Author: chris

Shooting portraits

My favourite photography to look at and to take is portrait photography. I love the idea of trying to tell a story, or capture an emotion in a single frame. I recently took a whole lot of portrait shots at a family get together, and I was really happy with some of them. So ‘I’m No Expert, But’ here are my tips for shooting portraits.

1. Light
If you have a studio and lights then you are probably reading this post on an ironic level…so I’ll just provide advice for the rest of us.
Use whatever natural light you have available. So if there is a window in the room, make sure the subject is facing towards it (and obviously avoid placing the person in front of the window, as all the backlight will make their face comparatively dark).

2. Shallow depth of field
A shallow depth of field basically means that one part of your shot is very clear, while the rest is blurred. To me this allows you to make the persons face the focus of the shot…everything else is just background. The lower the f-stop you use, the smaller the area that is in focus. My lens can go to 2.8 so that is what I use. Some lenses can get down to 1.4, some can’t get lower than 3.5.
The challenge with using a shallow depth of field is that while it means that you have one area beautifully in focus…you need to make sure that it is the area that you want. I have a dazzling array of photos where the person’s hair is in focus…or their ear. When in fact what you want to capture is…

3. The eyes
This is where the connection is for me. The mouth can be smiling…but the eyes will always tell the real story…so make them the focal point of the shot.
If you can, try to get some ‘light in the eyes’. If people are looking towards the light you will see a reflection of this light in their eyes, which adds an incredible sincerity to the shot.
Steve McCurry is a great exponent of this.

4. Camera settings
If you have the time and ability, then by all means set your f-stop, aperture and everything else manually.
Personally, I use the ‘CA’ (Creative Auto) setting on my Canon. Then use the following:
Flash: Turned off
Background: Blurred as possible (this is the shallow depth of field I was talking about)
Exposure: Leave as is unless it is really dark or sunny…and even then, just move somewhere else
Picture setting: Monochrome (I really like my portraits in black and white). But only do this if you can work with RAW files on your computer.
File type: RAW+L This will give you a RAW file (in full colour) and a JPG in black and white (if you’re in the monochrome setting). A lot of people will tell you to shoot full colour and then desaturate the image to make it black and white. But I personally like to see the image in black and white as I shoot it…and if I suddenly need a colour version, then I can just save the RAW file as a colour jpg.
Shooting: Continuous (people’s expressions change in the blink of an eye…so it’s worth shooting a whole lot of shots, to get that one moment where you have captured something special).

5. Put yourself in their shoes
Imagine you are sitting in front of a camera, unless you are an extreme extrovert, you are going to be feeling a bit nervous…the photographer takes the photo, then says ‘No, that didn’t work’ or ‘We’re going to have to do that again’. How do you feel? I’m going to guess ‘not so great’. As the photographer you may have meant ‘I didn’t quite get that right’, or ‘I’ve got to change my settings’…but the damage has been done. You are now very unlikely to get a great shot of this person because that are going to be feeling awkward or self-conscious.
So always put yourself in the shoes of the person you are taking the photo of…if you wouldn’t like someone doing something to you, chances are they won’t like you doing it to them. And from a purely selfish perspective, you are going to get a much better photo of someone who is happy to be there and having fun.

I also think it’s worth making sure you get at least one photo that the person having their photo taken will actually want. Yes that photo of them in the middle of yawn ‘totally captured their inner child’ and yes that photo where pretty much everything is out of focus except for their left nostril is a fitting tribute to ‘the look you were going for there’. But you’re going to run out of people who are happy to let you take their photo pretty quickly if nobody likes how you’ve made them look.
So find some work that inspires you (I love cycling so Kristof Ramon , Veeral Patel, and Wade Wallace are a few of my faves) and get out there and try to capture some magic…then upload that magic to the internet…then wait for people to tell you that ‘you’re doing it wrong’.

An open letter to my pregnant sister in Beijing

Any week now my sister is going to make me an Uncle, thus granting me the highly coveted male familial quartet of Father/Son/Brother/Uncle (a feat only achieved…by a dazzlingly high number of people…mostly men).
Regrettably she is over in China, and so I haven’t had the chance to pass on all my accumulated knowledge on what it’s like to become a parent for the first time…but I know she reads this blog, and I needed a topic for this fortnight…so this is what we in the industry call a ‘twofer’.
Now I’m No Expert But, here in no particular order are some things I wish I had known before I became a parent, but I didn’t find in any of the books I pretended to read about becoming a parent.

