility of the bride's face if it is graduated so the lighter part of the background 'washes' out the impact of the dress whilst the dark part of the background emphasises the bride's white face.

The following two pages show how a graduated background subtly reduces the impact of the bride's

wedding dress.

In conclusion, don't play safe when considering backgrounds for your images and your wedding albums will be the better for it.

Polishing photos - four simple rules

2010-04-30T21:24:00.000-07:00

On a rare occasion photos straight from the camera may be perfect just as you might find a flawless perfectly shaped diamond in nature. But leaving perfection to chance is a very risky business, particularly in wedding photography where wedding couples and their families aren't interested in the pursuit of natural perfection but memories of an extraordinary day.

So how to enhance images? Using the following four images that came from a recent wedding I photographed in Sydney, there is no simple rule that you can slavishly follow, more a set of rules that I am slowly working out.

Rule 1

Eliminate clutter

This photo of the bride was taken in a hotel room which had average light, a lot of clutter and little time for posing the bride.

In order to accentuate what I considered important, namely the dress, the bride and her maid of honour, I had to eliminate the lady in the background, the luggage on the right side, the air-conditioning duct, the small table in the background and the mirror. I've also toned the image to make it warmer, cropped it to vertically in order to emphasise the bride's slim figure and blurred the bed and background to draw attention to the bride's dress.

Rule 2

Tone images after considering what makes them significant

This photo has enormous significance - the father is about to give away his daughter but the surrounds were less than ideal, a corridor from a lift.

To draw attention to the bride, I made the floor dark to accentuate her dress. This follows the rule that the eye is drawn to the lightest part of the image so if it is irrelevant, make it darker. Similarly, I made the walls and ceiling darker and removed the halogen lights in the ceiling.

Without waxing lyrical too much, now that the bride is a vision of light in darkness, and is being lead from that darkness into the light, the image's tones are consistent with its theme.

Rule 3

Eliminate colour to compel the viewer to look deeper

Black and white photos tend to be more powerful than colour photos when conveying mood because they require additional analysis. I am not sure what the science is, but when we look at a typical image, we scan it for information, allowing perhaps half a second to absorb as much as we can. When there is little information about colour in the photo, we may devote the time we would have spent absorbing information about the image's colour to other elements of the image to learn about it.

For me this image is all about tenderness and to 'force' the viewer to appreciate this, I converted the colour image into a two toned image. I did not use black and white as these colours would have been too stark and would have jarred with the tender mode of this image. Instead, I chose a rich golden white and a golden black.

Rule 4

Find out what your client likes

If you consider your images without considering your client's preferences it will be that much harder to know how to enhance images.

In this wedding, the bride loved sandstone so we looked for a colonial building to use as a backdrop, took some shots and then headed back to the reception.

When I saw the couple hand in hand, walking back, I realised I had a terrific image - not only did I have sandstone as a backdrop but I could crop the photo so it looked like they were heading to a doorway and not an awaiting cab. I also had a lovely image of the couple.

But how to tone it? Bearing in mind the bride loves sandstone, it made sense to tone the image in 'sandstone' colours - an added benefit is that the bride's skin now glows with health.

Evolving your sports photography

2010-02-19T20:31:00.000-08:00

This blog is about how photographing my son and his team mates playing cricket has evolved over time.

When I began to photograph cricket, mainly to fill in time as I knew nothing about cricket and hadn't acquired the skill of staring at a grassy field for a day, I had no idea of what to photograph so I sought to imitate those cricket photos I had seen, conventional sports photography in newspapers. This meant I focussed on individual performance as per the photos below:

The batsman

The fielder

But over time this focus on individual performance became dull so my focus moved to the interaction between players beginning with that between the bowler and batsman, which resembled hatred at times, not something I had associated with cricket.

But this interaction became less interesting over time so rather than stop photographing, I became interested in the team's jubilation, the joy of boys in victory.

Which in turn lead to my interest in sadness in loss

I am not sure where to go now in my cricket photography - I could polish the existing themes or maybe focus instead on the spectators, the coaches or the post match shaking of hands. I do know that if I don't change the theme, I'll give up taking my camera to the games and that would be a shame because occasionally I will take a photo on the spur of the moment without any theme in mind such as this one.

How to turn your rough diamond photos into gemstones

2010-02-16T20:26:00.000-08:00

You take your camera to your child's cricket because it's an important game and it would be lovely having a photo of the team triumphing on the day. The game is tense but suddenly all comes good and magically you are in the right spot at the right time, you take the photo and can't wait to get home to print it and send it to the other parents.

You get home and disaster - instead of a gem, your photo is a dud. Or is it? To explain how to get the best of your photos, this article will show what had to be done to a cricket photo to make it a 'keeper'.

Fixing your photos can be done in a variety of programs including Photoshop Elements, Picasa and iphoto. Whatever your chosen application, fixing photos is an easy five step process.

1. Decide what's important and crop out what's not.
2. Delete distractions from the cropped image
3. Fix the scene's white balance and colour
4. Fix the scene's brightness.
5. Sharpen the image

As evidenced below, this approach can be applied to any photo, from landscapes to group photos:

A Group photo before cropping, adjusting white balance and colour, brightening and sharpening

A Group photo after cropping, adjusting white balance and colour, brightening and sharpening

A landscape before cropping, adjusting white balance and colour, brightening and sharpening

A landscape after cropping, adjusting white balance and colour, brightening and sharpening

Hopefully the above examples have convinced you that miracles can be achieved with your photos. So to help you with your own images, I'll explain how I have applied the five step process to improve a cricket photo.

Untouched image

Step 1: Crop the image

In the above photo the wicket keeper has caught out the batsman but you would never see this unless you peered closely because the image doesn't draw your attention to the wicket keeper. This is because there is too much irrelevant information in the photo such as the bare earth in the foreground, the white cone in the left middle ground, the blue bag in the right background and the cars in the left background. To remove these distractions you need to use the 'crop' tool in your chosen application which will result in the following image

Cropped image

Step 2: Delete distractions from the cropped image

Thanks to your cropping, you no longer see blue bags, cars and bare earth so you ending up seeing a lot more of the wicket keeper. You could obsessively delete anything other than the wicket keeper, beginning with the mother in the pink sweater sitting in the chair but sometimes background items give the image context. What doesn't, in my view, is the white cone to the right of the bowler so I'll delete it using the 'healing' or 'clone brush. Deleting this small object will make an enormous difference to how the viewer perceives the photo because the eye tends to go to the brighter parts of a photo and not in this photo automatically to the wicket keeper whose face is dark due to his complexion and his helmet shading his face.

