Diary of Photography

The Last Light, Last Night...

2011-08-23T16:49:00.003-05:00

The concept behind this photo came to me while I was thinking about a layout for a photo. It started as a guy sitting on a bed blowing out a candle. Just a really simple serene image. The phrase "The Last Light" popped into my head, and had a nice ring. Oftentimes, I like to make the titles for my images have a catchy feel to them... sometimes I'll have harsh consonants, sometimes I'll use softer words, sometimes a little bit of rhyme or alliteration. So I thought about the scene and decided to add "Last Night" to the end "The Last Light, Last Night"... perfect. But then I started to think about what was the "Last Light". At face value it is the candle... but what if I take it just a bit further... Technically, light has to travel from point A to point B. So wouldn't it be interesting if you could take a photo of a candle being extinguished, and your timing of the shutter was so precise that you captured it where the candle was out, but the last bit of traveling light was still illuminating something (in this case, the subject's face). The final image was how I wanted it to be, but I would have loved to explore further a method for showing that last bit of traveling light. I think there might be a way to illustrate it afterward with some graphical work in post-processing. Or, if this scene were painted or drawn I could also think of ways to depict it. But for now, I'll consider this a "scratchpad" concept, and how I've captured it and titled it will be in my portfolio to review at some point in the future.

Day 355 of 365 - The Overflow Room At The Brenisher Museum Of Art

2011-08-03T10:05:00.003-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

This is probably one of my favorite "trick shots" that I've done with long exposure techniques. The picture on the stairs is a picture of me, but the picture actually doesn't exist. No, I didn't photoshop myself onto that picture, I was actually standing/squatting just in front of the stairs. When the shutter opened, I manually fired the flash (which was gridded to only illuminate me), which then superimposed me onto the black piece of foam core that is on that picture frame. Then I quickly got out of the shot, and let the ambient light burn in the rest of the scene for the next 30 seconds. So it really is a single-take image, carefully engineered to take advantage of how darks and lights render when mixing flash with ambient light.

Day 283 of 365 - Decisions...

2011-06-23T16:17:00.002-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

This was a very fun shoot. Although, the mosquitos were NAS-TEE! My assitant and I walked around through the woods looking for the perfect size tree to use in this. The tree needed to fit between a normal-sized human's legs comfortably... not too wide, not too narrow. We lucked out and found this one right next to the path (which is what I was hoping to have). I get the general framing and composition figured out, then we setup a reflector on the left to highlight the runner's arm and leg on the shadow side.

My first goal is always to get the "standard" shot. The "standard" shot, is the simplest form of the final image that I would accept. In other words, even though my ultimate goal in this shot was to have the earbuds and water bottle flying, my first goal was to just get a good shot of the runner smacking into the tree without those other elements. Just getting that "standard" shot is all I need to know that technically I am done, and everything we do beyond that is experimentation. But hopefully, the experimentation is successful and ends up with the ultimate shot.

The breakdown of this shot is as follows... The runner is sitting on a stool behind the tree. A tiny bit of the stool was sticking out, and was easily post-processed out. Behind the runner, my assistant was crouched down and threw the earbuds when I told him to. The assistant was also slightly sticking out from behind the tree, so he was post-processed out as well.

Day 281 of 365 - Night, By Door...

2011-06-23T16:08:00.002-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

There's nothing I enjoy more than the challenge of modifying existing lighting. Especially when it's really crappy lighting that you cannot move (like street lights or lighted business signs). It took me a while to get things setup to look the way I wanted them to look. One of the bigger challenges was getting the red interior light to be the intensity I wanted it to be. After all, my two most significant light sources (the red interior light and the outdoor spot light) are both constant light sources and are both governed by the shutter. So, I had to move the diffusion panel closer/further from the light source to achieve the correct balance.

And of course, right when I nailed my "hero shot", I realized that the neighbor had come outside and their motion-light went on, leaving a wonderful specular highlight on the windows of the door on the left. And of course, the timer on their motion light was set to 10-minutes, so I just stood there doing nothing until it finally went off.

Day 280 of 365 - About Falling Off Wagons...

2011-06-23T16:02:00.003-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

Every so often I do a complete shoot, tear it down, and then end up having to set it all back up and re-shoot it. This is one of those. After reviewing the first round of images, I thought it would be funny to have Little Johnny pointing back at me and laughing (as shown in the final image). However, while setting everything up the second time, I realized that the original camera angle wasn't going to show Little Johnny's face as much as I would have liked it to. It seemed as though the whole composition would have to be re-thought, but I wasn't much in the mood because Little Johnny had enough already. So, I just shot it like this and left it.

Day 277 of 365 - The Final Presentation of False Emotions

2011-06-23T15:58:00.004-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

I was anticipating getting this photo complete in the early afternoon, as I had great natural light coming in through the window, and had worked out the framing and composition. But, I had to pick my son up from school. I didn't want to have to reconstruct the "scene", so I put masking tape everywhere to mark the position of the table, chairs, tripod, etc... that way if Little Johnny moved them when he got home I could move them right back. I wasn't able to re-visit this shot until later in the evening, so I had to figure out how to get light similar to what I was getting through the window earlier in the day. It took a little while to get it squared-away, but it wasn't rocket science. The biggest challenge of this shot was getting the knife at the right angle so that it's edge was highlighted. Ultimately I wanted the whole blade highlighted, but liked it much better with just the edge.