1. Sleep
You will want it, miss it and crave it. You will become obsessed with your child’s sleep. Complete strangers will ask you about your sleep. And do you know what? Not one of these things will actually help you get sleep.
There is no point comparing the amount of sleep you used to get before you had a baby, because that was a totally different time. Just as you can’t yell at your husband about having to make your own lunch, because you didn’t have to when you were 7 years old. That time has passed…and so to has having long stretches of unbroken sleep. Complaining about it won’t result in more sleep…but it is immeasurably therapeutic.
One of my clearest memories of when Josh was a couple of months old was talking to my boss at work and mentioning how many times I had been up the night before trying to get him to sleep. My boss had teenage kids and just looked wistfully into the middle distance and said ‘I would do anything to know where my kids were at night.’
Just know that there does come a time when you get to sleep through the night again, and that in the interim you will be freaking tired…but will find amazing reserves of energy.

2. Your child will be fine
One of the wonderful results of having very little sleep and being thrust into a role you have had very little preparation for, is that you suddenly start aging your baby 10yrs but giving them their current behaviours. ‘Oh my god I’m going to have the first child who sleeps in their parents bedroom until they’re 20’, ‘Oh my god our child is going to be the only child who still has a dummy at 10’, ‘Oh my god, my child is just going to scream every time he doesn’t get what he wants’. These are all things I thought about our first and second children, it’s only now with the third that I am able to relax and just enjoy my time knowing that they will develop at their own pace.

3. Accept people’s offers of help
A very large part of you will just want to just form a little cocoon around your new family and keep the rest of the world at arm’s length. Not least because you have no idea what you’re doing and don’t want someone to come in and tell you that you’re doing it wrong.
But if someone offers to bring around a meal, or clean up, or hold the baby while you have a lie down…take them up on it. They will feel great knowing that they’re helping you out, and you will feel great having one less thing to worry about.

4. Get ready to have your world view changed
Your respect for single parents will increase about 400%…your shame about your behaviour towards your own parents will increase about 8,000%…and the frequency of you crying while watching movies/news reports/Octonauts will be awkward for your fellow film viewers/colleagues/6 yr old nephews.
Also, have you heard that amazing new album by that hot new band? No, neither have I…however some of the Hooley Dooley’s early stuff is sublime.
In the last three years I have never read so few books, but listened to so many podcasts.
I’ve never been so consumed by own little part of the world, but had so many moments of noticing true beauty in the world around me.
And I’ve never felt so insanely out of control of my life, but felt so content.
Best of all you can start any sentence with ‘As a parent…’ and non-parents have to pretend that this actually somehow makes your point more valid.

5. Go in and look at your baby before you go to sleep
This is not out of some paranoia that they might have stopped breathing (although, to be honest….you will do this a couple of times), and not because it is the one time when they’re not expecting you to do something for them.
But because there is nothing more beautiful than the sight of your own child sleeping.

So let’s see that’s everything I know about parenting in less than 850 words…yep, that sounds about right.
Babies are contrary things, so just because something works one day…doesn’t mean it will work the next. But by the same token a failed strategy one day may be the perfect solution the next. Just go with your instincts, you’ll be right more times that you’re wrong. Why? Because you’re an amazing person, and you’re going to be a fantastic parent!

 

Staying fit when you’ve got kids

Apart from the actual exercise itself, two other essential ingredients when it comes to staying fit are consistency and sleep. You need to have a regular routine rather than sporadic bursts, and you need to be getting enough sleep to let your body recover. However there are two things that are going to be mere blips disappearing into the distance of your rear view mirror as you travel on the good car ‘parenthood’; routine and sleep.
So what can you do if you want to stay fit with kids? Well first of all I have to premise this with the fact that a year and a half ago I completed my first half ironman…but after the birth of our 3rd child 6 months ago, my next involvement with triathlon will be next weekend when I am going to handing out drinks at the Melbourne Ironman…so I’m not claiming to be a shining example of being in peak fitness.
‘Now I‘m no expert but’ here are some tips I’ve developed over the last 6 years of raising our three kids.

