Blurring the sky... part 2

I've got a photographer called Ryan to thank for sowing the seeds for this one after we'd chatted about whether its possible to get a slow enough shutter speed to 'blur' clouds like you can blur water and so finally, I got hold of some ND filter lighting gels for my Sigma lens. Its a great lens but unfortunately filters have to be rear-mounted as the front element is too large for a filter ring. The cut gels are fiddly little devils to get into the small holder at the back of the lens without getting fingerprints on them and are a compromise at the moment. This set-up makes it difficult to focus or even see through as they are so dense. I could keep taking the filters out to focus but thats a pain so I plumbed for good old 'Infinity/ hyperfocal distance' on the lens which at f22, should be okay. I used 2x ND1.2 filters cut from a sheet which equates to an 8-stop light reduction giving exposures of around 60 secs @ f22 100 ISO to get this shot. The great thing about this technique is that there is a bit of guesswork coming back into my photography. Not so much the technical aspect which I've got my head around, but the final aesthetic thang ! Initially I was worried that due to not being able to focus the lens properly, the shot would be all over the place. As the first frame appeared on screen, it struck me that this wasn't a problem since everything in the scene was going to move and blur anyway. As the wind died down, the shots became mediocre, as it increased, they looked 'too' blurred. I waited a while until the wind around the tree's was moderate then started either a 30sec or 60sec exposure and hoped i'd guesstimated right. Originally I was looking around the tree on the right to get a better shot of the clouds but I came back to the shot above and used the tree's to frame the wheat fields and clouds better. As I made the long exposure, I assumed the shot was about the clouds and hadn't anticipated that the trees would be so animated, unlike the grasses in the foreground which were in a relatively sheltered position. I'm not a natural landscape photographer as i'm not sure as to what the 'brief' is. With my other stuff, I usually have a good idea about what I want and how to go about it but landscape shots just seem a bit too static for me, and don't really reflect my love of both wide-open spaces and forests/woodlands etc. that I can crash through on my mountain bike. This is then becoming a case where the technique is everything I want to say about landscapes in my photography... the wind through the tree's, the rushing clouds, the natural drama that 1/125th of a second cannot describe. Hmmmm, I feel a 'poem' coming on in a minute !

I'm more of a rugby fan myself.....

For years i've collected photo-related junk ever since my purchase of a Box Brownie which had a roll of film still in it. I processed the roll with care only to reveal a clear strip of film save for the last frame which had a faint outline of a donkeys arse on it ! I tend to buy from flea markets and second-hand shops and go for photo memoribilia including cigarette cards. As a mass communication tool, these things were well sought after and a great way for product company's to market themselves. What better way is there than a child putting pressure on their parents to buy more cigarettes or packets of tea leaves to get the next card for their ever expanding card collection. Many of these cards were illustrated by artists but i'm caught by the black and white photographs, which were then hand-painted to remove backgrounds etc. The expressions, hair styles and poses are straight out of Boy's Own comics and look very different to how footballers are depicted now... I was always amazed that most of these cards were collected by kids yet they bore the name of cigarette companys on them. Could you imagine Yu-gi-oh or Top Trumps cards having the same thing today? There'd be outrage in the streets! Given that we're in the throes of a football world cup, I thought i'd try imitate the 'style' of these minatures. There are several things I needed to consider, one was the lighting, another was the actual, jaw-jutting style pose and then the 'card' style itself which would be a photoshop job to achieve. So, details.... This was shot with a Nikon SB28 placed about a foot away and about a foot above my face. This sounds quite vicious but it was only set on Manual at 1/32 power. Hand-held flash are great little power-units, but there is little in the way of reflectors or grids etc to control the output so i've always made my own from good old-fashion gaffer tape in true Blue Peter fashion ! With this shot, I made a tube to contain the light and stop it spilling onto the background. Its made with gaffer/duct tape and is simple to construct. I cut 4 lengths of tape into 25cm strips and overlay these to make a sheet. I cut the middle section from a plastic 1litre bottle of pop and lay that on the exposed, glue side, leaving the top strip uncovered by the plastic. I then cover this by laying more strips over the exposed plastic/strips and then trim. You should be left with a plastic-reinforced sheet with an unreinforced collar. Pull the collar around the end of the flash and tape in place. If you tape it right, you can re-use it time and again. The plastic bottle insert means that it stays as a tube without crumpling too badly. I cut a disc of translucent plastic from a detergent bottle and push-fitted it in the end to diffuse the light somewhat and make it a little less directional. Once you've made the initial tube, you can cut it up into a variety of shapes, gobo's and grids to fit your flash, and then throw it away as it wears out and make a new one. The 'card' style was straightforward enough. I photographed some faded old textures and opened the files in photoshop. I expanded the canvas size of the portrait to give a white border similar to the cards, and cut this out using feathering 10 and pasted it as a layer underneath the texture file. I used layer mask reveal all on the texture layer, played about played with its opacity and began rubbing out texture over the eyes, mouth and jutting chin where needed... And talking of a jutting chin, that was the hardest bit to emulate ! I'm no wimp but i'm no struttin', juttin' sportsman either so thats the best I could do i'm afraid.... Oh, and the ciggie brand and football club are fictious, I made them up !

