A new experiment - my first showing!

Flier for my first official Showing.... Info below.

    So, I was once again on my favorite place for work and entertainment, Craigslist, and saw an ad for RAW Artists, looking for new artists. Sent in an application, and got picked to do an event on June 20th. Not really sure what to make of this gig. Their site looks good, and I really like their mission of giving exposure to up and coming talent (in this case, I hope, mine!) The catch is, they fund their events by requiring a minimum ticket sales amount from participating artists. I need to sell at least 20 tickets to my fan base or I will actually wind up owing them for the show in addition to the outlay for prints and setup.

    This is where you, my fan base, come in. I will be turning this into a Facebook event and sending an invite out that way as the date gets closer, but if you are reading this, located in San Diego, and think it looks like a cool event, no reason to wait. You can get tickets in my name HERE!

    Not sure what to expect really. I will have a 10x10ft chain link fence to set up with provided by the venue, and a light. That's it. Looks like there are two other photographers. My plan right now is to use half the space to display prints of various sizes, and make the other half of the space into a small photo booth. So people can come in, get a portrait or fun pic done, take a card, and get prints later off my web site, or a digital copy to post on their FB or whatever. It looks like a pretty industrial club with some good beams, if I can manage a spot under a good rigging point I will put up a low trapeze bar or hammock and get people taking pics on the apparatus, which should be cool and really set me apart, but that will be location dependent.

    So, taking another giant leap into the unknown- could use a little help from you- my readers. Other than the obvious way of helping me out by buying tickets and showing up, If you have a particular favorite image(s) you think would be great to print up and showcase, let me know which ones you recommend. If you are in one of my images and don't mind it being placed up for sale, let me know and we'll do a model release and I will split the sale profit with you. If you have any good ideas for how to make my booth interesting and this first adventure a success, pass them my way. Finally, if you happen to be a graphic artist or designer and feel like hooking me up with a banner in exchange for some photo work, drop me a line. But mostly, just come out, have a good time, enjoy the show, get your pic taken and keep me company for a while. Dark beers also accepted!

Cashing in on gay marriage?

 Ok- not really sure how to start this one off, or what angle to take it. Been churning it since the shoot last weekend, still haven't come up with what I want to say. So hopefully a beer (or three) and some free typing will get to what I want to say. So let me start by saying it is hard to answer the question, "do I support gay marriage," or "do I support equal rights for the LGBT community?" The reason it is so hard for me to answer is that, really, the question never would have occurred to me without all the current media hype, it's rather like someone asking, "so, do you support oxygen and people's right to breath it?" It's not even an issue for me, everyone should have the right to live and love as they please as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. But if I have to take a side, I totally support equal rights for all and the right for everyone to be married if they so chose.

  So what the hell does this have to do with photography you might ask? Why the hell is this in my professional blog, instead of on my personal Facebook? Well, last weekend I got a gig shooting a couple for OutViewOnline, part of a series on honeymoon destinations. Met the couple at the Dana Hotel on a Saturday morning. Before we started shooting, met up with the hotel manager, who explained to me that the hotel was incredibly supportive of gay marriage, but all their wedding advertising featured heterosexual couples, so they were looking for some shots to use to try to help their position in the new market. The idea was I do the shoot, guess it was supposed to be an engagement shoot (even though the models- while actually a couple, weren't engaged) and later this summer I come back and shoot a wedding at the hotel. All I could think about was the Prop 8 Musical video from a couple years ago.... if you haven't seen it, check out the link. It's a riot, basically the gay marriage advocates convince the conservatives by explaining how much money there is to be made by allowing gay marriage and opening up the new market.  Admittedly, I am a cynic, but hey, if the hotel wants to expand their marketing, who am I to argue. But really, as much as I hope it's not just a marketing ploy, the couple wasn't actually engaged, who knows when/if this mysterious wedding will happen or not, bottom line was I couldn't get Neil Patrick Harris out of my head the whole morning.

   Ok. Enough with the background, how did the shoot go? Overall I wasn't happy with it. It really was the worst of all possible worlds. Late morning bordering on noon. Worst light of the day. My "models," while not really engaged, were a real couple, and not experienced models. And they were both slightly hung over from going out the night before. Couple this with my inexperience with directing models, you have a recipe for disaster. What I didn't realize until later on looking to see if any of the pics wound up on the web site yet, was that this same couple has done several of these shoots at various locations before. Thus, in addition to being hung over, they were also bored with the photography side of these little adventures they were having on the magazine's dime. I was just basically the price they had to pay to get their vacation.  But anyway, the shoot was decked against me from the start.

    Technically, I can deal with bad light. That's my job as a photographer. Bright daylight, use some fill flash to kill the shadows. Ideally, I would have been able to find some shade to put them in, or if I was really high speed, a couple of assistants could have followed us with a flat to hold over them and create our own shade just out of the frame. I would have set up a couple of radio fired strobes off camera to fill the shadows and life would have been good. Alas, I had no budget, no assistant, and barely an hour to shoot all over the hotel and grounds, so I had to make do with on camera flash and a diffuser. And hung over models who couldn't help but squint into the mid day sun.

