Rob Lamb Photography

February 7, 2014

Shooting Nana Part 3: Old School

I have the 120 film back from the lab now.

A big part of this experiment was to spend more time with the Hasselblad 500c and it lovely 150f4 lens.

There is a tendancy to look fondly back at the days of Medium Format. For many people it was purely about the quality of the images produced. The combination of a much larger image area and expensive lenses that effectively resolved much more detail in your image.

In the digital era, Medium Format seemed to become more synonomous with the highest resolution cameras – to the extent that the latest generation of 35mm DSLRs claimed to be ‘Medium Format’ because they offered resolutions only formerly available with a larger image area.

A lot of that is nonsense. We’re back to the uber-tech and ignoring some old school photography stuff.

Shooting Medium Format changes the way your images look for a number of different reasons:

In order to fill the larger image area, you need a longer focal length. There’s definitely a very different feel to these from being shot on a 150mm compared to an 85mm (35mm Full Frame) or a 50mm (APS-C DSLR) <skip long explanation> In general people look better with longer lenses.
The depth of field is different here too. I’ve traded off the medium telephoto wide aperature look of the 85f1.4 against the longer focal length f4 of the Hasselblad. It’s produced good isolation in the backdrop but much more detail in the face (not sure Mary is going to be 100% happy about that). Again, it produces a very different feel to the image when you see it big.
It slows you down. Even digital medium format is a slower process than 35mm and shooting 12 shots per roll and having to manually wind the film each time really slows you down.
You’re out from behind the camera. Shooting with both eyes. Different viewpoint, different interaction.

Now I think for some subjects I like having the freedom 35mm digital gives me to keep shooting to get what I want. But this takes more discipline. You tend to go for static emotion to get more ‘keepers’.

Of course there are drawbacks to using film: it’s taken me a week to get these back; it’s taken me over an hour to get them scanned; some of the negs are damaged and most are dirty or scratched (more of this later). And these days if I wanted these traditionally printed then I’m not sure where I’d go to get them done.

But that ‘film look’ is there with the dynamic range and contrast that we all strive to achieve in our black and white conversions (even though this is a rough-enough scan of the neg).

On the whole I think it’s worth doing more with this and exploring how it can be used. I don’t think I’ll be going digital MF just yet though.

The next step up is of course Large Format. Again there is a change in the way images feel not just because of the resolution but also in the way the cameras and lenses behave (focal length, tilt, shift etc). More on this from Gregory Heiser

For the record these were shot on Ilford XP2 super (400 ASA). Mainly because I know I can get 120 film C41 processed here in Cork but I have no idea where I’d get traditional black and white done without doing it myself. I’ve always loved XP2 from way back in my student days so no issues using it for this really. It was fast enough to shoot with the ambient daylight on the tripod at f4. I’ve done preliminary scans on these using my old flatbed scanner which has a TPU. It’s not quite wide enough for the full 120 film and not in any way as good as a proper film scanner like the one I have for 35mm film – but good enough for now and the lab can scan anything I want to do more with.

February 6, 2014February 6, 2014

Shooting Nana Part 2: Instant Gratification

While I wait for the 120 and 35mm films to be processed I have the digital files to look at.

Digital has changed pretty much everything about photography apart from the fundamentals of a good picture. There’s good and bad in there though.

I set Nana up in the window light and had the Lowel available of fill or a hair light. I used the D700 to check the exposure and the level of fill before running off on the Hasselblad. Then I shot a few more before running though the film and a couple more at the end, playing with the light.

She was pretty cool throughout but definitely got more relaxed as the session went on.

The main challenge for the digital part of the job was to work with it on the tripod, come out from behind and shoot with the cable release while more actively engaging with my subject. Just like the old days.

The problem is that I like my portraits – especially like this one shot on location – with soft backgrounds. In fact I like everything soft apart from the eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul.

I went through the ‘everything tack sharp’ phase but I released that I have always been drawn to shallow-focus images. Before I started looking into it critically I was always ‘wowed’ when I got one right (usually out of necessity cos it was dark).

They work because your brain automatically draws your attention to the sharpest thing in the shot – the eyes. All that creamy soft background adds context but automatically isolates what’s most important about your subject.

Then thanks to David A Williams, I released that portraiture isn’t about tack-sharp detail, it’s about emotional connection with the subject. The fact is that most ordinary people don’t want to be able to see every pore, they want you to capture their nature.

