Published!

Some of you may notice that I’ve been working on some of the pages of this site to bring you a more comprehensive Flash experience… and some of you might even care!

The newest page features some of my published works. It’s incomplete – waiting on a few .pdf files and I don’t want to resort to taking photos of magazines quite yet – but I’m working on it.

With that in mind, I’ve found two fantastic resources for converting .pdf files into web-friendly .jpg images. One does a good job while the other does… a job.

From www.online-tech-tips.com :

“Convert a PDF file to JPG – Easy Way

Go to ZamZar.com, browse for your file and choose PNG format for the format to conver to under Step 2. PNG is another newer picture format that is slowly replacing the JPG format. Most programs that can open JPG files can open PNG. Zamzar automatically converts each page in the PDF document into it’s own PNG picture file. Now you can simply open Microsoft Paint (yes, all you need it Paint!) and choose File – Save As from the menu and choose JPEG from the drop down list of formats.

That’s it! By the way, if youare interested in how to extract the text from a PDF document or how to convert Word files to PDF, etc, check out the links.

Convert PDF to JPG Format – Second Way

The first thing you’ll need to do is download a free software (the only one I could find) that converts PDF documents to JPEG image format automatically. Go to the Omniformat download page and download both Omniformat v8.3 and the PDF995 app. You will need to download and install PDF995 first before installing Omniformat. Once you have both programs installed, go to your Start Menu programs, find the program group Software995 and click on Omniformat.

The only annoying thing about this program is that it requires you to view some ads for about 30 seconds! However, it’s better than paying $20 or $40 for a program just to do a simple conversion! It does pop up another instance of your browser window for the web site of each of the sponsors, but it does not install any spyware onto your computer (no popup ads). Once the program is loaded, you’ll see it has a section called “Watch Folders” and then a button at the bottom titled “Start Monitoring” and “Single Pass“.”

Tried both of these options and they work a treat. The best option is by far http://www.zamzar.com, as the quality out of the 995 tools hasn’t been up to snuff (though I’ve only tried it a half dozen times, and I might be missing something).

10 Magazine Assignment: Green Gallery

Green isn’t one of the first words that comes to mind when I think of Korea. If there were a list (and I suppose this is) words like hegemony, fan death, yellow dust and soju would be higher on it. Yet Korea would like to position itself as a global leader in the green movement for a better tomorrow, though it’s not fully intent on giving up on clear cutting, erecting high rise apartment buildings on top of tigers, cleaning garbage off the streets of Seoul or cutting down on spitting anytime soon.

Case Study: I recently had the pleasure (?) of proofreading a business proposal outlining a bid for the reconstruction project of the land currently occupied by a military base near Seoul. Conclusion: “We would like to burn down/chop/generally destroy what remains of the nature on site to build a new, technologically enhanced and people friendly nature on top of it. With wifi.” end quote. Nature + Starbucks = ftw.

I digress. And I kid.

I don’t feel like I need to qualify myself to my readers (both of them) but a few weeks ago your friendly neighborhood Flash was called out for making things up as he goes along. Well, I say to that, no shit. I write fiction for a living, people. So just keep in mind that I’m joking half of the time, 75% of the time.

10 Magazine Assignment: Green Gallery

Back to work.

Green Gallery is an eco-friendly, or at least eco-conscious restaurant/constructing/engineering/design firm located in Bundang, that other Gangnam we all know and love (except when we’re trying to find it on the city bus from Osan. Then we don’t love it. Not at all). It’s tucked into the corner of a commercial complex that is less charming than totalitarian and looks like your grandmother’s garden shed from the outside, replete with a busted sign, angry dog and 3,000 discarded plant pots.

There are a million and one things I enjoy about this place. First of all, it’s like a jungle in there. Seriously. The building was constructed around old trees and 101 plants and flowers were tossed into the mix later, contributing to a decently low-key and relaxed atmosphere. I am not sure how well it’d play in the summer, though; so many plants, so much mist and water, it might get a little muggy. Frizzy hair city, if you know what I mean. But the place has a working woodstove and when you’re seated in the rear of the restaurant you can’t help but feel a little like Paul Bunyan, blocks of lumber stacked around you and raccoons descending from the ceiling to pick at your lunch. I dig it.

