On Location 2: Night Shooting, Urban Setting

I have been wanting to do an experiment for a long time now where I took the last stage of my performance 'The King of Beauty" in which he dresses up as Miss America and take it to a bus stop at night. This required quite a lot of confidence. The first time I tried to do this, I got all dressed up in make up, got the props and camera, drove to the bus stop, saw one person and then I bolted back home.

With more resolve – and at a later time slot – I decided to brave the outdoors.

Firstly, I remembered two things that Dave Mann told me: the flash will freeze the person in the photo and the long exposure time will capture any ambient light. What I hadn't accounted for was:

a) lens flare – even though I had a lens hood, the sheer amount of light in the urban setting from streetlights and cars inevitably causes flare
b) speckling – some of the pictures were destroyed by a speckling effect from the light, which appears on the image as missing pixels and is very hard to repair and
c) the inevitable motion blur – Some of the pictures were ruined by the long exposure time. It was cold and windy, I can imagine I was probably shivering, which has translated onto the image as motion blur

The camera also took a while to process the image after taking the shot, making continuous shooting fairly difficult.

However, it wasn't a total loss:

Miss America In Suburbia 1

As you can see there is a rubbish truck behind me which crawled very slowly along the street as I was taking pictures – I'm sure all the garbage truck men were having a good guffaw as they saw me. There were also two girls who popped out at one point to point and laugh. However, after those two experiences, I thought it couldn't possibly get any worse, so it made it easier to persist and push past that once the initial embarrassment had disappeared.

The most annoying thing about motion blur is that the clarity of the expression was lost:

Miss America In Suburbia 2

As you can see, where the flash 'froze' the model, there is motion blur, but the second one was much clearer. However, something is lost in the clarity. As an aside, an interesting effect I really loved was that at intermittent points, cars would zoom by and here you can see that as a trace of red light due to the long exposure. It really added a sense of life still going by as the photo was being taken.

The best shot of the night also used this ghosting effect:

Miss America In Suburbia 3

A few elements come together in this picture: a couple of cars came by at the same time so you have a brightness from the road. It also uses the 'double contrasting gesture' I experimented with in my very first shoot to provide some kind of juxtaposition, in addition to the ghosting effect I have been testing. I think this 'ghosting + double gesture' could be an interesting way to proceed with this.

I think I also need a more effective way of monitoring how the shots are going 'on-site' as taking photos of yourself, reviewing, running back can be an arduous process. This is easier with tethering in the studio as you can instantly see it on the computer, but I'm wondering if there is a camera with a larger display, for example, that would help me see how the shots are turning out 'as I go'.

On the whole, I'm glad I got this one out of my system. It didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to – I wanted to emphasise the hysteria and isolation of this Miss America figure. Several things could be done to help this. Taking someone out with me might be a massive confidence boost for a start. Also it might be worth considering doing this as a daytime shoot to see the contrast between night and day light, and whether it adds/detracts. Additionally I'm quite satisfied with the capturing of the ambient light as I think the exposure of the pictures was actually very good and well balanced in contrast with the flash.

Studio 2: Party surprise!

Armed with my new studio knowledge, I decided to go back into the studio and try something a bit more difficult. It is proposed that part of my project will have to do with capturing the 'instantaneous' or that flash of lightning that occurs within performance. To try and demonstrate this, I bought some party poppers to try and catch them mid-pop. There was a bit more pressure on this one. I had one bag, which equals 20 poppers, which in turn meant I only had 20 shots in order to get it right.

The only problem I had was setting up the lighting. Initially, I tried to put everything at the front of the studio, but the lights in the back kept getting in the way, so I just moved everything to the back and shot it there with two lights. I metered the lights and got them bang on f/8 for a 1/125 shutter speed. I noticed that the lights threw two shadows (one for each light source) and I quite liked this effect, though I noted that next time it might be interesting to use a diffuser to try and mute the shadowing effect.

Party pop 1

I also turned the house lights off, which gave a soft 'vignetting' style around the background, which I really liked as it framed the picture. This effect was less evident when the house lights were left on. I started to notice that there was almost a 'knowledge' as to whether a shot had worked or not. You can actually see when the flash goes off if the light has caught the party popper mid air or not and there was something satisfying about that sense of 'capturing' the exact moment.

