Memorial Day On The Peninsula

 

There is one certainty when photographing community events, and that is you never know when a better image may come along. Unlike editorial photography where there is a specific goal, photographs submitted from events may not have a specific person or thing to highlight, so it is up to the photographer to make an image that best represents the "vibe" of the gathering. This weekend there were two different events, and each served two different purposes.

The lead photo was from the annual flag planting ceremony at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno. It had been cancelled last year due to the pandemic, and many still took the precaution of wearing a mask. Most of the participants were Scouts for the area, and now that young women are becoming more common in local troops, I really wanted them to be represented. 

Lens Choice: Normally I would bring my "big guns" to the event, and when I was shooting Nikons, my kit composed of a three bodies: One with a 24-70 2.8 Nikkor on a  D600 (full frame) body, a 70-200 2.8 Nikkor on an APS body, and a Sigma 150-600 lens on another APS body, if I remember correctly. I always carried the Sigma, as one time I actually needed its long focal length to do some major visual compression. I don't know how much all this stuff weighed, but I do know I was always exhausted when I was done.

This year, I had an epiphany: Since I was shooting outdoors, I didn't need to bring those F 2.8 lenses, which are quite dense. My Fuji kit consisted of a X-T1 with an 18-55 F 2.8-4.0, the Fuji X-mount "kit lens". My X-T2 body was fitted with a 55-200 F3.5-4.8 lens. I still carried a third camera, a Nikon D7200 riding on a 200-500 F 5.6 Nikkor, the lens that replaced my old Sigma. In terms of perspective, I had a focal length for any situation, and lightened my load by a considerable amount. 

Directing My Subjects: For the record, I did some directing on my two young subjects. This was limited to having the "flag lady" kneel when she planted the flag, and had her hold the unused flags a little higher for better visibility. I'm not pretending that I didn't have any contact with the subjects, which is a basic tenet of ethical photojournalism, but to my defense, they were actually installing the flags, so I wasn't actually influencing what they were already doing.

Proud Fathers: I worked with these two Scouts for quite some time, so before long their fathers drop by to see what was going on. After introducing myself, I asked if they'd like to have a photo with their daughters, and they were delighted. Think about, it only took a minute or two to make the shot, pretty much exactly where they were already standing. I must say that the Goddess of Lighting was watching out for me, because all of the photos taken in the series had the soft lighting of a cloudy-bright day, so there is plenty of form-defining shadows in their faces. It doesn't get any easier than that.

Assignment With A Sign - TheatreWorks Silicon Valley

It All Started With A Sign: This was an assignment full of promise: A theater marquee, taken at twilight, the name of the event lit up for all all to see. Beneath the sign, Executive Director Phil Santora and Trustee Julie Kaufman, looking like Gene Kelly and Jean Hagen (Don Lockwood and Lena Lamont) on opening night, just basking in the warmth of devoted fans*. Alas, it was not to be.

Reality set in when I found out that this marquee "photo" was the product of some clever Photoshopping. Now I had less to work with. I was going to be photographing professional administrators who were busy keeping a non-profit organization running really smoothly instead of fictional characters from a 1950s musical.

What a photographer wants and what the subjects are able to provide often don't match. Time would be tight and I had to choose one of two possible time slots: 6:00 pm, and 1:00 - 1:45 pm the following day. There went my twilight sky, since sunset wouldn't occur until 8 pm. There was going to be lots of sunlight when the photo was taken. I took the 6:00 pm appointment, and hoped for the best.

The Fox Theater is on the south side of Broadway street, so I expected that the marquee would be in shadow. When I arrived at 5:30, I found that one face was in shadow, and one face was in full sunlight. If I chose the shaded side, I'd need to extend my light stand to aim an accent flash the log, and hand hold a second flash to illuminate my subjects. If I chose the sunny side, I'd probably have squinty expressions and some off-the-chart overexposure. 

As luck would have it, there were some benches and a convenient shade tree as you can see at the right of the frame. This meant that I wouldn't have to deal with direct sunlight on my subjects and could then light them with flash. Since I was outdoors. I didn't use and umbrella for fear it would be blown over by the wind. If I added weights to hole the lightstand in place, I could technically be required to have a permit to "block pedestrian traffic". So the flash was used "straight" with no light modifier. In some cases, the position of the light is more important than its quality.

Once I established the desired exposure for the theater logo, I could move my subjects until their heads covered the marquee. I would finally adjust my flash output to get proper exposure on my subjects. Unfortunately, positioning the subjects is an "on the fly" thing, and you can't know in advance exactly where the  subjects will be standing. Had I known the exact position, I could have looked up and aligned the flash for best effect. I suspect the flash was aimed too much towards camera right, resulting in some underexposure. Dodge and burn, dodge and burn, I managed to get a reasonable image, but certainly not of the best possible quality. I'm quite sure that by the time the photo is published, the degradation that all newspaper images suffer will conceal all the deficiencies that are currently driving me crazy. Or if I'm lucky, the image will be printed in black and white. Despite its shortcomings, my Editor declared the photo "VERY nice!". High praise indeed.

Depth Of Field Control: One aspect of the shot did merit some additional thinking. I was shooting at F 10.0, which gave me great depth of field. But what if I had installed a 3-stop neutral density filter? The shot could have  been made at approximate F 4.0 which would taken the sharp edge off of the lettering in the background. I've always had access to ND filters, but can remember using one only once for a published photo. If I think of them for depth-control rather than exposure control, I would be tempted to find space in the Big Bag and slip one or two in. I've owned a variety of Cokin filters, and maybe it's about time I started using them.

*Opening scenes from the movie "Singing In The Rain".