Just remember, when you’re playing with the woodstove, try not to set yourself of your neighbor on fire. It can get awkward quickly under cramped conditions.

Now, since this is a photography blog, I suppose we could talk about the photography for a moment. In making the frame above, I decided to keep things simple. Probably too simple, to be honest; I lit the tubes and the bamboo shoots with direct, hard light from a bare strobe camera right. Why did I do it this way? Why didn’t I soften things up with an umbrella or softbox? Well, lately I’ve been digging the hard light, the bold highlights and blown out touches of white in images. Rethinking that here might have been beneficial, as the light on the leaves – the lower section, specifically – is a little hot for my liking. I should know better!

 

This is how the same set looked with a grid on the strobe; I isolated the plants, let the sun coming through the window lift the exposure on the plates and brought the level of light on the wood way down. Two looks, only a grid between us. Poetic, in a way. But not really.

This assignment had me shooting the interior space with less of a focus on the food. Too bad, since the food was some of the best I’ve had in Korea to date. I went in thinking natural light would be the way to go – it streams in through frosted glass that wraps the place in a cozy little blanket – yet expected to encounter a few exposure issues along the way. Or twenty. And the place didn’t disappoint.

The light was coming in a little too hard and fast to flatter anything, so I took the exposure way down and blasted a couple of strobes into the roof – gelled CTO – to drape the place with a little warmth. You can see the mix of light on the menu in the image above and the ray coming through an open window that cuts across the frame. I let the light mix this way intentionally to create a bit of natural flow and to hide a few of the less-than-pleasing pieces of junk scattered about. Like people. 

By the way, how was the food?

In a word; sensational. Though the garlic bread retained just a hint of that all too familiar Korean sweetness we’ve come to associate with Italian cuisine here on the peninsula, the rest of the meal was brilliant. The gorgonzola was creamy and rich though the dehydrated sesame could have been left in the kitchen. I wouldn’t mind getting the name of the little fruit/nuts they sprinkled on top, though. Those were fantastic, if not a bit earthy on their own. The mozzarella cheese was as good or better than shoving a fresh cloud into your mouth and the cheesecake…well. Just wait until you see the cheesecake. Prices were less than reasonable, however; unless I’m eating this stuff at a Florence cafe there’s no reason whatsoever to charge 18,000 won for caprese or 12,000 won for a strawberry smoothie. No one is ever going to convince me of that.

Thick, succulent bricks of fresh mozzarella cheese. Easily the best I’ve had in Korea. Too bad it costs about the same as my camera.

Bellies full and back to work!

I like to ground my interior shots with subtle foreground elements, like the menu in the previous image. And sometimes things aren’t exactly so subtle; these bamboo stalks fall more into the sledgehammer category. But the light mix works well and I’m especially happy with the foliage shadows that my gelled flashes tossed onto the ceiling. Not so happy with the white drape I foolishly allowed to remain in the frame. Bugnuts!

At any rate, a good example of mixing ambient and flash to create drama and emphasize atmosphere throughout a scene.

 

We mixed some food into the equation, letting the natural light spill through the bamboo and create a few shadows on the dish. A little hot? Sure, but I like the brightness. Still don’t like that white drape, though. Dang white drape!

I’m happier with this frame; happiest, in fact. Solid exposure throughout, no white drapes, a nice little swathe of green courtesy the chair in the foreground. I turned this frame into the magazine; they asked for comfy interior, so they got it. All of these interiors were done handheld with a little help from my trusty flash system, as always triggered by flashwaves.

 

We put a bare strobe with a grid just to the right on the window sill and let it push light back down onto the food. A little understated food photography, if you will, in a three light set; one for the foreground foliage, one for the ceiling and one for the food.

Natural light!

Gasp! Egad!

Yeah, I did it. I’ve mentioned the excellent quality of the light that we had streaming through the windows, so I used that the best way I could when shooting from the 2nd floor balcony. I have made a conscious effort as of late to work natural light work into my assignments before breaking out the strobes – it’s a great way to integrate myself into a scene and I don’t have to worry about bogging down my life with 200lbs of equipment. I can appreciate that. Besides, it just looks nice.

