How To Video Like Scorsese

When your passion and perhaps your livelihood is the creation of quality videos for people’s events, you probably have some heroes. Martin Scorsese is somewhat of an icon because he is known for his stylistic videography in his movies. Now, you don’t necessary need as much style as a Scorsese gets in movies that win him academy awards. But such professionals who are both precise and very good at their work and creative in how they get their shots are an inspiration to the rest of us.

So how can you go about becoming your own version of “Scorsese” in reaching higher standards of professionalism in the video you do for your customers or friends? Well, sometimes you just have to go back to basics

When you go on a shoot, think of yourself like you are going on an assignment into a war zone. Of course, hopefully, nobody will be firing guns at you. But like a battle, you have to be totally prepared going in. There is no calling “cut” if you are filming your son’s first baseball game. You will get it or not on the first take so your equipment has to be ready and you have to be ready. So think through some of your pre-shoot preparations for the big day.

Inspect, clean, repair and test your equipment the night before. Make sure you have any support materials such as batteries, lights for your flash or if you use a lamp to accentuate indoor shots. And think through the various ways your equipment may have to support you and how you can support it?

What if something needs electricity but is too far from the outlet? Bring extension cords. What if you need more electricity then plugs are handy? Bring power strips. What if have extension cords where people will walk? Bring duct tape. What if you have to get that duct tape up fast? Bring a good knife or cutting blade. It pays to play these situations out in your mind and be prepared as you go to battle.

Framing a shot so it looks good in the final cut takes some talent and skill to get what you want where you need it to happen. If the scene is very active, like a sporting event, you need to be able to move, set, shoot and break down and do it again and again all day long.

That means your equipment has to be light and self contained but you need to be armed to swap things out on your feet. A well prepared supplies bag that you can get into, swap out a lens, a battery or other needs on the fly is essential to being that mobile. And you have to know your equipment so well that you can literally lock and load in seconds so important shots don’t leave you behind. Some practice with your camera, tripod, lights, supply bags and anything else you have to have for such mobility will pay off big time during the shoot.

You may have cringed when you saw the word tripod but get used to it. Don’t cut corners on this “accessory”. The tripod should be as flexible as your body so you can drop it for a ground shot and have it up and set quickly each time you need to reposition. But despite the “bother” this might cause, the tripod alone may make your shots 100% more professional.

Knowing your gear and being prepared are the two top commandments of producing high quality professional video. It may not make you a “Scorsese”, but it will take you a long way in that direction in the improvement you will see in your work.

Tips On Photography Lighting

Photography requires a few skills to make your prints look professional. One part of making a print professional is lighting. Lighting in photography takes a little planning and understanding of a few techniques. You best subject or object might not turn out that way if the proper light does not help to laminate the area. Below are a few tips on using light for photography.

First you must decide if you will use artificial or sunlight. If you are using sunlight you will rely on the Kelvin scale to determine the temperature of light and therefore the color of light. The color of light is important to maintaining the colors you see around you. For instance the warmer the light the redder the light will be, thus you may need to pick the time you will go out and shoot photographs. Outdoor lighting offers so many different times to take pictures depending on your need.

Next a photographer needs to understand the sun’s color scale. Pictures tend to lead the viewer towards certain feelings; often softer colors evoke more emotion. So understanding the suns impact on the colors will help you find the correct time of day. The sun evokes blue hues in the morning hours, while closer to noon you will find more neutral colors. The neutral colors can take away some of the definition you want in your print. Knowing how you want to shot the picture will also help you determine when you wish to take the shot.

When using natural light you will need to work with the angle and direction of the sunlight. If the sunlight is broad and diffused you will have softer shadows while the more narrow the light is focused the more shadow you can create. Often at noon when the sun is in mid arc you lose definition of the subject. The subject could look grainy. This is why shadow is used; the shadows can give you more quality to the print if used correctly. This adds to the beauty of your pictures.

