dispatches

Learning time lapse

I've been playing around lately with time lapse video, namely, setting up the still camera with an intervalometer while something is going on. I've fallen into every newbie pitfall there is to fall into (I hope), which is just how it goes when you try something new.

For example. Everything tested fine in the studio, but when I got on site, the intervalometer (a Pocket Wizard) seemed to only be working intermittently. It would fire, then stop for a long time, then fire again. Then cease completely. First I thought it was the power-off function of the camera, and that the signal from the Pocket Wizard wasn't waking up the camera. But it was still wonky. I fiddled with more settings, nothing worked. At last, I figured out that the lens was on auto-focus. If there wasn't an edge in the focus point (I set my cameras to use just one active focus sensor), it wouldn't fire.

I have never shot in jpg before, so I had a learning curve to manage with white balance and exposure. I knew enough to leave it on manual, but it was dusk and the light was changing over the course of the time lapse,. As it got darker I'd just open it up a half stop every now and then, as I couldn't think of a better solution.

The next day, with that steep piece of the learning curve behind me, I set up again. This time I found new mistakes to make, like not regarding the power drain on a battery when a camera is firing continuously for five hours. The next run I had plenty of batteries. I just kicked the tripod once when I went to check the battery and CF card levels (you can spot the moment in the Dismantle video).

Robin watched me go through this process and remarked, “A lot of people are afraid to go through what you're going through. They have shame around failing. You're just plowing ahead.” I think of it as, the more mistakes I'm making, the faster I'm learning. You have to be bad at something before you get to be good at it.

Results here.

The Folkfloor from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

The Folkfloor Dismantle from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

Northwest Folklife Festival: the videos

This is the first Northwest Folklife Festival that I've attacked with my newly acquired video skills. I've been cranking these out about one a day. Shooting takes under an hour. Editing about two hours. The bottleneck is converting the 5D files into ProRes, but I do those overnight.

I like the “I'm there” feeling that video provides. I'm still doing stills at the festival, but barely. And I'm doing more dancing than anything. Sore feet are happy feet.

Marimba at Folklife from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

Guerilla Contra at Folklife from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

Folklife Buskers, Briefly from Doug Plummer on Vimeo.

Is it a book or a video? Driftless: Stories From Iowa

On MediaStorm is a hybrid video/photo project that is an extension of Danny Wilcox Frasier's Driftless: Stories From Iowa. His project (the 2007 Honickman First Book Prize winner) is a clear-eyed view of contemporary rural Iowa. Absolutely brilliant work.

The notion of using a video to expand the reach of a book absolutely fascinates me. He directed the piece, and it's about 60/40 video to photography, but from the credits it doesn't appear he shot the video or produced the final piece. I'm curious to find out more how this came about. It's a riveting series of videos. Set aside a half hour and watch the whole batch. You'll probably do what I did at the end—order the book.

LCD image burn-in, and how to fix it

I have fallen into the lazy Mac user's habit of never turning off my computer. If you're a Windows user, this may strike you as bizarre. After all, Windows performance degrades the longer you go without a reboot, and every minor hiccup in a program seems to require a system restart. But not so much with Macs.

I had turned off my screensaver, I can't remember why, I think it was interfering with some mega-giga file transfer. Then I left a text document open overnight. When I went back to editing photos the next day, I saw all these faint horizontal black bands in my skies. My LCD had burned in the pattern of the text.

Paul Butzi pointed out this phenomenon of LCD image persistence last year in his blog, and aimed me toward the solution: a screensaver that “exercises” all the transistors and pixels, and erases any image persistence issues. It's called LCD Scrub, and it works. Today my screen is squeaky clean, at least electronically. Now if someone could point me to a solution for maintaining a streak-free exterior. 

Daily Photo is four years old

Four years of a photo a day, every day. Here.

How to microadjust your autofocus

 

So that explains it. I'd been bothered by how my critical focus seemed to be off a bit when shooting wide open. The eyelash instead of the pupil, that kind of critical. I turns out I can adjust my camera body to compensate for autofocus error.

On the Northlight Images site there's a cool tutorial on how to make the adjustment. This only applies to Canon high-end DSLRs (1Ds3 and 5D Mark II), where you can alter the AF Microadjustment under Custom Functions.

From the site you download a target image. Display it on your LCD screen at 100%. Align your camera parallel to the screen (at >50x the focal length). I used my laser enlarger alignment tool, but that borders on the obsessive. Using Live View, you focus on the computer screen. A moire pattern forms when critical focus is achieved, which is caused by the interaction between the computer and the camera LCD pixels (clever, eh?). Then you turn off Live View, and use auto-focus to focus the camera, while watching the focus display on the lens. If the distance marker doesn't budge, then there's no problem. If it does move, then you need to apply a correction.

For my 24-105mm lens, I had to apply an +8 correction to the camera body. For my 70-200mm I only needed a +1.

The passion-livelihood balance

How much are you making, really? Are you making money the way you want to?

Take a given job, track the hours on the shoot, track the file processing hours, and the hours organizing the work and burning DVDs and delivering the job. Divide by your creative fee. That day rate is looking a lot slimmer now, isn't it?

I got on this kick when a video producer suggested keeping track of editing hours to understand what we should charge for video production. Processing a digital shoot is not a lot less onerous.