So anyway. I like shallow focus, that means that I have to go to great lengths to make sure focus is extremely accurate. This is hard enough when you’re looking through the finder in complete control of the camera. But how do you do it when you standing next to it with a release in your hand.

There are a couple of ways I can think of:

Tell them not to move. OK for this subject. Most of the time. Not so for others. And what if she does something spontaneous that’s nice like leaning forward (did happen).
Stop it down to increase your depth of field so if you’re a bit off with focus then they’ll still be sharp – OK but now you’ve lost that creamy shallow focus look and of course you need more light (or more ISO) to work with.
Use the camera’s AF to track the subject. Tried this one previously and it worked reasonably well. It did track but a significant number were still soft (critically so). I think I also discovered this ‘thing’ using AF-C wide open that was giving me some additional misses. Good but not 100% happy.
Use Live View – on this generation of camera Live View has a significant lag to shoot the frame and the focus is less acurate.
Use ‘intelligent AF’. Most pros tend to turn ‘intelligent’ features off because they are hard to predict – so in any given circumstance you may not know what they’re going to do. Others just don’t trust technology just because they know what they can do without it and don’t bother to explore the limits of the tech. So you get the ‘Manual Only’ photographer who still says he’s quicker than the tech. Personally I think if you pay all that money for the latest technology you should use it. But you need to know how it works and when to either turn it off or otherwise help it out. So I use AF with a single point on subject, AP with compensation, Auto ISO with limits (and turn it off when it’s not helping), AWB (but shoot RAW).

I wanted to see how the Inteligent AF worked – in the case auto area AF-S.

Well guess what? It worked very well. Those Nikon guys have been working out! There is a slight lag in focus compared to the single area focus I normally use but I don’t think I missed anything.

I helped it a bit by stopping down to f2 for most of the images (even f4 on the 85mm) but even the few I took at f1.4 seem pretty good. Now she wasn’t moving that much and I tended to lock and watch and re-lock if I thought she’d moved.

I’m not a fan of techology for it’s own sake but this stuff really works – the combination of fast, accurate AF that is biasses towards skin tone and works in low-light, great low-light performance (so you can shoot at f4 in someone’s living room) and great, fast lenses make this work very well.

And I really enjoyed being able to forget about the camera. Just chat away, watch my subject and fire when something interesting happened. Particularly with someone like this, who wasn’t ever going to pose for me.

Of course there’s a tendacy to look at me and not down the lens but you can always ask to look into the camera and you can always go back to the viewfinder. But you’re much more able to see what you’re subject is doing out from behind.

A lot of good photography is about watching. Watching and reading, trying to predict and stimulating a reaction. It’s much easier with both eyes.

So I think I might bring this into more of my formal sittings and continue to work on it.

Processing-wise I chose a black and white conversion in Lightroom 4. Upped the orange filter for better skintone, adjusted contrast, blacks, whites, clarity and shadow. A small bit of healing on the skin here and there and that’s it. Not big photoshop on this one.

February 5, 2014February 5, 2014

Shooting Nana Part 1: What and Why

So the January (now February) project was to shoot my Mother-in-Law. With a camera that is.

There’s perhaps more to this than it would seem. So what’s the point:

To photograph someone you know quite well. I find this especially challenging, whether it’s one of my kids or someone in the family. In a session with a new sitter you discover an aspect of their personality and you capture that – whatever you can discover (and they let you see) in the time available. Familiar people are multi-facteted – you know more about their different sides and you need to decide what you want to capture – and then how to get them to show it to you (and then actually capture it).
Come out from behind the camera. People interact with other people not machines. It’s plainly obvious in some shoots that a subject is very happy and relaxed while you’re chatting but as soon as the camera pops up to my eye they loose all that and go into ‘snapshot mode’. Not what I’m looking for. I’ve been looking at the way a number of my photographic idols worked and an integral part of getting out from behind the camera and being more direct with your subject (Avedon, Heisler to name drop a couple). I’ve tried this a couple of times and it’s been good. There are two parts to this one:
- Shoot with the ‘blad. I own a Hasselblad 500c and 150f4 lens (it’s on the left of the pic in the last post). I’ve used it once. I bought it mainly to try shooting with a waist level finder and come out from behind. I also wanted see what difference shooting medium format made (larger capture area, longer lenses)
- Shoot with the D700 on the tripiod with the release á la the ‘blad. I’ve done this a couple of times and it was a good experience but I still like shoot these portraits wide-open so I need to get the focusing thing right when not in total charge of the camera through the finder.
To photograph a ‘stable’ subject. Photographing kids is great fun because they are so dynamic and so responsive. But never being able to rely on your subject staying in the same place doesn’t let you set up fancy portrait lighting or use manual focus or anything like that.
Shoot for pleasure. The other thing about non-commercial work is that there’s no pressure. You get the chance to experiment. As long as they sitter gets a couple of nice shots it doesn’t matter if not all your experiments work out. You get the chance to learn from them in an environment where there isn’t a client expecting a range of perfect shots. If something works out then get it down pat and include it in your client work.
Having taken on shooting with film for the Hasselblad, why not burn off some of that old film stock sitting in the fridge too? I get the pleasure of handling one of my favourite machines – the F4 (in F4e configuration for a change – doesn’t look as cool as the F4s but handles better) we’ll see how the film compared directly to the digital in the same scenario. While I’m at it there’s a few frames left in a old film that’s been in the FM2n for a while now. So strap the motor-winder on it and use those with that lovely Manual focus 50f1.2 AIS. At least I’ll find out if all this stuff still works.
It also has to be said that Nana’s not getting any younger. She’s also usually a terrible sitter for photographs. She puts on this acidic stare when the camera appears or just talks all the time so her mouth is open all the time in a non-expression. So this is going to be something to take some care over.

Easy right? No. Fun? Well yes actually as it turns out.

With all the talk about fancy portrait set-ups I went for something straight forward. I went to her place partly cos it’s freezing here but also cos I thought she’d be more comfortable at home. I also like the context of shooting her in her own living room – where so much of life has taken place (second only to the kitchen but not much good light there). I did introduce a light for fill / hair at the end.

Again the challenge about shooting someone you know is choosing something appropriate for location, setting and style. Nana is at home, well ‘at home’. She’s also not that mobile so this works for her too.

More about how it went in the next post. The films have gone to processing but of course the advantage of the digital is that you don’t have to hang around for all that stuff anymore:

January 31, 2014

January Project Teaser

It’s been quiet on the blog – lots going on in the Gallery but January is traditionally when I get time for a few personal projects that help me think about how (and why) I work.

So look out for more here about that but in the meantime here’s a clue to something which I hope to start today. Looks like it’s brightening up a bit so it might actually come off as planned.

This motley crew of camera are all lined up and ready to go. You might recognise a few relics here but let me assure you that they are all fully functional and ready for action (well I’m hoping that they all step up when their time comes).

Sometimes I do get asked how many cameras I own (normally by someone else’s kids). I normally don’t count them all cos it’s embarassing how many of my film camera I’ve held on to (and I’ve a couple more than are in this photo).

November 26, 2013

The Most Valuable Thing You Own

Eighty-one years ago today this little girl sat in The Waltur Studios, 141a High Street, Walthamstow, London E17 for a portrait. It was a few days after her First Birthday.

She doesn’t look much like she enjoyed the experience.

I’ve no idea what The Waltur Studios charged my gandparents for this sitting or the couple of prints that survive but I’m sure that to them it wasn’t insignificant. Given what I know of their circumstances, it wouldn’t surprise me if they went without something else to pay for these.

It was a gift to my generation that it’s now impossible to put a value on.

They obviously thought it was important to get a photographic record of their only daughter on her First Birthday. In fact, considering the times they were pretty good at taking (and keeping photos). My Dad have me a whole tin of pics from my Mum’s younger days. If there was a fire (and everyone else was safe)- this is one of the first things I’d want to save (along with my own pics of my own family).

What makes this one truely unique is that The Waltur Studios printed their details on the back of the print and stamped the date ’26 Nov 1932′.

It’s been our policy to sign, date and identify each of our prints. They are printed with professional ink and paper which is certified by the manufacturers for over 100 years (assuming you look after them). I want you and your kids to enjoy these prints just as much as I enjoy having this picture of my Mum

November 14, 2013November 14, 2013

Great Chefs and Good Coffee

I came across this really nice behind the scenes video on F-Stoppers today. The main set-up shots are a bit conceptual for me but I like the ideal of taking what you know (and can discover) about an individual and creating a portrait that uses that in both setting, lighting, styling and the emotion of the subject.

But at the end Schoeller does a more simple thing with the chefs and a coffee cup – well who’d have thought of that?

I’ve worked with Brendan Cashman since Augustines moved to the Clarion. About the time that that relationship was ending he came to me for a set of profile images. Unusually he specifically wanted them shot in Studio rather than the more environmental portraits we’d done as part of the publicity for Augustines.