You can also modify sunlight through certain techniques. Modifying sunlight when taking portraits outdoors requires the use of a background. You may wish for a breath taking landscape that will provide more composition to the photo. You may need to block the sun if it interferes with you or your subject’s sight. You might also bring in a white surface to fill the shadows. Landscape photography requires less work than usually natural light for portraits. In fact using natural sunlight for landscape photography without modifications can yield you a better photograph.

Landscape photography uses nature to provide the light and shadows. This is why you need to understand the light scale and temperature. Time is the most important aspect of using sunlight. To understand natural lighting you need to understand the affects the sun will have at certain times of the day. For instance if you are in a thickly vegetative forest the sunlight will have difficulty streaming in unless it is over head. You will have natural shadows in the forest and remember you can move around your subject to find the best angle with the sun.

Photography is an art that requires techniques and practice. Lighting is a major part of photography, especially when you are using natural light. Sunlight can bring plenty of shadows or take them away depending on the time of day. Knowing the best time to take a photograph depends on the sun’s angle. Photography is an interesting hobby and profession when practiced properly will give you plenty of prints for your home and others.

Whether you are a professional or a novice photographer, you want to produce some exquisite pictures with the proper lighting. With this in mind, choose your lighting according to your needs and the needs of your subject or object. Your pictures will be delightful with brightness when you use the best lighting situation.

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Simple Tips For Great Portrait Photography

Do you just snap pictures of friends without a thought to how it my turn out? Portrait photography takes you a step up from people photography. It gives you elements to notice such as the angle you take the photograph, the lighting you will use, and the expression of emotion on a persons face. While you may be an amateur photographer deciding to take Christmas photos without the expense you will need to have some basic knowledge of techniques used by the professionals.

First when taking a photograph of a person you need to study their face. The face is important to the angle you will shoot from. Though it is a cliché, it is true some people have a better side. This could be in relation to scarring or acne breakouts or even simpler. For instance my left eye is larger than my right by just a bit, and looking head on into the camera will cause a horrible portrait, however if the photographer comes from the right side and angles up a little the light and shadows will help even out the features while keeping the distinctions that make me who I am.

Portrait photography is about capturing the essence of the subject, the personality. The little nuances of a face add character to the portrait. You will want to loosen up your subjects. If you are becoming a professional portrait photographer you will want to learn about your subject as you are taking pictures or perhaps meet them before the session. If they are just your family then you should know what would get their personality captured on film.

Lighting is the next important step to portrait photography. A lot of photographers prefer natural light to artificial. Your subject will in part decide this for you. Remember you will use the light you have. Natural light will often require setting the aperture to compensate for the cameras lack of definition. In other words you need to create the contrast with the light and shadows for the effect you want. Often artificial light is harsh and not directed properly unless in a studio. Again you will need to use the manual settings on your camera to create the perfect portrait.

The background is also important when discussing light. In a studio a photographer will pick a background that will not wash your features out or your clothing. They want to have a distinction or contrast between you and the background. This is also important of home portrait photography. You will want a background that gives color to your subject rather than taking it away. Finding a nice spot with a tree to sit on and mountains in the background can be a great portrait, but you will want to make sure the background is not too busy to distract from the subject. Make the subject seem apart of the picture rather than outside of it.

The type of camera and film you use will also determine the quality of the photography. Once you combine techniques such as lighting, angles, and understanding your subject you will be able to create a near to professional if not professional portrait for your friends and family no matter the occasion. Just snapping a picture is possible, but it would be great to have a better portrait?

Professional Videography Tips

Making videos or “videography” is a different animal from photography. When you are trying to capture great pictures for a portrait or an event, you think in terms of still shots. In your mind the objective is “what will make a great picture.”

Video opens up whole scenes to be captured on film, for better and for worse. But it also opens up a lot of opportunity for mistakes, unexpected results or interruptions and surprises. Not only do you have to continue to think about what makes a great shot, you now have sound and movement issues to factor in. So while videography is much more fun, it also can be a lot more work.