Cropped image with local healing to remove white cone

Step 3: Fix the scene's white balance and colour

The photo is drab because it was taken on an overcast day so colours look dull.

To make it more interesting, you need to fix the white balance of the photo. White balance is the process of removing unrealistic color casts, so that objects which appear white in person are rendered white in your photo. Proper camera white balance has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, however digital cameras often have great difficulty with this.

To fix white balance, with the 'white balance' tool click on a neutral colour. In this photo, clicking onto the white shirt of the bowler works wonders as demonstrated below.

Cropped image with local healing to remove white cone and white balanced.

At this stage you should also consider the overall colour of the photo - increasing the saturation will give the photo more 'kick' as evidenced in the photo below.

Cropped image with local healing to remove white cone, white balanced and increased colour saturation.

Step 4: Fix the scene's brightness

The photo still looks drab because of the flat lighting so you should play with the 'exposure', 'brightness' and 'contrast' settings (in that order) until the photo becomes punchy. There is no right or wrong way to do this, just small adjustments until the image looks better and remember, there is only so much you can achieve with a photo (you cannot turn night into day).

Cropped image with local healing to remove white cone, white balanced, increased colour saturation and adjusted brightness.

If your application has localised adjustments, you want to brighten the cricket ball and the wicket keeper's face to make the viewer's eye go to them (remember the eye prefers brighter parts of the photo and the wicket keeper and the cricket ball are having to compete with the white cricket shirts, trousers, socks and shoes.

Cropped image with local healing to remove white cone, white balanced, increased colour saturation, adjusted brightness and localised brightness on cricket ball and wicket keeper's face.

Step 5: Sharpen the image

The final step is to sharpen the image - too little and the image will be soft or 'mushy', too much and the image will be pixellated or 'scratchy'.

Cropped image with local healing to remove white cone, white balanced, increased colour saturation, adjusted brightness, localised brightness on cricket ball and wicket keeper's face and sharpened.

In conclusion, with a little patience, you can turn rough diamonds into gemstones following the five step process above.

Using your DSLR - how to choose aperture, shutter speed and iso - Part 2 of 4 part series

2010-02-13T21:45:00.000-08:00

The previous article in this four part series about moving beyond the P Mode on your DSLR explained what your camera assumes about the quantity of light when being used in P or Program mode and that combinations of shutter speed and different apertures can result in the same amount of light reaching your DSLR's sensor. This article explains how to choose the ideal combination of shutter speed and aperture. It also introduces iso which allows you to vary the sensitivity of your DSLR's sensor.

Imagine two very different scenes you want to photograph: your son standing resolutely in the mountains, a backdrop of glorious scenery and your daughter dancing at a party, a distracting background of chairs and tables behind her. To help you with your imagination, here are two such photos:

In the photo of your son, the mountains behind are sharp whilst in the photo of your daughter, the distracting background are a blur.

What is your camera assuming about the importance of the background in P Mode so it can decide whether or not to blur the background? Your camera generally has no idea about what's in the background. Depending on the model, a camera may have thousands of images of scenes, and the ideal shutter speed and aperture for each of those scenes, stored in its memory and will try to match your scene with its memory so it can then impose the ideal shutter speed and aperture. This 'memory' approach can never match what you know about the scene. So once you have decided whether or not you want the background, how do you communicate this to your camera?

You control how much of the background will be in focus by changing the aperture of your camera. The larger the aperture (e.g. f5.6 instead of f11), the more the background will be blurred. In the two photos above, the boy's photo has an aperture of f16 whilst the girl's photo has an aperture of f4.

Why does your camera give you so many apertures when you only need f4 and f16? The answer is complex - aperture essentially affects the plane of focus or how much is in focus in front of and behind your subject and different lens lengths and your distance from the subject will affect the plane of focus. For the purpose of this article, which is written for anyone seeking to move beyond the P mode, use the largest aperture possible when wanting to blur the background and use either f11 or f116 when wanting to preserve details of the background.

But how do you change the aperture on your camera? The answer is to change your DSLR's command dial from P to A - A stands for Aperture priority and once you have done this, you simply dial in the aperture you want and the camera will automatically select the appropriate shutter speed. This sounds so easy and it would be if we didn't have to worry about shutter speed. With a very small aperture, only a tiny amount of light is able to register on your camera's sensor which means you have to keep the shutter open for longer than you would if you had used a very large aperture. In the two photos above, the boy is stationery so the actual shutter speed of 1/180th sec is not a problem but the girl is dancing and had I used a shutter speed of 1/180th second, she would have been blurred; in actuality I used a shutter speed of 1/1500th sec. So what shutter speeds will give you the best results?

If you are photographing a landscape, your shutter speed should be 1/60th of a second or faster (e.g. 1/250th of a second). If you are photographing a stationery person in a landscape then your shutter speed should be at least 1/180th of a second or faster. If you are photographing a dancing girl in a landscape then your shutter speed should be 1/500th of a second or faster. If you want to be artistic when photographing a running girl and want her to be blurred, you should ensure the shutter speed is about 1/15th of a second as is the photo below.

Say you want to take a photo of your daughter dancing in the mountains. In Aperture mode, you select a very small aperture, say f11, to make sure the mountains behind her aren't a blur but disaster, your camera's read out indicates the camera has selected a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second which is no where near fast enough since it is 1/3 as fast as what you need (1/500th of second is twice as fast as 1/250th second which is twice as fast as 1/125th of a second) so what to do? You could increase your aperture to f5.6 (remember from the first article that f11 lets in half the amount of light that f8 does which in turn lets in half the amount of light that f5.6 does).

But a f5.6 aperture would make the mountains blurred so what to do? Ask your daughter to stop moving and somehow make her dance in Photoshop when you get home? No, what you need to do is make your camera's sensor more sensitive to light - if you make it three times as sensitive, then at f11, your shutter speed will be what you want, 1/500th of a second.