   My biggest weakness was really brought out by this shoot. I am not comfortable yet directing and posing models. It's a totally new arena for me, I am used to shooting events in motion, performers at work, or generic crowd shots in a photojournalistic style. Lifestyle portraiture, where I catch my subject spontaneously and organically in the middle of what they are doing. I am good at that. But not so much the manufactured posing. Give me a model who knows what they are doing and I am fine, I can capture them as they work, (see image below, the model dragged me into this restroom and basically told me to start shooting while she did her stuff. I did her bidding and got some great stuff. Wish all the models were as awesome as the firebird)

but I have a long way to go before I will be comfortable directing models. The best moments I was able to come up with was when I could get them to laugh a bit and forget to be "posing," I would crack some jokes, like telling them to look into each others eyes and pretend they loved each other... or since it was an engagement shoot, to take the life preserver from the pool, use it as an engagement ring and propose to each other... I think I managed to get a few real moments. At least when I looked at the rest of the series I could say my pics were at least as good, if not better, than the rest of the series so far , so I feel a bit better. Anyway, until the article gets posted on Outview, you can see my gallery here and tell me what you think. 
 


 

Non Technical Nikon D4 Review.

        There are many reviews out there of the Nikon D4. I know this because I read through every one of them I could find when I was contemplating upgrading. So why am I writing yet another one? Well, it seemed to me that all of those reviews were by experienced professional photographers for other experienced professional photographers- mostly along the lines of "it's great, but is it worth upgrading from your D3S or not?" While those reviews were informative, they didn't really answer my questions as someone going for their first professional level body. So, now that I have had Excalibur for a month or two and have put her through some fun test shoots, I am venturing into review land once again in case there are other people who find themselves where I was and are contemplating the heart stopping decision to turn a massive amount of cash into a D4 body. So I hope to answer the question of whether it is worth it to go all the way up to the D4 if you are contemplating an upgrade to your first pro body. I won’t be able to compare to the D800 or D600, but you can also find plenty of that flavor on google.

   

    For those just tuning in for the review, here is a little history and how I came to this point. I have dabbled in photography for two decades, from back in the film age, but had taken a break from serious (D)SLRs for a few years until last year, when life events brought me back to photography. I didn’t have a large budget getting back into it, so after looking around for a while, I picked up a Nikon D3200 and spent as much as I had left on good glass, then upgraded glass as I could. Earlier this year, I realized that since the bulk of what I was shooting was low light, high speed performance work, and to get the images I wanted in that environment I needed to upgrade my camera body. Full frame was the only way to go for that, so I pretty much had to choose between a D4, used D3S, D800 or D600. You can goback and read some of the older posts here detailing the decision process but I finally decided to go all the way from Nikon's lowest entry level body to the top of the line D4. Found a Nikon refurbished one for about $1000 less than new at KEH Camera and pulled the trigger. Spoiler alert- NO REGRETS!

    Unboxing and First Impressions:

    Arrived on schedule in a grey refurb box. Other than the box color there was no way to tell this was not a brand new camera (even shutter count was at 0). First impression was "holy smokes, this thing is HUGE!" The D3200 is definitely on the small end for DSLR bodies and I had grown used to that, but even compared to the D800/600 bodies the D4 is massive. It is a tank. Apparently it is slightly lighter than the D3S, but if you are coming from anything except another large professional body, be prepared to be slightly overwhelmed by the size of this beast. That being said, the ergonomics are excellent. I have average size hands but despite its' size the D4 fits like a glove, whether in horizontal or vertical orientation. The camera is so comfortable and easy to hold, in fact, that unless I am going to be doing a lot of climbing or walking around for any significant length of time, I don't even bother to put on a strap, I just hold it and feel totally comfortable letting it dangle by a couple of fingertips on the grip ridge. The only slight negative I can give in the handling arena is that the depth of field preview and function button on the grip side of the lens are hard to reach when shooting vertically. The important controls are all duplicated so as far as your hand is concerned, although not quite as comfortable as horizontal, there is no noticeable difference in control placement or function when switching to vertical orientation. Which is awesome, because it seems like I spend about 80% of my time shooting vertically.