You are trying to find a middle ground when you start offering video as part of your services. You know that anybody can bring a camcorder and capture video streams. These days they can even do it with their phone. But you want to create a more professional shot than the high school kid with a camcorder. Then again, you are not trying to win an academy award here. So the level of professionalism has to be better than amateur so you can justify charging for it but it doesn’t have to be great art to be a good video that the customer will be happy with.

To accomplish this mix of perfectionism and compromise, a few tips from the pros who have already set up a video business can help a lot. Here are what many of the old pros tell us to focus on especially as we are getting our video business up and running…

The cornerstone advice that the pros give about making great video is plan ahead. The more you know about your shoot, the better equipped you are when you show up. If you are shooting a wedding, visit the chapel, perhaps the reception hall and plan where you will set up to capture the best images. Plan your routes as you move around so you can create a smooth flow that works with the wedding procession rather than interrupts it.

The same is true of any event. Even a sporting event, as spontaneous as that is, will offer some less traveled areas where you can position yourself to catch the action. If the best location for capturing video is above or a distance from the activity, then you know you will need to use zoom and focus differently than if you can be in the middle of the action. This helps you plan how to prepare your equipment and your crew who will be supporting the shoot.

Lighting is something that must be part of your preplanning so you have sufficient light so the action and facial reactions are easy to pick out on the video. Outdoors, keep the sun behind you if at all possible. Indoors, scout out how the existing lighting will look on video during the hours that you will be shooting. If they are not sufficient, you should get in there and set your lights in place well in advance of the event and work with the event organizers so they know your lights will be on during the event. The people who hired you want a great video so they will work with you. But you have to let them know what is going on.

A good video is a combination of stability of the camera and constant movement. So use a tripod to stabilize the shots when the video is being actively shot. But you have to be able to move the set up quickly to a new location. So make sure that your equipment is well maintained and that cameras, tripods and that all supplies are quickly accessible for field changes or repairs.

One of the most valuable insider tips is to shoot with the intention of editing. In that way, you will shoot more footage than you need, knowing you are going to edit it together later. You can go back and capture connecting video shots to smooth out the action and you don’t have to get upset if you get some bad footage. These and many other talents you will develop will take you to that level of professionalism you want to reach. And your customers will notice it too and come back for more of your talented videography.

Legal Photography - Release Forms

Have you ever been watching a video or a show that includes public shots and some of the faces seem to be blurred out? No, that is not poor production values on the part of the video team. That is because the producers who eventually sold that video to be used commercially did not secure releases from those individuals. And if they used their images, they are laying themselves open for lots of legal problems.

So how do you know if the work you are doing in your photography business requires such releases? After all, you would rather be safe than sorry and get releases from everybody you use as a subject than face a problem down the road. But there is a downside to securing them if you are not sure. That is the impression you create in the mind of your customer.

If you primarily do portraits, weddings or other events where the intent of your work is to sell the photographs to the people being photographed, there is certainly no need for releases. So long as you have no intention of ever using any of those photographs in a sale that will profit your business other than the original way, then you should be fine.

It is when you step over into that realm of photography in which you may be working with models to provide photographs for advertising, magazines, newspapers or any other purpose in which you are selling the images you have photographed for a profit, that is when a release is needed. This area of professional photography is tremendously profitable because you are working at a higher tier of professionalism than photographing the public to provide them with portrait level pictures. And because it is such a lucrative arena of professional photography, the competition to make those sales is stiff to be sure.

When you are working with professional models, securing their releases is pretty much part of the program and never a problem. They are working for you and they know the photographs are for sale so their agents and lawyers do all the legwork so the releases are routine and understood. But from your perspective, don’t let this detail go unattended to. Your customers, those magazines or ad agencies who look to you for professional photography work, are assuming you have this covered and that they can count on you to deliver not only quality work but work that has been legally released to be used for promotion.

