Changing the background with a simple gel for portraits

1:3 lighting ratio – Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 100, ƒ/5.6, 1/200

When I teach lighting I always teach the 1:3 lighting ratio. After I show how you set up the main light and the fill I show them some ways to change the background quickly using gels.

Now before I add the gel I shoot this photo where the subject in on a white background. I will shoot with just the main light, the fill light and then put both of the lights on with no background light so that the students can see individually what each light is doing.

Main Light only

Now I will turn the main light off and then turn on just the fill light.

Fill Light only

Now for the main light it was measured for ƒ/5.6. I didn't change the exposure on the camera I just shot the fill light at ƒ/4 to show it is darker than the main and where the direction of the light is coming and how it affects the model's face.

Then I combine the two lights.

Main and Fill light together

Then we talk about how she is in front of the white background but it looks like a light gray.

Main, Fill & Background Light

I put two lights on the background and then measure the light so that it is about 1stop brighter than the main light. So the background here is ƒ/8.

This is the histogram without the background light. The furthest right on the histogram you can see that the value is good amount away from the far right.

This is the one where I have the background light set at 1-stop brighter than the fill. Notice here you can see most of the histogram is the same, but the far right is on the far right. This is showing how the white value is recorded. If you are not butting up on the right then there will be a little gray or often a tinge of blue when you print out the photo in the background.

Now when I add the gels like this red or the blue above we take a light reading of the background. We want the value to be 2–stops darker than the main light. So here the background is measuring ƒ/2.8.

One more thing you will notice is you need to move the person away from the background when using white for a background.

Now I demonstrate this also using a black background and to get the color to look like this you need to be sure the background is then 2–stops brighter than the main light. So if this red background was really black with the gel on it the reading would be then ƒ/11 which is 2–stops brighter than the ƒ/5.6 of the main light.

Storytelling Photo vs Point Photo

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4.5, 1/100

"When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top!", sings Curly in the musical Oklahoma!

This photo above is the only time on the stage during the entire production of the musical at Roswell High School where the surrey is on stage. This is the one scene that captures the build up of the whole show to where we see what Curly was singing from the beginning of the show promising Laurey how he would treat her on a date.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 5000, ƒ/5.6, 1/250

This is Ado Annie Cames singing, but because I am isolating her alone only the corn in the background helps to place this with the musical Oklahoma!.

This is what I call a point shot verses the top photo which has much more information and is getting closer to helping to tell more of the story. You still need words with either photo to make it storytelling, but hopefully you are seeing the difference between the scene establishing shot and the closeup.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 1250, ƒ/5, 1/100

Now the reason this photo of Curly and Laurey often works as well as the shot of the surrey is that this particular pose is used often in posters to promote the show. Just Google "Oklahoma! Musical" and look at all the photos and you will see this style shot pop up.

Nikon D5, 28-300mm ƒ/3.5-5.6G ED VR, ISO 500, ƒ/4.5, 1/8000

Here is how I shot a promo shot verses the photo above it is from the show. Now while this doesn't tell the story say as well as having the surrey in the photo, Curly is gesturing about how the future he promises to Laurey is better than where she is now.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4, 1/180

Google "Oklahoma Barn Scene" and you can see variations of other productions that show similar scene. Again this is more of a point photo, but because I included more of the set most theatre folks will know this is the Musical Oklahoma!.

Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 100, ƒ/1.8, 1/200

People Need The Lord Photo

"I don't need a lot of 'People Need The Lord' photos," commented Jeff Raymond to a photographer shooting photos with him in the Dominican Republic. "What do you mean?," commented the photographer.

Jeff went on to explain the photo style like the Afghan girl on the front of National Geographic by Steve McCurry. This photo has had such an impact that many people think this is the "BEST" way to shoot.

Give me more context is what Jeff coached the photographer to do in addition to a few portraits.

You see the photo of the boy here could have been shot anywhere in the world.

This is a frame from short movie clip. Notice how the kids in the foreground are close enough to give you a portrait, but including the background gives you more context. Here is the movie and you can see what conditions I was shooting.

