Ben Cochran
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Very nice Matt. As far as how to get in the door, do something different, something that they haven’t seen before and in house staff can not replicate. The marketing piece (image) has to trigger the impulse purchase trait in the viewers. The other option is to be able to deliver consistently with shots that are similar to their in house but less expensive. The latter can be a hangman’s noose though so, caution on the approach and fit it into a proper business plan that measures feasibility.
Very nice John and really loved reading your thoughts. Would love to say that it gets better but…. We do live in our craft đ
Thanks everyone and sorry for the delay in getting back. Was up in PA for a few days and swamped on return. I really do appreciate your time in sharing your thoughts and impressions. The client has already approved it so, after some minor adjustmentâs/cleanup, add the title and the text lead lines, it will run.
The image is âsupposeâ to be suggestive of a couple researching and studying a facility in an attempt to asses the level of care for a loved one that they have to have transferred to post acute care. The original intent was upper management observing the quality of care at one of their facilitates with the women representing the patient care and the man evaluating the best business practice for overseeing all of the patients needs. As I stated before, my perception does not count as it is the viewerâs perception, thanks to viewerâs comments, I see that it delivers on both countsâand this truly is what matters most.
On the technical side, the reason for no hair lights, backlight, or rim light is due to the principal of not taking away from the intended focal point; what the couple is looking at. ON the same note, I wanted to go with the concept of a couple evaluating the facility and the darkness represents how empty this feeling can be for families. I wanted the light to be shared so that it looks like hope and relief. Shot it with 6 SB200âs overhead and bounced as a kicker off of the white foam board.
David A, I am very fortunate on this as it is commercial and I was the AD for it as well. I do know what you mean about magazine ADâs and submissions though so, that was a consideration but fortunately the client decided to break the typical script as well. On a side, I am one of those nocturnal critters that loves the dark side anyway, just donât get to do it much on assignment work.
David K. you are very close on the headline as one of the lead lines is; âWhat you need to know about Post Acute Healthcareâ
I have some contorting to do to this but thought that I would share a close up of the Ward, if anyone is interested in dissecting it further. I know about the Geri Chair looking like a wheelbarrow but I have to use it, as that is the means for transporting vent patients and a means of getting them out of the bed, so that they can also participate in activities.
Thanks again everyone as it did and does help me a lot!
Jay, not only is it awesome that you got the cover, it is an AWESOME image.. I really love this shot a lot!!!!!
I am a bit different on this. If it is for commercial use, I try to shoot wider as to leave plenty of room for gutter and bleed or slag. For illustrative, I will crop down to what I would of normally framed but I am trying to get away from shooting that tight, as I have a terrible habit of framing for my intended personal finals, got this bad habit from to much fun in closed framing recreational photography. I will sometimes put reminders in my bag, to remind me to shoot for the gutter and possible bleed.
Agree 100% with above, about keeping the originalâs at 100% so that the GAâs have more data to work with.
Yea, that does suck Chad and I hate it for you! Only positive, is that it happened with an image file that you did not mean to be published.
Had a publisher in europe not list my name in the credits, for a cover shot, that I did a few years back as well. Hurts but as it is my business, I made sure to not burn the bridge.
This is something that urks me but again, knew better than complaining much to the publisher: Turned in what I thought was a very good TIFF and see the published image was destroyed by their art department. That and have had my name translated to country dialect’s, like Beno Cochrano lol
Put it behind you, my friend, and keep plugging away at it. Your to good to let this one slow you down and interrupt your flow. Let the client know but act like you weren’t terribly disappointed and just need to make sure that your name is in ALL future credits. I know that they understand the importance of that.
Glad that I could help Matt and hope all is wonderful with you and your family! đ
Olie, as Neal mentioned, that lens sings even better on the FX sensor. Truly, one of my favorite lenses and I use it very often, I rarely shoot macro with it…
Hey Matt, and congratulations on getting that great lens.
Personally, I feel that you should keep and use that lens, you can always pick up the less expensive 60mm later. That lens has great MTF data and is engineered to be one of the best lenses on the market!
It will work great for macro shots but serves as an EXCELLENT tool for shooting that, which I know, is even more important to you. As your child grows, you would be glad about the idea that you kept the 105, as you capture great detail and expression, in your child’s face, of closeups that you capture over the years.
Forget about what you may want to shoot tomorrow and think about the shots that are most important to you over the years. You will be more than glad that you held onto that lens.