I did what I could to capture the essence of Green Gallery as you experience it; vibrant, organic and, perhaps surprisingly, green. Very, very green. And orange. I decided to shoot this with the mid-day sun helping out in an effort to toss light through the glass to create a bit of a lightbox effect. Things would look much different at night or with the waning sun, but these are the choices you live with.

I shot wide, as I do with these things, though I’m beginning to appreciate the value of shooting at a “normal” focal length when shooting interiors; straight lines stay straight and it’s possible to make the food look like it’s not about to fall off the table. That’s apparently important to restaurant and magazine folk.

Man, I need a tilt-shift lens.

I wasn’t tasked with shooting as much food as usual at this job, which is too bad, since it was some of the best tasting and well-presented eats I’ve encountered in the city. The bread didn’t give anyone a diabetes sugar shot, either!

I lit the cheesecake here quite simply; a gridded strobe high camera left with a big gobo – my reflector with cover on – keeping light from spilling all over our reluctant hand model.

 

Simple as pie; a single strobe gridded, behind the food and high (for the shadows under the plate). There’s a substantial mix of ambient in this image (as you can see in the background and streaming lights). I love to do this where possible because it lends a natural feeling to the scene, but it’s important to remain ever cognizant of your shutter speed; sure, the flash is going to keep your food sharp 9 times out of 10, but that background in the natural light is going to be another matter entirely.

* There’s also a reflector blocking the sun from ruining the exposure on the cake in this frame.

My brief didn’t call for moody interiors or dark atmospherics, but if it had I would have spent half the day upstairs in what I can only really describe as the caves of Green Gallery; four cozy dining sections surrounded by concrete walls. It’s not nearly as gloomy as it seems.

Still, I couldn’t miss the chance to toss a couple of flashes around. In the room to the left is a bare strobe, gelled CTO. On the right is a bare strobe gelled blue; not hard to see the potential for fun here. We just had to move on.

 

Of course, we took all the time we could to play with our food…

 

And even got to take a little something home with us. Though Megan wasn’t big on her plant; she traded it in for a block of wood. It can get cold in our apartment. Really, really cold.

– flash

Groove Magazine Assignment: Greg James Hanford

Greg James Hanford. Rockstar. Welshman.

I knew this was going to be fun.

Greg is one of the most easygoing people I’ve ever met and when I shot his band, Solitaire Love Affair back in January we did a little groundwork for what would become our interview and photoshoot. We drank a few beers, Greg played his guitar in the street and we had a crew of nearly a dozen folks working together downtown… could have been Rolling Stone out there (If anyone from Rolling Stone is reading, yes, I do accept your job offer).

The story I wrote on Greg can be seen in the April 2010 edition of Groove Magazine. Here we’re going to stick to the photos.

The Shoot

I enlisted the help of the Seoul Photo Club and the Seoul Strobist Club to shoot James one afternoon in Itaewon. It was all hands on deck and flashes at full power; not sure if any of us will ever get our eyesight back. Certainly Greg won’t. What a trooper.

I had four different shots drawn up and diagramed, though I knew we’d go with whatever was feeling right at the time. The final package is a touch different than what I originally envisioned, but I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time post-shoot.

Preparation

I did more prep for this shoot than I usually do because I had some time and because I was going to be doing fairly involved set-ups with a lot of people; I didn’t want to waste valuable time. Plus, I only had two hours to shoot and interview Greg before he had to play at Castle Praha. Crunch time.

You can see that I’m not using a fancy little iPhone app. to outline my shots. I draw these up when I’m not sleeping on the subway, fire them off to everyone involved in an email and call it a day. They look a touch better than my usual diagrams, but I’ll admit, they’re a little sterile.

Where’s the love?

Another reason I prepped as much as I did for this is because I like to do this kind of work in a single frame; I like to shoot people handheld because I can move and connect and talk and not have to worry about trucking a movement-restricting tripod around with me. That means single frames, no bracketing, no dropping people into this frame and out of another (to an extent). Maybe one day I’ll learn to be patient.