Kids playing in Togo, West Africa from Stanley Leary on Vimeo.
Please understand this blog post is not saying Storytelling Photo is better than a Point Photo. What I am saying is you need both.

Nikon D5, Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art, ISO 100, ƒ/1.4, 1/2000

The problem I see with many new photographers is falling in love with the closeup shot at ƒ/1.4 and centered. Then they have only slight variations of this photo in their portfolio.

If you are going to be hired over and over you must be the photographer who gives the client more than they expected. This is why learning how to use a variety of lenses, different apertures and shutter speeds on an assignment will have clients raving about you.

Sure you can do OK shooting the "People Need The Lord" photo, but you are a one trick pony show.

What high school theatre can teach us about Volunteers

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4.5, 1/100

Roswell High School had their last show of the musical Oklahoma! yesterday. What a production it was for everyone involved.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4.8, 1/180

Our daughter Chelle was in the musical as Aunt Eller and this is the main reason my wife and I were involved as volunteers.

While there are many other ways I could talk about being a volunteer I thought this was a great way to talk about the roles of the volunteer.

If your organization is using volunteers it is imperative on you to define roles of volunteers so everyone knows what they are doing. Most organizations that regularly use volunteers usually have a volunteer coordinator.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 1250, ƒ/5, 1/100

Now in theater the term role came from literally an actor being given a part. No one had the entire play in the time of Shakespeare. They just had their part. This is why often their role would setup the next actor.

For the play to be successful each person needed to know their part/role.

Think of your organization like a musical to give you an idea how important it is for each person to know their part and for someone to be responsible for coordinating like the director of the show.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S,  ISO 32000, ƒ/5, 1/500

If you want to see excitement on your volunteers faces like here in the scene from Oklahoma! then you need to make everyone feel like they are part of the team.

Now everyone in this musical except for the two teachers were all volunteers. The student actors could have quit at any time.

By the way very seldom does this not cross someone's mind as a volunteer. The main reason for the thought of quitting coming up is due to communication problems, which are often rooted in poor understanding of volunteers.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 6400, ƒ/4.2, 1/140

Here is a list of some suggestions for you:

• Developing ways to recognize and reward volunteer efforts
• Helping volunteers feel welcome and supported
• Developing and managing policies, procedures and standards for volunteers
• Looking after the volunteer database and records
• Planning and goal setting
• Rostering and organizing volunteers
• Delegating projects and tasks
• Managing any associated budgets and expenditure
• Communicating with people from diverse backgrounds
• Resolving conflict or managing the grievance process.

Some No-Nos

• Complaining about a volunteers work
• Ask people to volunteer and then when they show up not use them
• Make volunteers wait on you
• Don't thank your volunteers

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S,  ISO 18000, ƒ/5, 1/500

TIME

The one thing that is the most valuable given by any and every volunteer is their TIME. No matter the person no one's time is more valuable than any other person.

The only time it seems that we are really aware of how valuable our time is seems to be when our time is running out on this earth. Don't be one of those people who doesn't think about how valuable your time and others is until your last days here. Each person's hour of time they donate is the same value as another person.

Now some who read this will disagree with me, but just like this play if one person didn't do their assigned part then it is noticed. An actor doesn't appear on stage at the right moment the other actors have to improv and the plot can be affected in the storyline. 

Just think of the time you had a splinter and how annoying that is and affects the whole body. That is how big of a deal each person's time is to the organization. Something so small will be felt by the body.

Feelings Get Hurt

When people get upset working as a volunteer it can almost always be traced back to miscommunication. Often it is when the role wasn't well defined or just as often is when volunteer shows up and those who are coordinating their time dropped the ball.

Fujifilm X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 2000, ƒ/5, 1/100

When you take the time to plan and organize your thoughts about using volunteers you can get everyone in step together.

When a plan comes together

I can tell you healthy organizations are the ones that treat everyone's time as precious as gold. When they do the word gets out. People see what is going on and want to join. You see way too many people are aware of volunteering and wasting their time or at least not being treated with the respect due when you are giving away your time.

When a theatre company consistently is putting on great performances it is due to someone coordinating all those volunteers and treating everyone's time a precious.

When respecting people's time you will benefit from more friends and deeper friendships. You see a good relationship is respecting one another's time.