The complications come if you do your shoots in a public place such as a park, a mall or anywhere that there may be traffic that becomes part of the shot. If you complete the shoot and discover that the perfect shot that fits your customers needs just right happens to have miscellaneous members of the public in the background, you have to have releases from them or you cannot sell that photograph.

You could think ahead and try to secure those releases on the spot. But if the people you are trying to convince to sign such releases know you are going to use their images for profit, and you pretty much have to tell them, you get into another whole level of negotiation. But you sure don’t want to have to blur their faces out on the shot. You could Photoshop them out but that may lose the spontaneity of the shot.

It’s best to stage the shot from start to finish. If you want traffic to be occurring around your model, bring in models who can do the job for you. Any good modeling agency to provide you with “average looking” models to use for this purpose. You will have to pay them but at least you know that the shot is clean. Plus when you sell the shot, you are going to get questions about whether those models were paid and if you have releases on them too.

You can find a standard release form on the web or your lawyer can help you develop one that covers the legalities you need handled but also reflects how you want to handle this issue. But don’t let this issue slide through the cracks. By protecting yourself, you can do good business and profitable business but above all, legal business in perusing your professional photography career.

Will Camera Phones Destroy Photography?

In any “photo op” moment any more, it is impossible to miss the invasion of the camera phone. Where it used to be easy to tell when a camera was around and if people had them handy, now anyone with a phone could be a clandestine photographer. Even at occasions that used to be ruled by the professional photographer such as weddings and the like, we now see those dozens of hands going up snapping photos with camera phones that seem to dominate the scene.

Conventional photography is a highly developed art form and profession. The precision of the equipment and the ability of photographers to deliver a high quality product to their customers is well known and the result of decades of evolution of the craft. But today it is possible for anyone to become an amateur photographer using that tiny cell phone in their pocket or purse.

The question needs serious consideration for three audiences. For the professional photographer, is this the end of your profession? Will digital phones wipe out your customer base and make you obsolete? For the aspiring photographer, what about your future? Should you even invest in learning to use the sophisticated equipment that makes professional photography so superior? Why bother if camera phones are going to make it all obsolete? And for you the consumer, can you get the same quality of photographs with using camera phones as you can by hiring a photographer?

These are valid questions. It is very common when a new technology begins to make inroads into a profession for the old guard of that profession to feel threatened. It happened when television came along and the media called it the death of radio. It happened when talkies and then color was introduced to movies and television and at each technological improvement in the music world. And with each dire prediction of the demise of an industry, the opposite took place and that industry adjusted, evolved, got better and prospered all the more.

So there are good reasons not to worry that camera phones is going to destroy photography as we know it including…

* Camera phones cannot achieve the same levels of quality. There is a good reason that the professional photographer has invested in the highly sophisticated equipment that he has in his studio and that he or she takes to a shoot. The many years and decades of research have surfaced the problems with quality that primitive equipment could not deal with. Modern photography equipment has precise instrumentation to handle lighting issues to properly frame each photograph and to produce a professional quality outcome that people want from a wedding, a portrait or any kind of professional photography. You can bet that forensic photography, fashion photography and photography for publication will ever be willing to accept the low standards of quality that are the outcome of camera phone pictures.

* It’s an amateur game. When you see kids holding up their camera phones at a concert to steal a picture, you know that device is not going to result in a professional quality shot. This is especially true in a live setting like a concert where there are myriads of issues such as lighting, visual noise and other problems that have to be overcome with sophisticated instrumentation just not available on a camera phone. Camera phones are an amateur photography device. And they will always occupy that niche.

* Standards of the final product would be compromised. And high standards of quality are what make professional photography a value to it’s customers.

This is not to cast camera phones in a negative light. They have their place and they are great fun. But we in the professional photography world have nothing to fear from the growth of this technology.

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The Beginner's Guide To Photography

If you are a sports fan, you know what it means when a team goes into a “rebuilding year”. It is just when the owners or coaches decide its time to train new members and correct bad habits in others. And invariably, what team leadership says when they go into such a time is that they are going “back to basics.”

