My Blog Has Moved

Hey all - just a quick note to let you know that I have moved my blog from my Blogger blogspot address over to my own personal domain at www.tallgrassphotography.com.au/blog

Shinier, more bells & whistles, and more frequent posts from now on. It felt right to smarten up the blog having just redesigned my website and portfolio... has been on my to do list for a loooong time now.

Thank you to all my readers to date, and I hope you follow me over to the new address. Please feel free to subscribe to my new blog using the rss button once you are there.

Thanks,
Simon

www.tallgrassphotography.com.au/blog

My adventure with Joe McNally

"Um Hi, Joe, I'm Simon and I've flown across the country to meet you".
(imagine me with a silly grin and then insert incoherent mumbling in between each of these words).

That's about as intelligible as I could get the first time I met Joe McNally. And to make matters worse, this meeting was in the dimly lit lobby of a motel on the Gold Coast, late in the evening. I was having a quiet beer, on my own, and saw Joe and the Through The Lens Tour crew walk up to the reception desk ...and over I walked - in some dream like trance. After the introductions were done, I made my way back over to my beer feeling as if I had come across like some slightly out of kilter stalker.

Gold Coast workshop

I was in the Gold Coast to see Joe present a seminar on small flash & Nikon CLS followed by a keynote that evening on the 30 plus years of his life as a (brilliant) photographer. Then to participate in an all day workshop the day after that. To be honest, I didn't think I would ever get the chance to meet Joe in person, let alone do a workshop here in Australia. What an amazing time I had - first time I have ever been to anything thing like this. I learned a hell of a lot, not only about photography and the use of lighting - both natural & speed light/studio strobe - but also about professionalism and being a decent person. Yes I'm a big fan but I have met other people in this field who are very different when not in the 'promo light' - Joe is not only a great photographer but also a very decent human being, who has probably earned the right to be an ass if he really wanted to but he couldn't be further from that.


Just when I thought things with Joe were done and dusted, along came THE DREAM trip. About a week before heading to the Gold Coast the Through The Lens Tour guys announced an opportunity to join Joe on a shoot in Tasmania that was commissioned by Tourism Australia. When I saw that I damn near stopped breathing. As you would expect there was a fairly hefty price tag to go with something like that, and so after I started breathing again I resigned myself to forget about it and enjoy the already fantastic opportunity I had coming on the Gold Coast.

Wineglass Bay, Freycinet NP

If it were not for my wife Emma and my business partner Ros convincing me to do it, and to figure out the hard bits afterwards, I wouldn't have made the leap of faith. It was likely to be a once in a lifetime opportunity for me, and they know how high up on a pedestal Joe is in my eyes, so they didn't let up - and I think to be honest, they knew I would probably turn into a mopey grump for the next 6 months, kicking myself for not going.

Quad biking in Freycinet NP (Drew on the quad)

Well yes, it was expensive, and I will now be working my ass off even more to pay for it, but man what a ride! To say the 4 days was mind-blowingly awesome would be an understatement. The days began before the sun was up in order to be on location for sunrise, and then the nights were generally not early finishes but I was running on some sort of special internal vapour the whole time so it really didn't matter. I caught six flights in as many days, saw the sun rise more than I have in the last two years (strange for a landscape shooter I know) and saw (and ate) many things I never thought I would.

Sunrise shoot on the docks in Hobart

I will save some more of the story for another blog but let me just finish with a big thank you to Joe McNally, his first assistant Drew Gurian (who is an amazing photographer in his own right, and a great guy to boot) as well as the Through The Lens Tour guys who made the opportunity possible. There were also three other guys who made the trip too - Ray, Tony and Dave - all were great travelling companions and photographers as well.

Wow!

Good gear = Professional results? Rant No.1

Firstly, I will confess that I am a gear-head. Love looking at gear, reading about gear, smelling gear...

BUT, gear does not make the photographer. It can definitely help, and make your life smoother / easier, sometimes, but it is not at the top of the list what makes a great photographer.

Lots of sayings going around that some it up well - "Gear is good, vision is better" by David Duchemin would be my favourite.

I am very fortunate to have some very nice gear these days for sure but this stuff didn't just miraculously land in my lap. I have worked my way up to the gear I now use over the last 25 years. It's really only been in recent years that I have been able to justify & afford new/pro gear over second hand. Funny thing though - my current bodies still make an exposure based on a combination of ISO, aperture & shutter speed, just like the Canon AE-1 or the Nikon F90 did that I used for a long time prior to jumping into digital. AND, the final captured image is still controlled & composed by ME, not my camera.

For working professionals, good gear more often than not translates to tough, consistent & reliable gear. Tools of the trade. When you are being paid to do a job, especially one you may not get a second chance to reshoot, you want good reliable tools in your bag. Just like a good mechanic has accumulated years of knowledge & experience in their field, and choose to use the best tools they can. The tools compliment their work but they don't replace that hard earned experience & knowledge.

The main reason for this mini-rant is the other day, for the thousandth time, I received a nice comment about one of my images (which I really do appreciate) ...which was then closely followed by "You must have a really good camera" or my other favourite "I could do that if I had a good camera like yours but I just can't justify the dollars".