Which are you apart of? Group ƒ/64 or Group ƒ/1.4

Nikon D2X, Sigma 15-30mm, ISO 100, ƒ/13, 1/4

Group ƒ/64

In 1930 Willard Van Dyke as well as Ansel Adams & Edward Weston formed the Group ƒ/64.

Group f/64 was a group founded by seven 20th-century San Francisco photographers who shared a common photographic style characterized by sharp-focused and carefully framed images seen through a particularly Western (U.S.) viewpoint. In part, they formed in opposition to the pictorialist photographic style that had dominated much of the early 20th century, but moreover they wanted to promote a new modernist aesthetic that was based on precisely exposed images of natural forms and found objects. 

The term f/64 refers to a small aperture setting on a large format camera, which secures great depth of field, rendering a photograph evenly sharp from foreground to background. Such a small aperture sometimes implies a long exposure and therefore a selection of relatively slow moving or motionless subject matter, such as landscapes and still life, but in the typically bright California light this is less a factor in the subject matter chosen than the sheer size and clumsiness of the cameras, compared to the smaller cameras [35mm] increasingly used in action and reportage photography in the 1930s.

– Wkipedia 

One of the magazines I have done work for through the years is Country Magazine. There requirements are to shoot at the highest depth-of-field for their photos. To do this on today's DSLR cameras you are typically shooting at ƒ/22. This would be equivalent to the ƒ/64 on a 8'"x10" that many in Group ƒ/64 used.

Nikon D2X, Nikon 24-120mm ƒ/3.5-5.6, ISO 100, ƒ/22, 1/2.5

The strength of shooting with sharpness all through the photograph is it puts the audience into the scene. This is where you are using composition and lighting to draw the audience into the photograph.

While your eye may go first to where the photographer directs you using light values and composition your eye will wonder afterwards around the scene just as if you were standing there yourself.

This style was in opposition to the pictorialist of the time.

Pictorialism is the name given to an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of "creating" an image rather than simply recording it. Typically, a pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus (some more so than others), is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white (ranging from warm brown to deep blue) and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface. For the pictorialist, a photograph, like a painting, drawing or engraving, was a way of projecting an emotional intent into the viewer's realm of imagination.

– Wikipedia

Nikon D5, Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art, ISO 140, ƒ/1.4, 1/100

Group ƒ/1.4

Group ƒ/1.4 you may not have heard of, but I bet you have heard of BOKEH Photography.

In photography, BOKEH is the aesthetic quality of the blur produced in the out-of-focus parts of an image produced by a lens. Bokeh has been defined as "the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light". Differences in lens aberrations and aperture shape cause some lens designs to blur the image in a way that is pleasing to the eye, while others produce blurring that is unpleasant or distracting—"good" and "bad" bokeh, respectively. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field. Photographers sometimes deliberately use a shallow focus technique to create images with prominent out-of-focus regions.

– Wikipedia

I would say that those who shoot primarily wide open aperture are more stylistically like the pictorialist of the last century and less like Group ƒ/64 which was about preserving everything in the scene.

Nikon D750, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 500, ƒ/1.8, 1/320

I love that my camera lets me shoot from ƒ/1.4 to ƒ/57. The ƒ/57 is when I shoot with my Nikon 60mm Micro lens. Here is a shot I did that was widely published.

“ƒ/8 and be there,” was Alfred Eisenstaedt’s response to the question on how to be a successful photographer. 

However the earliest record of the quote “ƒ/8 and be there” is attributed to Weegee who was a famous street photographer during the 1930’s, 40’s and beyond. It represents a philosophy to keep technical decisions simple and be where your vision takes you. The quote has been the mantra of photojournalists, travel photographers and even nature photographers.

This says you just need to anticipate and be technically ready to capture “the decisive moment.”

I say to be careful not to treat your interviews as just got microphone and recorder levels set and just hit record and I am done.

Don't Make Your Camera a Box Camera

Kodak made a box camera where you pushed the button and Kodak did the rest. You had no control over the Aperture, Shutter or even ISO.

Once you subscribe to shooting all your photos like the Group ƒ/64 or those doing BOKEH photography you have in essence taken that very expensive camera and turned it into a box camera.