Controls and Setup:

    A Nikon is a Nikon is a Nikon in many respects. Although the D4 has probably three times or more options and menu items compared to the D3200, the layout and overall themes are similar enough that I had no problem navigating and getting the camera set up for initial shooting. That being said, this is a far more capable tool and there are menus and settings that I have not even begun to explore yet. I am pretty sure that if I really dig deep enough and find the right combination of settings that I can network the D4 into NORAD and take over the world. (maybe that is what that built in ethernet port is for.....) I do admit I had to spend a lot of time on google researching various options and settings, although Nikon does have a basic setup guide that covers various generic shooting environments. There is also the option to import other people's settings by saving them onto one of your memory cards. I have not tested this ability yet, but I can see situations where it would be useful. I did update the firmware, which is also done via card, and that was fairly simple and straightforward. (note- other reviews have mentioned that if you have networking enabled, this will keep you from updating firmware until you turn it off) Looking forward to David Busch's guide when it finally comes out, I read his D3200 guide almost a year later and still learned new things about that camera so his D4 guide should be very handy. Probably the best thing about the controls- they are backlit so you can see them in the dark, even though they are intuitive enough that I expect not to need that feature much longer and already don't for commonly used ones. My least favorite so far- the custom settings and shooting banks. For a beginner at least it is a confusing setup, despite having read all I can online about them. In fact, it seems from my search online that there are many more people confused as well. My biggest problem with them, even as I start to figure them out, is that they don't stay static as you would want to save them for a starting point, when you switch out of one it saves in the state you were in when you left it. I guess that is useful in it's own way when repeatedly jumping between setups, but I wish you could control this behavior so I could always have a certain set point to start from. You can control almost everything else on the camera, do why not that? Small gripe overall for an excellently designed piece of gear with so much configurablility and control it will make your head spin.

Capabilities:

    First and foremost- low light, awesome autofocus and speed. These were the main reasons I was looking to upgrade in the first place. So how does Excalibur deliver on these fronts? Again- HOLY SMOKES! This think sees in the dark and is blazing fast, it's like you mixed a wizard, Chuck Norris, a cat and a Ninja all into one.

    Speed on many levels. From power on to taking the first focused shot is pretty much instantaneous. I've done some emergency pull outs from the bag and been shooting even before the lens cleared the bag. (anyone want some great pictures of the inside of my camera bags?) Speaking of which, due to the size of this camera, I had to also upgrade most of my camera bags to hold the larger body. Minor point, but you will be hearing bag reviews in the future as well. There is no perceptible shutter lag. I actually didn't understand what the term really meant until I got used to using this camera. Now the D3200 feel slow and my waterproof P&S (which is otherwise awesome and indestructible) feel positively glacial. The controls are so light and responsive that it seems like all you have to do is think of shooting and the shutter fires. Shooting feels almost psychic. So sensitive that even on single shot mode it’s easy to accidentally shoot two or three frames.

   Then there is burst speed. The D3200 shoots 4 frames per second and when shooting RAW the buffer only holds 7 shots. On the D4 shooting 14 bit Raw I can do 10 frames per second and the buffer didn't fill until 63 shots in. Basically, I shot an entire swing and trick of a trapeze flier at 10 FPS without filling the buffer. I had to capture the first bounce in the net because I wanted to see the buffer fill. It sounded like a damn machine gun. It will go a bit faster, 11 FPS, but only if you lock focus/exposure on the first frame. So let me break that down for you. 10 FPS and each one gets an updated exposure and focus calculation. FAST!

   Autofocus speed- Again amazing. If there is minimal contrast, focus is quick and solid, whether I am using the pro zooms or the primes. I haven’t put my consumer DX zoom on yet, but on all the other lenses the focus in noticeably faster, more accurate and takes a lot less light. If it is really dark and there is no contrast, it will still hunt, but I have found that in that case I can switch to live view and usually still manage to get good focus on anything that is lit enough for me to see its’ outline in the dark.

   In short, major wins in all three areas I was looking for with this upgrade.

High ISO Performance

    The D4 shoots native at ISO 100 – 12,800. It can drop down to ISO 50 or go up to HI4 (204,800). The D4 will produce useable images at any of its’ native ISOs. ISO 12,800 on the D4 has similar noise characteristics to ISO 3200 on the D3200. Unless it’s a very dark image overall I pretty much do no noise processing if I was shooting under ISO 6400, from 6400-12,800 any of the noise processing plugins I use with aperture are capable to completely negating what little noise there is. 

 ISO 12,800 with no noise reduction. 70-200mm f2.8, 1/50sec 

Same shot with noise reduction applied. 

    Just for fun one night I slapped on a 35mm F1.8 (dx) lens, cranked the ISO up to max at 204,800, walked into my son’s bedroom and took a shot of him in the crib in almost complete darkness. Had to use live view to focus, and boost it a bit in aperture, but after running it through some post processing noise reduction, it wasn’t an image I would post anywhere (except here for illustrative purposes) but the noise level would have made for an acceptable newspaper shot.

Pitch Dark bedroom, ISO 204,800. 50mmF1.8, 1/40sec No noise reduction. 

    Overall highly impressive. What is practically lets me do is open my zooms up to 2.8 and shoot performances at 1/500 second or sometimes faster, which lets me freeze anything I need to, and not have to worry about images getting ruined by noise.

