By the time you’re seeing this (for those of you in the United States, at least), I’ll be through eating lunch in Madrid , and probably looking for a pillow for a quick siesta. For the next 16 days, I’ll be teaching a travel photography course across this beautiful country. This course also coincides with a special topics in Spanish media class led by Dr. Kent Wilkinson, an insanely intelligent scholar and fantastic educator who has spent a good deal of his career living in Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas. We have a great group of eager estudiantes along for the ride, although some are still working out the kinks that comes along with jet lag.

Throughout the next 16 days, expect various posts regarding the trip, the cultural and travel photography we embrace, and any other tip, rant, or blooper worth jotting down!

More to come…now, to find that pillow…

Hasta luego!

I met Baron Batch at a show I was playing with the Hogg Maulies in Lubbock nearly a year ago. I didn’t know much about him at that time other than his work on the football field. That night, I found out he is also a photographer and writer, and since then, we’ve been able to hang out quite a bit, talk shop, discuss life, and eat a few lunches (generally my favorite meal of the day).

Baron’s also highly involved with I Am Second, an organization focused on providing inspirational life stories from a wide variety of people that have re-concentrated their focus away from thinking inward and toward God and a more Christian lifestyle. Baron’s involvement with I Am Second is and has been notable, inspiring a weekly column in the Lubbock daily newspaper and several appearances at organization events across the nation. We’ve talked about this involvement quite a bit, as well as his dedication to use his skills as a photographer and communicator for humanitarian purposes. In fact, he’s headed to Haiti in less than a month to visually document a mission trip he’s involved with.

In one of our recent conversations, I told Baron I’d love to post his I Am Second video on this site, but I needed to have some original portraits to go along with it. We set up a time, shot for four hours, moving from the harvested cotton fields of West Texas to the studio, and produced some nice images. The shot above turned out as our joint favorite, and it was the very first TEST shot of the evening. Some things just happen well as accidents!

I’ll have more about our shoot in an upcoming Field Lighting, but I want to showcase Baron’s message in one of the several I Am Second videos available on their site. Whether you’re religious (no matter what type of religion) or not, we can all appreciate and learn from messages such as this one and the others. In the spirit of the season, I think it’s appropriate to reflect outwardly, realizing there are many, many things about this life that we don’t understand (and don’t have to understand), yet we’re directed to where we’re going at whatever speed we’re moving. I happen to agree with my friend Baron here:

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S17t6-YQ7T0

Sorry about the two week plus hiatus. It’s been a whirlwind of shoots, photo prep, and finishing out the teaching semester at Texas Tech. However, as my good friend Sabrina Henry wanted to do, there’s no need to send the search party yet! More to come!

I just noticed that it’s been nearly a month since my last Field Lighting post! So much for the weekly series, ha! If you read my last post, you’ll know I’ve spent much of the past month inside a vehicle and not at home base. The good thing is that all the time on the road allows me to at least brainstorm some new projects and blog posts, including this one.

I was on assignment to photograph a few satellite campuses for Texas Tech University, and like all photographers that are about to take an extensive road trip to do so, I made sure to search for any existing images of the subjects. One building in particular presented a challenge. It wasn’t incredibly interesting from the outside, but at the same time, it wasn’t bad either. It was previously a temporary location for a church, and like some temporary-turned-permanent structures, it just didn’t have the flair that some buildings have. However, this wasn’t the challenge. What really bothered me was actually the season! The front of the building faced North, which during the winter in this hemisphere would have been fine. However, during the summer, the sun rises and sets more in the South, leaving the front of this building clothed in shadows the entire day. This made attractive exposures (ones without underexposed foregrounds and overexposed skies) during the golden hours impossible with just natural light.

