Carnaval 2014

The approach of Carnaval 2014 was a pleasant surprise. There had been doubts that funding would be available to finance this iconic San Francisco experience. A little bit of the Caribbean, Latin American, and Chicano all mixed together with music, dance, and universal good times for a bright, shiny day in May. So once again, I went into the San Francisco's Mission District to photograph the participants, all expecting to be photographed. Many, it seemed, were truly at ease in the uninhibited personas they chose for themselves.

In The Bag: I went with two Nikon D70 bodies and my three must have lenses: A wide angel 12-24 F4.0 Tokina (slower, heavier, but sharper than my 10-24 Tamron), a 28-70 F2.8 Tamron, and my 70-300 Nikkor. I carried only one flash, a non-automatic Yong Nuo 560. I chose it over my usual SB-800 because it has one special feature: Its simplified triggering electronics allow it to synchronize at all shutter speeds, and it will work on Canon bodies too. When set to 1/4 power, it will discharge completely at1/1000 of a second when used with a Nikon D70. This is pretty much the practical performance ceiling because a shorter shutter speed or a more powerful flash setting will result in clipping (the loss of flash power at the back end of the discharge curve. Trust me). I decided to not carry a monopod for extended off-camera lighting. Instead, I attached the Yong Nuo to the camera with a Nikon SC-17 partially disabled for full synchronization (see this earlier post) and would hand hold the flash. 

Photographing In The Shadows: One can get some dramatic images by placing your subject completely in shadow and allowing the background to be fully lit by direct sunlight. Here, your flash provides the only effective key light on your foreground subject. If no fill is added, the shadows will be dark and dramatic. The edge on the shadow will be fairly sharp, but this really can't be helped, considering the limitations of the equipment and the amount of flash energy available for the shot.

Photo #1

In the photo (Photo #1), I held the light away from the camera and aligned with the young lady's nose. And while the light won't win any awards, her face is gently rendered, considering that this is hard, direct light source. It's all in the angle of approach, and the facial essentials, the eyes and the smile, are well rendered. More on this later.

With a subject like this Aztec headdress (Photo #2), the vivid colors alone could carry the image. Again, had I the luxury of better lighting, this image could have really hummed, but for a shot made on the fly with no preparation time, the results are pleasing, and potentially publishable.

Photo #2

Working up close and at eye level also made my arms "longer" and better able to properly align the light  with my subject's nose. The original shot was about one full stop over-exposed, probably because my camera was set the properly expose at a distance of about seven feet, the the shot made much closer than that. RAW processing brought the image into line, and some judicious dodging and burning brought some "pop" back to the image.

Backlit Subjects:"Backlit Photographs" are those where the main light source is coming from behind the subject. Assuming that your a photographing outdoors, the light will "halo" your subject, usually resulting in some overexposed highlights. When photographing without supplementary lighting (flash or reflector), the subject and the background receive the exact same amount of light, usually from the blue sky above, which tends to run on the cool side. If you need to maintain detail in the highlights, you'll need to adjust your exposure downward, underexposing both your subject and the background. The addition of a flash will only effect your foreground subject, leaving the background "in the dark" (Photo #3).

Photo #3

In the inset on the left you can see the positive effects of the sun backlighting my foreground subjects. The exposure kept the details in the pineapple fronds, while the flash gave me facial details. In the inset to the left, you can see that all of the essential detail was maintained.

One important caveat: If you try to lighten the background to increasing your exposure time, you will also lighten your subject by the same amount. The additional light provided by your flash will potentially overexpose your image.

Compositional elements aside, I rather like the photo, primarily for the abundance of yellow and green. I find the children in the foreground a little distracting, but you have to laugh at the juxtaposition of the inflatable bananas and the Carmen Miranda headpiece. Those bananas, by the way, were used by the "Banana Drill Team", another concept you have to laugh at. But humor is a big part of Carnaval, and you have to chuckle when you find it hidden in plain sight.