But how to make your camera's sensor more sensitive? In the dark era before digital DSLR's, you would use a faster film in your camera. Films were rated on their sensitivity to light with an 800 ISO (ISO is also known as ASA) film being twice as sensitive as a 400 ISO film which in turn was twice as sensitive as a 200 ISO film. This meant that an 800 ISO film required only 1/3 of the light required by a 200 ISO film to register the same amount of light information on the film.

So why is this relevant in the digital era? Because you can easily change the sensitivity of your DSLR's sensor 'mid roll' so to speak. Going back to wanting to photograph your dancing daughter on the hillside, if your camera's ISO was 200 when you found out the camera selected 1/125th second when you selected f11, all you have to do is increase the ISO from 200 to ISO 800 and your daughter will be beautifully sharp as will be the mountains behind her.

So why don't cameras use a very high ISO all the time? The faster the camera's ISO, the more 'noise' there is - little dots start appearing in the darker or shadow areas of the picture where there shouldn't be any dots and this isn't aesthetically desirable. Furthermore, sometimes you want a combination of slow shutter speed and small aperture - the above photo was taken at f19 using 1/15th second for shutter speed.

In summary, for a given ISO, a large aperture will blur the background and require less light than a small aperture which will preserve detail in the background but require more light. Increasing the ISO will make your DSLR's sensor more sensitive to light which will then allow you to use an appropriate shutter speed for a desired aperture.

The next article will explain how your camera focusses in P mode and what you need to know toensure your subject is perfectly in focus.

How to choose a wedding photographer

2010-02-11T03:01:00.000-08:00

A couple faced with choosing a wedding photographer enters a world which should be fun but rapidly becomes daunting. Every photographer they visit shows them a majestic leather bound tome in which the perfect couple looks stunning. With nothing to distinguish one photographer from another, the couple asks the photographer if the photographer is discrete and into candid photography because they hate posing. “Of course”, each photographer responds. So without staging a wedding rehearsal to test each photographer ,how do you choose a wedding photographer? On price?

I think the main question to ask yourself is do you want fairytale photography or photojournalism? The former focuses on the material symbols of weddings such as the couple as an ideal unit, the rings, the bridal party and the dress whilst the latter is about candor, images not necessarily technically perfect but capturing the wedding as it actually was.

A fairytale photographer might criticise the photojournalist as being all substance with no style whilst the photojournalist might criticise the fairytale photographer for being all style and no substance.

A great example of a fairytale wedding photographer is Yevant, a brilliant Melbourne based wedding photographer. In my view, the following photo by Yervant (www.yervant.com) is stunning. The lighting is intriguing, the composition classic and the use of the building to frame the couple perfect. Interestingly, the groom's face is partially hidden and this is most likely because males are generally far more awkward than females about posing so the photographic compositional trick is to 'bury' them. The female in this portrait also has her eyes shut - possibly in rapture or is it because Yevant wanted to avoid the wariness that is often found in normal (i.e. not a professional model) peoples' eyes when they are asked to pose?

However, as a wedding photographer I don’t aspire to take this type of photo because it is a posed image and does not focus on what I consider to be the most important quality of my photography which is capturing tenderness.

A great example of a wedding photojournalism is the renowned English photographer Jeff Ascough (www.jeffascough.com) whose photo is below.

With photojournalism wedding photography, the couple may not look deeply into the camera, there may not be perfect lighting but the photo is unmistakably that of a wedding and chances are the couple will remember how they felt at the time when they see the photo. My only criticism of this photo, based on the groom’s grin, is that he has either been asked by the photographer to pose, or knows the photographer is there. Like Yervant's photo, the couples' eyes are shut.

I personally prefer wedding photojournalism to fairytale photography because for me, the photo’s worth is less dependent on the material surrounds and therefore is more humanistic.

My wedding photography style is a variant on photojournalism in that I am endeavouring to capture a wedding by photographing the unique emotions present on the day, those which can never be repeated. The following photos for me exemplify my photography.

In the first image, the surrounds aren’t opulent but the mood is overwhelmingly tender - a father is farewelling his son as a single man and the son is deeply grateful for everything his father has done.

In the second image, the image is posed but has an intimate feel and uses soft afternoon light.

So perhaps there are as many types of wedding photographers as there are reasons for marrying and you may need to understand why you are marrying in order to work out which photographer will meet your expectations.

Once you have decided what style of photography you want, make sure you are happy with how the photographer responds to the following questions before you engage him or her.

Will you be the photographer on the day? Some studios may outsource photography and this may be disconcerting if the first time you meet the photographer is on your wedding day.

When will my wedding album be ready? Some studios only want to focus on signing up clients and taking photos in the ‘wedding season’, preferring to prepare albums in the quieter winter months so if you don’t want to wait six months, ask the studio to commit to a delivery time that meets your expectations.

When will my wedding photos be viewable on line? For friends and loved ones overseas, they want to see your photos sooner than later and anything more than three days may be too long for you.

Using your DSLR beyond the P mode - Introduction - Part 1 of 4 part article

2010-02-10T16:35:00.000-08:00

You bought your DSLR because you wanted more than a point and shoot camera but faced with a plethora of options on the camera’s command dial (A, P, M, S......) and wanting to play safe for important photos, you opt for the P or Program mode.

But this irks you as the camera sometimes gets it wrong and you never quite know when a great shot will turn into a blurred or out-of-focus disaster.

So what to do? Should you have bought a more expensive camera that presumably has a more reliable P mode? No - the answer is to transfer decisions from the camera to you and this four part series of articles will explain how to make this transfer process as painless as possible.

First of all, what is the P mode? Your camera is blind to the world and has to make a lot of assumptions about it including how much light is out there, where to focus, how fast your subject is moving and the ideal depth of field (or how much in front and behind your subject should be in focus e.g. 2 metres in front and behind the subject or. as much as possible). Switching your camera to P mode means the camera has to make the best ‘guestimate’ it can for all these unknowns.

Why does the amount of light matter to your camera? Think of your own eyelids and how each of your eyes has an iris. When it’s a very sunny day you tend to squint and your irises expand to protect your retinas. Conversely, in a gloomy room, you open your eyelids as wide as possible and your irises contract.