1. Consider being a bad parent.
Being a good parent is actually really time consuming. All that loving, and nurturing and ‘being there’ can really bite into your training time. Sure, being a good parent will probably result in them being well adjusted human beings who people actually like spending time with…but if you put the time you’re putting into being a good parent into your running training, you could probably run 4 minute kms for the marathon. So think about which one of those is more important.
But bear in mind that your kids are probably going to be the ones who decide which old people’s home you get put in.
2. Abandon hope all ye who enter
Ok, so a  more positive way of saying this may be ‘readjust your goals’, but positivity disappears at about the same rate as your anaerobic threshold after the birth of a child, so  unless you:
a) have gone with the option above
b) are a genetic freak
c) have been setting your goals remarkably low
You will not be returning to your pre-child levels of fitness for at least the first 6 months of the child’s life. So there’s no point trying to achieve it, and even less point beating yourself up for not achieving it. On a good day I focused on ‘maintaining a base level of fitness’ so that I when the time became available I could increase my training without having to start from scratch. On a bad day I focused on not becoming someone who was morbidly obese and had to be lifted out of their house by a crane.

3. Work the training into your life
As I discussed in my previous post (which ‘The New Yorker’ described as “We don’t review blogs so please stop sending us emails”), it’s hard to find time to do the things you want to do at the best of times…and finding time to do the things you want to do when you have kids is even harder. So where possible work it into your day to day activities.
For example:

  • Ride to work if you can. If you’re feeling courageous try running to work.
  • Pretend that carrying a small child is in fact an exercise for your core
  • Still carrying that child? Pick up that toy you just stood on. Now do it again…look you’re doing squats! You used to pay to do this at the gym.
  • Take your kids to swimming lessons and participate. If the sight of yourself in bathers isn’t enough to terrify you into more exercise or less eating, then you’re doing well.

4. Misery loves company
You know how little you cared when one of your friends without kids complained about how they had to wait for ages to get a seat at some new and expensive restaurant even though they ‘totally knew someone who worked there and had spent like at least $200 on drinks at the bar’? Yeah, well that’s about how much they care about your ‘I got no sleep’ and ‘I’m pretty sure this is an acceptable amount of vomit to have on my top’ discussions.
So if you’re going to spend a couple of hours on a bike talking to someone, make it someone who is the same situation as you. They are a lot more likely to empathise with you, and a lot more likely to be at a similar level of fitness as  you.

5. It does get better
My experience has been that you spend the first month after the baby is born living off residual fitness. For months 2-4 the sleep deprivation accumulates and your level of exercise is pretty much eviscerated. At this point you become pretty much convinced that you will never be fit again. Months 5-6 are frustrating because you suddenly get intermittent exercise availability…but nothing consistent enough to let you feel as though you’re doing anything other than fighting hard to stay in the same place.
But after that you will hopefully start finding that you can get out every second weekend for a ride…or to the gym a couple of times a week. Within a year, suddenly you’ll start feeling some of that fitness come back and you might start identifying some targets for the next year. Within 2 years you will be back to your original level of fitness and you will have completely forgotten all the pain and frustration of that first 6 months…then you will decide to have another child…and 9 months later it will all come flooding back.

But is it all worth it? Well I’ll leave you with the immortal words of Jon Stewart who says that ‘Parenting seems like a lot of work. But for all the hassle and worry once in a while comes a moment of pure innocence that touches your heart and tickles your funny bone…nah f%&$ it, it’s a lot of work.’

If you’ve got any advice or tips, I’d love to hear them.

 

Anyone can take a great photo

Welcome to the first NineB (‘Now I’m no expert, but’) blog

A while ago Things Bogans Like had an excellent piece on bogans purchasing camera equipment and assuming that they were automatically great photographers. As usual I started reading the article and thought ‘Ha, ha…those stupid bogans!’…and then gradually began to see more and more of myself in the article. Then I stopped reading it. I don’t have time for that sort of pseudo-intellectual lefty crap.

