Photos of you, proceeds to Charity - Tuesday from 3pm

Update: Facebook event page, click here.

Do you find yourself needing a portrait for your social networking sites? Are you creatively cropping pictures of yourself so you have something to post on your profile?

Camaraderie (102 Adelaide St E) and David Porter Photography are teaming up so you can get a professional headshot of yourself on June 29 for $50.

To sweeten the offer, we're donating 1/2 the proceeds from your photography session to the Disabled Sailing Association of Ontario. Their mission is to build confidence, self-esteem and enhance independence for people with mobility or other impairments.

We'll have studio lights and a seamless paper back drop for your session at Camaraderie.  Register now at our Facebook event site.

In both photos, is Nigist Sewnnet last years Commodore of DSAO and competitive sailor.

Event photography - how to figure out a shot, fast

As the saying goes, nothing a photographer likes better than group shots.  Especially in dimly lit areas where flash is frowned upon.  Am I talking about Weddings in St James?  Nope, an AGM by by a local professional organization.

The Association of Career Professionals was having it's AGM in local watering hole and about 60 people showed up for the event.  As it was a solo gig, I once again borrowed my friend Tracy's D90 so I had 2 cameras with me at all times.

Composition

Now, the basement of this place has 3 bare concrete walls that have all the photographic appeal of a gray card.  One of the saving graces was a post covered with red wood paneling of some kind.  Perfect.  Gives me a left frame for the pictures as the board members speak to the crowd.

Exposure

Next issue, I wanted to include the people listening but couldn't get the lighting to work for all the people in the shot.  No problem, turn the back's of people's heads into silhouettes and make sure the speaker is adequately exposed.  I'm still shooting at ISO 1600 and ISO 1000 for many of these shots though (1/30, f2.8)  The slow shutter speed actually worked for me in some cases.

Reception shots and packing light

My father got married again and ended up holding a reception out in West Vancouver.  I had some choices to make as I wanted to pack rather light and mostly carry on if I could get away with it (I don't have those fancy pelican cases yet).

What to do?  I was going to be the only photographer there, so I had have a second camera body.  Tracy was kind enough to lend me her D90 (which has the same sensor as my D300).  I wanted to take some umbrellas, light stands and such but I had no room!

A while back I got an adapter to mount a lighting head on to a broom pole.  I also have one of those tri-flash head mounts.  And, I was reasonably sure that where ever I ended up would have a broom pole I could borrow (worst case, run out to the local hardware store).

So what did I end up taking?
D300
D90
2xSB800
1xSB900
3xPocket Wizards
17-55
70-200VRI

Spare batteries and chargers.

Easy enough to fit into one of the 2 carry on's that you're allowed these days.


For some of the photos, I was able to hand hold a flash, after setting the ambient exposure to where I wanted it.  (See above, iTTL on +1.7 and taken around 6:30pm local time.  The city lights are off and the sun's coming down pretty hard.  Even the Lion's Gate bridge lights are off.)

Photos of you, proceeds to charity - June 29

Update: Facebook event page, click here.

Do you find yourself needing a portrait for your social networking sites? Are you creatively cropping pictures of yourself so you have something to post on your profile?

Camaraderie (102 Adelaide St E) and David Porter Photography are teaming up so you can get a professional headshot of yourself on June 29 for $50.

To sweeten the offer, we're donating 1/2 the proceeds from your photography session to the Disabled Sailing Association of Ontario. Their mission is to build confidence, self-esteem and enhance independence for people with mobility or other impairments.

We'll have studio lights and a seamless paper back drop for your session at Camaraderie.  Register now at our Facebook event site.

In both photos, is Nigist Sewnnet last years Commodore of DSAO and competitive sailor.

High speed synch - Auto FP - Overpower the sun with 4 AA batteries

As a few of you may know, I’ve been getting very interested in the work done by some photographers using high speed synch. There are some great articles on it over at Strobist and I’ll try not to repeat it too much here.  This article will give you some tips on how to have almost total control over your lighting even in a bright and photographically speaking, potentially boring afternoon.  It will allow you to get the ambient exposure you want and help make your subject pop from the page.  (Or put another way, how you can pretend to over power the sun with 4 AA's, at least for a fraction of a second)

Not having any people to photograph , I went down to the Lakeshore this afternoon to test out a few theories and get a handle on how this could work for me.  In spite of a few snide remarks and some chuckles from passerby, I took a view of the horizon and used a lamp post as my stand in for a person.  Keep in mind these were all done on a nice sunny day around 4pm.