On the street

We prepped in the parking lot of the Hamilton Hotel and though we were nearly killed by a Hyundai and then a Mercedez, we were ready to go by the time Greg arrived.

I’m not stranger to this setup; I’ve done it a few times and it was in fact one of the very first styles of off-camera flash work I practiced when starting out last spring; key high and tight, sunset in the background, street life playing a little symphony. Simple stuff, until you borrow a little inspiration from the light god himself, Strobist.

That’s the Seoul Photo/Strobist Club helping me out, flashes strapped to each of their cameras. Greg is far too chill to come off as an arrogant rock star, so I decided that this frame and this attitude wasn’t to be the winner. I love everything else about it, though. Even the green gaffers tape I used to rig the recievers to the flashes. Yeah, that’s right.

There are 7 flashes in this scene: SB-80DX, softbox, high camera right as key / SB-900 w David, camera left / SB-80DX w Dylan, Camera right / SB-25 w Megan, camera right / Canon Flash w Aaron B, camera right. We triggered the Canon and the SB-900 optically and used Flashwaves Triggers for the rest. I love ‘em. I’ve never set off one of my flashes from the moon so I don’t need the range (or size) of pocket wizards.

Now the music is doing the talking. This is much more Mr. Hanford than the last frame. Same lights, same spacing, different attitude (I need to use another word… attitude makes me sound like a judge on America’s Next Top Model. Not like I’d know that, though). Attitude!

EPIC SUNSHINE!

I’ve had a few questions about the processing I did on the street shots. It’s nothing more than a little lightroom experimentation. First, I started by layering in some black and adding contrast to deepen the scene. Then I adjusted colour and saturation (bringing out the guitar and Greg’s clothing) before turning to the highlights and shadows. This is where the processing becomes prevalent; I took the highlights from neutral to a bright yellow and desaturated and did the same with the shadows, but using blue. I went back and tweaked the overall saturation until I had a mix that I wanted and presto – EPIC SUNSHINE! I have been using this processing preset more and more – especially on my travel photos – and I love the result. It alters the colour and tones on just about everything but human skin.

In The Back Alley

I took Greg into the back alley and I…

this isn’t an episode of Red Shoe Diaries, people. We’re here to talk about the light.

You’ll find this photo was mapped out in diagram two. Is this what I thought I was going to get when I drew it up? No, not really. Tons of ugly flares, small light sources (thank forgetting to zoom the heads and the spacing for that) and just a general awkwardness overall. I like it, though. I should have stuck with this and had Greg get a little pensive, look down at his guitar and pose a little, but I didn’t. Just made the one frame.

Getting the frame I did want with this set up was simple enough. All we had to do was turn the VAL’s around. The light bouncing off the walls – four of them – provided the backbone of the silhouette shot and another light in a softbox a few miles to the right added a touch of detail to the guitar and the shades on Greg’s face.

The light: SB-28 @ very low power, camera right, softbox, for rim and highlights on guitar/glasses /SB-80DX, bare, shot into the wall, Camera right / SB-900, bare, shot into the wall, Camera right / SB-25, bare, shot into the wall, Camera left / SB-80DX, bare, shot into the wall, Camera left
Same lights here. I love this frame for what it could have been; it could have been as righteous as the Summer of ‘69 cover, but I don’t think Greg was cool with smashing his new guitar into a million pieces before he had to go on stage. I wasn’t too worried, though. I knew he had it. I should have pushed the envelope. He’s a rockstar, after all. He’s likely to push a few televisions out of hotel windows before his days are done. What’s a single broken guitar at the end of the day?

I went with one extra light in this scene to carve Greg off the background. Again, I think this is him; happiest when he’s playing, pleasing the people around him. Not an ounce of angst or annoying rock-god self-importance about him.

I had to give the man the BDS treatment, though. Had to. This is the third lighting diagram and was, in a way, the simplist. It’s a portrait, so there was no jumping around and I didn’t have to worry about timing. No awkward light positions to compensate for. Just straight-up shooting. I had Greg keep the glasses on for this one so I could catch the massive reflector as it bounced light back onto his face.     You put a guitar in this man’s hands and he’s going to break into a smile. There’s no way around it. That’s the genuine stuff right there, too. I think you can feel that in this frame.

