Easter marks the high point of history for the Christian as we celebrate the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Christ, without doubt establishing his credentials as the Saviour. This year our church, Calvary Baptist Church, performed an Easter Musical entitled “Saviour” on Good Friday Morning which was attended by over one thousand people.
Being devoid of musical talent, my contribution was to photograph the presentation, the results of which are the subject of today’s post.
Event photography always presents challenges, not the least of which are there are no ‘do overs’, you only have one chance to get it right. Secondly, you need to capture the feel of the event, so that the viewer of the images gets a glimpse of what it would have been like to be there, and those who were performing at or attending the event should be able to relive the experience through viewing the photographs. I trust both of those ideals are met with these images.
Event photography presents numerous and significant technical challenges that must be successfully navigated in order to achieve good results. The venues are generally dark, and lighting is typically achieved through multiple point sources (spotlights) that continually move about and change colour as well. We will talk more about dealing with various challenges in a minute using images to provide examples.
Event photography, especially in low light situations, is one of those things that requires a good camera body that functions well at the high ISO’s required to generate shutter speeds fast enough to capture the action without blurring the subjects. The Canon 5D MkIII used for all of today’s images is a terrific high ISO performer and all the images in this post were taken at ISO 4000. I purposely did not perform any noise reduction in the post processing of these images so that you can see how clean the files are right of the camera, even at ISO 4000. Fast glass is also a big help in low light and if you look at the EXIF data you will see many of the images were taken at f/2.8. Four different lenses were used for this photo-shoot; 16-35/2.8L (wide angle zoom), 24-105/4L (short telephoto zoom), 100/2.8L (portraits), and 70-200/2.8L (telephoto zoom).
When covering events, get there early and look for some unique compositions and angles that are all about capturing the feel of the performance.
I aways start with the wide angle and get shots that show the performance on a large scale as well as capturing the venue and the audience. Move around the auditorium (if allowed) and get a number of different views.
Side views of the auditorium are the best vantage point to highlight the audience.
And from the other side of the auditorium.
Event lighting changes quickly but the effects are dramatic and powerfully contribute to the effectiveness of the performance. It’s difficult to capture those rapid changes photographically and retain the ‘feel’ of things. These next two images are from a similar vantage point with the same spot lights visible in both. In the first, the primary spots are yellow (1/160 sec f/4).
In this shot the spots are white and I’ve over exposed it a bit to highlight the beams of lights diffusing in the smoke. (1/125 sec f/4).
Photographing soloists is perhaps the most challenging as they are virtually always in a bright spotlight against a much darker back ground. This creates big problems for the camera metering system which ‘sees’ the primarily dark scene and tends to ignore the small real-estate occupied by the brightly lit person in the frame. The result is an overexposed person with blown highlights and a result that is destined for the round file. To correct this problem you need to underexpose the meter reading by two to four stops depending on the situation. All of the soloists shown here were underexposed three stops with the exception of the first which was four (the less area in the frame occupied by the light, the greater the compensation required to preserve the highlights). The pleasant result of underexposing to preserve highlights is the creation of even darker back grounds which makes for an uncluttered dramatic image.
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Always be ready to take a good exposure very quickly. The red back lighting in this next shot only lasted for a few seconds but provided an interesting dynamic to the image.
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Most serious DSLR users shoot in RAW format (as opposed to JPEG) and for event photography using RAW is essential because of the great latitude it provides in post processing. RAW files are like digital negatives and contain all the data captured by the sensor at the time of the exposure, which although creating large files, allows for manipulation of that data in post processing, including exposure and white balance. When you shoot in JPEG format, in order to make smaller files, the camera strips out a lot of ‘non-essential’ data before writing the image to the memory card in the camera. Obviously the data removed is not available for modification in post processing and unfortunately exposure and white balance are two of the many things removed when you shoot JPEG’s. The variable and dynamic lighting conditions inherent with event photography demands you take advantage of the insurance provided by shooting in RAW.
I trust you have enjoyed a wonderful Easter weekend and thanks for taking the time to go through this post. As always, your questions and comments are much appreciated.
Labour Day, it seems, has once again arrived a little earlier than it did last year and in doing so signalling that another summer season has come and gone. It appears that each season blends seamlessly into the next, just like the water does with the skyline in this snapshot taken a couple of days ago from the dock at the cottage with my iPhone.