Your eyes irises and eyelids vary the amount of light because your retinas like a certain amount of light to register information - too little light and your eyes only see limited information, too much light and your retinas are overloaded and you see nothing. Your camera’s sensor is the monocular equivalent of your retinas - the place where information about light is registered, and just like your retinas, the DSLR’s sensor likes an ideal quantity of light. Unlike your eyes, your camera has no eyelid or iris to regulate the quantity of light. Instead the camera controls light by varying the shutter speed and aperture.

Two new terms, shutter speed and aperture, deserve an explanation. Think of a shutter as a primitive eyelid for your camera, primitive in that the shutter is either open or closed and cannot be anything in-between. When you take a photo, the shutter temporarily retracts so light can come through the lens and register on your camera’s sensor. The longer the shutter retracts, the more light hits the sensor. In a bright room, you only want the shutter to retract for a short time or the sensor will be overloaded. In a dark room, you want the shutter to retract for much longer to give your camera’s sensor enough time to register the far dimmer light. The typical shutter speed is 1/125th sec which means the shutter temporarily retracts for a tiny fraction of a second but most DSLRs' shutter speed ranges from 30 seconds to 1/4000th of a second. A later article in this series will later explain why you would want to vary shutter speed.

Now you know what a shutter does, where does aperture fit in? The aperture is the iris of your camera. It is physically part of your camera’s lens, it is usually octagonal and it restricts light by expanding and contracting.

Unlike an iris, an aperture has a ratings system e.g. f5.6, f8, f11. What does this mean? The ‘f stop’ rating simply explains how much light is let in by the aperture using a scale where f2 lets twice as much light as f4 as f5.6 lets twice as much light as f8 which lets in twice as much light as f11.... This is a confusing scale - just remember, the smaller the aperture (e.g. f4 instead of f 11), the more light is let in.

In summary, a DSLR controls how much light registers on the camera’s sensor by varying the size of the aperture and by varying the time the shutter retracts. It stands to reason that different combinations of shutter speed and aperture will result in the same amount of light reaching the sensor.

For example, if your sensor needs a shutter speed of 2 seconds and an aperture of f8, if you double the shutter speed to 4 seconds (which will let twice as much light in), then you need to change the aperture from f8 to f11 in order to halve the amount of light let in by the shutter.

Before you worry about what combination of shutter and aperture to use, you need to work out how much light is required by your DSLR’s sensor. Cameras have built in light meters to measure the prevailing light condition but they have to make an assumption about how much light is being reflected from the objects you want to photograph. Why? The camera’s light meter measures light that is being reflected from your choice of subject and the general environment around your subject. However, the camera’s light meter cannot know the reflectivity of your subject matter so it has to assume that overall, your subject reflects as much light as a light grey (known as “18% gray”) piece of paper and this assumption works for the majority of subjects.

To understand why this assumption isn’t always appropriate, imagine three tennis balls, one is white, one is grey and one is black.

Let’s assume the white ball is three times as bright as the black ball. In other words, the white tennis ball reflects three times as much light as the black ball. Now let’s imagine what your DSLR assumes when you aim your camera at the white tennis ball. Does your camera assume it is a black tennis ball in a very bright room, a white tennis ball in a very dark room or a light grey tennis ball in average lighting.? Faced with these three options, your camera assumes the tennis ball is light grey, whether it is in fact white, black or grey.

In order to make a white tennis ball a grey tennis ball photo, your camera will underexpose the photo i.e. it will speed up the shutter speed from say 2 seconds, to 1 second so that the sensor is only exposed for half the time it should be.

In order to make a black tennis ball a grey tennis ball photo, your camera will overexpose the photo i.e. it will slow down the shutter speed from say 2 seconds, to 4 seconds so that the sensor is exposed for twice the time it should be.

If this is all a bit too theoretical, think about photos you have taken that were incorrectly exposed. A classic example is snow - instead of pristine white landscapes, your pictures have dull ‘sooty’ snow because your camera didn’t know that the scene’s overall reflectivity wasn’t light grey but much brighter so it exposed the focus to make your snow light grey!.

The next article will explain how to choose the ideal combination of shutter speed and aperture.

Should a photographer refuse Indian weddings when they aren’t in a maharajah's palace in Rajasthan?

2009-09-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

I was asked to photograph an Indian wedding that was organised very quickly, within a week; an auspicious day not to be missed meant very little planning so when I drove to the venue in Sydney on the wedding day, I had no idea of what to expect though I doubted it would be a magnificent maharajah's palace since there aren’t any in Sydney's suburbs!

The venue turned out to be a brick house. At this point I could have jumped up and down, outraged that the venue wasn’t even a temple but rather than take on reality and lose, I did what all professional photographers do and looked around for opportunities.

Where to photograph the bride? The house’s front door had a glass decorative panel and since the house faced North East, I was able to take advantage of the morning sun streaming through the door’s glass panel. The location wasn’t ideal – a light switch threatened to feature prominently in any photo, the glass panel was at chest height meaning anyone wanting to take advantage of the ideal 45 degree light would have to ask the portrait sitter to crouch down and even worse, it was the front door which meant I couldn’t have an elaborate set up or the guests wouldn’t have been able to enter the house. So what to do?

Here is a “location shot” to give you some idea of what I was faced with.

Below is the final photo, taken within 5 minutes of this location photo – no flash has been used, both sides of the bride's face are illuminated because I took advantage of the lighting reflecting off the walls and most importantly and the bride is not apprehensive or impatient because I worked quickly. I showed the bride the photo immediately afterwards and from then on, any doubt the bride might have had about whether I was able to photograph her at her best disappeared.

The wedding ceremony was housed in a mini tent that was within a marquee in the back yard- it would be safe to say that the natural light was dismal, no beautiful 45 Degree light, just dull light struggling to get though two layers of canvas.

Here is the location shot of what I was faced with:

The location shot is slightly misleading because the mini tent is illuminated since I had placed a flash in the mini tent’s ceiling that fired upwards into its ceiling via remote control (no messy wires tripping up the guests). This turned the humble mini tent into a Bollywood film set. Having the flash fire into the ceiling also meant the wedding couple weren’t being blinded by direct flash. It also meant that I could move around and photograph the couple from various angles knowing that the front of their faces would always be exposed.

Below are some examples :

I wanted to take photos of the couple from the side. Since the bride was sitting in a chair next to the groom, I was faced with deciding who was going to be blurred, the bride or the groom. But rather than make such a decision, I photographed firstly the groom, then the bride and when I got home, I merged the two images to get the couple both beautifully sharp.