The problem that the bogan and I have, is that pretty much anyone can take a great photo. If everything goes right, and all the moons align, and you take enough photos…eventually you’re going to have one that is a great image. And you’ll look at it, and you’ll think ‘If I can do this once…I can do it again…so clearly I’m now a photographer!’ But you’re not. The big difference between me/you and a good photographer, is that they continually get great shots. They definitely shoot some duds…but then they also shoot some photos that are so good they make you want to just give up on ever taking another shot (I call this the Lee Jeffries effect).

But there are some things we non-pro’s can do to improve our ratio of crap photos to good ones.

1. ‘It is about the bike’
Sure Lance Armstrong may have said that his success was ‘not about the bike’…but that’s a lot easier to say from the comfort of a $10K road bike. Likewise, the money you put into good equipment (particularly lenses) will make a massive difference to quality of the images you take.

2. Using ‘auto’ features does not make you less of a man.
Yes, a great photographer doesn’t need a stabiliser, or autofocus…and they set the f-stop and aperture and everything else manually (they probably even know what the f-stop is). But you are not a great photographer…yet.
When I first got my DSLR I shot everything on full auto (other than flash..I hate using flash), and they are still some of my favourite photos.
By all means learn how to do everything manually (it will make you a better photographer), but if you see a great photo happening in front of you…don’t forsake capturing the moment for some sort of misplaced professional pride. Besides, when someone asks about your photo, you can still lie and claim you did it all yourself.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask for advice from photographers whose work you like.
Most good photographers know that there is more to what they do than just the settings they use (such as the way they work with the people they’re photographing, the post production processes they use, the time they spend in the freezing cold to get the shot), so they won’t mind answering your questions.
If I want to ask someone about taking a MTB our outdoorsy photo I’ll ask Tim Arch, or if I want some tips on taking a great portrait shot I’ll ask Veeral Patel, or if I want a great car shot I’ll ask Joel Strickland…and of course if I want a photo that represents the pain of riding from Melbourne to Adelaide on a fixie I’ll ask Andy.
But be warned, some photographers are just jerks and won’t get back to you…I’ve sent numerous emails and tweets to Ansel Adams asking if he uses a Canon or a Nikon DSLR. He still hasn’t responded to any of them.

4. Shoot what you know

If you like cars or bikes or wilderness or ponies, then shoot cars, bikes, wilderness or ponies. If you have an interest in something, then you’re likely to have an intuitive idea of; how things should look, when is a good time to take a shot…and ideally where you can find a pony who can either drive a car or ride a bike in the wilderness.
Most importantly, it is a lot easier to fit photography into your life than it is to make time to go and take photos. So the more you can work photography into what you do everyday, the more practice you will get,and the better you will become.

5. Shoot early, shoot often

The joy of shooting digital (and there’s no way you made it this far through this blog if you’re shooting on film…so don’t try to claim otherwise) is that you can take a whole lot of shots, and you can see them immediately, and then you can adjust things accordingly …and then you can shoot a whole lot of shots again.
It’s basically the snowboarding/surfing scenario. It’s a lot easier to learn to snowboard, because each time you fall over, you can just get up and try again. Whereas with surfing, each time you fall off you have to paddle back out, wait for a wave, catch the wave then try to stand up again. So be like a snowboarder, and take a lot of shots so that you can learn how things work. But at all times know that surfing is way cooler.
It is also very important that you get as good at deleting photos as you are at taking them. If you’re shooting a 100 shots and keeping more than 10 of them, you are either setting your standards way too low or you are some sort of photographic wunderkind. Either way you are not the target audience for this blog…so it’s probably best if you left.

So there you have my hints for taking a better photo, to paraphrase a DJ Shadow sample ‘It won’t make a bad photographer good…but hopefully it will make a good photographer better’.

 

Let’s get this party started

It’s probably not the best way to start a blog…with two comments telling you to go elsewhere…but with a 7 week old in the house, I’m not about to tempt fate by pissing off an organisation helping people affected by SIDS.
Yes a seven week old in the house, and it’s fair to say that I have at least a 7 week backlog of work. As I move through it I’ll put up some examples of what I’m working on. At this stage I’m shooting on a Canon 550D and cutting on an iMac using FCPX, and I’ll happily tell you how it’s going.
But for now, I’m just going to put this post up and start seeing what I can do with WordPress,
Cheers,
Chris.