So, what to do, what to do? I knew I didn’t want to photograph it during the day. At the same time, the building was two stories, and fairly large. Too large for me to completely light with what lights I did have efficiently (three Canon speedlites and two Elinchrom Quadra packs). I finally decided to light the building with a single light. Yes, a single light. Like I said, the structure wasn’t the most artistically-attractive, so why try to light all of it? Why not focus on highlighting what is important and using other compositional and lighting features to draw the eye?

I waited until about 20 minutes after sunset, and after setting the camera on a tripod and on a 10-second timer tripped with a shutter release cable, I took my first exposure. I exposed for the sky, knowing that I didn’t want to overexpose any of it, and rather underexpose it by 2/3 to a full stop (finally settled on 2 seconds @ f/10, ISO 400) in order to saturate the colors of the ambient blues. I tripped the shutter, and ran up and hid behind the fountain in front of the building.

During the subsequent exposures (I had to listen carefully for the mirror flap), I would trip the diffused flash (that I was holding in my hands) manually. I did this for a couple shots, changing the output on the flash until I knew my exposure on the front of the building was looking good on the histogram.

After adjusting for the flash exposure on the building, I got to a great baseline for the shot. The only problem was my foreground, which leant a lot to the overall composition and framing of the shot, was not lit very well with the ground decor lamps nearby. So, I did what I could without worrying about tripping two flashes (I was quickly losing my light in the Southwest): I pulled my vehicle up close to the curb at a near-parallel angle, and turned my dims on. I learned to use car lights from Jim Richardson at a lecture I was fortunate enough to attend in Milwaukee years ago.

Even better, the lights from the vehicle are warmer in tone than the light hitting the building (and those lights in the building), providing a contrast of tones and visual draw to the image. In retrospect, the building is kind of small for the overall image, but by framing it with a wider-angle lens in such a way negates keystoning and brings a bit more of the environment to the shot, especially since daytime shots would not look near as interesting!

This shot was basically an in-field examination of what could be done to provide an image to my clients that didn’t seem like I just walked in and shot it. Instead, it allowed me to work with the different light sources (ambient, speedlite, and headlights) in order to create more impact, contrast, and color that would not be available during the day. This technique is basically the same as lighting someone up against the sunset. In this case, it was just a building.

Light is light, it always has been, and it always will be, no matter what source produces illuminance. It’s really just a matter of getting comfortable with how light works that making the decision to use a vehicle’s headlights isn’t totally out of the question! Don’t be limited by what you don’t have. Use what is available in ways that work for you, your images, and more importantly, your subjects…but you might avoid shining that 2-million candle power spotlight into a model’s eyes!

The Junction courses are about to wrap up, and although there are many photos and stories to share, getting to sleep four hours every night is catching up on us! So, I’ll just share a shot of my class, the A-Team! I ended up with four in the videography course, and they are working their butts off! We paired up with Wyman Meinzer’s photography course for 95 percent of the shoots, and hopefully I’ll have images up from the flash flood we caught today soon!

With that, more to come! Enjoy the action above!

Our first and second day at Junction saw us shooting quite a bit of flower work. The rain has come pretty regularly, and we take advantage of the overcast skies by shooting on a macro level. I’m engrossed in high-speed sync flash work again, and I’m finding a few inhabitants along the way. Macro work is such a great exercise in patience and creativity, not to mention technique: FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS!

We do not go without having fun though! Macro videography can put you on the narrative level of an otherwise inconspicuous creature. Below is a few quick shots of a caterpillar my class named Tim…

Have Sixteen Legs, Will Travel from Jerod Foster on Vimeo.

More to come. We shot a cattle branding today on the Llano River Ranch, and we even had a student participate! I might even have a video of the high-speed sync flash work up later…

Early mornings and late nights, little sleep, and awesome light! Wyman Meinzer and I are back in Junction, and over the next 15 days, I’ll try to keep the site posted with little asides from our adventures with 15 college students, all of them here to dive deep in visual creativity! It’s an extremely productive two weeks, and the most gratifying aspect of the trip is to see the transformation many students undergo with their craft and passion! Annually, we see Texas Tech students, as well as students from across the nation (literally, non-traditional as well) come away with new, or re-newed, senses of their abilities, confidence, aesthetic, and general vigor for shooting!