More equipment and just diversifying your equipment is not always the best avenue. There are not many lenses that will deliver as good as that particular 105 and you will grow to appreciate it even more with prints and/or future monitor upgrades. As the saying goes, don’t cut off your nose to save your face.
The 105 is also an EXCELLENT macro lens but also serves an an excellent high end portrait lens!
Morsie, I would strongly recommend shooting color, as it will provide you with more control over your targeted gray scales.
One thing that you can also add, to your work flow, is a print proofing step. Any descent printer should do fine and more colors will probably show up in flat sheet proofing. You may also try converting to sRGB as well. On the wide gamut monitor, I can see more of the RGB gamut than on my macbook, the macbook pro is about 72-75% of the RGB scale so, I don’t heavily trust it for proofing. Your printer may print that additional gamut, a smaller sRGB gamut conversion will help limit it too but that isn’t why we purchase these expensive camera’s.
Got to love colors—- and prozac  đ
Can’t really add any help in the way of guides, never used them down there.
2 places that I used to love fishing for reds, below New Orleans. Venice or Empire, as launching points. They are pretty close to N.O. and I did have some incredible fishing experiences down there; granted it was all underwater recently. My old closest fishing grounds was Baptiste Collete Bayou, caught a huge amount of wheat fish in there too. The best Reds were further down, out South Pass and east towards Redfish Bayou. At the end of South Pass is an old automated USCG lighthouse, Â just on the other side of the jetty was some awesome fishing! They are suppose to be doing some dredging in Baptiste Collette so, I don’t know what the current conditions are, up there.
We use to go down to the end of South Pass, when off duty, and stay overnight at the lighthouse. The next day we would fish the other side of the jetty and then sell our reds to the local fish market. In one day we could make as much as what the gov. was paying us for some very long weeks.  Did 2 years of duty, in those swamps :-X âŠ
Dusty, the easiest and quickest way for me to explain it would be this:
As DA mentioned, save the sharpen step for last. Once you have made all of your other adjustments, save the TIFF or PSD if you want the layers saved. Now flatten the image and copy a new background layer. On the 1st background layer, add your sharpening to that layer, then make a copy to a new layer. Convert this new layer to a masking layer and make sure that you highlight the masking layer box. You can use the eraser tool or paintbrush to edit the particular layer. If you use the eraser tool, keep in mind that you can adjust the size as well as the density, a softer brush adds more feathering while the harder brush is more precise. The painting process is much cleaner and is the better choice. Select the masking box and paint white to keep the effects or black to erase them, you have the same brush controls as the eraser brush. Very important that you do this in the masking layer as, if you donât, you may end up with a terrible haze in a printed version.
You may want to open up a hue layer and desaturate the magenta channel, this may help with the mouth hue.
Grant, I agree with the statements above; go completely full manual and you will learn the digital transition a lot faster, not just manual mode but in all of your settings.
The first picture is a bit over exposed but that is not what has created all of your frustration, IMHO. The rest of the shots seemed to have been metered fine and the tonality as expected. Look at all of your backdrops and environmental conditions. Consider the fact that you shot in heavily diffused light and your subject is in matching camouflage. Hard to get any pop, from this type of composition. The shots also seem to be a bit soft on the focus side but I donât consider that a major deal.
Your last shot seems to have some sort of conflicting Kelvin issue going on, as well. Check out all of the whites and you will see the cyan on a lot of them.
Nice catch, Dusty! Along with what David Anderson mentioned. I believe that the lines are more similar to digital aberrations, meaning: You over sharpened the blur and then increased the exposure and contrast. The sharpening tool tried to define lines in the blurred area and did the best that it could do, add an enormous digital pixel shift and these artifacts will appear almost always. Try erasing the area that you do not want to apply the sharpening tool and it should help. Also, you have several hot spots (no data) and I am not sure if that was because of the PP or in the original, facing jaw joint, thumb and fingers. By leaving the background section a bit darker, helping to prevent hot spots or amplifying them, you can actually give your subject more pop and separation from the background.
As John said, a bit over saturated and contrasty, mostly in the reds. You also have a good bit of magenta on the roof of the trouts mouth and along the upper lip. It is more noticeable on the wide gamut monitor but I can still see it on the Mac monitor. Glad that you posted in jpg as it really has a lot more pop in the wider gamut.