This blog post will be a short one as we prepare to pack up the van and join the throngs who will be heading south on Highway 11.
This summer has been a great one, the highlight for us was becoming grandparents on July 3, 2013 with the arrival of baby Kaj, to Jeff & Ellesse. He’s one of the most photogenic and photographed babies on the planet as you will no doubt see in upcoming posts. In order to properly document his rapid growth I’ve been experimenting with taking video as well as learning how to edit the clips. Also as mentioned in prior posts, I’ve also been attempting to video birds and other wildlife after photographing them in the traditional sense.
The video in this post today is a compilation of clips taken by placing the GoPro video camera on different positions on our Seadoo and then trying to edit them into a short video. Having only one GoPro it is challenging to edit multiple clips in a fashion that results in a coordinated video. There is still much to learn however I trust you enjoy this short (2:30 min) clip showing some of the fun enjoying the summer of 2013.
It has been far too long since my last blog post and I apologize for the tardiness, however there will be lots of material coming over the next few months.
Presently Deb and I are enjoying a vacation celebrating our thirtieth wedding anniversary. Its been a fabulous thirty years and the time has flown by but that’s what happens when you are married to your best friend! We arrived in Rome just over two days ago and are now enjoying our first of two nights in Venice. In the morning we are meeting up with Marco Secchi for a photographic tour of Venice. We can’t wait as Marco shows us the sights of Venice from a professional photographers standpoint, and as a photographer who grew up and lives in Venice he is uniquely qualified to do so.
Although we won’t be able to post any DSLR shots while on vacation, Deb and I have been also snapping away with our iPhone’s and they really do remarkably well. I have already posted some of the images taken so far onto the Scott Martin Photography Facebook page and if you haven’t already done so, please ‘like’ this page and check out some of the images from Europe. There are some images of the Colosseum and St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican.
The wonderful world of apps for your smartphone has produced thousands of apps for the photographer; some to add quirky text balloons to your pics, some to make you smile by distorting the people in your images but fortunately some provide serious horsepower to improve your images and expanding the versatilty of the smartphone camera. Photosynth and Snapseed are two of the latter and every photographer serious about using your smartphone camera needs these apps.
Photosynth is a free app designed by Microsoft to make the taking of panoramic images a breeze, and it does exactly that. You can take 360 degree panos as well as taking ‘multi-level’ panoramas meaning you can take a matrix of images and have Photosynth seamlessly stitch them together into one image. When viewed in the Photosynth viewer you can use your finger to scan from left and right and up and down within the image. It is very impressive. After saving the panorama to your photostream you can then edit and crop the image using Snapseed. Snapseed is a powerful image editor developed by NIK Software, famous for their suite of plug-ins for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture. The beauty of Snapseed is that it brings NIK’s patented U-point technology to the smartphone and tablet. U-point technology allows for selective editing of brightness, contrast and saturation within an image based on the colour and texture of the part of the image you select. Besides selective editing, Snapseed performs many other essential post processing effects including, sharpening, structure, ambiance, white balance, special effect filters and even tilt shift conversions to name just a few. Snapseed costs $4.99 but I can assure you that it will become the only smartphone/tablet photo editor you will use once you have downloaded it.
Here is a photo taken earlier today of Lake Russel in the Disney Nature Conservancy south of Kissimmee Florida. This shot was captured with an iPhone 4S (8 megapixel camera) without any zoom in landscape orientation. The image is un-cropped.
Here is six shot panorama taken from the same position with Photosynth and the camera in portrait orientation. It took Photosynth less than ten seconds to seamlessly stitch the images together. The resultant picture was cropped and edited using Snapseed.
Finally, this is an eighteen image panorama taken as a 6×3 matrix. Photosynth stitched this panorama in about fifteen seconds. This image was taken from the same spot as the previous one and was processed with Snapseed.
In keeping with the theme of this blog post, it is being written and posted from Florida on an iPad 2 using the WordPress app. The photos, all taken earlier today with an iPhone 4S, showing up on the iPad via the cloud! How technology has changed over the part few years.
I would like to thank my good friend Arni who told me about Photosynth. You can see his superb photography at www.pixelz.ca
Note: After posting the blog images it became apparent that I cannot use the iPad to resize the photos as I usually do with WordPress. Please accept my apologies and I’ll fix the problem when I’m back in front of the computer. In the mean time the new technology still impresses!