Sometimes it’s good for us as photographers to go back to basics. And, of course, if you are just getting started in the world of photography and want to learn “the ropes”, the basics are a natural start. But you want the basics of what the professionals know about the craft of photography.

Anybody can take a picture. I attended a wedding reception where the wedding party left a disposable digital camera on each table at the reception for guests to snap photos. Before the evening was over, it was the children who were running around taking pictures of everything from the dirty dishes to their own underwear. These were not photographers and while those pictures will no doubt get a few chuckles, these are not the kind of professional pictures people want for their long-term memories.

Obviously, the cornerstone of the basics of photography is the camera. When you see a camera geek walking around with enough equipment on his neck to launch a space shuttle, you get the impression that cameras are phenomenally complex, more than mere mortals can grasp. But look at the professionals and you see them working with portable, relatively easy to operate cameras. That is because the basics of running a camera come down to aperture and shutter speed.

Now don’t get nervous about fancy terms. Aperture is just a term for how wide your camera lens is open to let in light. And shutter speed is just how long you let the light come in to affect the picture. For getting a shot of a fast moving event, you want a wide aperture to let in a lot of light but a short shutter speed so you capture the event quickly and close the window so the picture is caught before more light hurts the quality.

Photography is really all about light. You can and will get learn a lot about lenses and flash photography and other ways to turn the control over the lighting of a shot to you. So add to your core skills of photography a willingness to never stop learning. The better and more sophisticated you get in your ability to work with the equipment, the more you will learn and the more you will want to learn.

You can get a greater control over these basic controls of the camera such as aperture and shutter speed by learning how to switch from automatic settings to manual settings. The automatic settings of any camera are just there for the general public who are not interested in learning the basics. So they give you some basic settings like landscape, portrait and sports settings. By switching to manual, you can learn what settings work best in different situations.

And that takes us to the most important basic about becoming a great photographer and that is practice. Take some time with your equipment and play with it. Take it to situations and take photos with different aperture and shutter speed settings, in outdoor and indoor settings and different orientations to light. Don’t get upset when some shots don’t work. That’s part of the learning curve.

By learning by doing, you will build your confidence in your work and eventually become a great photographer. But don’t get cocky, there is always more to learn. And that is one of the fun things about photography, isn’t it?

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The Benefits Of Digital Photography

In any discipline, you will have what many think of as “the purists”. Purists are those who revere the way things have always been done and view new innovations in the field as upstarts and obviously of poorer quality than the tried and true methods.

This is nowhere more true than photography. For decades the film and chemical processing method has undergone continual refinement to achieve higher and higher levels of sophistication and to find higher levels of quality. Small wonder that when the digital revolution came along, “the purists” were, to say the least, a bit snobby about the idea of professional photography moving in this direction.

But there are some genuine reasons to at least incorporate digital technology into your professional photography game plan. These reasons are compelling enough that more and more we are seeing the big studios going all digital. So if you are running an independent photography business or if you are “just” a photography hobbyist (and thank God for the hobbyists), you may have to think through the value of moving to digital processing yourself.

Ease of Use.

The amount of fuss and sheer “stuff” of doing a shoot digitally is dramatically less involved than using the older technologies. Witness how the digital revolution in photography has revolutionized the personal camera world. Now people can take as many pictures as they want and have them to review virtually instantaneously.

Probably the biggest leap forward in the use of digital photography is that you can do re-shoots quickly, easily and for virtually no cost. If you conduct a portrait session with a customer, you can have the “stills” of the session available almost as soon as the session is done. If a shot was good but not perfect, you can correct it and re-shoot immediately saving huge amounts of time and improving the chances you will get the portfolio you want and that the customer wants on the first session.

Rapid Customer Service.

The impression we get when a technology delivers so much value to the public is that quality will go down. But, amazingly, this is not the case with digital photography. If anything, the quality of the photographs is as good or better than any we could do with prior technologies. And the cost both to you as the photographer and to your customer drops off so dramatically that the age old complaint the customer has had about professional photographs costing too much can be eliminated making the customer want to use your services more often.