Look for more on the site in the next several days! I received the Zoom H4n today, and just playing around with it for a little bit has completely blown me away in terms of sound quality! I’ll have more to post on this nice piece of multimedia gear later!

The above shot was the first thing I saw this morning as I was walking around campus! More to come!

When I posted last about James Watkins’s hands, it struck me that most of the posts regarding lighting and photoshoots (in my world at least) revolve around using some sort of artificial lighting technology. I love using lights, and if you’ve read this blog enough, you’ll know that I’m a diligent user of several gonzo-sized sticks of dynamite-like photons, er, I mean studio and flash strobe systems.

What doesn’t get paid its due in this world of gear, gear, and more gear, are those times when “lights” aren’t needed. Take for example the photograph in the previous post. Uninhibited by gear, I was left able to just simply find the light. Although it doesn’t present itself to be as simple as we all would really want, when you do find it, you’re more likely to find it later! I was shooting an assignment for a magazine on the art classes held every summer in Junction, and I spent a great deal of time working in the pottery class, taking advantage of the beautiful, directionally diffused light coming in through the screen windows (below is a shot of the interior of the studio where the class was working). The shot in the previous posts, as well as the one above and one below were taken of Mr. Watkins in the right-hand corner of the building you see here. Non-directional light flowing in from everywhere, and the highlight kicker touching his hands came from the window to which he was sitting closest.

Directionally diffused lighting that occurs naturally offers soft, wrapping light that is more subdued in intensity, giving your camera (and you) a break in dynamic range limitations. The values in the shadows and highlights come a bit closer, and you’re able to capture detail in both areas more easily as opposed to shooting outside in direct sunlight at high noon (blech). In essence, it’s a naturally occurring softbox or scrim.

And this light rocks! It can be soft and subdued, or even more dramatic, particularly when it is more directional, such as the shot below taken in the evening. Notice that nice highlight on the artist’s hands.

Basically, this light is coming from behind and nearly level (in terms of the sun) with the window it is passing through. That nice, warm evening light makes everything dramatically tangible, and it’s something that many folks using artificial lights strive to recreate! Hats off to those who do!

So there, it’s always a good practice to review the light given to you naturally, particularly if you’re on assignment and needing to move faster than your assistant (or yourself). In this case, I don’t think artificial lighting would have done this work any justice, especially given the subject and his artwork!

That’s right, an HD video/documentary course, in Junction, Texas, Texas Tech University satellite campus, May 12 – May 27. If you are frequent readers, you know I’m a photography instructor (of sorts) at Texas Tech University, and for five years now, I have been teaching a field photography course with Wyman Meinzer at the Junction, Texas, campus. This year, we’ve decided to test out a new course in high-definition video. I’m basing it off of the foundations of the photography course, which is “get your feet wet working like a professional.” For 15 days, students and instructors alike work tirelessly, pursuing the story of the land and the people on it. Each year is a treat, finding ourselves with a new bunch of students and some familiar and veteran areas of the state to point our lenses. We travel well over 1,000 miles during our 15 days, and we see a lot of country. If the video/documentary course turns out anything like the photography course, and it should (we’re going along with them), then it’s bound to be a challenging, yet inspiring, experience for all parties involved.

If there’s anything that can be said about our classes in Junction, it’s one of the only times you can receive that much one-on-one mentoring for the price (which by the way, is a great deal more affordable than other workshops). Also, you don’t have to be a TTU student now to take the course (that’s right, this is sort of a pitch). However, before you sign up, you will have to submit an application to Tech, a formality, to be enrolled in the course. If anything (if you have a degree or not), you’ll get three hours of college credit in 15 days. How cool is that!?

If you’re interested, please shoot me an e-mail. I’m sure there’s some technical details I left out, but I can dig up anything!