ISO 12,800, 50mm f1.8, 1/1000sec - no noise reduction

    I have found that the Auto-ISO setting on the D4 is pretty damn useful. I set it to max out at 12,800 and then don’t worry about it unless I need to do something specific. The one consequence I found with this is that I was used to adjusting exposure by varying either aperture or shutter speed in manual, but with auto ISO on, unless I was maxed out, the D4 would adjust the ISO to maintain the same exposure when I changed the other settings, so I have had to learn to use the exposure compensation function. A minor adjustment and totally worth it for the convenience.  

Image Quality

     Talked about the high ISO performance earlier. Won't repeat how awesome that is. Also have no intention of getting into pixel peeping and all the technical mumbo-jumbo, the people over at DXO Mark do that way better than I can, if you want to go super deep geek, check them out. I'm going to give you my impressions as a user, not a tech nerd. Overall, the full frame sensor just gives better images all around vice the smaller sensor. Images seem more 3 dimensional somehow, they have more depth, and the depth of field is less for any given aperture, so it's easier to get good subject isolation. The color is phenomenal. I had the pleasure of shooting a bright daylight event with a friend and totally awesome photographer who is sort of my photo idol and inspiration. He shoots a high end Canon, and comparing the two image sets I could finally see the difference I had read about in the way Canon and Nikon capture things. I like the Nikon color and depth better, the Canon images seemed flat and a bit washed out. Maybe that is just how we processed them after, we're opposites on all fronts, he's Lightroom and I am Aperture, but anyway, the difference was obvious. One isn't better than the other, it's just a matter of preference and I guess I prefer the Nikon palette.

    One of the biggest criticism I saw of the D4 when looking around reviews was that it was only a 16mp camera. The D3200 is a 24mp camera, the D800 shoots at 36mp. Sure, I can crop in farther at greater resolution on the D3200 images. I am sure that is even more of a factor on the D800. Guess Nikon traded resolution for low light performance, and it seems like a good trade. Effectively it means I just have to plan my shots a little better and take time to compose the shot I want when I take it, instead of shooting way too wide and cropping down later. That being said, the focus and clarity is better enough on the D4 with a pro lens than on the D3200 with a consumer level lens, that I can actually crop tighter and still get clean results. (if I put the pro lenses on the D3200 that advantage goes away).

Lenses and Compatibility

    Since I am writing this primarily for people like me who are wondering about jumping up from DX to Full Frame for the first time, I should talk a little bit about lenses and glass compatibility. In short, you will be able to use any lens on the D4 that you were using on your DX body. The D4 will auto crop itself down when you put a DX lens on, but then you get less use out of that full frame sensor that you just paid a hell of a lot for. So what happens when you turn off the DX auto-crop feature and slap a DX lens onto Excalibur? I had to experiment with this out of necessity when my 24-70mm got knocked out of alignment (not by me) and had to go to Nikon for repair (not a speedy process). I ordered a 50mm 1.8 FX lens, but had a couple things I needed to shoot before that came in that were just too close for my 70-200, so I had to use the DX lenses I had. The 35mm F1.8 worked almost flawlessly in FX mode on the D4, I am happy to say. There was a slight vignetting around the corners, but since most of what I was shooting was in a theatre or club where the edges of my frames were dark anyway, this was not at all an issue. The other DX lens I had on hand was my 17-55mm F2.8. Zoomed in to 55mm there was little to no noticeable vignetting, increasing markedly as I zoomed out. At 17mm, there was a huge amount of vignetting, in almost a lantern pattern. (these pics were with NSFW subject matter, so no examples here, sorry) So- are your DX lenses going to be useable on the full frame camera, yes they are. But you will have to test each one out for yourself and see what focal lengths equate to a level of vignetting you can live with, or just use the crop mode until you can get some FX glass. Really, you should upgrade your glass before the body anyway, it’s a better investment of money, but if you need the performance of the FX for a specific purpose like I did, you can still use your old lenses while you upgrade. As a bonus, because it has a built in motor, you will be able to use older non-motorized lenses with the D4 so you can find some great lenses out there for relatively little money that will give you access to the full capability of the larger sensor. Google around and you’ll see lots of reviews. (disclaimer, all the Nikon FX bodies have the same in body motor, and some of the higher end DX bodies as well, this is not an exclusive feature of the D4)

Battery Life

    One thing I saw a lot of discussion about was the battery on the D4 as compared to the D3 series. It is not the same battery, nor does it share the same charger, which annoyed a lot of people, understandably, but there was also a concern that it was rated for way less shooting than the old. Apparently this was due to new battery design rules effective in Japan. I have not had the chance to shoot a D3, so I can't talk to the battery life on that, but I started a day long soccer tournament with a fully charged D4 battery. When it got to about halfway through the charge I decided not to change it out so I could really see how far I could push to get some data for this review. I was shooting continuous machine gun style, with an older lens (so the body screw had to do the focusing) and JPEG Fine resolution. I started the first game at 8am, shot ten 1 hour long games, averaging of 450 shots per game. Formatting memory cards after each game. The battery died in the second half of the 11th game. So, made it just shy of 5000 frames spread out over 10 hours on a single charge. Maybe the old batteries were better, but this one is plenty good enough for me. 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