Here is the before photo of the bride that was used to make the final image.

Here is the final image showing both bride and groom in perfect focus:

I also took candid shots of the guests. In my experience men are far more difficult than women to photograph so the secret is not to let them know you are photographing them which means no poses and no flash: here are two candid images:

After the wedding ceremony, I took advantage of the lighting set up to photograph the family in the mini tent:

But how to cope when the couple left the mini tent to mingle with their guests in the marquee? I abandoned the flash and took candid photos making sure that the white canvas walls of the marquee did not confuse my camera’s exposure. Then, when I got home, I brought out the magic of the images but altering their exposure and tonality.

Here is a before and after photo of the couple greeting a guest where I have deliberately ‘blown out’ the scuffed walls of the marquee and its plastic window so nothing detracts from the warmth of the greeting.

I then took photos in the house. The living room had a lovely plain white wall and white ceiling so I asked one guest to point the flash at the side wall whilst fired my on-camera flash into the ceiling. This enlarged the apparent light source to give a lovely soft feel to the portraits since the light wraps around the face using this lighting technique. In short, I turned a living room of a suburban house into a professional light studio within two minutes. Here is one image from this 'studio':

In conclusion, I was able to take great photos because I never tried to fight reality. I accepted the location for what it was, a house in suburbia, and then worked out how to best capture the wedding day. To see more photos from the day, click on the link: http://www.johnslaytor.com.au/slideshows/celebrations/hindu_wedding_sydney/index.html

A review of four on-line photobook publishers available in Australia

2009-09-18T00:03:00.001-07:00

I have developed a funeral photography business www.thefuneralphotographer.com.au. Integral to my service offering is the Memorial Book, a photo book which contains images of the funeral service, hobbies and objects special to the deceased such as their garden and objets d’art.

For two years I have used Asukabooks but became disillusioned with them. Whilst the quality of their books is superb (I rate them eight and half out of ten, with Asukabooks losing half a mark because of barcodes), I had six complaints.

Firstly my biggest gripe was that Asukabook did not provide book publishing software which meant that I had to generate the books within Adobe Photoshop. Whilst I developed a good system using Smartobjects within Adobe Lightroom, it was no substitute for dedicated software. It meant a book took up to fifteen hours to design and one that could never be modified in front of the client as the process was too cumbersome. Asukabook does offer dedicated software which looks glamorous but is very simple- being in its first edition, it lacks sophisticated options if one compares it to Momento’s software. I understand that Photojunction offers unofficial support for Asukabooks but I could see myself getting caught between these two companies and wearing the cost when something went wrong with a book design. I am also unfamiliar with Photojunction, a process not helped by its own website video tutorials not working for three days when I was interested.

My second complaint was that there was no pricing transparency. I would upload an order and within days my credit card would be debited. I would only get an invoice when I received the final product and the invoice was wrong more than once, once I had been overcharged by more than $150.

Thirdly, the page margin for error resulted in one book being unusable because the text had been cropped notwithstanding that it was within the safety margins of the page template – Asukabooks subsequently advised me that I could not rely on the safety margins of the template it provided and always had to allow for an additional ¼ inch. Asukabooks did not offer to reprint the book free of charge.

Fourthly, there were no volume discounts, even when I ordered 14 copies of one book and it seemed unfair given my own client’s expectations.

Fifthly, I hate the fact that Asukabooks insists on a strange barcode being both on the back cover and on the back inside page. In my opinion, this compromises the book cover design and looks ugly.

Sixthly, Asukabooks forces you to work in multiples of ten pages. So if you want to have a 42 sided book, you have to pay for fifty sides and put up with 8 blank sides.

So with these reasons, I started to look around and accepted that I might have to use Windows software (I have always used a Mac).

I first tried Click-on-Print http://clickonprint.com.au/ . Its Windows only software was easy to use and I had no problems sitting down with a client and substituting images and modifying page designs.

The software’s major weakness was that I wasn’t able to vary the opacity of images. For example, if I wanted a background image muted by reducing its opacity to 20%, I couldn’t do it within the software and instead would have to create the image within Adobe Photoshop, reduce the opacity, save the image and then transfer it from the Mac OS to the Windows OS. Needless to say this discouraged me and when I asked Click-on-print if they were likely to introduce opacity modification for images in their software they replied they had no plans to do so at the present time.

All in all, I thought the software ranked about seven out of ten. It encouraged me to play with page layouts.

In my opinion the quality of the Click-on-print books was four out of ten. Whilst the colour accuracy was good, the books suffered as follows.

Firstly, there was hideous warping on the inside covers presumably from excess glue.

Secondly, the side of the pages seemed to be smudged with ink lines.

Thirdly, the pages were warped

Fourthly, the glossy front cover seemed excessively vulnerable to scratching.

Fifthly, you could see the stitching in the centre of the pages when the book was open.

Click-on-Print gladly offered to reprint the books when I raised these problems but the subsequent reprints weren’t much better in my opinion.

I rate the Click-on-Print book four out of ten.

Next I tried photobookaustralia.com.au. Its software was good (I rate it seven and a half out of ten), available for both Macs and Windows.

I was able to create a book within four hours which I thought was great. I also like the fact that you could create new page templates and save them. My main gripe with the software was that once the book was converted into a pdf file ready for uploading, I couldn’t review it for errors as the software repeatedly crashed . Photobookaustralia made suggestions about how I could rectify this situation but they didn’t work.

Unlike Momento, the software doesn’t generate a mini PDF (ie a file under 10 mb) of the final file which made it difficult to share with clients; I would have to shrink the software generated pdf within Adobe Acrobat but I am yet to do this as I don’t have Adobe Acrobat. Unlike Momento you get penalized timewise when laying out pages if you don’t decide on the layout before you select the images for the page.

The ordering process was excellent – it was easy to understand various options and place my order. I also liked photobookaustralia’s tracking system which kept me informed.

When ordering the book, I chose 6 ink printing and 170 GSM satin paper.

I was pleased with the results when I received the book. The colour was spot one, the sharpness of the images perfect and I liked the smart look of the black inside covers (every other book publisher has standard white inside covers which isn’t as good in my opinion; some charge extra if black inside covers are required). I was thrilled that photobookaustralia doesn’t insist on barcodes anywhere in the book unlike every other publisher mentioned in this article.

