Aliens And My Grandfather (would be a cool name for a band!)

Here’s a quick look at what I’m doing when I travel to a shoot.

This is me all hunky dory (maybe not hunky, but you know what I mean):

This is me when I see something up ahead on the horizon that looks like it may delay me, non-photographically, from my destination (I hate being late to a shoot)!

This is me when that something turns out to be an alien spacecraft actually sent here to delay my arrival (man, what now…)

And this is me getting back on schedule after exchanging e-mail addresses and Twitter information (they’re up-to-date as well, how do you think they were able to get here, by being behind?).

Alright, a little jocularity is needed at this point. Besides, I can’t let Joe McNally take all the fun out of traveling (see his most recent post and you’ll know what I’m talking about).

But, on a more serious, photographic-related topic, I recently used Blurb to put together a present for my grandparents. Blurb, among other similar services, offers a pretty nice product in the way of books that you put together and “publish,” and they’re product can be found employed by both amateurs and professionals alike. Anyways, the book I created is titled “Meadows Ranch: A Summer in Cottondale.” I grew up on a family-owned and operated cattle ranch, and I owe so much of what I do and who I am today to this experience! It really is such a pleasure going back home to visit, and even more so as a photographer. In this book, I basically just documented the visual side of the ranch during a very nice summer period. I also included shots of the family, groups and individuals. I tried making the book seem as much like a book that my publishing house would produce as possible.

Among the portraits in the book, one stands out quite a bit:

I have taken several portraits of my grandfather, one that I definitely like more than this one (it also includes my grandmother), but this one really stands out with the included content and lighting. Why? Probably because I’m a photographer, and I associate with many other like individuals, and they notice the artificial lighting, whether it’s good or bad. What’s more important to the photograph is not how the subject was lit, this can be figured out (although I’ll tell you), but rather the content of the portrait and what it means in overall perception of the subject. I absolutely love the clouds in the background, and while the sun had not yet set, it was behind the clouds, throwing off some nice colors if the exposure was made for the sky. This particular aspect of the photograph adds strength, a characteristic I associate with this man (he can outwork anyone half his age in a full day and still be ready when it’s time for those late night calvings and equipment mishaps). The tractor, well, let’s just say that there’s really nothing that “Runs Like A Deere” on the ranch!

OK, so, to get the photograph (and if you’ve been following Strobist’s Lighting 101 lately, you’ve already figured it out), you need to make an extreme exposure for the sky. By this, I mean underexpose your ambient until those colors really become saturated. Don’t worry about what happens in the foreground, you’re going to bring that back with the use of artificial light. Without any artificial light used, this is what the base exposure will look like:

When I took this photograph, my Dad was standing by, so I grabbed him and used him as a lightstand. He held a Canon 430EX Speedlite with a diffuser just camera right (actually, about six feet camera right). I used a Canon 580EX Speedlite to master the smaller flash, changing the power output until I had a great looking exposure according to my histogram (nothing blowing out, skin tones where they should be, etc.).

That’s it! A simple, quick (took about a minute and a half to get exactly what I wanted and could get at the time) portrait that has quite a bit of punch! So what about that nasty shadow underneath the brim of his cap? And what about all the dark areas that the light does not open up? That’s the beauty about content vs. technique. Granted, I wasn’t near much gear at the time, so the shadow underneath the cap had to stay, and it doesn’t really bother me. That particular shadow just adds to the “power” feel of the light that is actually being used to compliment the frame. The shadow areas in the rest of the picture, I wasn’t worried about them to begin with. I wanted PaPa to be the subject matter you focus on, being framed by this nice degradation of light intensity around him. Again, if I was going for something other than sheer strength and power in the photograph, I probably would have tried to bring more detail back to to the frame, but that wasn’t the point of what I had in mind.

It really does come down to content in the image, what we are trying to communicate. Like Bill Zelman said on Strobist the other day (paraphrased of course), it’s a necessity to know your gear inside and out so you don’t have to think about it when you are trying to acheive something more meaningful through your photographic and creative vision!

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 12:08 am and is filed under Blog, Learning, People, Teachings and tagged with Agriculture, Cottondale, Farmer, Lighting, Paradise, Rancher, Texas, Tractor. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.