Day 273 of 365 - Distorted Point of View

2011-05-13T15:20:00.005-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

This photo has been mulling around in my brain for a number of weeks. I've had lots of different versions of what I wanted to attempt, but couldn't really focus on any one idea in particular, so I just left it stew in my head for a while. About a week ago I decided it was time to acquire a mirror so that I would have it available for whenever I decided it was time to do the shot.

(I'm going to sidetrack for a second and talk about mirrors and photography... I highly recommend that when using a mirror for photographic purposes that you stay away from the mirrors that have beveled edges. Bevels cause a lot of problems because they show things along the edges of the mirror that aren't in the composition. I'm not saying you CAN'T get them to work, I'm just saying they can cause a lot of frustration that's just not worth dealing with.)

I still didn't really have a good solid idea on the day I decided to use the mirror. I mean, I had kind of whittled it down to one or two versions, but neither was necessarily better than the other. In the end, the final shot wasn't really any of the top contenders that I had floating around in my brain. In other words, the session was more improvisational than anything... which I'll talk about in a minute.

Breaking a mirror... I'm a somewhat skeptical and cautious person. So when it comes to breaking a mirror, I'm not necessarily thinking about "how" to break the mirror, I'm thinking about "what could go wrong" as a result of breaking the mirror. So the first thing I decided to do was search the internet to see if anybody out there had advice about breaking mirrors. The first tip I found was to duct tape the back of the mirror. I was pretty sure that needed to be done, but this was good confirmation for my skeptical nature. Without the duct tape the pieces will all be loose and will just fall out all over the place. The duct tape keeps it all together. Outside of that, I really didn't find anything else on the Internet that pertained to my situation. It took me about 30 minutes to duct tape the mirror (because god-forbid the pieces of duct tape not be properly aligned). First I ran strips side-by-side vertically across the back of the mirror, then I did the same horizontally just in case. The next biggest struggle was deciding where I was going to hit the mirror. It was actually quite frustrating, even though it seems quite simple, but where the mirror is struck could play into what the story of the photo is. For example, if I was going to punch the mirror I would probably have the main break in the middle, or if I wanted it to look like I hit my head against it I would have the main break higher. But, as I said before, I hadn't really decided what the story was going to be, and that's why it was a struggle. You have to remember too, that once it is broken it is broken... you can't do it over without going and buying another mirror. So in the end I decided to put the break a little higher, and I would just make it work somehow. The physical act of breaking the mirror was more difficult than I expected. I thought just a firm tap on the back with a hammer would do it, as I wanted to make sure I didn't put a hole through it... but it ultimately took quite a whack to get it to break.

Once the mirror was set I just needed to figure out what I was going to do. I went through a series of setups, but none really inspired me until I did the fist-punching one. I spent probably 30 minutes figuring out the hand, elbow, body, head, and eye positions in the composition. I use visual cues to help me line-up consistently each time, and it usually works pretty well. For example, I always put my feet in the exact same spot, I place my knuckles in the same place, I close my right eye and just use my left eye to look at a particular crack in the mirror and make sure I can see the camera lens line up a certain way in relation to that crack. I got a couple keeper (safe) shots, so I moved on to doing shots with more facial emotion, such as laughing deviously, yelling, etc... Again, I got a couple keep (less safe) shots, so I moved on to one more idea I wanted to try. I grabbed a bowl of sugar and proceeded to use my right hand to throw a small amount at my left hand immediately before the shutter released. The hope was to make it look like a little bit of mirror debris was flying through the air. It actually looked decent, but I wanted more variety in the size of the debris, so I used some purple crushed glass. That's right, I said "purple"... it's all I had available. Looking at the preview on the back of my camera, I decided not to stress about the purple crushed glass, because it was the only purple in the photo and I figured I could adjust the color of it in post-processing (which is exactly what I did). The diffcult part of throwing the crushed glass isn't the timing, because I've done enough throwing of stuff in my 365 that I kind of have the hang of it. Instead, the problem I ran into was that the physical act of throwing something made it very difficult to keep my head position steady so that my left eye was in an intact area of the mirror (that is, that my eye wasn't landing on a crack). But in the end, once I realized this was a problem and focused on trying to stay still while throwing, it only took a handful of shots to get some keepers. So I decided I had enough, and it was time to wrap it up for the night. I took a photo of the lighting setup, then headed to the computer to select an image and process it.

Post-processing was actually very straight-forward. I don't think I did any blemish correction on myself or anything in the scene. The brunt of the post-processing work was really spent getting the colors the way I wanted them to be, and making some adjustments to shadow areas so that things looked good from a contrast-perspective. Then, of course, I had to deal with the purple crushed glass... so I added a "hue/satuation" layer, set the color I wanted to affect to "magenta", adjusted the range of magenta I wanted to affect, desaturated it, lightened it, and shifted the hue slightly until I had something more neutral (gray/white). I didn't need to mask anything off in order to change the crushed glass color, because (as I had mentioned earlier) there was nothing else in the image that was purple. I did sharpen the photo a little heavier than normal, as I wanted to cracks in the mirror to really pop and look sharp (literally), but overall the post-processing didn't take very long at all.

