Tuesday, May 28, 2019

THE CHALLENGE: FAMILY PORTRAITS ONLY IN THE CLIENT’S NEIGHBORHOOD


We usually do outdoor family portraits at one of several great public parks here in the Treasure Valley, Idaho. We also offer to do family portraits at their homes, if their location looks good as well. But, the final decision is based on MY criteria; I want foliage and/or trees for the background and a clean base (like lawn) and I want a location that has good light at about 2 hours before sunset. 

So, when we were contacted by the area director for N-2 Publishing about contracting to do photography for a new community magazine I was intrigued. I liked that they picked an upscale neighborhood in Eagle, Idaho (Two Rivers) because those are the clients we were looking for, but their business model required that all photography be done at the client’s home or in the neighborhood. Since we were doing the covers for this community magazine (called: River’s View Living) for a year I wanted each one to be great. That meant I had to do location checks at each client’s home and scout for alternative locations in the common areas in the neighborhood for each assignment.

This is one we did in common areas….
f6.3 @ 1.125th ISO 800; lens @ 140mm
This is the image that was selected for that month’s cover. Believe it or not, this beautiful spot is a small divider island in the middle of their street!  Another constraint, typical for magazine publications, is that the cover image had to be in vertical orientation.

However, since we were also wanting to please the families selected for these photo-sessions, with the possibility of print sales, we also did some portraits in landscape mode at other locations when we could.

Here’s the other set-up we did….
f6.3 @ 1/100 ISO 800; Lens @ 142mm
All of these images were done around 7pm in June so we had good light, but I didn’t get the back light from the setting sun that I usually get when we go to our favorite parks.

In reality the “challenge” in these upscale neighborhoods was not so difficult. Finding outdoor locations is my specialty and after all this is Idaho!  With our plentiful water most of the housing developments here put thousands (some, tens of thousands) of dollars into landscaping with huge swaths of lawn on built-up berms surrounding the developments.  And, many of these developments have waterfalls or some kind of water feature with custom made signage.

’Til next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

THE ART OF B&W CONVERSION


Decades ago, in my film days, B&W as an art form was not something you converted to. It was a planned decision you made based on the subject. And if you wanted quality B&W you started with the proper B&W film for the job. As Ansel Adams taught it was all about pre-visualization; how did you want your vision or interpretation of a given subject to look?  Every step of the way we had many excellent choices in films and B&W papers to create that B&W vision.

It was a big deal when I set-up my darkroom to print the B&W negatives I deemed worthy of printing. Then I’d spend an entire weekend printing, souping, washing and drying prints until the wee hours of the morning.

Our only choice for converting color images to B&W back then was using Kodak Panalure paper on color negatives, but the results were not very impressive. In addition, because the Panalure was a resin coat product it was far from archival due to color shifting (bronzing) and orange spotting in reaction to light. It was thus not a paper of choice for fine art printing.

Today in our digital realm it is amazing what we can create with color RAW files as our source images. I can now pre-edit (Adobe Camera RAW) make a JPEG convert to B&W (NIK Silver Efex Pro) and if needed do retouching cropping and noise reduction (Photoshop) creating a spectacular new rendition of my color file in 30 minutes! 

It’s important to note that you’re not going to create a spectacular image out of nothing. As has always been the case you must start with a good image; the old adage comes to mind—You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear!

A B&W result using my favorite software….
NIK’s Silver Efex Pro-2
This is the finished image with NIK’s Silver Efex Pro-2 using the B&W Push preset with some of my own tweaking. Then I used NIK’s DeFine2 noise reduction.

Here’s the original image after prepping….
f11.0 @ 1/400 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 100mm
I always prep my RAW files in Adobe Camera RAW before I drop the resulting JPEG into NIK. 

In this image I made these adjustments:
  • Exposure…..- .20
  • Contrast….. + 5
  • Highlights…..- 88
  • Shadows….. + 53
  • Blacks….. - 72
  • Clarity….. + 11
  • Vibrance….. + 18
  • Saturation….. 0
Note: I’ve learned over the years to take it easy when using Clarity and Saturation; two fo the most over used sliders in the digital world.