    I have not regretted upgrading to the D4. Even before I upgraded, I had no illusions that buying the best camera out there would magically make me a great photographer. I actually expected the opposite, that the higher level of camera would make my shortcomings as a shooter more obvious, instead of less. That didn’t happen. What I have found is that Excalibur makes it easier to capture the images I want, and it has taken me a giant step closer to where I want to be. It has also forced me to up my game and to learn new techniques and get better as a photographer. As I mentioned, the handy auto ISO feature has forced me to use exposure compensation instead of just playing with shutter and aperture settings. The AF is so good and the full frame depth of field is so razor thin at the wide open apertures of my pro lenses that I really have to pay attention to focus points and put the focus precisely where I want it, down to which eye I want in focus sometimes. The high burst speed has, contrary to expectation,  made me more conscious of waiting for the right moment and trying to get it in one shot instead of just machine gunning it. And I haven’t even begun to play with a lot of the modes and settings out there like interval shooting, 9 stop auto bracketing, and things like that. While the camera didn’t magically make me Ansel Adams, it has definitely opened doors to me and made me a better photographer already just trying to work to its’ potential. By way of analogy, a professional Tour de France cyclist, when put on a beach cruiser, would definitely be able to crush a regular joe on another beach cruiser, and could probably beat a couch potato on a high end race bike. But to compete at the top level against other pros on race bikes, that cyclist needs to be on a good race bike or they will get left in the dust no matter how hard they train. Can a great photographer take an amazing picture with a point and shoot? Of course. Can a great photographer use the same point and shoot in a darkened theatre, turn off the flash and take a picture of a rapidly moving dancer at a high enough shutter speed to freeze her motion at the precise peak of a leap across the stage? Probably not. Would I have been happy with the D600? Maybe for a while. The low light performance and image quality would have been a step up still, but I think I would have outgrown it. What about the D800? I may eventually grab one as a second body, but I think the resolution was much higher than I needed and the high resolution seems to come at the expense of speed, so I think I still would have found it limiting in the shooting environments I am focusing on. So yeah, I went from one end of the camera body spectrum to the other, no intervening steps. But I have no regrets at all. Is it right for you? I can’t say. If you shoot action in the dark, then heck yes. If you are shooting landscapes, the D800 would probably be a better choice for you. But for me, the D4 was the right call. It is awesome!

  The final note- I shot some pics at an overnight Search and Rescue last weekend, and when I posted them someone asked me if the night shots were HDR, and when I told him no, the follow up was, "holy crap, what are you shooting with?" That pretty much says it all about what Excalibur can do. 

ISO 12,800, 50mm F1.8, 1/50sec, noise reduction applied in post

Lucid Dreaming... shooting and experiencing Lucidity Festival 2013

  The galleries are finally all up from Lucidity Festival last weekend and I am stuck on duty with nothing to do but write about the whole weekend experience, so here you go.

   For reference, you can see all of the galleries here.

  This weekend was quite a few firsts for me: First festival the season, first festival with my  new family (at least more than the little Dragon's one day visit to YouTopia) and first festival working vice just going to play. I was invited to Lucidity as an aerial rigging assistant for all the aerialists at the Alive Stage. Since I planned on bringing the cameras and shooting whenever I wasn't rigging, I got in contact with the media side as well and arranged to be part of the official media team. (more on that later) In short, a lot of competing priorities and a lot of new and unknown things going into this one. I was also really afraid the little guy would not be able to acclimatize and I would have to choose between what I had agreed to do and taking care of my family and maybe even having to leave early. Turns out I had no reason to worry and my family rocked it like champs, but it was still in my mind going into it. With all of it going on, I had a lot of trouble getting into the flow of the weekend, it wasn't until Saturday I started feeling at home with it. I eventually did get into it and had a great time, but it took much longer than usual. Normally I get in, set up camp, have that first beer to make it official, and I am set. Anyway, that's the background, now on to the festival, how it went down and what I discovered.