Exercise for you to do

Take your camera and just one lens. Find a scene and then shoot the scene at every aperture you can on your camera. Now as you get to a wide open aperture you know that your depth-of-field becomes very shallow, so remember to change your focus so that the focal point is on something in the scene that creates interest. We call this technique selective focus.

Now just spend time doing this for several different situations. It might be able to do it with scenics rather than people at first, but then move on to people. What is really fun to do is to shoot where there are many people. A good example would be in a coffee shop.

Your challenge is not to make one good photo in each situation, but rather a great photo at each ƒ-stop.

When you master this technique you will discover you will be able to say something totally different about each situation. This will be the difference of you writing a very short sentence to creating a novel with just one frame.

Will you take up the challenge?

I believe the great photographers are the ones that know when to use what aperture to capture what they want to say about the subject.

How to Video Capture more than 29 minutes with a Nikon D5

Fuji X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 1250, ƒ/5, 1/100

Last night I photographed and video captured the show Oklahoma!. Just a last minute push to encourage you if you are in Roswell, GA to come and see the play. Runs through the weekend. Go here to buy your tickets or at the door.

For video capture I attached to my Nikon D5 using the HDMI output the Atomos Ninja Blade 5" HDMI On-Camera Monitor & Recorder.

Why did I do this is a great question. Most all DSLRs that record video have a 30 minute time limit. I understand this has to do with avoiding a double tax in some countries.

So how do you record a musical as I did that goes an hour and half for just the first Act? This is where the Atomos Ninja Blade comes to the rescue.

Atomos Ninja Blade 5" PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS

Key Features

325DPI, 5" IPS 1280 x 720 capacitive touchscreen monitor/recorder.

Waveform RGB & luma parade, vectorscope with zoom, and test pattern generator.

Adjustable gamma, contrast and brightness.

HDMI input and output.

Real-time monitoring, playback, playout to a PC or Mac with QuickTime, and edit logging.

Focus peaking, 0-100% zebra, and two modes of false color monitoring.

Records 10-bit, 4:2:2 in ProRes or DNxHD.

S-Log / C-Log recording.

Trigger REC/STOP from camera (Canon, Sony, ARRI, Panasonic, RED, JVC)

Timecode from camera.

2.5" HDD/SSD media storage.

It records up to 1080 30p/60i resolution via HDMI to an available HDD or SSD using either Apple's ProRes or Avid's DNxHD codecs. Recording at 10-bit with 4:2:2 color sampling, this unit provides you a monitoring and recording solution in one compact battery powered unit.

Now I bought the ADATA Technology 256GB Ultimate SU800 SATA III 2.5" Internal SSD card.

This setup worked great for last night's opening night performance.

Fuji X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 1600, ƒ/4.7, 1/100

While the Nikon D5 will record 4K I don't need this most of the time, so the Atomos Ninja Blade 5" was perfect.

If however you would like to record at 4K you can get the Atomos Shogun Flame 7" 4K HDMI/12-SDI Recording Monitor. They make other higher end models as well.

Nikon D5, Sigma 120-300mm ƒ/2.8 DG OS HSM | S, Sigma TC-2001 2x, ISO 5000, ƒ/5.6, 1/250

If you are not a video shooter and are more of a stills shooter then for capturing video you need to be a little more hands on technically.

What I mean by this is that the exposure and sound vary through a production and you may need to adjust this as you are recording.

With the Nikon D5 attached to the Atomos Ninja Blade using the HDMI port just siphons this off before it hits the H.264 encoder and you are recording in ProRes format. This isn't really recording in RAW video but more like a TIFF file than say a JPEG.

Now I cannot share the Oklahoma! video because of copyright. [I am recording it for the Shuler Awards in Georgia]

The cool thing is right now you can buy the Atomos Ninja Blade 5" for $395 without a hard drive which gives you the 5" monitor. I would recommend buying a SSD hard drive of your choice in size.

Fuji X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 2000, ƒ/5, 1/100

There are three more performances for me to tweak my exposure and sound on to capture the best quality possible out of my setup. At the same time each performance traditionally gets better each time.

