An open letter to Sam.....

Dear Sam,

 Thanks for an enjoyable day helping you sort out better ways of photographing cake decorations for use on your employers website.
 We talked at length about the need to get good,accurate colour, especially when dealing with foodstuffs. Below are sample pictures of your cake decorations done in my studio. The first example shows the finished picture with a bit of improvement in an image editing programme.

All of the colour looks correct. The back ground sheet is white paper that looks grey simply because there isn't a lot of light cast on it.

This is how it was done.
Most cameras come with a range of colour types built into the menu, usually they are depicted by small symbols that become visible on the screen on top or at the back of a camera. When initially purchased most cameras would probably be set to AWB (Automatic white Balance). As you can see from the examples
below this isn't always as accurate as it should be.This is the colour that automatic light balance produced. As you can see it didn't do a very good job of rendering the right colour as we see it. If you adjust the colour settings so that the daylight symbol (the symbol is the sun) is displayed you get this effect. Its even more orange.

Automatic Light Balance (AWB)

If set to shade  the picture is made even warmer as the camera tries to cheer up the added blueness in the light.

The  cloudy light setting is even more extreme.

Tungsten setting puts more yellow into the white of the flower

 Fluorescent Light (office or kitchen strip light) usually has a greenish/yellow quality.

Light balanced for flash

The next two types are Custom White balance and degrees Kelvin. With this first option you photograph a pure white target and set the balance to that, This is very useful in situations where you have a number of different coloured lights illuminating the thing you are trying to photograph. For example, daylight from a large window, strip lights on the ceiling and photographic lights directed at the object. Very tricky! Most photographers would end up trying to refine the white balance in Photoshop or a similar software.

You can also set the white balance with a colour meter to the appropriate number of degrees Kelvin. Hence the symbol is a letter K. To do this you would need a special meter. Very few professional photographers now use colour meters. Almost all would use Photoshop as its quicker and more accurate.

When working with small objects a lot of time can be devoted to propping the thing up in the best position to photograph it. I used some Climpex stands (you can just see the crocodile clip holding the flower) wire, masking tape,and BlueTack to hold things in place. A lot of patience and dexterity is needed.
 To focus, I used a home made bit of gear. A piece of a food carton with bar code on it that is easy to see and manually focus on through the camera lens. Its held in place by a funny thing intended to hold notes on an office desk. A camera that cannot be focused by hand isn't sophisticated enough for this type of work even if the maker says its automatic.
The card is placed in the group set back a little from the front of the flower, the camera is on a heavy tripod and then focused.  The card is removed from the view in the viewfinder and the picture is taken.
Even with a heavy tripod great care must be taken to ensure that camera shake does not occur during the exposure. I used mirror lockup and a cable release.

To refine the image I used Photoshop. Photoshop is a formidable programme that art students spend 3 years learning to use. You might be advised to try doing your colour balancing in a simpler piece of software. Many simple software programmes allow the colour settings to be corrected. Look out for 'colour balance' or often an image of a hyperdermic syringe is the symbol for the colour tools. You place this over a bit of your photo that you want to be pure white and then clilck your mouse and the colour should normalise itself.

Flying problem solver

Daylight photo done in Kitchen

My latest four short courses have been pleas from small companies and sole traders who desperately need help photographing their products or services for use on the Internet. Lots of them have been sold equipment that is less than ideal for their purpose. Sometimes equipment was fine at the beginning but the range of things offered for sale evolves from the original products. For example, if you bought equipment that was ideal for photographing matt surfaces it would not necessarily work well for glossy or transparent objects.

Simple photograph for eBay using daylight

For this reason it is often beneficial to visit the place where the photography is being done as it allows me to assess things many would not notice. The most common one being very mixed colour temperatures in the studio (often a corner of an office) used for the work. An on site analysis means that simple things a layman might not notice can be dealt with and possible future problems anticipated so they don't interrupt the companies work flow.
Recently I've been to Birmingham, Warwick,
Brighton to do this type of work.Contact me directly for an on site photographic course.

Product photography

I get lots of requests for help from people who run website or small Ebay Internet businesses. They basically want to know what equipment they need to get to do better product photography. There is a lot of competition. The big firms are able to afford to pay the prices asked by the most successful photographers. Smaller outfits try to find ways of conserving capital by doing work for themselves..

What is meant by product photography? Consumer magazines are full of photos ranging from large objects like cars, boats, houses, interior furnishings, electronic gadgets, power tools, gardening equipment, and on a smaller scale, phones, watches, clothes and bottles of perfume. There are many other categories that I've missed form this list. Trying to find one photographer who is a master at photographing all of these categories would be very difficult indeed. Photographers tend to specialise in a narrow range of activities for which they become known.

If you want to investigate whether its feasible to do some of your own photographic work I think its best to spend some time thinking about some very practical problems. Do you have enough space to devote to photographic work? Obviously its hard to generalise here but the man that sold signage for directing drivers around public car parks will need a lot bigger space than a man who sold antique Japanese swords. Space can be an expensive commodity if its underused.