    (Note- I say "discovered," like this is magic new knowledge imparted to me from on high, but really when I use the word it's code for "something I read about or heard another photographer talking about, and was finally able to experiment with and put into practice myself," so while most of these may not be revelations in the grand scheme of life, they were new discoveries to me, like the discovery that I can hold a flag or throw a double on the trapeze)

    Got in Thursday afternoon and looked for the RV circle. Like most festivals I have been to, the map, while technically accurate, was neither to scale nor a very good navigational aid. Or maybe between doing search and rescue and having been the Navigator for two warships has given me over to having far to great an expectation when it comes to navigational tools. But we did finally find the circle and a perfect little corner to call home. Didn't get in early enough to make the media check in meeting, so got home set up, had my beer, went and found Tammy Firefly who was coordinating the Alive Stage, figured out where that was, and tried to find the Media coordinator to check in. Got told by the office he would meet me at the office at 9am Friday morning. Went back to camp, had dinner and hung with the family for a bit. After bedtime for the little dragon I headed out with Excalibur slung to take a tour of the site and see what I could see. My 24-70mm/2.8 didn't get repaired in time to make the trip, so I slapped on the 50/1.8 prime. Again, the low light capabilities of the D4 are simply astounding. Set her to shutter priority, auto ISO capped at 12,800 and just shot. The two shots below are typical of what this photographic beast is capable of. In short, over the whole weekend, I only used flash during the daytime. Every night shot you see was ambient light.

     So as you can see, Excalibur does in fact see in the dark better than Chuck Norris dressed as a ninja cat. I didn't have to worry a bit about lighting at night. What I did learn the value of; however, was using fill flash during the day. More on that later.

     Called it a night on Thursday. Woke up Friday morning and headed down to meet the media coordinator at 0900 at the office as I had been told to the evening before. Only to find out there had been a backup meeting and check in held at 0800 and the coordinator was already gone. When I got home and went back through emails this meeting was mentioned, so yeah, it's my fault for not remembering about it, but I was still pretty peeved that I had been told the day before to show up at 9 instead of being told there was a meeting at 8. I didn't feel like going all the way down to the ticketing station, which was a hike, so I said screw it, as nice as a media badge would have been for my ego, I was just gonna shoot free lance and provide images to the festival afterwards if they wanted them. I decided I would check when I was near the office or the media green room anyway and if I met up with the coordinator later on during the weekend fine, but I was done looking for him . So you may or may not see some of my shots getting used by Lucidity at some point. Who knows.

    Back to fill flash. So I may have looked funny running around at noon with a giant flash unit on top of the camera, but it was great. Especially great shooting the aerial performances which were directly under the stupidly bright afternoon sun. I did a few test shot and was not happy with the shadows and invisible eyes of the performers (the ones whose eyes were open at least) so I pulled out the flash and did some tests and finally found that a combo of -.33 to -.7EV on the camera and -1.0 on the flash worked wonderfully to fill in and let me get detail on the performers. You can see what I am talking about in the image below. This was taken with the stopped down fill flash. Without the flash her eyes were completely in shadow. With the flash set to 0ev the shadows were totally gone and it was too flat. With the camera set to 0ev the black in the costume and cyc were enough to cause the meter to go too dark and blow out the highlights, but the -ev in camera knocked that right out.

The black costume on the black background was less than idea, and since I didn't have the time to set up a backlight to separate them out, I wound up having to change my shooting angle for this performer so there would be sky in the background. That worked out pretty well and the rest of the performers either had lighter costumes or the cyc was open so it was all good.

 
   So, like many photographers before me, I "discovered" that fill flash is essential for shooting during the bright of day and have become on of those "backwards" people who uses a flash in daylight but takes it off at night.

   Another think I discovered is that if you put a 70-200/2.8 zoom and a SB910 speedlight on a D4, you get quite a beastly rig. It looks like something you could use to win a war and take over a small island nation and weights about as much as my kid does. It certainly isn't an all day walk around setup, and since I was too lazy to bring the monopod, I wound up with a very sore support arm by the end of the weekend between shooting and carrying around the little dragon. On the up side, when I switched out to the 50 at night it felt like I was carrying nothing at all. The 24-70mm is back now, can't wait to try that one out, think it will be a great walk around.


      Though it wasn't the Ruby Room, as the sun went down the Alive Stage did start to feature a wonderfully horrid set of LED footlights that seemed to be constantly set to a very bright and evil magenta hue. I left the -ev compensation set in the camera and this knocked the magenta down low enough that the detail didn't get blown and the channel was still useable. I was still annoyed because it still made the entire image look unbalanced until I made a new discovery in Aperture and figured out how to dial in a specific hue and bring down the brightness and saturation on that color cast only. Between that discovery and the -ev comp I was able to get good images from everything I shot in the magenta light. I think I am ready to face my arch nemesis and kick its' ass when next we meet!

    So yeah. As the weekend went on and I realized that things were cool with the family (let me just take this moment to mention that I have been blessed not only with the happiest, sweetest cutest little baby dragon ever, but also the most supportive and coolest girlfriend I can imagine) and the rigging work wasn't going to take up every spare moment I was able to relax. After catching the shackle as detailed a couple posts back by pure luck I felt like I had paid my way rigging wise as well. As I am looking at all the pics I shot, it is easy to remember why I prefer shooting events to staging studio shoots. I feel fake when doing the posing thing with models, and I think that comes through in the posed pics I have up on my galleries. On the other hand, when I finally relax and get into the flow of an event I think I am able to capture some real moments and the soul of the event and the participants. I really enjoy being able to capture moments like this one

   
   So now I need to learn how to somehow work with models, with couples, people who want portraits. I need to figure out how to create and capture real moments in any environment I find myself shooting in. That's the next challenge I think, and the next step in my evolution as a photographer.