That’s it for this week…Have questions don’t hesitate to ask…’Til next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

OUTDOOR FAMILY PORTRAIT POSES WITH PETS


We encourage families to include their pets when doing their family portraits. Sure, it’s more challenging, but in the many years that we’ve been doing portrait photography at The Storytellers we’ve found that the more people we photograph in a given session more great images are created and the better the sale as a result. So, that also applies to pets; after all they’re part of the family, too!

Note: because this concept has proven itself over and over again we never charge extra beyond our usual session fees for additional relatives in a portrait session (we love family reunions!). Don’t put up roadblocks to making better sales!

So, do close-ups….
f5.6 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 145mm
During the session—we do the whole family group first and find out who belongs to the dog. Who has that special connection with the dog? You can usually tell just by observing the family dynamics and then suggest special combinations. If they hesitate, I just say, we’re all here, you’re dressed perfectly, we can give you more choices and we have no time limits on your session!

Do individual portraits….
f5.6 @ 1/125 sec., ISO 400; lens @ 155mm
Since they had their dog groomed—complete with a ribbon-bow—for this session and that dog is gorgeous anyway this was a slam-dunk. Besides I wanted this for my portfolio!

Note:   Always have squeaker toys in your camera bag to get their attention—the people as well as the animals! 

Here’s one of the family poses…we do at least 2 and try for 3

f8.0 @ 1/60 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 125mm
As I already said, we always start with the whole group portrait first because that’s the hardest pose and the reason we all came together in the first place.  This image was taken about an hour and a half before sunset. As is my usual procedure (and my artistic style) I place my subjects with the sun setting BEHIND them to get that nice backlit background. In addition I make sure the there is a large patch of clear blue sky as the Key Light; that way I never need to resort to any ugly fill flash.

’Til next week…any questions? Don’t hesitate to ask…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman

Tuesday, May 7, 2019

GHOST TOWN FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY - SILVER CITY, IDAHO; Part 2


Like many fine art photographers I like old things—(that’s why I photograph ghost towns!) and old things left outside, in a four season climate, to degrade and rust are the Best! So, when I first visited Silver City after checking out the historic buildings I ventured up into the hills on the town’s edges looking for those old things left outside. I soon found several old car chassis, hunkered down in the weeds, rusting way, paint peeling…

f9.0 @ 1/200 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 73mm
The peeling layers of paint on this old car’s “suicide doors” is art in itself! That’s why I did so little in post processing on this image besides cropping in camera to off-set the doors’ seam pushing the door handles to the right (“rule of thirds” composition). I suppose I should title this one, “Bloody Suicide Doors”.

Next I found this old car being consumed by weeds…
f9.0 @ 1/320 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 32mm
Or, maybe, as edited into B&W, my vision of this as a metallic skull, with the trunk lid gone, creating a huge maw, it looks like this beast is doing the consuming of the weeds!

TECH NOTE:  I converted this RAW file into B&W with NIK’s HDR Efex Pro using the B&W Art Preset modified to my taste.  Here is the original file….
Original Unmodified File
This original file just did not have the sinister punch I wanted for my vision; it had to be monochrome. I also picked-up a lot of texture in the rusted steel with the HDR conversion.

Here’s my favorite view of Silver City….
f8.0 @ 1/640 sec., ISO 400; Lens @ 32mm
Whenever I photograph any well known site I always try to create something that other photographers have not done. I do not copy other photographer’s work. So, looking for a different composition is important, and one of the compositional elements many photographers neglect is the tried and true: Foreground, Middle-ground, Background concept. To create this concept I find a subject—in this case the old school house—and then I back-off and look for an alignment of some foreground element. Well, I had to back WAY-OFF, but I found this really nice archway created by some old vine covered trees that gave me the perfect foreground to frame my schoolhouse scene.

Not content with that look I pushed it to the surreal….
Solarization
 One of the benefits of our digital photography age is that we can create surreal images so easily. One of my favorite printing techniques from our film days was Solarization and it happens that included in the NIK bundle of effects is both color and B&W Solarization.

TECH NOTE: This was done with NIK’s Color Efex Pro using the Color Solarization #3. However, when using the Elapsed Time Slider for the look I wanted it created some unwanted colors in the clouds over the school house. So, then I dropped the image into Photoshop and used the Spot Healing Brush Tool to clean up the sky.

Hope you enjoyed my one day adventure….’Til next week…

Author: Jerry W. Venz, PPA Master Photographer, Craftsman