Dr. Robert Paine, a forensic anthropologist at the university, amazed me when we got to talking about the skull he is holding in the above image. To be brief, he described it as a multiple gunshot incident, and he explained to me that inferring from the hairline crack in the skull from the first shot, that it was definitely a homicide. I couldn’t do his explanation justice here, and in light of being accurate, I’ll leave it at that.

What I can explain, however, is the lighting! The idea for the story was to create edgy images, but not necessarily in the same light that you would see those characters on a CSI television show. That being said, it was important to interestingly tell the visual story of a science dealing with a certain unique character about it. The shot above is a composite of two images that I used to show the editor what was being shot, but both images were shot with exactly the same setup. The main light was a 39-inch Elinchrom Rotalux Octa placed behind, above, and to camera left of the subject. This kept the spill from invading the black background, which is essentially the black reflector up against a chalkboard. The second, “kicker” light on camera right was created by a Canon 580EX speedlite, gelled blue for the skull shot alone. It was powered less than the main light, used only as a tool to create an edge against the background and throw a little different color in to the mix.

I can’t ever leave the scene without a close-up, and it’s always good to take the subject’s facial characteristics in to consideration. Dr. Paine has a fairly unique face, and one rad beard. Same lighting, just a play on composition in the shoulders, and you have a quick and easy (and different) headshot.

Here’s a diagram photo (sorry for quality, iPhone pic):

As well as a backed out setup shot:

I have some more from this story, but I thought this would be a nice introduction to the lighting that went on. Simple, yet effective and dramatic!

Thanks to Dr. Robert Paine for allowing me to make a few portraits of him. It was incredibly interesting to hear him speak about what he does and how he does it!

Let’s face it: often times as a photographer, you’re pressed for time. Hopefully you’re never late for a shoot, but when we start working with light and other people, we’re involved with highly dynamic variables. On a clear day, light is pretty predictable, but sometimes that sneaky set of clouds will set in right before sunset, and you’ve lost the shot you were looking for, only to find another (again, hopefully). And people, well…will always be people, you included! The point of all this is that sometimes, you only have a small window of opportunity to get the shot you need!

Ever since I made this portrait, I keep going back to it, remembering how much pressure there was to get the shot under the particular environmental conditions. Randall Jeter, Ph.D., is a bacterial geneticist at Texas Tech University, and I was photographing him for a university research publication a couple of years back. Instead of photographing him in his lab with the prototypical white lab coat on and a microscope nearby, I decided to put him in a field of spring wheat. I couldn’t begin to intelligently explain what Dr. Jeter researches (if you want to find out, click here), but after we spoke on the phone the day before, I had an idea that part of his agenda was analyzing the water on the Southern High Plains. So, where else but an irrigated field would work the best!

OK, talk about working fast (this is why I love reflectors). It was windy. Real windy! Speedlites and umbrellas/softboxes are out of the question in West Texas when the wind is blowing over 20 mph, I don’t care how much weight you have on the stands. Luckily, I had two assistants in tow for this shoot, and each of them grabbed a reflector. I don’t go anywhere without a Westcott 6-in-1 reflector set (I like the 42″ version), and in quick situations like this, it comes in super handy!

So, how was this shot put together? The subject was standing with his back to the sun, which was coming in from extreme back and right. It was coming in at so much of a direct angle, that I was a bit afraid of overexposing the sky, but it held. Next, one assistant standing in line with the sun on camera left, bounced light into Dr. Jeter with the daylight reflector. The other assistant (standing  barely to camera right) used one of the diffuser panels included with the reflector kit to bounce much, much softer light back in to the dark shadows the initial reflector created. The key here was not to bounce to much fill light in, taking away the drama in the light. I used a telephoto lens to draw that background in a bit, making sure the background served a compositional and storytelling purpose for the shot, and that’s it!

We were done with this location in less than five minutes. Thank goodness for reflectors!