    It was also great to meet, work with and watch a truly awesome group of performers. There were some amazing aerialists from all over the west coast who came to play and I was excited to shoot them. One thing I definitely noticed going through the pics was that a lot of performers have a tendency to do their whole acts with their eyes closed. Talked a about this a bit with one of the others who actually did the opposite and really made a point of making contact with the audience and giving great facial expressions used as a key part of her routine. Maybe it was a specific creative choice by some of the performers, for some of the acts it may have simply been that the sun was stupidly bright and in their eyes. But I think for some it was more the fact that is feel easier and safer to close your eyes and go inside instead of acknowledging and connecting with the audience. Thinking back to my own aerial routines, I must confess to have done this myself (not when working with a partner, but in solo routines) because I felt terribly self conscious on stage in the spotlight. Having been able to see this through a wide range of performers over the weekend I will have to pay a lot more attention to this in my own aerial work. I am not going to post any closed eye samples here, but I have to say I really prefer the wide open, confident and engaging expressions like these:

 Overall I was very happy with the shots I got over the course of the weekend. I filled up my XQD card and got to see how the overflow capacity use of the CF card works, and can happily report it was totally seamless. I really do think I am almost cheating when I shoot. I was taking stock of my life this week and "discovered" once again how lucky I am. I am surrounded by the most incredibly talented, gifted and just plain beautiful people I can imagine. The are all amazing artists, and some of them are literally the people the Playboy mansion calls when it needs beautiful entertainers for events. Shooting these artists is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel, it's easier to get an amazing shot than a bad one.

(still, sometimes it helps to be in the right place with the right angle and camera settings at the perfect time - gotta thank the universe for shots like this lining up) 

 

    I can't fully express how lucky I feel to be a part of this community, and as much as I would love to one day start making money from photography, it'll be hard to ask for money for something I feel so honored to do and allows me to give something back to the world that took me in and pretty much turned my life around when I really needed it. Not sure how I am gonna cross that bridge, but if there is anything I have learned it's that if you go with the flow and put your intention out there, the universe will respond. So maybe that bridge will cross itself if I stay open to it. Anyway, despite my initial funk it turned into an amazing weekend all around.

    I'll leave you with this final shot, when I saw it it made me think of one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes, "All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts..." Seems appropriate as I stumble on trying to learn what my new part in this mysterious dramedy called life will be.

  

Maybe I shoot shows too!

Still going through the images from Lucidity, all 1400 of them, almost done posting them to galleries, then will attempt to chronicle the weekend and maybe put out some gear reviews now that a few toys have been battle tested. But tonight, I got a treat going through the images. I have been a fan of Todd Owyoung and his site, iShootShows, for a while now, and I can across this image that I shot for a little ambiance just after coming from his site, and for a second I thought it was one of his that got mixed in with mine. In other words, I feel pretty good about it. Check it out and tell me what you think.

Overall, this is one of my favorite shots of what is looking to be an epic few days of shooting for me last weekend. 

This picture may have saved a life or three.

    Back from Lucidity Festival. 1400 shots taken over 4 days to go through before posting, but just had to get this one out because it may be the most important picture I have ever taken. Midway through the set Friday on the Alive Stage, I decided to take a pic of the rigging on the chain motor the aerialists were flying from, just to use as a reference. I zoomed in on the playback to check focus because I was also playing with a few focus modes.

    Riggers- can you see what I noticed when I took a close look? (sorry if you have to scroll, posted full size so you can see the details...)

    Now, I am not an chain hoist expert, but I didn't have to be to catch this problem. If you missed it, take a close look at the shackle holding up the chain motor..... Anyway, stopped the show until we got it fixed and re-rigged properly.

    So, initial cut looks like I got a lot of awesome shots from the festival, and maybe figured out some tricks in the mastery of Excalibur, more on that later in the full post festival photo extravaganza, but between my rigging experience and the universe putting me in the right place at the right time with a camera and good zoom lens, I'd like to think that I may have kept something really nasty from happening to some cool aerialists I had the pleasure to meet over the weekend.

Because every SuperHero needs an Arch-Nemesis... or dealing with Red LED wash lighting and some fire perfomance techniques....