So we shot a range of images and had a lot of fun. Apart from a truely gifted chef, what’s struck me about Brendan is that he understands how he wants to use images to promote himself and his work. He’s also very comfortable in front of the camera.

Whenever we’ve worked together before there’s always been coffee and a cigar involved during the ‘briefing’ (we drink, he smokes) so I wanted to include those two elements in some of the shots: they were an essential part of the I considered the Brendan Cashman experience.

For me, Portraiture is about capturing a glimpse of someone character in an image way more than it’s about capturing someone’s physical likeness. Getting that to appear for you, knowing it when you see it and getting it into the shot are the skills of a good Portrait Photographer.

November 11, 2013

Halloween Dress Up: Thank You

Thanks to everyone who came in for the Halloween Dress up this year.

So far we’ve raised over €700 for our Children’s Charities.

If anyone still needs to collect prints then just contact me and arrange to call in sometime soon.

We’re also giving prints to anyone photographed at the Ballinlough Spook Parade

October 15, 2013

Halloween Dress Up 2013

10-4pm Friday 25th October

Halloween Dress Up is on again this year. This is our third year running the event and we’re hoping for an even bigger turn out this year.

The idea is simple: bring your kids along to the Gallery in Fancy Dress and they get a Free Picture taken in our Halloween Den. All we ask in return is a donation to one of our Children’s Charities.

Many of the local schools and preschools will be having parties that day as it’s the day before mid-term so why not call in on your way home and get your photo taken?

We’ve had great fun with it in the last few years since we moved into Ardfallen Estate and we’ve raised €100’s for Crumlin and the Ronald McDonald House.

So put the date in your diaries for next week and call in and give us a scare!!!

Childrens Pics at Halloween — Halloweeen Dress Up for Crumlin 2013

October 9, 2013

Maybe Summer is Back?

Photographer in Cork — Just like being Under the Dome

As we did the return leg along the road back to the Car Park in Currabinny on Saturday, I suddenly became aware of being surrounded by these remarkable butterflies.

Hang on, it’s October.

But there are loads of them flitting across the road.

Then I got home and the same butterflies were crowding around the little daisy-bush-thing that flowers in late summer (they could be Michealmas Daisies). Loads of them, all visiting the flowers and drinking nectar. So me and The Boy watched them and I managed to take a few snaps (no macro lens at home, no opportunity to do anything with the lighting, just full sun and the closest, longest setting of the ‘chasing kids around the woods’ lens).

This would be unusual enough if I hadn’t seen the latest episode of Under the Dome which also features butterflies appearing en-mass at an unusual time of year. So if the Dome coming to Cork?

October 7, 2013October 7, 2013

Autumn Family Portrait Special Offer

€50 Session Fee + 10% Discount on Prints and Storyboards

It’s a perfect time to get out and have a Family Photo Session: autumn is here and the woods look fantastic; it’s bright and still warm outside.

This October we’re offering special discounted rates on all session booked from now until the end of the mid-term break.

For €50 you get a full Family Session anywhere in the Cork. We’re also offering a 10% Discount on the Gallery Price list for print orders placed at your viewing after your session.

There are many spots around Cork for great Outdoor Family Photo Sessions. We’ve worked in Currabinny, Rostellan, Fota Gardens and even more suburban locations like Fitzgerald’s Park and the Japanese Gardens. All we need is somewhere you can be free to relax and play and we can capture your family at their best.

You might also consider some of our great local beaches at this time of year: Myrtleville, Rocky Bay, Garretstown or the Dock Beach have all worked well for us in the past.

But if you have your own favourite spot that your family know well then why not get photos taken there.

Weekend sessions are available but with limited availability. The promotion runs through to the end of the October Mid-term break so you can also schedule a session while the kids are off school (3rd November).

Terms and Conditions Apply:

You have to be prepared to go out there and have fun
The Session Rate of €50 applies to family sessions booked between 4th October 2013 and 3rd November 2013
The 10% Discount applies to the normal Gallery Price List and is only applied to products ordered at your viewing session (subsequent orders will be priced at our normal rates)
In the unlikely event that the weather isn’t great the day of your session then we’ll re-schedule (I don’t mind getting a bit wet but there are some days when it’s just not going to happen). The offer will still apply to rescheduled sessions even if they have to get taken after 3rd November.
All work is covered by our normal terms and conditions of business