Getting technical....

Theoretically, working with flash outdoors is relatively simple, set the flash to the aperture, meter the ambient and Bob's your uncle. Actually being able to come up with the goods is a different matter, especially if there are many technical factor's to take into account. So to help out a group of students who were fairly new to environmental portraiture, I got them outside with a flash, brolly, triggers etc and we sessioned setting up the kit, metering etc. We got through the technical stuff reasonably quickly and we were able to set about a shoot. This bit is always difficult because I asked the students to be the models on this occassion. I wanted them to get a sense that it was down to them as to how they wanted the model to 'be' rather than rely on someone who could turn on an 'act' just like that !

I gave them a guitar as a prop and wandered them off down a side street and set about some 'improvised' environmental portraiture. Given the location and the guitar, the guys had to come up with a theme or scenario and we settled on an 'urban minstrel' thang where the location had to play a part as a background. The great thing about this approach is that we could use just about anywhere, regardless of its state, and still come away with an 'editorial' feel to the shots. The first shot we utitlised a storage container that was on site. Depth of field wasn't an issue as she lent against the doors. A single flashgun (Nikon SB28) was fired through a brolly placed on the right-hand side at metered to give f8. As it was a dull-ish day, the shutter speed came in around 1/45th sec. Just before shooting, I suggested she thought of herself writing a tune about the end of something such as a long journey or relationship etc. and how that might make her feel. The juxtaposition of the steely, industrial container with the fallen leaves lent itself well to this and she responded with this rather sombre and introspective pose. The last shot we went for was to have a Happy Mondays/Oasis 'Mancunian' feel to it. There isn't really such a 'look' but they knew what I meant ! The shot looks somewhat grim especially as the colour and contrast levels were toned down in Photoshop afterwards.

The whole exercise was over in about 90 minutes and revealed some potentially strong shots. Initial, technical problems such as metering and balancing daylight soon gave way to thinking about the actual portraits themselves and gave an insight on how to handle such a job which would come their way.

Metz flashguns....

I bought a Metz flashgun from this guy off Ebay and arranged to pick it up from his place. Although he wasn't a snapper, he'd come across this Metz kit which intrigued me as he'd listed the flash with a "Mecamet 45-20" unit. After a bit of research it turns out that a Mecamet 45-20 is a power control unit for when the flash is used manually. It'll allow you to split the 'manual' setting into full, half, quarter etc. right down to 1/32 so naturally I dived in...