Day 272 of 365 - A Prelude To Dreams

2011-05-13T14:08:00.005-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

A couple people asked about more information about this photo, so I'll give a somewhat short-and-sweet rundown of the image.

Lighting is a 28-inch softbox to the left and up high, aimed toward the camera. Another light is off to the right and bounced off the floor.

The pose was a little tricky because I wanted to make it look like I was falling, so I had to lean quite far back without actually falling. I had worked out the hand/arm positions ahead of time, and I really needed to get them in the right place for it to look like I wanted it to look. And this is where it got tricky, because... I took a swig of water and kept it in my mouth, started the timer on the camera, got into position and posed the lower part of my body, about 1 second before the timer went off I blew/sprayed the water out of my mouth, and then I had to complete the upper-body pose before the camera took the shot.

In post-processing I used my own variation of a cross-processing technique, leaning a little more to a blue-ish hue/tint. The more I looked at the photo, the more the water spray reminded me of a galaxy or night-sky filled with stars... so on a whim I added a blank layer, set the blending mode to "overlay" then painted pink blotches at about 10%, 20%, and 30% opacity. Then I would go back with the eraser and erase areas at 10%, 20%, and 30% opacity until it looked good. Because it was "overlay" mode, the pink actually turned blue. I liked the blue, but wanted to complete the "galaxy" thing by adding pink, so I added another blank layer (this type leaving the blending mode as "normal") and once again lightly painted and erased pink until I liked how it looked.

Day 115 of 365 - Life Does Not Seem Real

2010-12-06T14:01:00.004-06:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

This was a shot I've been wanting to try for a while. Well, not necessarily this exact shot, but something along these lines. I'd have to say it was probably mostly inspired by the "Chasing Reflections" eBook by Eli Reinholdtsen (through the Craft & Vision series). The author's style in that book is a little more in the realm of "street photography" (which isn't really my thing), so I wanted to put my own spin on it.

I have had these windows lying around for quite a few weeks now (procrastinating on the project that caused me to pull them out), so I grabbed one and started doing some test shots. I was liking the results, so I moved down into the basement and started to put this together.

Time was a huge enemy of mine on this shoot. I didn't get started shooting for my 365 project until 11pm, and by the time I got around to testing out this window it was 11:30pm... I needed to get moving or it'd be another late night of shooting... and it was.

When I finally decided how I wanted to approach this photo, working the camera-angle out took a bit of time. I'm not only trying to get the window propped [compositionally] at a good spot and a good angle, but it's position will also dictate where the camera needs to be in order to get the reflection correctly composed. I'd be willing to bet it took nearly 20 to 30 minutes to resolve the camera angle.

While the camera angle was being worked out, I was also getting the main light in place. This was absolutely necessary to do at the same time, because I knew there was a chance there would be a conflict of the angle and the reflection and the position of the lightstand. Eventually, the lightstand became a annoyance that I didn't want to compete with, so I chose to double-super-clamp it from the ceiling.

The part of this shoot that I totally didn't anticipate, was [light] metering. I've been using a light meter pretty religiously for the past few months, and wanted to make sure my light-ratios were good on this one as well. However, I quickly found that a metering on the subject translates differently when that is captured as a reflection on glass. I'm guessing I would have had to use a different type of metering (metering off the glass instead of at the subject), so I ditched the light-meter and went with my gut.

I could have easily spent another 2 hours working on this shot. It was an awesome challenge to take on, and I can think of many other things I would have like to have tried. But, again, time is an enemy... and I whittled my sleep down to a measily 2 hours (oops).

Day 110 of 365 - Der Ain't Nutin' Like Fishin' Fer Some Dirty LaundryOn A Tuesday Night

2010-12-01T09:15:00.005-06:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

One of the quicker photos I've done in my 365... from coming-up with the concept, to packing-up the gear, it was about 25 minutes. Not too often things come together this well.

There's actually quite a story behind this photo. Many of the elements in the photo represent some pretty deep/strong meanings. Although, I won't expand on them anymore than that.

I couldn't have gotten much luckier finding a decent piece of long grass to chew on. I knew I wanted it in the photo, but with Winter here (it snowed a little on this day... and the next) I knew my chances were slim. But, just outside the back door I found a single long piece of grass in the dark of the night. Good thing too, cause it was damn cold outside.

I wanted the lighting in this one to be very simple and clean. I definitely didn't want it to be the most powerful aspect of the photo. The main goal was to keep the light off the back wall so that it wasn't too distracting. It's a good grungey wall, but that is irrelevant in this particular photo... so I used a softbox to help control the spill, and I'm very happy with the outcome. I also didn't want the scene to be too contrasty, because that would equate to light that wasn't simple/clean, and could potentially alter the message in the photo. So, I added some fill light at about 2-stops down from the key, and feel it was the right amount.