Another type of customer has done some holiday photography and thinks skills can be acquired merely by spending a lot on the proper equipment. Sometimes, this may be true. I have a pen that is better than anything Shakespeare ever had but I still can't write as well. Equipment isn't everything. Throwing money at a problem isn't always going to make the skills of image building that were hard won from long years of study and experience. It is also true that technology can change radically (from analogue to digital) rendering past experience worthless almost overnight. Often salesmen have recommended photographic gear that isn't really suitable at all for the job they want to do with it. On one occasion that equipment was very good the user had changed his product range to such a degree that the soft light of fluorescent tubes wasn't incisive enough for the new products he was photographing. These were simply sheets of rough textured paper. Light tents from Ebay or trade fairs are bought enthusiastially to solve all sorts ofphotographic problems.They work okay for some very small objects though they are far from the answer to all simple photographic lighting problems.

Interior of David Turner's Stokenchurch studio where one -to -one photography courses are run

A better way to proceed would be to strengthen you knowledge base prior to investing a lot of cash in new equipment. Spend a day finding and doing practical work in the studio on one of my photographic courses. You will normally be the only student and can find out exactly what you need to know.

Getting a white background

You might think that a roll of white background paper might easily lead to  pictures where an object appears to float in a completely white space. Its not as easy to achieve as you might think.

Firstly, the background needs to be very even. This is usually achieved by purchasing a roll of background paper or vinyl sheeting. Either material needs carefully supporting to avoid creases in the surface. It should be completely free from marks on the surface as well. Not too difficult to achieve with a small camera back and a sheet of drawing paper. However, anyone whose tried to photograph a motor bike in the same way will know that trying to get a roll of studio paper to unwind smoothly and lie perfectly flat on the floor is a lot trickier. The roll of paper is often warped by leaning it at an angle in storage.You also have tyre marks, and foot marks made getting the bike on to the background in the first place. Often large objects like bikes, boats and items of furniture are too long for the width of the background. You end up with a picture like this:-

The missing corner on the left has to be added in Photoshop etc. People think that a wide angle lens will solve the problem. Usually they introduce too much distortion.

You have to divide the studio or background into two different light zones. The lights falling on the object or person should be adjusted to give the correct exposure. The lights projected on the the background (you can just see the background light in the top of this picture) should be set slightly higher to overexpose the whiteness of the background. It is this overexposure that creates the bright, detail free, background white.

Exposure should be checked with a flash meter with the background light set slightly higher to overexpose the white paper a little (about one stop) None of this light should fall on the object or person which needs to be correctly exposed to show its characteristics. In a small studio this is often difficult to do as the light tends to bounce around the place in unexpected ways. Note that in the illustration there is a gap of six feet between the background and the biker. This is to stop cast shadows falling on the background.

On a high quality large print it would be necessary to remove a lot of marks made when the bike was wheeled into place on the floor.These can just be seen on the first picture.

Common Photography Faults

Setting up your camera for beginners....


Ah! those tiresome old jokes about not forgetting to take the lens cap off! Here are few newer ways for improving things before you start work:-

1.CHARGE YOUR BATTERIES
Always recharge your batteries if you are taking your camera with you for a day out. There are few things more irritating than to have to stop work because the battery is flat. Extreme cold is bad for batteries. Keep your charged batteries warm in your coat pocket.

2.INSTALL CARDS
 Check that you have a card in the camera and some spare cards as well. Cards have got bigger and bigger over the years and the price has fallen considerably.You could be tempted to buy one very big card. Years ago, I worked for Kodak as a wedding photographer just as they were changing over to digital imaging. The standard advice was to shoot each wedding on about 4 different cards. Then if one was corrupted you still had three cards left of a unique event. The same is still true: I would never do a whole holiday on just one card especially if it would be difficult to repeat it.

3.SELECT A COLOUR TEMPERATURE
Try to set the correct colour balance for your camera. The colour of the light changes according to the light source and any filtration. If you start photographing a landscape in the morning the light is very blue. Later it might become cloudy. This will filter the sunlight behind the clouds making it slightly cold. In the evening the the light will turn orange as the sun sets. Indoors a room could be lit by a candle, tungsten bulb, or fluorescent light. Each is a different colour. Often a range of colours can be mixed together as with sunlight filtering into a room mixing with colours from television and a reading lamp. Dealing with this jumble of different types and colours of light  can be difficult for cameras. So its best to start off with the colour of light you believe to be nearest to correct. In the pictures below you can see the dramatic effects of natural lighting and red spotlights. Both pictures are truthful but in very different ways.

To adjust the light do the following.
Find the symbols that appear on the colour control panel on your camera.Select the most suitable symbol for the type of light that occurs. If everything is mixed light use the automatic light adjustment. More sophisticated cameras allow a custom light balance to get the setting right. Colour can be usually further refined by adjusting it in a photo editing programme.