Top pic - P mode:  As you can see in this photo, the full auto and no flash with spot metering gives a decent, boring lighting of the post.  Notice how the sky is blown out though.

Centre pic - The camera was in manual mode at f7.1 , 1/3200 and ISO200.  In this pic, no flash was used as I wanted to get the skyline set the way I wanted as it was almost 4pm in the afternoon.  See how you get details in the clouds but the post is dark.  Without Auto FP, you could never synch with shutter speed this fast.

Bottom pic - Same settings as the centre one except I used the flash on iTTL, spot meter mode on the post (hey it was also my focus point), and the SB800 set to +3.0 (Keep in mind this is not the camera’s EV buttons, this on the flash only!  On the SB800 this is the + button on the strobe itself while the mode is TTL).http://www.flickr.com/photos/porterspixels/4612917721/in/photostream/
I was standing about 1 metre from the pole, strobe in left hand, camera in right.

Group shots and receptions

Oh that favourite topic of every photographer, group shots!  My father's (delayed) wedding reception was on the weekend and he asked me to shoot it.  I drove through a rather crazy wind storm to find the party had already started without me having any time to setup.  Pictures available at http://photos.davidporterphotography.ca/wedding-porter (If you don't have the password, contact the bride or groom, not me.)

I had with me a 17-55 and 2 hand held strobes with light stands and pocket wizards.  As I quickly assessed the home, I determined it had some good and bad points.  Lots of marvelous large glass windows letting in tonnes of ambient light, open concept design and a front hall that just killed me.  It also had a ceiling that was painted with white paint.  Perfect.

Now, with just 2 lights and 0 assistants,there's no easy way to get great lighting on everything all the time.  At least not with this many people in a room this big.  You have to pick your spots.  I set up both lights on light stands, one of which I quickly moved after seeing it starting to wobble as people were passing by.  I found the top of the kitchen shelves to place one strobe on and bounce off the ceiling while finding another out of the way spot to place a lighting stand and bounce from an opposite direction.


Did this give me perfect lighting all the time?  No.

The long kitchen bar and wooden cabinets gave me heck the whole time as I had one strobe placed on top of the cabinets so it could hit the ceiling and not get knocked over.

Did it give me good quality lighting in a few high traffic areas that I could cover with no assistant?  Yes.

My strobes were hitting the ceiling area over the living and dining rooms to make for consistently good crisp pics all afternoon at a steady f6.3, ISO400 1/125 all the time.  The strobes were set to about 1/4 power so they could recycle quickly.

Sync speeds and intimate concerts

As some of you may know, I've been spending some time over at my friend Darren's place aka the Cave of Comics.  Darren has found a gig that gets several good folk music acts into his basement every month or so and as a result, I get to take pictures.


Over the weekend, I got to borrow my friend Tracy's D90 so I could have both a wide and my zoom lenses going at the same time.  I mistakenly thought that since the D90 has the same sensor as my D300, most of the rest of important bits would be the same too.  Oops!  The flash sync speed is slower on the D90 than it is on the D300! Pictures available at http://photos.davidporterphotography.ca/sean-cotton

Normally, when I'm shooting in Darren and Cathy's basement, I use a few flashes.  I nuke the walls using a red gelled flash pointing behind Sean at about 1/4 power and a second flash at about 1/32 power bouncing off the ceiling in order to get a white light hitting the artists no matter where they move while singing (People were complaining about yellow and red skin, go figure).  I sit in the back row taking pictures, where I can't adjust the angle or the power levels of the flash without interrupting people.

Why do you care about sync speed?  Well, on most CMOS SLR's, the shutter closes either from the top or the bottom (go figure).  Roughly put, the sync speed is the fastest shutter speed that all the light from your strobe can reach the sensor.  Strobist has a really great article on this.  Also, whether the shutter closes from the bottom or the top depends on the model.  The D90 shutter closes differently than the D300 and they have the same darn sensor and share a lot of other bits too.  If the settings on your SLR are making everything black except what you paint with a strobe, you get a dark band on the bottom or top 1/2 of your frame (left or right if you hold it vertically).  While David Hobby and Chase Jarvis can do some really cool things with this in day light, if you set the exposure to be black where your strobes aren't hitting, it matters a great deal!

Why do I care?  I had to crop a bunch of photos prior to posting them today in order to get rid of the black band on the bottom of the frame (see the smaller picture below).  No real harm done and lesson learned.