It was tough coming up with a good pose. Actually, I had a few poses I liked, but because I kept the lighting simple/clean, there were some "dimmensional" problems I ran into with some of the poses. Namely, because I didn't use a back-light (rim-light or kicker), the positioning of the far arm (my right arm) looked weird. Even in this photo I think it looks a little weird, even though in reality it doesn't. But, I was willing to accept that in the final photo and just be done with the shoot.

Day 109 of 365 - I Don't Know Who I Am... Anymore

2010-11-30T11:03:00.003-06:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

Today was a rough day for me... I had an early-morning dentist appointment that didn't go so well. The dentist had to re-freeze my mouth 3 times because it just wouldn't take... eventually the work just had to get done... it was painful, really painful. Throughout the day I struggled concentrating on things because my mouth hurt soooo bad. When it came time to start dedicating some thought to my photo of the day, I just didn't have the patience because of my sore mouth.

As I was leaving work, I think the aspirin I took had kicked-in and I was feeling a little better. I walked out to my car and noticed the two street lights in the parking lot. I've noticed them before, but today it was raining and creating a nice glistening surface to reflect all the light... and the gears in my head started turning. I had a couple thoughts in mind, but with the rain coming down still, and me with no good way to protect my camera, I decided to leave those ideas for another day. Instead, I moved myself closer to the entrance of the building to see what I could come up with.

The door of the building has two outdoor lights on it (located camera-left and camera-right in the photo above). I figured they would make good key lights, so I considered standing right between them to create an interesting double-kicker type of look. But, I had just kind of done a photo like that the other day, so I decided to try something else. I knew that there was some technical stuff I could do with the front lights and the street lights back out in the parking lot. So I grabbed my light meter and I found the spot where the front lights were 1-stop brighter than the rear lights. I wanted to manage that ratio closely (and technically) because most times I eyeball it wrong and end-up with problems post-processing (the rim light gets blown-out, or the rim light is too subdued).

Once I found the exact spot where the lights were at the ratio I wanted them to be, I marked the spot. Then I opened the door of the building so that I could put my camera inside (away from the rain), dialed in the settings, and did a couple test shots. Once I had everything looking the way I wanted it in regard to exposure and framing and composition, I setup the camera to do an interval shoot... with 1 picture to be taken every 5 seconds until it had taken 15 photos. This allows me to vary my pose to give me a couple different looks to choose from (without having to keep running back to the camera to set the timer).

So yes... no flashes/strobes used on this photo. It's all available light from the street lights in back (rim light) and the outdoor lights on the building (key light). Actually, technically, the light camera-right was acting as the key light, and the light camera-left was being more of a fill light on the camera-left side of me.

Day 98 of 365 - Then Do Now... What Must Be Done

2010-11-19T13:14:00.002-06:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

The thing that I really enjoy about this photo is the light. I'm not talking necessarily about the quality of the light or anything like that (which is normally what I tend to focus on)... instead I am referring to the role the light plays in this photo. It's the first time (I think) that I treated the light like it was a subject, that it represented "something", as opposed to it just being a tool that illuminates the scene. It's used in this photo as something that has a presence. It is the recipient of the sword, the recipient of the subject's gaze, and responsible for the subject's submissive demeanor.

Day 96 of 365 - KB

2010-11-17T14:57:00.003-06:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

When I got home after doing this photo with Steve, I had one of those moments where I realize just how much goes into a shot like this. Granted, I have a long way to go, but even so, the number of decisions that get made while assembling a photo like this is pretty amazing.

Location selection is always an interesting challenge. And most times once the location has been selected, you go through the arduous chore of cleaning-up. Normally, I don't start cleaning-up until I have a good idea what my framing is going to be. The reason I figure out the rough framing is because I only want to have to clean-up what needs to be cleaned-up. Why spend time moving things that aren't even going to be in the frame? Once we had this spot selected, we moved some obvious things that didn't need to be there. Next I pulled the drawers out a little in order to create some nice leading lines into my subject, and to show the tools which are extremely important regarding the purpose of this photo. Next, there was a boat right next to the subject's leg, so we moved that as far out of the way possible, but even then I had to photoshop some of it out of the right-side of the frame. Next we had to deal with that thing in the background camera-right, next to the subject's head. It's a large black crane-type thing (presumably to lift engines). For the most part, it fit into the context of the photo, but where it didn't fit too well was it's luminosity (or lack of it). It was so black against the white wall, that it was screaming "LOOK AT ME! HEY, LOOK AT ME BACK HERE". Due to the size of that particular piece of equipment, we opted to throw a piece of plastic over it, which greyed it out enough to make it less obvious (although, I'd still like to have subdued it even more). There were a couple boxes against the wall right behind the subject's head that were a bit distracting, we moved those. Off to the camera-left side of the subject's head was a picture on the wall that, once again because it was so dark, had to be removed because of it was a distraction. The top of the toolchest camera-left was a bit bare-looking, so we grabbed a couple items and created a pleasant looking composition. And finally, to fill in a gap and also to make a more pleasant pose for our subject, we stuck that black toolbox under the subject's right arm.