The light: SB-80DX, high camera right in a softbox, two CTO gells / SB-80Dx, monopod, behind Greg camera right, rim / silver reflector, low camera left.

One last trick to pull out of the bag.

The often-neglected ring light. I love this thing, but I don’t use it enough to warrant a steady place in my kit and it’s a pain in the ass to lug around. When I do use it, though, I love the results. I could have gotten close to the same effect here with a strobe since the catchlight isn’t as pronounced as it could have been had I been closer, but those shadows are just too smooth to mess around with. BDS, but in another way.

At the Show

We went inside. We had a few drinks. We talked for a while, I made some notes, took some quotes, had another beer. Then Greg took the stage. I tossed in a little light, got up close and personal and made frames of the create in his natural habitat, the place he is most comfortable in this world. I’m not a live music shooter – hard to move the light stands around that quickly – but this was a joy to shoot. Even if I did bump into half a dozen people trying to eat dinner and trip a waitress carrying a bottle of red wine.

I want to be a rockstar, too.  

The Light: SB-80DX on a monopod, bare, bounced into the ceiling (above frame and both below).

And one more frame, this one from the original Solitaire Love Affair session I attended, where I met Greg and we worked together for the first time. One of my favorite frames of all time, but not something that suits Greg’s personality or his style of playing. It’s a little more Cash…and if you know the album cover I borrowed this idea from, I’ll buy you a drink.

In the end, I think we came away with some frames to make Greg and the crew happy. I’d like to thank Aaron Brown , Shannon Lunsford, Aaron Raisey , David Sheldrick , Megan Ahrens , Alex Murry and Dylan Goldby and Greg for all their hard work and for putting up with me all afternoon. That deserves a reward in and of itself.

Thought I’d show my appreciation this way. Don’t hate me.

Pan’s Labyrinth

Seems like there’s plenty of panning going on these days.

Can’t open a magazine without seeing someone panning this, panning that; two photography mags I read over the weekend ran articles on panning birds in their March issue and two more focused on panning motor vehicles. Thom Hogan is panning fowl. Ken Rockwell is probably panning Leica, too (but no one cares). The pan is in, man.

But why?

Panning as a technique is popular because it is one of the best ways you can effectively communicate speed and motion through the photographic image. Panning is not something Guillermo Del Torro does in his spare time. And it is becoming more and more popular as people discover things to speed up and slow down.

Panning has been around as long as cameras have had adjustable shutter speeds. If you could get that shutter down low enough, you could try your hand at panning. Yet panning isn’t easy; freezing motion in one part of an image – an animal’s eye, the fender of a racing car, for example – is difficult. Incredibly difficult. Thom Hogan suggests that he has a hit rate of 1 in 76; one decent frame for every 76 times he presses the shutter. Imagine trying this on film. That’s a little more than two canisters of film spent to retrieve one usable frame. Obviously, panning has only come into vogue as a part of the digital revolution. For most photographers, anyway.

I’ve eluded to a few styles of panning – birds, motor vehicles, people – yet there are as many things to pan our there as there are things that move. I’m going to touch on a few of them here and end with a little panning + flash walkthrough, for the adventurous types out there.

Getting Started

Panning is a numbers game.

You need to start with the correct shutter speed – one that will allow you to blur a background but retain a sharp subject – in order to communicate a feeling of motion or speed. I suggest something between 1/25 – 1/50 for moderately moving subjects (cars, people on bikes, etc). Remember that the faster your subject is moving, the faster you can use the shutter; you’re going to have no problem panning a rocket at 1/100 sec. if you can move your arms that fast. But for an old lady walking to the corner store you’re going to need to slow things way, way down. Into the 1/20 – 1/10 range, give or take.

This was made at 1/20 sec. while focusing and exposing manually on an old 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor prime. While most panning pundits suggest shooting with continuous focus switched on, focusing manually is often a good idea. First, when focusing manually you can fire the shutter at any time, and not have to wait for the focusing motor to catch up to your subject and lock in. Also, in decent light, you’re going to be at such a smaller aperture – often between f/11 and f/22 – that getting “close enough” to the focus is going to result in tack sharp subjects. I don’t use a tripod or monopod when panning because it limits my mobility, so keep that in mind; you need to keep your hands steady as you roll across a plane.

