The Computer History Museum

This is Dag, the Senior Curator at the Computer History Museum’s permanent historical collection. The CHM contains the most comprehensive repository of computers, software, media, oral histories, and ephemera relating to computing in the world. The paper is running a Q & A article on  him, so I went down to the museum to provide the photograph. 

As usual, I arrived 30 minutes before our scheduled shoot at 2:15. This gave me a chance to scout out the museum for interesting backgrounds. I settled on a display that included the reel-to-reel tape drives that were spinning in the background of almost every mid-sixties film that wanted to project a high tech feeling.

The first thing I did was to establish the white balance. It is really a simple choice. Most displays still rely on incandescent lighting, so after making a sample shot (left) using the Daylight white balance preset, then I reshot it at the Incandescent preset (right). Luckily for me I had spent some time organizing and labeling the zipper pouches in the Pelican case, so I knew where to find the CTO (color temperature orange) gels I would need to install on all of the speedlights to match the accent lights on the foreground display.

I also wanted to add some depth to the photo, so I placed a gelled speedlight on a floor stand and aimed it at the graphic that already had its own accent light. With the light aimed directly at the graphic, the light randomly spilled onto the wall, providing a random light on the back wall.

This final test shot involved a speedlight mounted almost ten feet in the air and pointed at the brightly painted tape reels in the background. I would like to mention that I am constantly looking for a shooting position that would minimize the appearance of glare from both my flashes and some unexpected reflections of some windows on the walls to my right. In the lead shot, you can barely see the reflection in the glass protecting the blue tape reels.

With all the background lights positioned and adjusted, I added my key light, a flash with a shoot-through umbrella. If you look at the shadow cast by Dag's arm, it was positioned fairly high above the ground. I've been an advocate of carrying a tall light stand because a shot like this requires that you place the light relatively far from the subject, and to maintain a pleasing light-to-subject angle, you may have to raise it considerably. I am guessing that the flash/umbrella combination is about ten feet off the ground. Even then I still have two more feet if I need them. Remember that I am working indoors in an empty museum, so obstruction of visitor traffic isn't an issue.

Since all the lights were in position, I repositioned Dag so I could get a shot with more of him and less of the background. If you look at the orange tape reels in the background, you can see that my new composition allowed more reflections to appear on the protective glass. Since I needed to get the session completed within the allotted time. I decided to live with it.

Posing: Here's something I only noticed when I reviewed this image during post production. Dag's shirt  has vertical lines that curve slightly in the closeup photo, but they are less prominent in the leading shot. This is because in the top photo he's facing me straight on, while in the lower photo his body is angled away from the lens axis. It is possible to use the Liquify command in post production to reduce the curve by moving his waistline to the left to reduce the curved effect, but I can't alter content for anything published in the paper.

Just for practice I did a digital tummy-tuck and changed the contours of Dag's body. It took about five minutes, and if I spent a little more time on the project the results would have been marginally better. For the record, I did not push the curve toward the centerline, but instead pulled the waistline out to the left of the frame, giving his torso a straighter line. 

I may send Dag this altered version after the article is published. I am sure he'll appreciate the effort. And from now on I'll keep an eye out for vertical lines in EVERYONE'S clothing.

A Flock Of Flashes

I believe this photograph now holds my personal record for most speedlights used in a single photograph. Let's count them. From front to rear:

• 1 key light used with a shoot through umbrella
• 1 fill light bounced off of the floor beside me,
• 1 kick light used to create the highlight on the background 
• 2 background lights aimed at the shelves in the background
• 1 skid light aimed at an angle to the ceiling, and
• 1 background light aimed at the back wall

The Key Light: Nothing special here. I used my twelve-foot tall light stand to position the light high and to camera left. I angled it slightly to prevent severe over-exposure to the clock by the left edge of the frame.

The Fill Light: When I can, I use a Joe McNally technique of bouncing a flash, positioned perpendicular to the floor, to provide a highlight at the lower edge of the subject's eyes. It does throw some light into the nose shadow, but cannot brighten the teeth. The effect is very subtle, but I am a big fan of catchlights, and I am always uncomfortable when I can't see any. See left photo.

The Kick Light: This flash was aimed specifically at the rack of clothing behind the subject. I wanted to add some three-dimensionality to the clothing behind the subject. I clamped it onto a clothing rack at camera left. In retrospect, I should have reduced the power, or eliminated it altogether.

The Two (Shelf) Accent Lights: Because the isle between the two facing shelves was so narrow the flash beam angle, even at its widest setting, couldn't completely cover the box-filled shelves. This forced me to use two flashes to get the coverage I needed. Each flash had its own light stand. While the selves themselves don't add anything to the photograph, it prevents the warehouse from looking like a cave with no ending.

The (Ceiling) Skid Light: I started by aiming a flash perpendicular to the ceiling. Unfortunately, the reflective surface of the insulation didn't give me the effect I wanted. I then moved the flash as close to the back wall as possible and angled it so the light would bounce off the ceiling at a 45 degree angle. This increased the coverage and highlight size. And if you look closely, you can see the flash mounted in a "foot" on the floor.

The Background Light: The last light was placed to light the far wall of the warehouse, placed to define the physical limits of the room. Even though the flash wasn't powerful to fully light the wall, it added enough detail to proclaim its presence.

Controller Compatibility: My equipment included 4 older Gen 1 Flashpoint controlled and a total of 4 newer Gen 2 Godox controlled speedlights. In the past, I could cross-control these two different speedlight families by mounting a Gen 1 controller in the hot shoe of a Gen 2 controller. 

This photo shows a Pocket Wizard mounted on a Gen 2 Godox controller. A Gen 1 controller could be mounted in the same manner. I could have mounted the two controllers in tandem, but instead chose to maintain direct control over the original four speedlights and switch the three others to the speedlight's built-in optical S1 triggers. Shifting to the S1 mode requires manual adjustment of the output, but in truth, frequent adjustments are not needed for speedlights other than the Key light.

This photo was not an unplanned grab shot, but a carefully controlled and orchestrated photograph. It certainly wouldn't qualify as a "spot news photo" in the traditional sense, nor was it a managed candid. I wanted a photo that was eye-catching and visually interesting enough to encourage the reading of the caption.