I wanted the subject's pose to be triangular in nature. Accomplishing this was pretty straight-forward, and we really just needed to pull his arms away from his body a bit.

Compositionally, I tried picking a perspective that would cause all the diagonal lines to converge in a pleasant looking way. See that area right above the subject's head where the ceiling and walls all meet? That was done on purpose in order to point at the subject.

The general framing of this was a bit of a bear. I needed to get the tools into the shot, but there was too much stuff on the right and left side of the frame that I didn't want in the shot. So ultimately I chose to stand back a ways, shoot as wide as possible, and then just do a square crop. Had I stepped closer, or zoomed in, I would lose the bottom of the frame and cut off the tools. Similarly, I thought about backing up even more and zooming in, but then I would have to get lower in order to get the drawers in... but, going lower would make it so you'd barely be able to see into the drawers, and make the tools less of the image.

I kept lighting pretty simple on this. This work area had a ton of overhead lights in it. So many, that I easily shot a correctly exposed image at 1/60 f.32 200ISO. The problem just using the available light was that it was all downward light that shadowed his eyes. So, I underexposed the ambient a bit, and bounced a flash off the camera-left wall.

Day 88 of 365 - Just look her in the eyes... then turn and walk away...

2010-11-09T13:29:00.004-06:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

My Day 88 photo was not an easy one at all. I started off with basically zero ideas. Eventually I came up with one that went nowhere fast, and immediately ditched. Next, I started doing a proof-of-concept that I've had rolling around in my head for a while. After about an hour of essentially failure after failure, I abandoned that idea as well. However, within that proof of concept I discovered something that I'm sure I'll use in the future.

Eventually I ended-up in a spot where I've been wanting to shoot for a while. Once again though, I was at a loss regarding what to do. I had already went with a light setup that was unfamiliar to me, in order to inspire new ideas. I changed my shirt and added a tie to try and get a different look going. When I sat up on the couch and grabbed an unlit cigarette... things started to take shape.

I was using a studio light with just a reflector on it, and only utilizing the modelling light (i.e. no flash). Throughout the evening (through all my failures) I had familiarized myself with the lighting pattern that was being created by the light setup. So when I finally came up with a pose and a "mood", I was pretty confident regarding how the light needed to be setup in order to get me what I want.

I turned the light toward the camera for two reasons. First, I actually wanted to create a washed-out look by flaring the lens. I know this kind of stuff can be done in post-processing, but I'm not too big on doing things in post when I can do them "live". I also turned the light toward the camera because I just wanted a small sliver of light on my face. By having the light turned at such a drastic angle, I knew the camera-left side would be in the extreme fall-off of the very edge of the light, and because of the head position the camera-right side of my face wouldn't be directly illuminated. Hence, just a small portion of my face was illuminated. Other than that, I just tried to keep the cigarette so that it was being slightly backlit (rim light) by the main light... so that it wouldn't get lost in the shadows too much. Yet I had to keep the cigarette on the fringes of the light-edge so that it wouldn't get blown-out because of it's proximity to the light.

When all was said-and-done, I spent quite a few hours from start-to-finish on this photo. And I chained smoked 3 cigarettes before I finally got a good photo... which made me a little sick to my stomach, and stunk my house up really good (bad).

Day 81 of 365 - Shadowland

2010-11-02T13:14:00.003-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

The concept behind this photograph came to life when I was in a knick-knacky store and I came across this ornate lantern. The lantern reminded me of something a Tibetan monk would walk around with (not that I know or understand the culture of Tibetan monks). Regardless, a starting image was formed in my head. So, I bought the lantern.

Over a month or so, I developed the concept into something a little more complete. However, there were some issues with the concept, namely how I could physically construct the type of setting I needed to create. I guess at some point it started to feel like a mountain that I wouldn't be able to climb, so it just stayed on my list while I tried to conjure-up ways to get what I wanted.

Desperate for an idea for my 365, I decided to re-visit the lantern, and see if I could adjust the concept into something that was a little more feasible given my time and location constraints. One concern I had based on some test shots I took a few weeks prior, was that the illumination from the candle in the lamp was less than adequate... so I knew that would be a problem I would need to resolve quickly, because it literally is the difference between success and failure.

I decided to start with just ramping-up the ISO... all the way to 6400. That definitely gave the exposure I wanted, and I wasn't too concerned about image noise because I felt it would add to the overall mood of the image. Next, I switched to a tea-light (candle) that had a little longer wick than what I was using. The combination of high ISO and better candle gave me some usable images, so I decided to keep pushing forward.

The other thing I knew I had on my side, was that I knew I would be draping a white cloth over me. The benefit to this is that it actually helps trap and reflect light a little better... almost like a softbox and a reflector all-in-one. Once I added that cloth, not only did the light quality improve slightly, but a "mood" started to form.

At some point in time I knew I would be moving down to the basement to do this photo. Mainly because there was much less chance of me starting the house on fire, but also because it had a more appropriate mood. It was around that time that I remembered the stairs leading into the basement, and I came up with the idea of putting candles on each stair to add background light and "interest".