5. SELECT A FILE TYPE
Modern cameras often allow a range of picture (file) sizes to be chosen. The size you choose heavily influences what you can easily use the pictures for after the event. If you choose small jpeg files you will get a lot of pictures on a card but they will only be suitable for email and phone pictures. If you want to make photographic prints from the pictures you need to make large files. The best quality files are Raw files usually available on better cameras. You would have to acquire some knowledge of photography to process these.

6. CHOOSE AN ISO NUMBER
ISO is an index of the speed that the chip in your camera responds to light. A high ISO number gives a fast response at the expense of some degradation in the quality of the images. In strong daylight you would use about 400 ISO. For the smoothest images always set your camera as low as you can, usually 100 ISO. Outside, on a changeable day, I would use 400 ISO, or 100 IS0 in strong sunshine. I would probably use this setting for indoor pictures supported by a flash gun.
For pictures taken at night use a very high ISO index number(6400 ISO)because the level of light is very low. At this ISO level the quality of the image begins to degrade. Noise (random wrongly coloured pixels) can be seen in big enlargements. This can be minimised in image processing programs.

• 100 ISO Normal setting. Sunny day outside.
• 400 ISO  Overcast days outside. Well lit interiors
• 1000 ISO Very dull day, Under trees in deep shade.
• 6400 ISO  Twilight. Well lit streets at night. You might need a tripod for some subjects.

7. BATTERY CONSERVATION
Switching your camera off and on continually depletes the battery quite quickly. If better to leave it switched on and let the battery conservation system temporarily switch off.

8. PROTECT YOUR CAMERA.
Keep your camera in a decent bag that will protect it if it is dropped. Lots of photographers protect the lens by fitting a screw in UV filter. This makes very little difference to the to the images visually and can be cheaply replaced if scratched.
Do not leave it in the sun for a long period of time.

Make all of the above checks before you start each shooting session. Although photos can now be modified considerably after they are taken it can be complex and skilled work to do well. Get it right in the camera!
I've forgotten to do most of the above at sometime or other. Try to find a quiet space to check your camera over before a shoot.

Photographing white paper.

Photographing white paper.

I get a number of interesting requests for help with photo projects that grow out of the one day short courses that I run in my studio.(www.david-turner-photography.co.uk ) Many of my customers run small Internet businesses of one form or another. This problem came from a man who was well informed about the technical aspects of photography and had set up a website to sell high quality sheets of paper suitable for use by artists, craft workers and designers. I think he must have been using some form of template website that allowed only small samples to be shown in his website shop.
The problem was that a sheet of white paper, irrespective of its high quality and hand made attributes, doesn't look very exciting as a small square on a website. Grey paper, looks even worse.
Like most of my customers he had a selection of bits of lighting equipment acquired over the years that he was trying to use. Some of the equipment he had been sold wasn't very suitable for the job it had to do.They were fluorescent light bulbs of the coiled type.These can be successfully used on static subject matter where a very soft light is needed.
The problem was that a hard light was needed to bring out the texture on the art paper surface.Usually people have problems creating soft lighting. This one was the other way round. If there is a moral to this storey it should be that good information is best obtained before you buy equipment. It is equally true to say that situations change over time and one bit of gear cannot solve all of your problems.

Planning studio lighting effects. Hat shoot

 You might think that photographing a few hats was a simple problem. To get the results shown here two very separate lighting systems were involved. The studio was divided  into background light and lighting to show the qualities of the hats.
Lighting kits for studio work usually come with a few different ways of controlling the spread of the light umbrellas, soft boxes, snoots etc. To get the best out of each subject its important the the light shading is carefully matched to the qualities of the objects being photographed. In this particular case all of the hats had a wide range of surface textures plus  the model's hair and complexion. Rather than opting for large umbrellas or solftboxes that render a smoothing effect on the lighted subject I chose to use a range of honeycomb filters fitted over the lights on the model.

 A honeycomb grid looks exactly like it sounds: is a filter made with hexagonal tubes placed over the flash unit. The tubes or cells are available in a number of different sizes that control the spread of the light. Honeycombs were originally marketed as an economical substitute for a focusing spot light. They have one quality that makes them useful for this type of work. The edge line with a spot is always focused and hard whereas the edge rendered by a honeycomb tends to be soft.  The size of the light patch is also fairly easy to control. The slightly harsher light brings out the texture in the hat surfaces. In all of the pictures shown three honeycomb grids were used. The first was a large size grid over the front of a small soft box casting an overall soft light on the model. This was placed at about 45 degrees above the model and established the overall lighting of the picture. To this I added another two flash units both fitted with honeycombs to highlight certain aspects of each hat. Below I've shown a closeup to give a better indication of of what the prints really look like. The real beauty of the textiles used can be appreciated from the A4 prints made from file.
Thanks to Felicity Hat Hire of Beaconsfield and (www.felicity.co.uk) for supplying the hats and to Paris De Reuck for modeling them.