My three gripes were that the pages were slightly rippled (unlike those of Asukabook or Momento which are dead flat), it wasn’t possible using the software to generate text for the spine (I would have had to do this in Photoshop using a template cover page and upload it separately for no additional charge) and the cover didn’t feel as durable as those of Asukaboks or Momento. Interestingly, photobookaustralia subsequently advised me that they have discontinued satin book covers since they aren’t very durable. I rate the book eight out of ten.

Finally I tried www.momentopro.com.au. Its Windows only software is excellent, very stable now in its 5th edition and the momento software encourages experimentation since you can easily drop images onto a page without worrying about how they will be placed (one of my gripes about photobookaustralia’s software). My first gripe with Momento’s software was that I couldn’t save page templates so I was forced to use those provided in the software. My second gripe was that I had to generate each page which gets tedious if making a seventy page book My third gripe is that the software cannot generate images on the back cover – for a $20 premium I could submit a jpeg image to rectify this but it seemed silly. I rate the software eight and a half out of ten.

The software was very stable once I had conformed to its requirements. Firstly, when numbering images, make sure you have a three prefix numbered system e.g. Image001, image002 otherwise the software sorts them as follows image10, image100, image101, image 11…

Secondly, if you have the same image names but in different folders, the program cannot cope and scrambles page thumbnails.

The ordering system is good though not in the same league as that of photobookaustralia.

I was disappointed when I received the book. In my opinion the colour space of the front cover was seriously wrong, skin tones were unduly pink. The colorspace of the pages was fine though the satin paper, whilst it lay beautifully flat, had a dead feel to it unlike photobookaustralia’s satin paper. Some of the pages also had tiny grey spots on them. It was also annoying to have a barcode on a page of its own at the back of the book (which also looks odd, as if I have made an error), particularly since a Momento staff member assured me there weren’t any barcodes. As a result of the above, I rate the book seven out of ten.

In conclusion, in an ideal world I would use Momento’s software albeit with photobookaustralia’s ability to save page templates and create back pages to generate a book with Asukabook’s cover and book size offerings (e.g. 7” x 7”) but using photobookaustralia’s inside black coverss which would then be presented in the hard plastic book sleeves provided by Asukabooks. Because I live in the real world, I have selected photobookaustralia as my preferred book supplier.

Portraits v Pictures

2009-08-17T20:11:00.000-07:00

In my view, only a self-revealing portrait is beautiful and if a photo of person isn't self-revealing, then it isn't a portrait.

Photographing adolescent females in our society is challenging since they are acutely aware of their projected image and tend to do whatever they can to alter themselves to conform to their perceived ideal self. Since the stereotypical adolescent female image is cloyingly sweet, or sexually mature beyond her years, in my view this stereotype lacks beauty because who ever adopts it lacks self-revelation. Observing my own daughter, I have found that adolescent females reveal themselves in piques of anger, possibly because fury displaces control, and it is this self-revelation that interests me. I only wish that the circumstances that give rise to the self-revelation were calmer.

I am intrigued by the paradox that contrary to the stereotype, adolescent females are beautiful when they are angry.

The images below show the transformation of an adolescent female, from contrived posing to fury. The trigger for her fury was a male: her younger brother.

Why the National Geographic isn't for me

2009-06-02T15:15:00.000-07:00

Better to reject than be rejected!

In April 2009 I was engaged by the Naandi Foundation in India to photograph an inaugural coffee competition and then the area in which the judged coffee was grown, the Araku Valley, a tribal area. In the Hindu caste system, tribes rank below untouchables so these peoples' lives were grim, particularly once the British cut down the forests which sustained these people. The Naandi Foundation sought to improve the tribes' lot by turning them into coffee farmers which was possible given the high elevation of the tribal area.

In the brief time that I was in the Araku Valley I was able to photograph many villagers who associated me positively with the Naandi Foundation and therefore weren't reluctant to be photographed. The photos are good, distinct faces, unique nose jewelry worn by women, lots of colour.

So why have I lost interest in venturing into remote areas to photograph colourful people? The answer is that without living with them for months, all I can do as a photographer is be a grinning encouraging foreigner with a camera. There is no dialogue beyond the initial smiles and that's my frustration. Yes, I've gone beyond the stony faced suspicious look and avoided the coerced uneasy pose but I haven't been able to document the person at ease in their environment.

So until I am prepared to make a serious commitment, I'll stay fixed in Sydney where I am flat out photographing Hip Hop artists, unique creatures in that they seek me out to be photographed!

hip hop shots

2009-05-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

A nineteen year old wants a photo for his album cover. This is no awkward teenager but a professional image maker and for four hours I photograph him.

Like any performer, and like me as a photographer, he needs to warm up - I use the poor light of a rainy day that filters through the open window to give him confidence, educating him, involving him by explaining as I shoot how I am sculpting the light on his face. I want him to understand that any request I make is to enhance his image, not mine.

In his first photos he almost looks like a boxer, silent with a white towel. The natural light is a challenge, it makes me slow down, makes me interact with him. Initially we need to work together but soon he'll gain enough confidence to do his routines without any encouragement.

As I show him the resulting photos he gains confidence and the showman in him begins to come out. I do little to encourage him as I working with the light and he with his image. Sometimes I don't see him as person but as a living reflector and absorber of light. Occasionally I direct him when something he does catches my eye - his hands at one point, another is his ottaman look as he wears his baseball cap sideways.

Once he is self-assured, I move on from natural light to flash - two umbrellas and strobes. Using flash can be tedious since it is such a controlled and predictable light and if I am not careful, I go into autopilot and switch off but because I have set the stage, so to speak, he is by now very engaging from his sheer self-confidence.

In his initial shot you can almost see him psyching himself up before he goes onto the stage, a white backdrop.

Then I steer him a little, suggesting he pose "for the ladies".

I use a 42" covered umbrella very close to him to exaggerate the mirror sheen of his body with a secondary open 32" umbrella acting as fill.

At the end he is tired, reflective, his performance has drawn his energy.

Anatomy of a coffee shoot

2009-05-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

Further to my last post, I've had a lot interest in the ultimate shot of George, the coffee roaster. Some skeptics don't believe that it was a quick shot in less than ideal conditions and lots of people want an understanding of the technical issues I had to deal with.