Fuji X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 1000, ƒ/4.5, 1/100

By the way Aunt Eller is my daughter Chelle. This is her senior year and last production. She also taught the choreography to the cast.

Fuji X-E2, Fuji XF 55-200mm, ISO 5000, ƒ/4.7, 1/100

I hope these tips will help you thinking of ways to use your DSLR to do more than just take photos. I know I wanted to use the high quality CMOS chip to get a wonderful keepsake video of our daughter to cherish for the rest of her life.

Making Photos POP!

Nikon D5, Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art, ISO 100, ƒ/1.4, 1/2500

Selective Focus is what makes people pop out of photos or the backgrounds recede in a blur. And you make the choice of what pops, what blurs, and what fuzzes over.

Where do you want the viewer to focus their attention - the hedge in the foreground, the man in the middle, or the trees in the distant background? Many professional photographers use the selective focus technique to control the viewer’s attention.

The apertures, called f-stops, are actually fractions. The f-stop ƒ/4, for example, is really ¼ (one fourth). What one fourth of, is a little beyond the scope of this article.  Let’s just say that an f-stop is a fraction, ok? (ƒ/4 = 1/4th  f8 = 1/8th). Typically these numbers are on the lens, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22 and so on.

Remember these are actually fractions: 1/2.8, 1/4, 1/5.6, 1/8, 1/11, 1/16 and 1/22. It provides a comparison of how much light each number lets through the lens. Therefore 1/5.6 allows more light through the lens than 1/22.

Nikon D5, Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art, ISO 180, ƒ/8, 1/100

Here’s the creative part: the smaller the opening (f-stop) in the lens, the less light is allowed in. Therefore, a greater area is in focus from the foreground to the background. If you want to throw most of the background out of focus, use ƒ/5.6 rather than
ƒ/22.

Today’s digital cameras allow the photographer to vary the aperture, preview the results, then make a decision about it’s effectiveness.

Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 100, ƒ/1.8, 1/320

If you want the subject to “pop”, use the larger lens openings, i.e. ƒ/4 or ƒ/5.6. Like a simple sentence, having one distinguishable subject is better.

A smaller aperture (ƒ/16 or ƒ/22) brings the foreground and background into sharper focus or a greater depth of field. It also allows for other compositional techniques to direct the viewer to the main subject of the photo.

Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 100, ƒ/1.8, 1/4000

Setting your cameras ISO, shutter speed, and aperture provides more than a properly exposed photograph. These are tools you can use to compose and say what you want to say in your photographs.

Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 100, ƒ/10, 1/320

Experiment using different ƒ-stops. Try setting the camera to the aperture preferred setting. Explore the creative tools available on the camera. If the camera is always set on automatic, it becomes into a very expensive box camera.

Simple Hotshoe Headshot Setup Using MagMod

Nikon D5, Nikon 85mm ƒ/1.8G, ISO 50, ƒ/1.8, 1/200–Neewer TT850, Neewer Wireless 16 Channel Remote, MagMod Magsphere, MagMod Magbounce, 

While I have shown you this type of photo many times this time I shot it with the cheapest system I could configure.

This is the setup. Now here is the list of items for you other than camera:

• 2 - Neewer TT850 Flash $114.70 ea
• 2 - Neewer 433MHz Wireless 16 Channel Flash Remote Trigger with Receiver $29.99 ea
• 5 - Manfrotto 5001B Nano Black Light Stand - 6.2' (1.9m) $57.88
• 2 - Interfit Metal Umbrella Bracket with Adjustable Flash Shoe $19.99
• 2 - MagMod flash modifier system $89.95 ea
• 1 - Magmod Magsphere [main light] $49.95
• 1 - Magmod Magbounce [background] $49.95
• 1 - Westcott Collapsible Reversible 5' x 6' Black/White Backdrop $175
• 1 - Lastolite Triflector MKII Frame + Silver/Gold Panels $180

Since the flashes can be powered way down I was able to shoot at ƒ/1.8. 

The Magsphere spreads the light around the sides which then catches on the Lasolite Triflector silver panels and lights under the chin and on both cheeks. The flash is the main light above the subject creating that wonderful butterfly light. The main light was powered at 1/64th power and the background was at 1/4 power.