Digital photography, being a child of the internet and the digital revolution that has swept our lives via personal computers, can be delivered in a myriad of ways and at a speed that was unheard of prior to the arrival of this technology. We can deliver the photos via email, by posting them to an online gallery or by burning them to a DVD or CD so the customer can order lots more shots for the same cost and have them delivered in a way that easy to view and store.

Editing

Editing has similarly moved from the realm of the back room wizards to something any of us can do due to the sophisticated computer programs, such as Photoshop, that we can use to improve the pictures we take. It is really amazing the effects that can be imposed on a picture with this software. But more importantly we can so much more easily correct minor problems with a photograph so what might have been a lost session can be improved to become acceptable with some clever use of digital editing.

In virtually every way, digital photography, delivery and editing is superior to the way “the purists” would have us hold on to. It makes our lives as photographers easier, faster and more profitable. But above all, this is something our customers want us to use. They get to enjoy their pictures so much faster, at a more reasonable cost and the pictures can be emailed to friends and posted on their family web sites which is fun for everyone. So despite our desire to be “purists”, every reason we need is there to convince us that digital photography is the way to go.

Using Black and White Photography

It’s interesting how sometimes older technologies or art forms take on an even greater value when they are made obsolete by the new and modern. This is certainly true of black and white photography. When color photography came on the scene, it seemed the days of black and white in both video and photography were over forever.

But that was certainly not the case. Over the years we have seen black and white take on a new artistic value in both genres. In fact, it is not at all unusual any more to see a very modern movie filmed entirely in black and white. It is also common to visit a fine art museum and find a photographic art display that uses black and white extensively. Black and white has some artistic and emotional qualities that are just not possible to achieve in color photography.

Probably the strongest quality that grabs the viewer with a black and white photo is its emotional power. Even if the photo is just of an old barn or an antique car, there is an emotional appeal that is difficult to analyze in words but universal to all of us as we look at a black and white shot. That is why black and white photos almost instantly take on an artistic look. So if you are evolving your artistic photography style and portfolio, including some experimentation with black and white will do a lot to improve your work.

Black and white also focuses the eye on the emotional center of the piece. Probably the best subject for black and white photography is the human face. In even a tranquil expression, the viewer can see such a vast range of expression in the eyes, the tilt of the head, the subtle wrinkles or peculiarities of the face and the focus of the gaze.

Black and white almost always invites the viewer to want to know about the story behind the picture. If it’s a landscape, “What happened here?” is the question that often springs to the mind of the viewer and the longer they gaze at the photo, the more their imagination fills in the details. If you are viewing the face of a serene or melancholy girl, it is almost impossible not to wonder what she is dreaming about or what of life’s issues is weighing on her mind.

Along with the emotional power and the way black and white compels the viewer to search for meaning, black and white carries with it a tremendous romantic power that touches the heart in a powerful way. That romance can easily translate over to the sensual or even the erotic without having to become pornographic to achieve that effect. Shots that are trying to evoke the power of sensuality and romance do well when they involve moisture or a water scene such as the beach. Despite the lack of color, these colors appeal to the five senses in ways that color can never hope to achieve.

You can experiment with black and white and gather the responses of friends and family to learn how to utilize the subtle but powerful artistic nuances that seem to come with black and white photography almost unconsciously. The digital camera has ushered in a whole new era of black and white photography. You see the form used even in otherwise non artistic settings like wedding portfolios or anniversary pictures. That is because of that emotional and romantic power that black and white conveys.

If you have not started to experiment with black and white shots, it’s worth the time to learn how to capture the powerful images this type of photography can make possible. Along with the creative use of light and framing, black and white gives itself well to editing that you can do with Photoshop to bring out the emotional center of each shot. Before long, you may actually find your self seeing black and white shots in a color world. Your awareness of what will make a great moment in this format will become acute and you will be ready to capture those moments spontaneously, which is always the best kind of photography.