So this post isn't about the psychology of a portrait sitting but more the nuts and bolts of how to shoot an environmental portrait.

To convince you I wasn't in a studio, I've taken the before shoot. For the record, this was taken at 2.26pm or seven minutes before the final shoot.

There's a lot not to like about this image. The uniform lighting doesn't make George the focus of the image. Instead there is a clutter of things that catch the eye - the square control box, the wiring on the back wall, the blue ducting running vertically on the support beam. Even worse, George doesn't look trim though he looks like he is geared up for work since I asked him to wear an open necked shirt and casual jacket. He's not looking at the camera and that was intentional. George is a busy guy and the last thing he wants to do is waste time looking at a camera when the photographer is still planning the shoot.

This image helped me to decide where to place George; either to the left or to the right of the roaster machine. Since the square contol box was distracting I decided that George would stand in front of it so the coffee machine would be to his left.

Next I didn't want to see anything but George and the roaster machine, no cables, no wiring... A 32" flash umbrella was placed about 1 metre to George's right: the flash umbrella was used to turn the small hard light wireless-controlled flash into a large softer light source which would flatter George.

But a small flash doesn't travel very far and didn't illuminate the roaster machine. This meant that I could use another wirelessly controlled flash that aimed a tight light beam (105 mm setting on the flash light) at the roaster machine. An enormous advantage of using two distinct light sources is that the resulting photo will be far more interesting simply because it is not only a portrait but also a study in lighting conditions.

The shoot done, I then reviewed the ensuing fifteen images on my computer and decided that the shot below had potential.

But there were a few problems with it. A horizontal bar below George's coat was distracting because it was a bright regular shape:

It had to go and so did a point source of light, both elimated using the clone and Exposure brush tools in Adobe Lightroom :

Now to George - fortunately he is a good looking bloke so there wasn't too much to do - eliminate a sunspot on his right cheek and freckle on the bridge of his nose and lighten his left side. The sunspot and freckle elimination took 10 seconds using the clone tool in Adobe Lightroom.

The lightening of his face was more complicated because as human beings, we are very diligent when scanning faces and the slightest fudging is apparent. I created a virtual copy of the image within Adobe Lightroom and then used the Adobe Lightroom 'fill light' command to lighten the left side of his face until it looked good (which meant his right hand side was over light.

Then I opened the two images as a two layered document within Adobe Photoshop (one correctly exposed for Gorge' right cheek, the other correctly exposed for George's left cheek). I then masked the lighter image and carefully concealed some of the mask in order to expose the lighter image by using a very low opacity brush.

Finally I had an image I was happy with, or was I?

The Develop Module of Adobe Lightroom is able to process your image in different ways using 'User Presets' so I applied some of them to the image hoping that one or more of them might guide me in enhancing the portrait.

Neither of the above two interpretations, 'Antique Lighting' and Faded Elegance', helped me but the next one, 'Direct Positive' did.

I loved how punchy the image became and the background clutter was elimated leaving just George and the roaster machine. But a problem, Geoerge looked about to die from jaundice and the darker side of his face had become almost obscured. I solved the jaundice problem by changing the colour temperature of the image. I lightened George's face using the technique described earlier. Then George's top shirt button was eliminated using the clone technique since it was distracting.

Finally an image I was pleased with. George looks handsome and professional, his creation behind him bathed in a bluish light emphasising his scientific approach to coffee roasting.

Mug shots

2009-05-13T03:57:00.000-07:00

George Sabados is the founder of GS Roasting, a wholesale coffee roastery in inner-city Sydney, and to the chagrin of many coffee aficionados, he doesn't retail coffee, though that maybe about to change hence me being commissioned to photograph him for several websites currently under wraps.

George not only roasts coffee, he is a coffee judge of international renown and is an expert in turning around cafes. He is also a great bloke and happiest when not buttoned up in a suit.

So many roles means that one photograph cannot do. George needed three photos, as a good bloke you would want to engage to sort out an underperforming cafe, as a gun coffee roaster and as a coffee consultant.

So how to produce three distinct images in an hour? George's office wasn't glamorous, a computer station, reams of paper, invoices, standard lighting, nothing you would want to see so when I set up the shoot in his office, I avoided the CEO at his desk look (which works if the CEO has a magnificent oak bureau but not if it's an Officeworks $99 special) and went for a very simple shoot - just George and the innocuous venetian blinds behind him.

To warm him up, get him used to the camera, I asked him to wear a casual shirt. Initially he sat at his desk but George is a doer, happiest when he is working. Once standing, the photos started to work but a problem, George was even too casual in the first photo notwithstanding you immediately smile when you look at it. The solution, not a reshoot but a tight crop - thanks to high end full frame DSLR cameras, you can get a fantastic image even if you use 1/5th of the frame.

Then to the suit shot. The whole point of wearing a suit is that it disguises your individuality - the term "suit" doesn't exactly conjure up a fun guy so as a photographer, there's no point fretting if the image doesn't 'sing' and give you visions of winning the Pulitzer Prize. Maybe if I had spent a day tricking up the lighting, I could have got a memorable result but instead, I got the suit shot.

I then focussed on what I really wanted to photograph - an environmental portrait of George, his environment being a bespoke coffee roaster that has allowed him to produce exalted coffee blends. The circumstances of this part of the shoot weren't ideal - roasting was about to begin in five minutes so the workers were loading beans and preparing boxes and a forklift truck was whizzing around alarmingly close to my gear. Worse still, a machine had just broken giving George and his offsider, Rudy, a major headache. So a quick two light set up, a naked strobe lighting the roaster and a flash umbrella lighting George.

The four faces of Bella

2009-05-06T00:03:00.001-07:00

Child portraiture is fraught with difficulty since you are effectively dealing with not just one client but four: the child, the mother, the father and yourself and at some point, you have to decide who will be writing the cheque and focus on meeting that person's expectations. Or do you?