Photo #4

I included this backlit shot (Photo #4) for comparison purposes. The placement of the flash does make a difference in how the face is rendered, and it's pretty obvious once you know what to look for.
This shot was made from a low camera angle, with the flash held as high above as my arms would allow. If you compare the nose shadows in the left and right samples in Photo #5, you can see that there are fewer highlights (bright spots) on the left sample than on the right. This is because I was able to get my flash slightly above the nose on the left shot, but not on the right. This is an important difference, and worth remembering when you use you flash outdoors. I'm sure that if my flash was mounted on-camera, the results would have been much worse.

Photo #5

Photo #6

Flash Fill For Side Lighting. In all of the previous examples, the flash provided all of the light to illuminate the subject. While not the case here, the ambient light level may contribute to the overall exposure. But when photographing subjects with a strong amount of side lighting, you may want to consider the effects the sun will have on the final photography. You can see the amount of side lighting effects the dancers in different ways (Photo #6). The two from the left have are lit from the side, while the two on the right the sun has little effect. For the rightmost pair the fill lighting renders them as "normally" exposed, while those on the left show some overexposure where the sunlight adds to the flash fill. In the end, the left were overexposed by the additional sunlight, while the rightmost pair are enjoying a colorful accent light.

If possible, consider how much you want the side lighting to contribute to the shot, and how much fill you'll want to add. Full-on flash fill works for the two on the right, but adds a bit too much light to the dances on the left. This is not to say that you can always predict exactly how such images will finally turn out, but anticipating the possible consequences is one half of the battle.

Photo #7

Flash Fill For Front Lighting. You can tell by the length and direction of the shadows (Photo #7)  that this pair of dancers is lit from the front, and fairly early in the morning. To properly expose a shot like this, you must balance the sun's exposure with you flash output. When confronting a front lit subject, a quick rule of thumb is to underexpose the ambient by 1/2 stop, and adjust your flash to provide 1/2 of the output you would normally need to expose your subject. Now your highlights will get full exposure (1/2 from the flash and 1/2 from the sun), and the shadows will 1/2 of the proper exposure value, or a tad more if photographing on a lighter concrete surface as opposed to darker asphalt. These are not hard and fast rules, but from a mathematical point of view, illustrate the cumulative nature of mixing artificial and natural light.

Photo #8

High Noon Fill. At noon, the sun will be in it highest possible position. I applied the 1/2 + 1/2 rule to this shot (Photo #8). You can clearly see that this technique gives a proper amount of exposure contrast to the highlight and shadow areas. Since I knew my flash would be acting as a fill, I mounted it on the camera's hotshot to get it closer to the lens' axis. This gave me some great catchlights in my subject's eyes, another plus. Don't get me wrong. Photographing in direct sunlight at high noon is the pits, and so long as the sun is provides the main light source, you'll get less than spectacular results. But when you have to make a photo under these circumstances, you can at least deliver a properly exposed image with lots of shadow detail. Just don't overexpose the highlights.

Now for the record I default to exposure settings that tend to underexpose my images, simply because I usually try to include some portion of the sky as a background and I want it rendered somewhat darker than normal. My go-to lens is usually a wide angle, which allows me to photograph at shorter distances, allowing the output from my underpowered flash to have a greater impact on the shadow exposure.

I have said in earlier posts that Carnaval offers photographers a chance to experiment with composition, lighting, and a variety of other people photography skills. Just remember to smile a lot, and enjoy both the joy and humor that are all around if you just keep your eyes, and ears, wide open.

Soul Stroll 2014

I was at the Soul Stroll, a fitness awareness event in San Mateo. The featured guest was Laila Ali, the daughter of boxer Mohammed Ali and a world class boxer in her own right. My take on the assignment was simple enough: Show Ms. Ali interacting with the crowd. How I did it was up to me. 