The problem with Metz's is that the manual setting output is limited to full power unless you get a CT4 and even then they're limited to 1/2 or 1/4 power. The plug-in Mecamet 45-20 gives you speedlight-level control which is invaluable. Now, having sussed out the Mecamet, I was itching to give it a go. I dug some kit out of the car and Jon was up having his pic done so I set to work. He's stood in bright sunlight with his back to the sun. Without flash, he would be a backlit silhouette so I fired the flash through a brolly to fill in the shadows. The main exposure was for the sun and set at 1/180th at f11 and this meant that Jon would silhouette. The sunlight lit up his hair and shoulders so I set the flash to f8 to auto to give one stop less than the sun which worked out fine. I then tried the flash on manual and use the Mecamet. The Metz on manual metered at about f22 so using the Mecamet, I dialled it down to give me f8 and fired away. Jon was good enough to stand around whilst I messed about with the Mecamet until I understood what it was about.

I got back home and decided to do some more portraits so I nipped down to my local woods with a mini-project idea of snapping dog-walkers. I like that idea that owners are like the dogs they choose because sometimes, they're is an element of truth in it. I set up the flash to fire through a brolly and give f11 on the subject, and metered the daylight to record some highlight detail. At a 1/90th of a sec, this makes the tree's etc. feel more like a studio backdrop.I was explaining my mini-project to this guy when his dog Oscar decided to have a nosey in my camera bag. Oscar's head disappeared inside the bag and left behind copious amounts of slavver and snot. As I shot a few frames off, the guy got his mobile out and phoned a friend who turned out to be a professional dog-walker and was on her way day down with a dozen hounds. Although this wasn't quite what I had in mind for the project or my camera bag, it was a great opportunity to play with the Metz. Unfortunately, I got a bit carried away and was firing away like crazy. My new toy made one last 'crack' and emitted a tiny puff of smoke and was dead ! I suspect that it hadn't been used in a long time and firing enough shots to drain 3 battery packs was a little 'excessive'....

Blurring the sky...

I've never felt the need to put a virtually opaque piece of glass in front of my lens before now until another photographer I know asked me whether it was possible to use a slow shutter to blur clouds in a landscape shot. I had to think about this one for a while. How do you get an exposure time of around 30 secs in broad daylight ? f32 using 6 ISO film should do it but alas, my digital camera only goes to 100 ISO. I cobbled together a red, blue, green and polarising filter and measured the light-blocking strength and it came to around 10-stops which should easily give me an acceptably slow shutter speed.

This image is the result of a 30-sec exposure.Couple of issues with this approach. Firstly, 3 colour filters jammed together gives a yucky overall colour cast so I had to shoot in B+W. Secondly, all that light entering then exiting, not one, but 4 filters means that sharpness is affected. Thirdly, its very difficult to see through the filter stack to compose which means removing it to focus and compose, then refitting it to shoot, and lastly, if you want the clouds to blur, it has to be on a windy-ish day so I needed to carry around a jolly heavy tripod to avoid camera movement ! Now, with a bit of research, I found out that there are several filter manufacturers that produce 10-stop, Neutral Density (ND) filters but its important that you understand first how filters work so here is the techy stuff.

A filter is a piece of glass which goes in front of your lens and its purpose is to affect the light passing through it. There are hundreds of different types of filters, all with different purposes.

A Neutral Density (ND) filter is designed to reduce the amount of light passing through it without altering any of the colours hence the 'Neutral' tag. They have their own nomenclature which can be confusing but essentially, ND filters are graded in 'stops' i.e a 1-stop reduction, 2-stop, 3-stop etc. and given a number i.e 0.3 or 3.0 to indicate its stopping power. The varied filter manufacturers list their filters similar to this....

0.3 / ND2x / 101 Neutral Density Filter reduces the light by one f-stop 1/60th becomes 1/30th 0.6 / ND4x / 102 Neutral Density Filter reduces the light by two f-stops 1/60th becomes 1/15th 0.9 / ND8x / 103 Neutral Density Filter reduces the light by three f-stops 1/60th becomes 1/8th 1.8 / ND64x / 106 Neutral Density Filter reduces the light by six f-stops. 1/60th becomes 1 sec. 3.0 / ND1000x / 110 Neutral Density Filter reduces the light by ten f-stops. 1/60th becomes 15 secs

Here's a couple of links so that you can get an idea of the purpose and costs of ND filters....

http://www.bpluswfilters.co.uk/index.php?page=products&sec=140

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/circular-or-threaded-filters/b3072