Everything was going pretty smoothly, even though draping that cloth over me was a complete pain. However, the camera-right side of my body really seemed to be getting too lost in the shadows. So I put a 1-foot tall box slightly behind me and slightly away from me, and placed 3 more candles on it. Those candles gave just a pinch of illumination to my arm/shoulder area... just to show something was there.

Next, came the key. The key is tough because even though it is reflective, it just as easily reflects black... and gets lost very easily. So I had to hold the key in a way where it essentially mirrored the lantern (from the camera's perspective). Many failed photos because of the key, but eventually you get familiar with the correct angle to hold it at.

In total, I used 8 candles as the only illumination in this photo. I did at one point add a 9th candle in the camera-left background (in order to add shape to the subject's head-outline). But, I didn't have any "keeper" images from that setup.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the end result of this photo. It honestly turned out better than I expected. Although, I would probably add a few more strategically placed candles if I could do it over. Maybe one day I will be able to do the concept as it originally was intended to be. But for now, this is what I got... and I'm good with that.

Day 74 of 365 - Melodic Phrases As Smooth As Butter, Brought To You By... The Jazzman

2010-10-25T22:08:00.005-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

I guess you could call this one "the shot that wasn't supposed to happen"... There was absolutely no intent of even attempting this photo today. In fact, the clarinet wasn't supposed to make it's initial appearance until it was featured in the photo it was originally purchased for. However, once again my day was coming to a close and I hadn't even taken my camera out... so I was being "reactionary".

I won't talk about the photo that the clarinet is supposed to be featured in, because I still plan on doing it. Instead, I'll keep my conversation related to this photo you see here.

I was wanting to get away from these low-key/dark photos for a while, because I seem to be doing a lot of them lately. But in a pinch, they tend to be a little easier to do because I don't have to worry as much about backgrounds or environments. So that is probably what led to this one being (once again) so low-key/dark.

I wanted to create a "live concert" feel... which was based off of something I saw a couple months ago on American Idol. Let's get something straight though.. I don't watch American Idol, but a friend of mine was showing me YouTube clips from one of the shows, and one particular entertainer's lighting-setup really caught my eye. Let's get something else straight... I didn't mimic that lighting setup nearly as closely as I would have liked to, but that's the downfall once again of having to complete a photo a day... time is an enemy.

My first thought was to do a straight-up rim-light. The problem though, was that it was way too static... I didn't feel any sense of emotion with just seeing an outline of a dude playing a clarinet. At some point I decided to frame the light in the photo, and things kind of started to change.... that move kind of gave a bit of life to things. But, I still didn't dig the straight-up rim light. I kept changing my pose around until I accidentally showed my far eye, and that's when I knew I had something. Seeing that eye, and seeing it closed, really seemed to bring a sense of emotion/passion out. I also liked it that more of the suit was visible.

The next task was to make sure the fingers could be seen a little better. That's when I threw a flash on the ground and pointed it upward. That bit of illlumination helped make the fingers stand-out much more, giving them a more active role in the image. Granted, I do worry that a real clarinet player is going to scold me for having my fingerings all wrong... but, I don't have the time to get that 100% correct (because time is an enemy).

The next key thing was to make sure the end of the clarinet was illuminated. With the way the lighting was up until this point, I was losing the end of it in the darkness. I kept jockeying the floor flash around until I got it to go inside the end, and then it was just a matter of getting my pose correct in order to see the end at just a slight angle.

Posing was a real bastard on this shot. Normally, with a shot like this, I will really play. Because, believe it or not, it is really easy to see when someone is faking it. For example, doing a pose that makes it look like you are walking looks nowhere near as good as actually walking. Playing a clarinet is no different. My best test shots were the ones where I was really getting into it. But there was a big problem... The problem is that most times on my self-portraits I eventually find the EXACT pose I want, and then I repetitiously shoot it over and over and over until I get it. This clarinet shot though, was like no other self-portrait I've ever done... in that I HAD TO have the body angle, and clarinet angle, and the face turned enough to see the far eye, and not have my nose break outside of my far cheek, and not have too much of my far eye showing. Yeah, I was a freak about getting it THAT exact. So, I employed my wife. I told her every little nit-picky thing that I needed. So, she monitored me very closely and called out instructions. She did very well, cause we nailed it after a couple of shots.

The biggest stupid mistake I made on this shoot, was that I didn't change my pants. I left my jeans on, with all my junk in my pockets, and paid for it in post-processing. So my advice to anyone that wants it is this... Don't ever do anything half-assed. If you are going to do it, do it 100%. I thought I had learned my lesson on this, as up until this photo I have been doing the 100% thing... but alas I failed again. Luckily, a square crop worked just fine on this... but I'm still not happy about it.

Day 72 of 365 - "If you'll excuse me please... some men are here to take my life."

2010-10-23T23:06:00.007-05:00

Photo by Andrew Kufahl

Lots of things to talk about with this photo.