When Bella came to my studio she had clear expectations in mind - just as a hairdresser might be shown Nicole Kidman's latest look in a glossy magazine and told to replicate it, Bella showed me images on the web that she wanted for herself. Once upon a time I could have pretended to comply with her wish and then quietly ignored it but now that every eleven year girl has a digital camera and knows images can be instantly reviewed, I cheerfully complied. Bella's request wasn't ideal, it didn't suit her, but that didn't matter since until she felt I had met her expectations, there was no point worrying about anyone else: you cannot photograph uncooperative subjects and they will be uncooperative if they feel they cannot trust you.

Once Bella's expectations had been met, I wanted a more natural look to please her mum but how to achieve it?I decided to use a studio prop, a burgundy felt hat. Unless the portrait sitter is a raging extravert, they will take time to thaw and shrug off that hounded or coerced look. But you don't have a lot of time in a studio. Somehow, by giving the portrait sitter a studio prop they relax at lot faster. Perhaps this is because they feel they are no longer the subject. Who knows? I don't but the results speak for themselves.

By now the portrait session will be half finished and the subject will be comfortable enough to do away with the prop so it's time to experiment in order to photograph them at their best. Changing backgrounds and alternating between natural light and flash ensures that I as a photographer, am alert to every nuance of the subject's features as the lighting changes.

By the end of the forty minute session, I have satisfied my four clients. Forty minutes might seem short but any longer and the child will get bored.

Soccer Shots

2009-04-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

The cheapest seats (actually they were freebies) to see the Australia Ghana football game meant an obstructed view of the football field with the players dots in the distance most of the time.

So how then did I persuade the National Library of Australia to purchase five images taken on the night for its permanent collection?

As the seats filled up around me, it became clear that I had a ringside seat to watch an amazing spectacle: the Ghanaian supporters who had clearly decided this was the night to celebrate being Ghanaian. This meant Ghanaian flags, trumpets, court jester outfits, dancing, curly yellow hair wigs, Ghanaian flags painted on fingernails and the Ghanaian national colours on every shirt.

All of this was begging to photographed but how to be unobtrusive? Having my nine year old son with me helped. So did the stadium lighting - its luminance coupled with my digital camera that can literally see in the dark meant there was no need for flash photography - I was able to shoot at 800 ASA, my aperture set to f3.3 and my shutter speed set to 1/180th second. As for focussing, I didn't use the viewfinder at all, simply aiming the camera from my waist and relying on the 'focus on nearest subject' mode.

The party began in earnest at kick off but as the night progressed, and it became clear that Ghana wasn't going to win, the mood turned to despair. So immersed were the Ghanaians in the tragedy that I was able to take beautifully poignant portraits.

More of these images may be seen at www.johnslaytor.com.au/img/flashsports/ghanasoccer/index.html.

The night taught me that my camera, despite its size, was able to be completely invisible and thus allowed me to be photographically in the moment. The night also taught me to seize the moment by appreciating my immediate surroundings, not those elsewhere I had intended to appreciate.

Party Clicks

2009-04-20T18:15:00.000-07:00

A depressing venue - a dingy nightclub so I was concerned about how to photograph the event, a 21st birthday for a Nigerian born Australian, CJ. I didn't want a 'society' pages look to the images where the women pout at the camera, toes stretched, plastic smiles. Nor did I want the usual dim background caused by the flash having to work overtime in the darkness.

A concern about my personal safety. The email that got me the gig simply stated "a friend told me about you" and CJ wouldn't confirm who the friend was. I was supposed to turn up to the venue at 10pm and leave at 2am but CJ kept changing his mind about when he would appear. First it was 11pm, then midnight. And CJ said when he did turn up, I was supposed to meet him outside. I sent CJ an invoice and my bank details for the deposit in order to see how genuine he was. Giving my bank account details to a Nigerian seemed to break all the rules.....

When I turned up, the bouncers at the nightclub confirmed it was reserved for CJ to my relief. I set up my portable photography studio which consisted of a white background seven feet high by 8 feet wide, one 42" flash umbrella on a light stand and my SB-800 Nikon flash set up for remote flash. The studio was located in a corridor on the way to the toilets but in sight of the dance floor: this location was as ideal as it was ever going to get being four feet wide which meant my light-stand and backdrop weren't going to get in the way of passing traffic and the flash umbrella was far enough away from the backdrop to evenly light it.

The studio was a huge hit, particularly with the women, who had arrived en masse way before the men because it gave them something to do whilst waiting and it was novel - no one had ever seen such a set up at a party before. So rather than me asking permission, the women asked if they could be photographed and I was happy because I had controlled the lighting and backdrop so I I knew the photos would be great. Before long, the men arrived, studied what I was doing and liked what they saw.

More of these images can be seen at http://www.johnslaytor.com.au/img/flashcj/index.html

Had I known what a terrific ice breaker the photography studio was, I would have brought another flash umbrella and also figured out a way to pre light the subjects because as it was, the venue was almost too dark so my camera struggled with auto-focussing; the subjects' clothing and skin colour didn't help.

Vicarious photography

2009-04-15T16:26:00.000-07:00

That look of skepticism or resignation in portraits. I thought it was me, somehow my personality displeasing the subject but when I designed a wedding album for another photographer using his photos, I saw the same look in his subjects' eyes and it was a huge relief to realise it wasn't me that was at fault, just the subject disliking their projected self.

So I thought about what I could do to take portrait photos that make me smile rather than cringe and I went to India. In the West Bengali village where I photographed people, there is no equivalent expression for "say cheese". The villagers don't have cars, they don't have computers and they are not bombarded by advertising that makes them feel inadequate. Instead, they focus on living and somehow, this makes them enjoy being photographed.

But India doesn't help me in my day to day professional life so in a recent portrait sitting, I decided to take advantage of the fact that the three children had known each other all their lives and it was this relationship, not mine with them, that would be worthy of photographing.

So I set up my beast of camera on a tripod with a cable remote release, set up a flash umbrella and let the children photograph each other.

What began as a simple portrait session turned into the making of brilliant photos. In the words of their grandmother:

"I am stunned and have been gazing and gazing at your photos …. Lots of them. The ones of K and co are so life like of them; it made me feel they were in the room here, or I was there…. And seeing them all at their best, most interesting, and most loveable…. I wonder how ever it can be done, to get so much depth of a person into a photo"

The children became fascinated in the shadows caused by flash and not having any preconceived ideas about what constituted a portrait session, incorporated the shadows, eventually deciding the shadow made for a monster leaping from the window towards the terrified child on the bed!