I am with you on that one David! Got my own system worked out and am just to scared and/or stubborn to throw a wrench into something as seamless as it is. Hey, just picked up the LaCie 526 monitor… WOW, you would love this thing and the calibration report put me at a DE average of 0.3 with 98% of the ISO coated scale covered đ
Josh, LR is a great program so, don’t think that I am saying it isn’t. Just kind of an old school guy that hates having to become a programmer instead of focusing on my primary. đ
Agree with everything written above, nice write up again Neal.
Other âvitalâ thingâs that we have to take into account are: The sensor reads best on 18% grey then darks to lightâs, in the meter mode, the camera then adjusts to an algorithm of similar profiles. If the composition has 3 or less stops between lightâs to dark, the image is going to be flat and the smaller sensor is going to have a very difficult time deciding the area of your âintendedâ focal point, especially in a matrix mode.
Keep in mind that your cameras TTL system is performing 2 functions, meter and focus. If it has a difficult time metering, it will have an equal difficulty in focusing. If these 2 properties are present, the matrix meter read is going to tell the computer that zone âXâ has a better range of lights to dark âcontrastâ and the auto focus will adjust to that matrix zone. Look close at your image and you will see that the bubbles, under the gill and on the water, are perfectly in focus. Also notice that this is the least flat âmore than 3 stops difference of specular to shadowâ area.
A suggestion for you: Change to center weighted or spot meter, keep in mind that these also control the defined focus disciplines for the camera. Your trouts eye has nice specular and dark so, meter and auto focus there. As mentioned above, use a tripod and shoot wide enough that you can crop for your intended framing.
Main point is: Spot meter and focus on area of best bright/contrast. Zone map your shot first to make it easier on your camera, for better control the final (tell the camera what to do). Hope this helps someâŠ
I will agree with every single recommendation above. The thing is, there truly is not any one book and no one should limit themselves to, even, just a couple. I have had so many that I can’t even begin to name them all, it is all about constantly continuing an education with the physics of light.
How-ever! If I was just starting out, I would loved to of had the opportunity for a great tutorial and accelerated learning curve. Zach Arias has a DVD out, for one light source and he is very accurate in teaching some of the physics principal’s of light. I would strongly recommend learning one light first, as it really helps simplify the learning of what can be a very complicated subject.
Zack also uses speedlight’s on a lot of his shots so, you won’t be left behind on that front. Joe McNally is always great but Zack goes more into the physics of light and helps convey the reasoning and logic behind it.
Google: “OneLight” and it should steer you to a link where you can purchase it from him.
Nice shots Tim. In short, yes, the polarizer did do that but it was only one component. We also have to take into consideration that the clouds were also completely blown out. I am not sure what type of post processing you did but the white clouds have no data at all, this means that we cannot white balance off of them. If you look at the white bark, you can see that they have a pleasant warm luminance but the white on the steelheads mouth is cold. This tells you that you had conflicting Kelvin, from the sunlight to the shade. It also tells us that there was a color shift caused by the polarizer and that the polarizer was not consistant. Personally, I would WB on the fish and once you do that, you will see that the sky color doesnât look so odd, the clouds will still be blown but for web use, the image still tells the story that you want and portrays a good composition.
If you want to get more technical and go further with it. I would probably shoot the same composition with a much longer lens. The reason for this is: With the same frame as you have, a longer lens would provide better compression on your subject (more life like) while the background would have more diffraction along with the already preplanned DOF. This would actually raise the mountain higher and limit the amount of clouds that would be in frame. They are going to be blown, no matter what, unless you get more light onto your subject. Of course, you could change your field of view and background but, that doesnât help with offering suggestions on this one shot. Any sharpening will just make the clouds look worse as well.
The last suggestion is a much better filter but I think that you would still have some problems. I know that someone will probably suggest the D lighting but it will desaturate all of your contrast and make it appear flatter, would work on this shot though.
On your second shot: The variance for light to dark is so much that one is going to loose detail. You metered the sun so, the darks are now darker and the thinner rays fell inot this gap as well. I can see some faint additional rays but they fall into a shade area where the shadows are the background. They were metered out as you would have to shoot just a tad more wide open to get them back in.
Nice compositions though  :)[ch9786].
Love the texture of your shot Chad, always have been a fan of your shots though but this one carries a certain appeal of nostalgia to it.
Have to tell you though, I was nervous and shaking as I opened this thread. Amazing what a Title can do to a fellow LOL.