Let's start with one of the obvious ones (that is, obvious if you follow my Flickr photos)... This photo is similar in nature to my "Day 17" photo from my 365 project. Similar, but not the same. One of the problems I have with doing self-portraits is that it tends to take quite a while to do them. On average, getting one good photo takes at least 2 hours (that includes coming up with an idea, deciding on location, deciding on props and wardrobe, lighting, etc...) Because of that, it is difficult to do more than one variance of a theme/concept. Therefore, one thing I've decided to do throughout my 365 project is to essentialy extend the theme/concept over multiple days (not necessarily successive days). In other words, tell a story with each individual photo, and then a more complete story with all the photos together. Currently I have two such stories in-progress in my 365 project.

How this photo came to be... Today there was no intent of doing this particular photo. I was actually making good headway on another idea I came up with yesterday. But, some things happened and I lost my momentum. The other idea I was working on did involve the briefcase, and I knew I wanted to do one of the "gangster" photos with that briefcase, so I decided to switch gears and go after that. I'm glad I don't lose my drive in these situations, but I have to tell you that it is very, very frustrating.

Lighting... There was a lot of temptation to use a similar lighting style that I used in the "Day 17" photo, but the natural light coming through the window was too stellar. The problem however, is that by the time I got to going with the "gangster" concept, the daylight was fading very fast. And, to make matters worse the sky was completely cloudy. One thing though that I believe is always on my side, is that my neighbors house is about 20 feet from mine, and it is white... so it makes some beautiful light coming through the window (sunshine or no sunshine). I ended up shooting this one at ISO 800 (to keep noise minimal) and a shutter of 1/25.

Camera positioning... Camera angle was a little tricky on this, because I wanted to shoot this from a low angle. However, at 38mm focal length, my right hand was looking a little huge. So, I opted to raise the camera up, then tilt it down so that it kept everything relatively undistorted looking. I also purposefully chose to use a "dutch" angle on this, cause I tend to think of "dutch" camera angles when I think of the "noir" style.

Composition is usually an extremely crucial thing for me. I'm not saying I'm great at it, I'm just saying it is very important to me. The gun leading straight into the extended left arm (I'm not left-handed by the way). The briefcase at an almost parallel angle with the left arm. The right arm bent so that the forearm points back toward the briefcase. The upper-arm out slightly. The stairs in the background leading right down toward the subject. And you can't really see it, but there is also a corner (two walls converging) right behind the subject's head in the background. All these elements are purposeful, to create a nice flow between all important things within the frame. Towards the end of this shoot, I considered repositioning the table so that the edge of it angled more toward the subject, but moving the table had a domino-effect on lighting and posing and props... so I just said "to hell with it" and ended the session.

Somebody on Flickr commented that the image is "too clean". I would agree. Even though I did my "grunge" post-processing on it, it lacked some of the elements that really allow that technique to grunge a photo. I did take a number of photos during this session where I was smoking a cigarette, and while that did create some interesting changes in the atmosphere of the photo... I wasn't getting a good look from it, so I snuffed it out. In the end though, noise and grit can be added at any time, so I'm leaving this as-is... and I'm okay with that.

Day 70 of 365 - Feels Like A Perfect Day... To Make A Change...

2010-10-22T13:13:00.010-05:00

(Photo by Andrew Kufahl)

The purpose of today's image is to blur the lines between a fairly common [acceptable] task, and one that is a bit more uncommon [unacceptable].

I am constantly amazed by how the slightest physical gestures can change the shape of an image. Oftentimes, the "accidental gestures" (ones that happened by chance through the course of doing a session) end up driving the premise of my photos into a different direction than I originally intended. In this particular photo, it is the position of the hand by the neck which I feel causes one to question "what exactly is this person going to do?" Shave, or slice? I can honestly tell you that this photo started out being about a dude shaving in a dingy basement... but that all changed as I was mixing-up the poses and I came across one that looked a little more "questionable", solely because of the hand position.

This was a long shoot for me. Simple as the environment and props may seem, I probably spent almost an hour selecting a spot in my basement, hanging the mirror, and getting the camera-angle figured out. Lighting was pretty straight-forward, but still spent probably 30 to 45 minutes on that. After all that was set, I probably photographed for at least 1.5 to 2 hours. Not all of that is a single pose though... I actually do at least 3 different poses when I do self-portraits. For this one I did some with my shirt on, shirt off, lathered with shaving cream, etc... In the end, the entire shoot had taken almost 4 hours, which kind of includes some of the post-processing time.

Originally I started with a small softbox up high and to the left, but it was too large of a light-source so I switched it to a grid. The first test shot that I did was actually pretty killer, but I have a big problem with letting my shadows being completely black (more on that later), so I used a large softbox to add some fill-light. Eventually I stuck a third light into the mix... a gridded, CTB gelled, flash that was placed on the floor to illuminate my furnace (which could be seen in the reflection of the mirror). Granted, that third flash can't be seen in the final image because of how I processed the photo... but it is there.

