Compose For The Background - The San Francisco Youth Symphony

Any violin teacher will cringe when they see this photo. I didn't have the vocabulary to explain exactly how I wanted the hands placed for this shot, but from a lighting perspective, I was extremely pleased with the results. I will be working on lighting the dark "below the chin" shadows, but other than that, I don't think I could have done a better job of balancing the interior and exterior lighting.

Davies Symphony Hall is the most modern of the Civic Center grand venues. The views from the first and second levels are spectacular, and I wanted to make a photo that featured the dome of City Hall in the background. Luckily, the shot would be made between rain showers. The atmospheric moisture helped soften the shadows, while errant clouds became natural reflectors that softened the shadows further.

Since the City Hall background was so prominent a feature in the photo, I wanted to be sure that it was addressed first. The three-step process was as follows:

• Select the background. In this case, it consisted of finding a spot where the seams between the window panes were farthest apart.
• Determine your shooting position. This is a good time to select your lens focal length, assuming that the relative positions of the camera, the background, and your subjects will have an effect on the photo's final appearance. This is done by walking towards, and away from, your background until it is properly framed.
• Mark where you want you subjects to stand. In the end, it's easier to move your subjects nearer to, or farther from, the camera once you background has been established. Since I knew there would be six subjects, I placed two chairs in the foreground the "anchor" the composition. I decided that the arrangement would consist of two musicians sitting and four standing.

This shot shows the two chairs roughly centered in relation to City Hall. I would reposition them to accommodate the final composition, but that was easily done.

At this point, I set up my Lastolite E-Z Box and Adorama AD200 flash on a 12' light stand. To simplify shooting, the light was placed in a high overhead, on-axis position. Because the windows were not perpendicular to the flash-to-subject axis, there were no reflections on the windows.

Photo #1: 16-55 mm F 2.8 @ 16mm, 1/250 second, F 8.0, ISO 200

Photo #1: ROC. This shot is Right Out of Camera (ROC). There is a fair amount of wasted space, and the subjects are not perfectly framed. You can see that the window panes diverge towards the top of the frame. But I was pleased with the balance between my flash exposes subjects and the dome of City Hall in the background.  After checking for blinks, I was satisfied that this frame, coincidentally the last, was the best of the batch. 

Photo #2

Photo #2: Post Production:  Very little was done in post production to adjust the exposure. I did not like the way the two window seams appeared to diverge in the original image, so I did a minor perspective adjustment. I do not consider this a significant alteration, as it doesn't affect the visual content in any way. It is something I could have done in the wet-processing days, so the procedure gets a pass*.

The Final Print: The final print, shown at the top of the post, was cropped to an 8x10 format to tighten the composition further. After the perspective adjustment, no additional processing was needed.

The final photo resulted from a lot of pre-production preparation. The amount of time spent on location selection, camera position, and subject arrangement paid dividends in allowing the photo shoot to run as smoothly as it did.


*Strobist David Hobby's philosophy on "Photoshopping" allows the utilization of any technique that was available to the black and white film photographer who processed prints using a conventional enlarger. Perspective correction consisted of tipping the easel (the frame that held the printing paper) to correct the apparent diversion of parallel lines.  Trust me, it was a tedious process, but it worked.

Rona Figueroa At ACT

The Journal has started a series of profiles of entertainers who have roots on the Peninsula. Rona Figueroa was born in San Francisco and attended Mercy High School in Burlingame. American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) in San Francisco was presenting Rhinoceros, and Ms. Figueroa was cast as Daily, the movie's love interest. 

Arrangements were made to schedule a twenty-minute photoshoot at the A.C.T. offices in San Francisco. When I arrived, Kevin gave me a quick tour of possible backgrounds for the shoot, and in the end selected the open balcony on the seventh floor. The weather was crisp, and gusts of wind kept the air clear of haze. Having arrived 30 minutes before the scheduled shoot, I started to set up the shot.

The only shade I could find were the shadows cast by the support pillars that bordered the balcony. I found this picnic table, are decided to align the nearest edge a convenient picnic table with the shadow of the pillar,creating a narrow shadow where Ms. Figueroa could sit and be protected from direct sunlight.

Lighting would be provided by a bare tube Godox AD200 self-contained flash slipped inside a Lastolite E-Z Box softbox. The unit was then hoisted atop a 12-foot Manfrotto lightstand and anchored in place using the roller bag used to schlep all of the necessary lighting equipment, plus more than enough accessories to handle any catastrophe.

A quick selfie confirmed that at full power, the softbox produced enough light to balance the sunlit background. The softbox was positioned approximately eight feet from my face.

One nice thing about working with a lightstand: Since the distance from the light source to the subject remains constant, I can adjust my camera from my position, shoot, and re-adjust until the proper exposure is achieved.

This quick photo of Kevin confirmed that my exposures were where I wanted them. This particular image was altered slightly by burning in the edges to draw the viewer's attention towards my subject's face.

When Ms. Figueroa arrived, I  had her sit on the edge of the table in shadow of the pillar. We discussed two of Gene Wilder's movies, "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein", and was surprised to learn that she didn't know that in 1974, Rhinoceros was made into a movie that starred Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder. After a few minutes, I changed lenses and began to photograph Ms. Figueroa for a tight head shot.

Shifting to a 50-140 mm lens allowed me to increase my shooting distance  to about ten feet, and in so doing changed the relationship between the subject and the background. The background was now reduced to an abstract pattern of soft-focused, geometric shapes. I liked this image, and submitted it for inclusion in the upcoming article.

For a lark, I made this image with both Rona and Kevin. I had intended to send it to Kevin for his Facebook page, but my editor liked it so much she decided to choose it as the featured photo. I did not think the photo would be taken seriously, so I was a little less attentive to my subjects' positioning. I should have noticed that Ms. Figueroa was now standing in front of the table, and was lit by an edge of direct sunlight, as seen on her sweater. and on her face. 

Kevin is the vice president of public relations and marketing for the PR firm handling ACT.  As they both went to school in San Mateo, my editor thought that this would be a great local angle, so she selected this shot to run with the article.