    Ok, shot an event for Elektrofied last Saurday at the Ruby Room. For some reason, maybe because they are named Ruby Room, they tend to have an even more heavy handed liberal dosage of pure red LED stage lighting than any other venue I have been to thus far- and that is saying a lot because clubs like their red wash lights. For those of you who don't know, pure light of any color plays havok on digital camera sensors, but pure red is the worst. If you aren't a tech geek here is the quick primer. Light is broken down into three primary colors- Red, Green and Blue (RGB). Each receiver site on a camera sensor is set to record one and only one of these three colors. Most people, myself included, would naturally assume that these three colors are evenly represented on the sensor capture array, ie 1/3 of the sites capture Red, 1/3 Green, 1/3 Blue. In practice; however, that is not the case. Green light is the predominate color in the human spectrum- unless you live in the desert or total cityscape, a quick look around you will probably demonstrate this. Because of this fact, a typical camera sensor has twice as many Green receiver sites as it does Red or Blue. So automatically when you switch to pure red or blue you are only getting half the capability of your sensor. For normal (incandescent) stage lights, the light isn't a pure color, so it isn't as bad. But LEDs are pretty darn close to pure. I think pure red is even worse than pure blue because it's the antithetical color to green on the primary spectrum- if you look at the shadows cast by red lights, they will have a green tint. So let's take all the factors that play into shooting under a red wash: You are starting out with at best half the capability of your sensor. You are also probably at close to the max useable ISO of your camera so you are pushing those sensor sites to their max, and since the camera can now only see part of the picture, even with spot metering it thinks the target is around half as bright as it actually is. So you get washed out, overexposed horribly red cast images with blown highlights. To put it simply, red LED stage wash lighting is the DEVIL!
    I was hoping the Excalibur would be able to magically deal with this challenge. While it dealt with it better than the D3200, it seems that even a magic sword cannot defeat the devil on its' own. Ruby Room, we met again, and once again you kicked my photographic ass all around the ring. I was able to salvage a few shots, but I had to throw out way too many beautifully timed and framed shots that were just too blown to be salvageable. To give a clear visual of what I am talking about, compare these two images. This one is a completely off the cuff image shot when one of the performers dragged me into the ladies room to see the awesome wall background and climbed up onto the toilet to post. So, full spectrum light, all three colors for the camera to meter and record. Had to do very little post processing at all on this one, pretty much cropping and a bit of raw noise reduction.

   Piece of cake for Excalibur. Now, contrast with the following shot. This one was one of the red wash shots that I was able to salvage. It took about half an hour of tweaking around playing with various levels and adjustments in Aperture to get it to the point it is here. I was able to save about 1 out of every 8 red wash shots, but from a practical workflow point of view, it's way too labor intensive to do, especially since way too often I would spend all the time on an image and still not be able to save anything useful.

 
   So how to deal with this? Though the magic of google and a lot of reading I have come up with three possible solutions. The first one is the worst option in my opinion, but one I may have to wuss out and take on occasion if I really have to get a shot. Use a flash. kinda defeats the purpose of getting a badass low light picture taking machine, and it wrecks any cool effects of the lights. That can be somewhat mitigated by dialing the power wayyyyy down and just providing enough fill to balance the heavy red wash. I'll play with it sometime and see how it works. Second is a last ditch post processing technique. Found this one in a book I am reading in a discussion on when to use black and white versus color. One of the throwaway asides the author threw out was to try black and white if  you have spent hours trying to get the color to work and just can't, but need want to save the shot. So, if you look at the whole album from this event, you will see several B&W conversions. Third, and the one I will really have to try out next time I face the Ruby Room head to head is recognize the single color cast, and respond by deliberately underexposing significantly from the sensor reading so the image won't get blown out and I can pull it up in post and get it back. I think this is the best option, the fun will come in trying to learn to calculate how much to underexpose and when, then get my reaction times fast enough to do it. Or maybe cheat and shoot autobracket and then just use a stack workflow. Finally, there is a fourth suggestion I found, that I really like, but isn't really viable long term- one photog who is just as bitter about this as I am suggested in jest that you could carry a slingshot or airsoft pistol in your camera bag and just shoot out all the red wash lights! As much as I like that idea, I think I will keep it in reserve until after I try the underexposure and flash plans, I have this thing about wanting to avoid jail time....

    Otherwise, the gig was a good opportunity to experiment with some different settings and techniques for shooting fire. Took the ISO way down to 100, dialed the aperture in, dragged out the shutter and added a little rear curtain sync remote flash. Got some decent results, as you can see from the shots below, or in the full gallery

 
  A few of the images had some ghosting instead of a clean flash capture. My theory is that this is because the Phottix Odin system lets me do remote TTL, so that is how I had the flash set up, and the system was trying to adjust and shoot this like a regular shot. Next time I will try taking the flash to manual and see if that gives better results. Still, pretty happy with how the experiment went overall.

    So, while this wasn't my best night of shooting and I didn't wind up with too many useable images from the event, I was at least able to learn a lot and get a lot of ideas on where to go next. So overall a success. Now on to Lucidity Festival and a weekend straight of shooting- while also being the head aerialist rigger for the festival and doing the first family festival camp out with the Happy Dragon himself . Should be another fun filled, fast paced weekend filled with..... opportunities for learning!
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