Really quickly I'm going to talk about why I try not to let my shadows be completely black. In two words, "no lattitude". What if I get to post-processing and I decide that I'd like to see some detail in the shadows? If I let them go to black, too bad... not gonna happen. That's why I normally shoot with my shadows at least 2 stops down from my key-light... sometimes I will do 3 stops, but normally it is 2. Reason being, in post-processing a 2 stop difference can easily be pulled down much darker if I want deep shadows... or left right where it is if I want the detail. Whereas, if I shoot it with a 4 or more stop difference, getting detail back in the shadows is nearly impossible without noise/distortion issues. So, that 2 to 3 stop difference gives me some really generous lattitude to process my photos a number of ways without destroying the image quality. In the image above, I probably shot it with a 2.5 to 3 stop difference, cause I knew the final photo would be "edgier".

Seeking Focus Flickr Guide Feedback

2009-06-23T00:12:00.005-05:00

To help get us a all a little more acquainted with blogging, and to hopefully more quickly help us to decide whether or not we want to make this a part of our group, I've decided to setup this blog post as a study in leaving comments on a blog.

Hopefully by now you have all received the Flickr guide that I sent out. This is your opportunity to leave comments with your feedback, recommendations, or corrections.

Let me start this process out by noting some things that I know of:

Document eventually needs to be converted to PDF.

It appears as though the table of contents (page 1 of the document) did not update correctly, so the page numbers are wrong. This is an easy fix, but I decided not to re-send the document due to the size of it.

That is all I am currently aware of. Please leave comments below indicating things you noticed. (I am temporarily allowing "anonymous" comments on this blog so that you don't have to create an account. I will be disabling this in the future though. I will also have it setup so that I can moderate the comment posts, so that any malicious deviants don't litter our site with nonsense. This means that your comments may not show up real-time... I have to approve them before they will appear.)

If you have questions or problems leaving comments here please send me an email.

N.E.W. Seeking Focus Meeting Minutes - 6/9/2009

2009-06-10T23:24:00.022-05:00

Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Time: 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: Appleton Yacht Club

Meeting agendas were handed out, and a brief discuss followed regarding using agendas to provide flow and structure to the meeting format.

Two new members were introduced, Lisa Ann Krutzic and Chuck Dunning.

Re-introduction of existing members followed, in order to acquaint/re-acquaint ourselves with each other.

The next portion of the meeting was dedicated to discussing some new things that are going to be implemented, or are being researched, for our group. Some of these include the following:

Flickr - Streamline and centralize photo sharing for our group. Documentation is being put together in order to show our members how to create an account, upload photos, share their photos with the group, and utilize Flickr's discussion thread feature.

Blogs - Being researched to determine its usefullness as a communication tool for our group.

Photographer of the Month - We will select one group member each month to ask questions of and view their top 10 photos. This is an effort to get to know our members better.

Photo Critiquing - We will be considering doing this again. Our first phase of this however, may be to critique "third party" photos (i.e. not the members of our group). The purpose of this is to share our thoughts, likes, dislikes, techniques, etc. with each other, while [hopefully] preventing it from becoming something which can sometimes be negative or "attacking".

Monthly Themes - A theme will be given each meeting for our members to go out and take photos of. Those photos will then be reviewed at the following meeting.

While discussing the items above, we actually went out to Flickr, navigated through portions, and answered some high-level questions about it.

The next portion of the meeting was dedicated to reviewing the photos we took of Courtney at the previous month's meeting (May). While reviewing the photos, we talked about the lighting setups, poses, and what we liked or disliked.

Brett Stoddart was selected as this month's "Photographer of the Month". Even though he was unable to attend the meeting, he did fill out a questionnaire that we went through. (If you are interested in that questionnaire, please contact Carolyn to see if she has a copy available.) [Edit] Brett was recently interviewed by PortalWisconsin.org (a nonprofit web site created by the partners of the Cultural Coalition of Wisconsin to support the state's culture, arts, humanities and history) for his work photographing abandoned buildings... be sure to take some time and check out the article here. Congratulations Brett!

A slideshow of member photos was next.

We finished-up the meeting with Wayne discussing his recent lighting training (Touscany) in Green Bay. He also shared some of the photos he captured from that training.

Next Month - July

Dave Jackson will be joining us for another outdoor photoshoot. Dave indicated that there is a strong possibility the shoot may go past 9:00pm.

The current Photography Theme is "Dairy Month using your aperture". This means you should go out and take photos that relate to June being "Dairy Month" and while doing that you should shoot pairs of photos with two different aperture settings (which will illustrate the impact on the depth-of-field). This next part is so hard to explain... It is "recommended" you bring in 6 total photos. Technically that would be 3 unique photos where each of those 3 photos is taken with two different aperture settings. There is a chance we may not be able to review these photos in our July meeting because of the Dave Jackson photoshoot. But, we still encourage you to go out there and try to capture something anyway.

Other Items of Interest...

The Payne Art Center in Oshkosh is having a photo exhibit June 6 - October 11. We have selected Sunday, August 30th as a possible day for us to go there as a group.

There was a general reminder about the High Cliff camping trip on October 2nd. If you have any [photography] ideas/games/challenges/etc... that could take place during that event, please let the group know.