Party pop 2

What I like about the above image is the 'anonymity' of the figure. I have begun to nitce that once you shoot, although it is strictly self-portraiture, you do start to disassociate yourself with the figure in the picture. In these shots, I feel very much as though I am 'demonstrating' an action, which is quite Brechtian in it's way. I discussed this with Sian, who also agreed and said that the gesture act as a 'poitner' or signifier to something else. This contrasts with the work of someone like Cindy Sherman who is definitely trying to embed the 'self' into the photo. This particular shoot actually draws more parallels with someone like Bruce Naumann. To that end I love the 'anonymity' of the above shot. It has all the 'surprise' of the party popper, but it could be coming from anywhere. Also, an interesting unintended side effect of the focus in the above shot is that the end of the streamers are in focus and it gets progressively out of focus.

Party pop 3

Also an unintended effect produced above is that the blue streamer touches the very edge of the frame, giving the composition a '3D' effect, or makes interesting use of depth of field in order to give relational perspective to the shot. This emphasises the viewer/performer relationship and gives them a sense of how and where they are in relation to the person in the image.

A thing to note in these pictures is the use of space: I am becoming increasingly aware of composition and 'face on' or centred shots can obliterate the whole perspective of the shot. It's better to place yourself off centre and use the rest of the space in an interesting way in order to give a sense of that space you're occupying.

I'm interested in the contrast between studio and location setting. Both have their own specific challenges: while on location seems like it might be more unpredictable, there is actually something more 'thrilling' about it and the fact that it is more gritty not only contributes to the spontaneity of the shoot, but also to the framing of the constructed reality of the shot.

In the studio, it's much safer but because of that a chasing of perfectionism can become evident. There is no reason not to get the perfect shot as you can shoot continuously until it happens. However, that shot is almost as spontaneous as any other – there's no telling when it will come. I can see studio shooting can easily be quite intensive.

I am looking forward to going back into the studio and developing the above shots. I really feel there is an interesting and impulsive feeling to these shots and – as ever – it's about re-shooting until you get the perfect picture.

Studio Flash Photography: An induction

As some of you may know from my post about my very first time in the studio, before I came to Falmouth I hadn't really investigated studio photography and so – to that end – my supervisor Sian Bonnell arranged an induction for me with the very awesome Dave Mann. He took me through the studio and I also got the chance to ask him some questions about my technical difficulties I've experienced so far. Thanks Dave – you helped me so much and I'm really itching to put everything into practice!

Firstly, we went through the studio basics, such as health and safety. But I'm going to attempt to repeat everything Dave told me to make sure I've understood how everything works. Firstly, a light actually has two lights: the modelling light and the flash bulb. The flash is actually what 'goes off' when the camera clicks. The lower the setting, the shorter the time the flash goes off - good for 'freezing' action. The higher it is, the longer the flash will be on.

If your camera is set to a shutter speed of higher that 1/200, you'll get black bars on the image so it's best to set your camera to 1/125 and then meter from there. However, it's actually the aperture that controls flash – shutter speed controls the ambient lighting.

The lights are set at increments that range from 0.5 to 6.0 and can be adjusted in 0.1 increments. 10 increments equals one f/stop on the camera, so if you meter and it comes up with f/11 and 6 bars, you would turn the light down by 1.6 to give a perfect reading of f/8 and 1/125 shutter speed.

Using one light, Dave very kindly modelled for me:

1 studio light to the photographer's right

As you can see, on the left hand side of the image is a very stark shadow, and also the camera captures a slight grey on the background. In order to compensate for this one black polyboard was put to the right of the light in order to stop throwing light to the back of the studio.

1 black polyboard

This gives a completely black background. However, it makes the left hand more stark. To that end, a white polyboard can be used to reflect the light on the left hand side.

1 black polyboard, 1 white polyboard

As you can see, the shadow is slightly more graduated, providing more definition. My first question to Dave was how do you get a white background. Dave suggested metering the background to ensure it's the same as your foreground lights and lighting the background with the same flash. This means the highlights in the wall are also detected by camera:

But you can also turn the flash up one full stop (e.g 10 increments) higher than the flash light in front. Dave says this is good for bleaching and can bleach out blemishes such as crinkles in paper, or foot marks:

You can also just whack the lights up, but this comes out so overbleached you lose the lines/edges of the picture:

 

 

Though not technically 'wrong' this lighting choice is obviously made by the photographer.

I also asked Dave about night photography, and he set up a practical example in the studio.

 

In this picture, the flash freezes the model in the foreground and completely obliterates the background, due to faster shutter speed. This is a good example of how shutter speed controls ambient lighting.

And in this picture, even though we have motion blur in the background from a longer exposure and hand-holding, the flash freezes the model in the foreground. In this way, motion blur can create an interesting artistic effect.

However, even with longer exposure times on a tripod, this 'flashing' then captures ambient light in the background without over-exposing the subject in the foreground.

All I can do now is employ what I learned in the studio, so wish me luck for the next time I go in!