It’s a pleasure for Deb & I to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for 2012. It is such a busy part of the year that time allowed for photography is at a minimum and keeping up to date with posting images and writing blog entries is almost impossible.
The single image in this post is of the famous Mesa Arch which is located in the ‘Islands of the Sky’ region within the vast Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA. It is a ‘bucket list’ location for landscape photographers looking for that perfect sunrise shot and the effort required to be there was absolutely worth it. This shot was taken on a Saturday morning in October and we left our hotel room in Moab Utah at 4:30 a.m. and thirty-eight degrees for the almost hour-long drive into Canyonlands, where we parked at the trail-head in the dark and set out on the three-quarters of a mile hike under the moonlight to arrive at the arch in time to set up our gear and await the spectacular sunrise.
I will explain more about the experience and show many more images of the arch in upcoming posts, along with many other photographs from our recent trip through the American mid-west.
This image today is a Christmas one for a couple of reasons, the first is the sun breaking through the night sky reminds me of what it must have been like for the shepherds and wise men following the star that led them to Jesus over two thousand years ago. A celebration we continue to enjoy today, remembering an event that changed the world like none other ever has or ever will. Jesus is the only reason for the season. The second thing is the sunrise reminds us that a new day is upon us and at this time of year we take pause to think about the New Year that awaits us.
So once again, Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to you and yours.
This past July, General Motors held a Camaro Open House weekend at the Oshawa Vehicle Assembly Facility which is the only Camaro production plant. Yes, that means every new Camaro you’ve seen on the road was built in Oshawa, Ontario, a city of 150,000 about 40km east of Toronto. It was a fabulous event which included full access to the new and very high-tech Flex Plant assembly facility while production was running. It was the first time I’d seen the plant in production since working as a security guard as a summer student in 1979.
The ‘Flex Plant’ is a modern redesign of the traditional automotive assembly line that allows for the production of up to four different vehicle types on the same ‘line’ at the same time. While we were touring the facility the flex line was producing the Chevrolet Camaro and the Buick Regal. It was interesting to watch as two very different vehicles would roll off the line one after the other. General Motors recently announced that they will be adding a new full-sized Cadillac to the flex line next year.
Since beginning Camaro production a couple of years ago, more that 250,000 vehicles have been produced. Most of the Camaros have been coupes however with the introduction of the roadster last year a lot of convertibles are now being built. I must admit to a strong bias as I’ve owned Camaros in the past, but to put the production numbers into perspective, between April 2009 and May 2010 General Motors sold 100,486 Camaros while Ford sold 87,670 Mustangs and Chrysler sold 30,521 Challengers.
It was a rare pleasure to be allowed to take pictures of the cars being assembled and I trust you enjoy the images that follow. Most were taken with the 24-105mm f/4 EF L lens to take advantage of the image stabilization however I also used a 16-35 f/2.8 EF L lens as well.
The old and the new!
The process begins (coupe first followed by a roadster).
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Meticulously checked for surface defects before being sent to the paint shop.
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They look better painted!
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The following image shows the attention to ergonomics that is taken to reduce work related injuries and increase production efficiencies. Note how the chassis rests on a large bellows platform that raises and lowers as it moves through the facility maintaining the optimal height for the workers to safely carry out specific tasks for that part of the assembly process. Notice the white vehicle is much lower than the black one in this shot.
Although these are V6 engines destined for the Buick Regal (the open house didn’t allow access to the Camaro engine line) it’s an example of the many production design intricacies required to efficiently assemble a car today.
While the chassis is being developed in one area the power train is being assembled in another. You’ve gotta love that dual exhaust!
Completed power trains sitting on computer guided platforms ready to be mated with their chassis. This process is almost fully automated and it was incredible to watch as everything lined up perfectly every time! I’ve tried to capture the process in the next few images which show the power train moving into place beneath the chassis, raising into place and then the empty platform leaving to go back and get fitted with another power train. The entire process takes about five minutes per vehicle.
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Notice the car behind the yellow Camaro is a Buick Regal.
Tires are one of the last things to make their way onto the vehicle.
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Another Camaro comes to life!
Coming off the line.
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I couldn’t resist attempting a few artistic shots, even in a vehicle assembly plant. I hope you enjoy them!
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Camaro Car Clubs from all across North America came to the open house. There were over one thousand Camaro’s of every year and model at the event. It was a treat to walk among the cars, chat with the owners and hear the many stories behind each car. I think its time to buy another Camaro!
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