Single-Serving Photo

Seldom do I employ such emphatic punctuation in a blog title, or such bombastic portmanteaus, but it seemed appropriate given the out-of-control creation of panoramas that I’ve been engaged in lately.

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m out here in the great American west—“big sky country,” if you want to call it that—and some of the sights I’ve seen were nothing less than demanding of a panoramic treatment. On top of that, I suffer from a devastating case of technolust and wanted to really put “AutoPano Giga” through the paces. Well, I sure did. I also probably melted the heat sink off my poor laptop’s CPU…

Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” In the case of AutoPano Giga, I think he was wrong; I think it actually is magic. I have tried a few panorama tools out there; the free and open-source Panotools, a couple of Mac-exclusive ones, and so on. AutoPano Giga is so easy and so fast and so accurate, it blows them all out of the water. Of course it also costs an arm and a leg, but at least you know why.

After the break, actual panoramas! Read the rest of this entry »

This week, I am traveling through the western US on a sort of national park whirlwind tour. I flew into Denver, CO on Sunday, took a quick jaunt through about half of Rocky Mountain National Park, and now I’m hanging out in Grand Teton National Park until tomorrow when I’ll head up to Yellowstone (to the right is a fisheye shot of part of the Teton range I took yesterday).

Although the landscapes are breathtakingly (and effortlessly) beautiful, photographing out here in these western mountain parks presents its own challenges, and I’d like to share with you what I’ve learned so far about successfully shooting in Rocky Mountain and Grand Teton. Read the rest of this entry »

Today I stumbled across this short blog post in the New York Times’ technology section (a blog called Pogue’s Posts, written by David Pogue) about the way a camera’s settings is generally included alongside photos in various magazines and articles related to learning photography.

Pogue’s point, in part, was:

… [T]he caption always gives the specs for the photo: “Taken with a Nikon D90 at 1/200th second, aperture f/2.8, exposure +1, using Sigma 18-200mm lens” or whatever.

It’s always bothered me that often, the camera came up with these settings.

Plenty of shutterbugs use Auto mode or Program mode, where the camera computes the shutter speed and aperture size.

Others use Aperture Priority mode or Shutter Priority mode, where the photographer dials up one variable (the f-stop or the shutter speed) and the camera calculates the other one (the shutter speed or the f-stop).

For the record, I shoot in aperture priority mode (in the Canon world, Av for “aperture value,” and in the Nikon world, A, for “aperture”) essentially 99% of the time.

Also, for the record, I am totally unashamed of that. Why try to balance two settings all the time when you can simply adjust one (and occasionally tweak the EV)? Isn’t that what all of this fancy shmancy “through-the-lens” metering is supposed to be for? Yes, yes it is. I trust my camera’s meter, and I do rely upon it. I don’t think there is anything wrong with that.

Getting back on topic, what Pogue is calling for here is a more forthright description of how a photograph used for instructional purposes is described. An accurate way to put it would be “Aperture set to f/2.8, exposure +1, auto shutter at 1/200th.”

In point of fact, the phrase that Pogue gave as an example (“1/200th of a second at f/2.8, exposure +1”) kind of doesn’t make sense because if you are in full manual mode, “exposure +1” would be an observation, not a setting. You can’t use EV settings in manual mode. But I digress.

I certainly don’t have the clout in the publishing world to make magazines and high-profile sites change the way they represent camera settings, but for what it’s worth, I completely support Pogue’s idea, and let it be known that if I mention settings for a photograph I’ve taken, nine times out of ten I let the camera choose at least one of the values.

Little did I know of the abilities of so-called “tethering,” for I had never tried it myself.

In the photography realm, tethering is a term generally used to describe shooting while the camera is directly connected to a computer. Most often, it is used to instantly push the photos onto the computer so that they can be previewed or, in some extreme cases, immediately edited by someone else for review by an on-site art director and so forth.

So really, “wireless tethering” is a super oxymoron, but that’s what they call it when you control your camera wirelessly or retrieve the photos in realtime wirelessly. Canon makes a device for this, and it retails for $800. I think you’d really have to need it to spend that much.

At least, that’s what Jamie Carl thought, so he made his own. Basically, tethering nowadays is just a standard USB connection, the same connection that you use to download photos directly from the camera (if you ever do that). They actually make wireless USB extenders now, which basically just separate one end of a USB cable from the other using wireless technology. It works just like USB, for just about anything that talks through USB.

I’m not sure what the bandwidth is like, but for controlling your camera, you don’t need much.

Jamie wanted to have wireless control of his camera because he was going to be riding in a car at highway speed, with his Nikon dangling outside on a mounting bracket! It seems like it worked out pretty well!

Check it out on Jamie Carl’s blog.

There’s this guy… Let’s call him “Carlo Allegri.” That’s his name, after all. He was born in Bermuda and raised in Toronto, and all he ever wanted to do was take photographs. He started as a photo-journalist and worked his way up over many years to finally become a senior entertainment photographer for Getty in Los Angeles.

The dude loves Profoto gear. Wait, you don’t know Profoto? They make some pretty high-end on-location strobes and other lighting accessories. (Buy ‘em from B&H.) Two 2400 watt-second strobes with basic reflectors, a battery pack, and a case to carry them in is going to run you around $2,500, and then things go up from there.

Anyway, if you’re into off-camera flash, Allegri is someone you should idolize. He has perfected what he calls “guerrilla lighting” wherein he can set up a shoot for an A-list celeb, snap off 20 or 30 photos, and have them off on their way in sometimes less than five minutes. This guy can not only capture the mood and emotion of the individual, but also throw together a creative lighting setup in as much time as it would take you to imagine doing it.

Speed isn’t everything. There is a huge amount of technical savvy and creativity that goes into a successful photography career, especially working for Getty and operating at those high-stakes levels. Still, when it comes to photographing a movie star, pop singer, or even a CEO, you are going to be in demand among publicists and agents if you can pull it off in the time it takes your subject to walk from the stage to their dressing room.

Read more about Carlo Allegri and see some of his great photos on Profoto’s blog