Since this was an outdoor assignment, I packed my "outdoor" camera kit: 2 Nikon D70 bodies, along with a Tamron 10-24, Tamron 28-75 2.8, and a 70-300 Nikkor.  Since weight is a factor, I don't carry constant aperture lenses except for the 28-75, which is light enough to justify its inclusion in my bag. There is my usual single SB-800 speedlight, but I added a second flash, a LumoPro LP 180 complete with a Chinese knockoff battery pack. I chose it instead of another SB-800 because its rudimentary mounting foot lacks the "flash present" contact, allowing it to sync at all speeds in the D70. The LumoPro LP will also work with Canon cameras, and safely too. By attaching the supplementary battery pack (it holds 8 AA batteries) the combination has a very fast recycle time. It has neither iTTL nor non-TTL aperture exposure automation, but if one can maintain a consistent camera to subject distance, it isn't as much of a problem as you might think.

Photo #1

It was going to be a few minutes before Ms. Ali took the stage, so I "warmed up" by photographing some of the participants dancing to music provided by a local radio DJ. Even though there was plenty of cloudy-bright morning light, I let the LumoPro add some supplementary lighting on my wide angle shots. (If you look closely, you can see a shadow on the grass). The output was kept low so that it wouldn't overpower the exiting ambient light. I chose to shoot from a very low angle in attempt to get an interesting cloud background. Exposure at ISO 200 was 1/1000th of a second at F 5.6, set manually. This would allow me to keep the sky, a major portion of this sort of composition, consistent from shot to shot. I also underexposed the sky slightly to help accentuate the clouds. I would now simply adjust the flash output to brighten the foreground when needed, which in this shot,  was set to 1/4 power. For the most part, all of these settings were made by eye, not by meter. The result (Photo #1) was a cute photo, but not a keeper.

Photo #2

Shifting to a second D70 with a 28-75 2.8 Tamron allowed me to get tighter compositions by just changing cameras (Photo #2). Here, I could concentrate on expressions that might make for an interesting photo. I concentrated on this young woman, since she seemed to be enjoying herself. The light was pretty even, so I set this body to Aperture Priority and let the camera decide on the exposure, which in this case was 1/400 at an aperture setting of F 5.6. I felt comfortable with aperture priority because the sky, if it appeared in the composition, would not unduly influence the exposure and cause the foreground to be underexposed, as it sometimes happens.

Photo #3

When Ms. Ali stepped to the stage, I managed to grab this shot using the 28-75 Tamron set to about 50mm (Photo #3). I thought about including as much of the "Soul Stroll" sign in the background, and waited until she and I could take positions where this could happen. When she did, I made this shot (Photo #4), and while it did have the sign and Ms. Ali, there wasn't enough context to warrant submission.

Photo #4

Two other people came up to the stage, and Ms. Ali offered encouragement as everyone did their warmup routines. My exposure, set in the manual mode, was 1/1000 at 5.6, which allowed me to keep some cloud detail in the background. The on-camera flash, set to 1/2 or 1/4 power, gave me enough light to fully illuminate everyone on stage, and keep some detail in the banner in the background. When used on-camera, the flash is essentially on-axis fill and will create specular highlights that often hide the 3-dimensionality of the subject's face. But when the subjects are as small as they appear here, it may not be important.

Photo #5

Photo #5 was rejected because the man at camera right is facing out of the photo. This draws the viewer's attention out of the photo, so I waited for another shot. When his position was more "neutral", I made another exposure (Photo #6). Luckily, Ms. Ali was very animated, and happily cheering everyone on. This shot had everything I wanted, so I wrote a caption and submitted it.

Photo #6

Everybody started moving to the starting line, where an archway made from balloons had been installed. The official photographer was already arranging a shot, and interestingly, asked that everybody put down their cameras until after he was finished, just as I might have done. When he was finished, I decided I'm make one too, since the crowd was in good spirits and could be cajoled into smiling without a lot of effort. So I gave them the "Let's all cheer on the count of three" routine, and this is what I got (Photo #7).

Photo #7

The result was a fun shot, and I could have easily submitted it. Unfortunately, what it gains in spontaneity if loses in context, since there isn't anything that remotely ties it to the event. I've seen worse shots published in the Community Section of the paper, but no matter how interesting the photo, it still doesn't project the spirit of the event. This shot could have easily been improved somewhat by asking Ms. Ali to take a few steps toward the camera. I decided not to take up any more of their time, so after two quick shots, they were on their way, and so was I.