MagSphere

The Magbounce is on the background light spreading the light evenly across the Westcott White Collapsible background.

MagBounce

The cool thing is the Neewer TT850 is rated to fire 600 times on full power with a full charge. I am no where near this power consumption, so I could do a lot of headshots before changing the battery.

Thanks for stopping by!

Covering a candidates for City Council meeting

L/R Marie Willsey, Lori Henry and Shelley Sears are all running for open spot on the city Council, speaks at Roswell City Council Candidate forum held at the Roswell Community Masjid. [Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art, ISO 2500, ƒ/4, 1/100]

I went to the local Masjid in Roswell to cover three of the candidates running for City Council office.

Why?

I wanted to show that this was pretty historic to show the Masjid hosting the meeting and as well to capture the personalities of those running for office, so that the audience would know about the candidates a little more than before the event. The tiles had Arabic language on them and I included them to show the location of the meeting.

I watched and listened. Each of the candidates running for office was very different from the others.

Shelley Sears was running on her success as a business woman in Real Estate. [Fujifilm X-E2, FUJINON XF 55-200mm, ISO 3200, ƒ/4.8, 1/100]

Shelly Sears was no nonsense business personality. She had a very similar approach of Trump. She wanted everyone to no she was not a politician, but a successful business person. She was running on the platform of we need business people running the city and not politicians.

I noticed she leaned forward more than the other candidates and intentionally chose not to use a microphone. This to me was her visually saying she needs no help at all and can handle it herself. I waited for the moment I thought that show her take control lean forward and tell you how she is going to take control was the best way to capture her.

Marie Willsey has been serving on her homeowners association board. She was seeing this as an opportunity to serve just like she has done for homeowners board, but a bigger stage of the community. She just likes serving. [Fujifilm X-E2, FUJINON XF 55-200mm, ISO 3200, ƒ/4.8, 1/100]

Now Marie Willsey reminded me of the stay at home mom who is involved in community service projects. She was serving on her homeowners board and loved doing this. She saw many of the same things facing the homeowners as those concerns for the larger community.

All the time when she was talking she was smiling. It was important that she came across as friendly and wanting to be seen as someone there to help you. So, I was sure to capture the smile and the warmth she was conveying to the audience.

Lori Henry had served in the past on the City Council. She wanted people to know she understood the issues that are the hotting topics to the community. She wanted to portray herself as scholared candidate on the cities issues. [Fujifilm X-E2, FUJINON XF 55-200mm, ISO 3200, ƒ/4.8, 1/100]

Now the third candidate had been here before. Lori Henry was running at the well educated on the issues candidate. She took issues and explained what needs to change to make a difference.

To capture this I had to look for that expression that showed a lot of thought going into her comments. So I looked for that furrowed brow and intense gaze.

Thought before I shot

As you can see I thought about each person. I felt their presence and looked for ways to capture those things into a visual moment that communicated some of this to the audience through the lens of the camera.

[Nikon D5, Sigma 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art, ISO 2800, ƒ/4, 1/100]

However First I ...

The very first thing I did was to walk into the room and asses the room technically.

The room had fluorescent as well as tungsten lights. I wrote an earlier blog talking about this here and how to get good white balance.

I basically did a custom white balance using the ExpoDisc and was sure that the shutter speed was no faster than 1/100.

Next I sat on the front row center so I could get a clear shot of the speakers without any distractions. Also I knew I could stand up for a moment and move to the side and get an overall shot at some moment.

I also brought two cameras. The Nikon D5 had a 24-105mm which helped for the over all shot and the three speaking, but then I brought my Fuji X-E2 with the 55-200mm which let me get tight shots of them individually speaking without me leaving my chair.

Once I had all the technical stuff taken care of I then switched my mind over to listening and finding those moments to tell the story.

Workflow

I call all this my shooting workflow. You need to always get the best technical shot as well as getting the moments to tell the story. There is a process that takes place every single time.

Do you have a process? Do you know why you are taking a photo? Do you know who your audience is for your photos? If you don't know these answers then you will not be able to communicate much through your photos.