1/25 sec. is my bread and butter shutter speed when it comes to panning moderately moving objects. But even then, when using a speed I’m comfortable and experienced with, it’s more miss than hit. I can fire 25 frames in a row when shooting subjects like this any come away empty handed. You really have to stick with panning and hope for the best.

Same compositional rules apply to panning that apply to other techniques; you often want to ground your photo with a strong foreground element. In this case, that foreground element is a man crossing the road in Beijing. He’s blurred out while the subject of my pan is crisp; just one more way to add dynamism to a frame.

Panning People

Panning people certainly isn’t easy. A person has so many gangly moving parts that it’s hard to keep them all in focus when they are moving. Heck, it’s hard to keep both eyebrows in focus half of the time. But the rewards can be great when you pull it off. Consider panning people who are engaged in fast-moving sports. You might like what you see.

My subject is soft, but my background is much softer. So my relative sharpness is more than enough to compensate. A good example of how manually focusing can work for you; because it was a bright, sunny day, I shot this with an aperture of f/20. Anything even close to my focus point is going to come through crisp (if I can nail the pan!) The sports pan. Just one more way to add drama to what should already be exciting photographs.

Using the Z-Axis

Panning objects on a horizontal plane – we’ve covered that. It’s old news. Want to add more drama and more depth to your shots? Try panning things that are coming towards you. The same principals I’ve already mentioned apply, though now you have to take into account the Z axis and effectively add a 3rd dimension to your panning technique. It’s easier than it sounds.

This tuk-tuk is coming right for me. I was panning at 1/25 sec. and f/1.8; not a lot of room for error there, really, but worth a shot. Knowing that the driver was coming at me on an angle and not crossing me on an even plane I had to make a few adjustments. I held the camera the same way I normally would when panning – following the driver, keeping him in the same space in my viewfinder – but I also brought it back towards me in line with the driver and his tuk-tuk, pulling the camera back through my frame. This one takes a little practice, but can really help you isolate a subject from the rest of the frame. All you need to do is practice pulling your shoulders back towards you while shooting. A little is more than enough, and remember to keep your movements fluid and smooth.

Flash Pan

Say you want a sharp subject; even sharper than you’d normally get when you nail the focus while panning. Say you want your subject to jump out of the frame, to have all sorts of depth and dimension. Say you want a hit rate greater than 2.4%. Say you’ve got a flash.

I used a single flash here, high and to the left of my model. The flash helps freeze the model in one place while the long exposure allows him to flow through the flash, creating a little more movement. This is one of the easiest strobist techniques to master – try it!

Here’s a flash pan done with a ringflash. The ringflash tosses out even light that wraps a subject – perfect for freezing, or slowing down a whole subject while panning. I did everything as I would with a normal pan – followed my model through the frame slowly, kept the camera steady and, most importantly, followed through out of the frame like I was swinging a baseball bat.

The flash pan was made for dancing in the street. Even the on-camera flash pan… something you should be sceptical of, at best!

The Zoom Bust

While not exactly the same as panning, the zoom burst is another technique that adds the feeling of speed and movement to a frame. It’s a little easier to pull off than panning, too, though you’ll often need a steady support like a tripod or monopod to achieve ultra-sharp results. You also need a zoom lens to do it.

For this shot of the bird’s nest in Beijing I started with my camera on a tripod and selected a shutter speed that would allow me to burn in the light trails; 4 seconds in this case. I composed my photo in the frame and made a test exposure of how I wanted the outline of the building to look. Then I zoomed wide and opened the shutter. I slowly zoomed in and allowed the lens to sit at my final focal length long enough for the building to take shape and become the most prominent aspect of the photo. Simple stuff, really. My friend Simon does these very well. Take a look. And if you want to see a master ply his craft, check out what travel photographer Eric Lafforgue does with a little zoom burst and a tribal warrior.

That’s the pan. It’s a favourite technique of street and travel shooters alike because there are as many things to try this on as the day is long. Get out there, open up the shutter, and let it fly.

– flash