Aaaaaargh !! "I pity the fool" - thanks Mr T.

Just like the nice gear didn't magically appear in my hands, the last twenty plus years of experience making photographs, reading books, going to courses etc. etc. etc. wasn't a matrix style instant download to my brain either.

It just seems more & more these days that the respect for genuine professional photographers/photography is gone or at best a rare & fleeting thing - certainly compared to the  days of film, and before the age of instant gratification that we now live in. I'm sure there are plenty of contributing factors - flickr, Facebook, cameras in almost every device imaginable (not all of these are bad things by the way... they all have their place). I think it is also fuelled to a degree by the number of cameras present at any given place & time now, many of which in their manufacturer's advertising campaigns are conveying the message 'you don't even need brain to use me'.

What a can of worms... there are so many more rant topics this could lead to (and just might down the track).

OK I'm done.

Taken with iPhone, whilst blind folded...
just kidding.

Collaboration

I recently had the opportunity to participate in a two day photo shoot with a client & friend of mine, David Smoler of Studio Paris. The brief for the shoot was to provide images of professional hair designs for a client of David's, which were to be submissions for a national competition. There was also a lot of very specific fashion involved, which was provided by another client, as well as killer makeup on all the models - again provided by another professional who had a keen interest in the project.

Essentially my job in all this was to assist David in creating the 'look' that he had envisioned for each series of images (as well as getting some much needed exercise lugging lots of heavy equipment around). I supplemented David's lighting gear with my own so he had more options to choose from. I'm into gels and all sorts of lighting modifiers, some of which David hadn't used before, so it was a great way for him to play & experiment, and a great challenge for me to create the lighting effects that another photographer was seeing in their mind's eye.

It was a great experience for me in a number of ways. It's not the sort of shoot I have been involved with in the past, so the different style of photography was great to experience. It was also really valuable seeing how all the elements are co-ordinated for a shoot of this scale such as separate hair, fashion & makeup artists all doing their thing. The client sitting in on the shoot and having a voice in the process as we worked was also a new experience too (all good). David was great in letting me have a fairly free hand in setting up the lighting - we would have a chat about what he wanted to achieve, what sort of mood was required, and away I went. Soft boxes, grids, beauty dish, gels, reflectors - even mixing studio strobes with Nikon SB900s - they all had their place, and all were important tools in the process. I even ended up doing some DJ work with the music on day 2.

It was a long two days for sure, but that it how it goes, and what the job required. The results were well worth it. Over the two days there were 6 different models and about a dozen themes / sets that were shot... culminating in a ton of images to sort through (around 1500 I think) which have to be whittled down to just six finals for the submission. Both David & myself were really happy with the results, as was the main client and all others involved. We were also able to shoot some personal work in amongst everything else which was a huge plus too.

Unfortunately the submission process will not be over until early next year so I am unable to post any final images at this point (except for a lighting setup shot that I really like that doesn't give anything away).

Thanks again to David for giving me the opportunity to jump onboard - the collaboration was a great one, and won't be the last I'm sure.

The Power Of The Print

The other day I was reminded of the 'power of the print' when a customer picked up a couple of 16x20 inch prints. She very rarely prints any of her work, and has never had any prints made above an 8x10. I was a little worried at first thinking we had made a mistake with her order - she was quite silent, and tears looked like they mightn't be too far away. Then she exclaimed "Wow! I took these pictures!" She experienced for the first time the joy of seeing your own photography in print form, and big.

These days it can be far too easy to forget about the impact a big print can make, about the pride & satisfaction it can bring. The process often tends to be you shoot your images, you download them, edit them and then file them. The end. I'm not saying there is no satisfaction seeing your images on screen, there definitely is, but when you make a big print of that same image and hold it in your hands, it is something else - the process tends to feel complete, at least it does for me. I'm lucky, and owning a photo lab allows me to print my images whenever I like, but even before that was the case I was making prints of my favourites from both my personal and professional work - I have a ton of unframed prints in big flat boxes at home that I pull out from time to time, and rotate through various frames.

Do yourself a favour and make a print or two of some of your favourite images - and I don't mean a 4x6 or an 8x10 - make a 12x18 inch print at the very least. And don't forget there are all sorts of options these days too in regards to paper types - I've just been experimenting with some textured fine art papers and man does it bring on a whole new dimension to the completed image. There are so many options when it comes to what you make your print on - high gloss, metallic gloss, lustre, matte, canvas, textured fine art... and they all just add to your creative toolbox and vision.

My final bit of advice is to get your prints done properly. If you don't have the facilities to make them yourself, have your prints made by someone who cares as much as you do about the final result - not a mass merchant who lured you in with cheap prices so you could browse in their furniture and carpet section whilst waiting for your prints.

RAW Vs JPEG

and yes this was shot RAW...