My sense is that the one-off magazine portrait gigs are my most efficient money making enterprise. I often shoot, process and deliver the same day, and with the trade pubs the fee is half decent. They don't come along as often as I'd like.

The big travel, multi-day college shoots are my main income, and the invoice for a 3 or 4 day shoot can start looking scary big. But these are such high volume shoots that the processing time often exceeds the time I spend on location. My “hourly gross” looks a lot less impressive than the fee would suggest.

The worst return is with weddings. There is so much post-production effort required to deliver a wedding job that I can't charge enough to keep the return up with my other assignment work. I seem to have hit a market ceiling with my wedding rates—I raised them this year, and the bookings fell off. Then again, wedding photography is a lot of shooters' Plan B right now, so it's a buyer's market.

There are other values besides money to decide how to spend a life. I made a decision to not go into high fee, big production advertising photography. I like working light, without a crew, because connection with my subject trumps anything else for me. I have the most fun on the college shoots, and I like going deep into a single project. The short half day assignments don't bring nearly as much to the table in terms of connection and relationship. Weddings are great because the emotional dynamics are so intense, and I love the pre-ceremony prep and tension as much as anything else I shoot. If I never had to go to a reception I would be a happy wedding photographer specialist.

I made a decision decades ago that my livelihood and my passion would have to be the same thing. I've nuanced it down to a very satisfying balance now.

 

How to take this picture

The situation is a common one for me: classroom, instructor, students--find an interesting photo. I've been here a hundred times. Here is how I solved it this time. From the metadata I can see that I was in the room for 15 minutes, and I shot 75 frames.

What I look for is interaction. In this case, students are in small groups, and the professor is visiting  each group in turn. I follow him, and put him at ease thusly, “If it looks like I'm stalking you, it's because I am.” “I figured as much,” he says.

Walking into a situation wearing two honking big cameras gives you a lot of social authority. Different situations, of course, require different behavior. Sometimes I need to remain discrete (for say, a law school lecture). In this case, I roam the room pretty much like I own it, though with my antennae up. If I feel the hint of discomfort or awkwardness from someone I back off. Or I face it. “Yes, this is really awkward isn't it,” I'll say. And I'll share the experience of feeling awkward with them. Now we're connected, and I have permission, or I have a clear boundary to respect, one or the other.

This class was informal, so, as I frequently do, I made a spectacle of myself. I stand on top of tables. I crawl on the floor. I'm a little guy, and I'm limber, which is a tremendous advantage in squeezing into tight quarters. That, and with the cameras, I become a highly visible, and thus normal occurrence in the room. It's amazing how easy it is to disappear by being the most obvious presence in the environment.

I was starting to put a photograph together. Basically, one of two angles was working, low or high. With everyone packed in so tight, it was easier to isolate elements if I worked low. With each group I visited I learned a little more about what was working. By the time I got to this gang, I pretty much knew what the photograph I was after looked like.

I had solved the technical issues by this point too. I nailed down an ISO (3200) and an exposure, 1/20 f/9, (set manually, via histogram) to maintain depth of field. With IS, I knew this was a safe shutter speed for me to handhold. The limiting factor would be subject movement.

I set up the composition, though I can't say that I was doing so with much conscious intent. Looking at the result I can see that I was lining up the woman's arm on the right to be parallel with the frame edge, and letting the diagonals of the desk and the other figures drive my eye around the frame (if you look at the sequence, you can see that I tried a couple with a level horizon. I apparently didn't like it.). The framing happens unconsciously. What I am consciously managing is the action. I'm micro-adjusting the framing so that I can see everyone's face. I'm watching for when they are all engaged at once. I'm monitoring the gestures of the professor. I fire the shutter every time it feels like everything is more or less coherent. Every time it feels close, I take a picture. At some point, I know it's in the can.

I have not looked at the LCD screen once during this entire sequence. As soon as you start assessing what you've shot, you are no longer connected with the moment. Save it for the end of the day.

Transcendence

My friend Connie Sidles took a KUOW radio host around the Montlake Fill the other day. The resulting interview is a powerful story of birding, grief, meaning, and the transcendent glory of bluebirds. 

http://kuow.org/program.php?id=17451

Genius not required

David Brooks is taking a break from his usual NY Times columnist beat (“I'm a Republican yet I really like Obama”) to talk about creative process. “Genius: The Modern View" is a  review of some of the popular writing on the subject, particularly “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle, and “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin.

The most interesting item in the column is this: “The mind wants to turn deliberate, newly learned skills into unconscious, automatically performed skills. But the mind is sloppy and will settle for good enough. By practicing slowly, by breaking skills down into tiny parts and repeating, the strenuous student forces the brain to internalize a better pattern of performance.”

That “sloppy” trap is a killer. I fall into it continually.  Being a pro photographer means having a toolkit of ready made solutions that you're known for, and can bring to bear at a moment's notice. Probably ninety eight percent of the time I'm responding to the moment in a way I've done in previous, similar situations. The challenge is to bring to the situation a state of awareness, and know that you're falling into a habit. If the habit is providing the right solution, then bingo, you're good to go. Those dependable solutions are our stock in trade. But paying attention to some other input, maybe a feeling, or a body sensation, can be where mastery of a more complex treatment can emerge.

You don't need to be a genius to make this work.