Recently my business partner and I have been wearing a T-shirt in the shop on occasion with the slogan "I Shoot RAW" proudly displayed on the front (this is courtesy of another interesting personality & talent I follow online, Jared Polin, who is more commonly known as "Fro Knows Photo"). It has been an entertaining experience gauging what sort of response we get from our customers, and other people in our shopping centre we meet whilst wearing these... needless to say, we have received many a strange look as well as some clever comments which generally have nothing to do with photography, but hey, as long as it brings a smile it's all good.

The RAW versus JPEG argument has to be one of the most widely discussed topics in photography these days, with countless opinions on what is best. Most, unfortunately are based on misinformation or just plain old ignorance, and surprisingly it's more often the professionals rather than the hobbyists that I have spoken to over the last few years that are the ones falling into the second category.

Here's my two cents:

This will mean more to those who have shot film...  I liken shooting RAW format images to using the best possible film for the job along with having it processed at the best lab available.

Does this mean it will make a great image out of a crappy one? No - the photographer is still the most important cog in the whole process by a long shot, but it does mean that you are allowing your camera to capture an image with the maximum quality it possibly can. The biggest difference, is that a JPEG captures 255 tone steps from absolute white through to absolute black, whereas a RAW file captures between approximately 4000 & 16000 tone steps depending on whether your camera can capture a 12 or 14 bit image. This is the reason why you are able to recover many an off exposure if required, as well as produce much better tone gradations - especially noticeable in big enlargements. Essentially, unless there is a damn good reason, why would you choose to capture sub-standard images on the gear you have invested a lot of dollars in?

I have been able to save many an image for the pro clients I process work for when they have shot RAW. Again, I am not advocating that you should shoot RAW to make up for bad or sloppy photography, but it definitely can get you out of a jam... and life can choose to throw tests at the best of us whenever it chooses.

As well as the significant tone range difference, there are a few other components of digital photography that can benefit from shooting RAW. In camera sharpening and white balance are two things that can be set on your digital camera. If you shot RAW, you have the ability to change both those things if required, in your post processing software. Ideally, you should have set those things correctly when taking the shot - that's what good photographers generally do - but white balance can be a doozy sometimes, and if you are on the run jumping from daylight to tungsten to fluro... well, you can see how it could be an enormous advantage to be able to fine tune later if needed. Again, this ability has allowed me to save a number of photographers who have say, accidentally shot the good part of a wedding that was outside (daylight) with a tungsten white balance - you would not know once I had finished with the images. The same scenario in JPEG - find a good lawyer.

Now to be fair, shooting JPEG sometimes has it's advantages over RAW. JPEG's, having a smaller file size. They take up less memory, and can be captured and written faster - enabling faster frame rates for sports etc. Often sports shooters will do this as getting "the" shot with super fast frame rates is more important than RAW tone range. A job may require quick, easy and instant view-ability - which JPEG will provide (in many cases photographers shooting under these circumstances will shoot a RAW+JPEG to give them the best of both worlds). Other than those two situations though, in my opinion RAW wins every time.

So if you haven't delved into shooting RAW because you didn't understand the why's or wherefores, or because you've been told it's only for Pro's, give it a try. Most current computers should allow you to view your RAW files in their native viewing applications, and software like Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture and iPhoto to name a few, will allow you to get the most out of your camera and out of your images.

Reputations on the line

In my main line of work - running a photographic lab - I am often dealing with other photographers, but more and more these days, with the changing times, I am dealing with their clients too. These days it seems a lot of photographers are choosing to hand over a digital version only of the images they have shot for their client (there are many debates on this line of thinking too). When this happens, more often than not no form of print is included - not even a set of proof sheets. I'm not here to debate whether that is a smart way to do things but what I can say from my experiences over the years as a printer and a photographer, is that without something showing your client what sort of quality they should expect from the images you have made for them, they can potentially end up with anything - despite all your hard work.

What I mean by this is that many of them are being lured to the mass merchants to have their "professional" prints made - you know, the images you made with your professional gear, post processed on your high-end computer & software and expertly finessed all the way with your experience and passion...  These mass merchants are destroying the retail photographic printing industry whilst they play out their pricing war on 6x4 prints (and most of the other common photographic services). They are only interested in running a lab as a loss-leader to the merchandise they sell (TVs, BBQ's, underwear etc), and have absolutely no expertise, and generally place little to no care in their photographic services. Granted, that potentially on the right day, with the wind blowing from the right direction and all the planets being in alignment, it is possible to get a reasonable looking print from a good file from one of these guys. But the rest of the time what your client will receive from them is not what you would want your client seeing.

I know this because I have lost track of the number of people I have dealt with now, who after having taken the CD of images they purchased from their photographer down to one of the TV selling / photo printing stores, and then after having been sorely disappointed, have come into my store and asked for my opinion on what they should do... generally they are angry at the photographer for producing such awful looking images and want to know if I can fix them. In the vast majority of cases the images are fine, they have just been printed badly (what can you expect for  nine cents I guess). After I make new prints and explain to them what's going on (and repair the photographers damaged reputation) they are generally OK. I do know of cases where the client never learned the truth and assumed the photographer was to blame, and then did their best to not recommend that photographer... food for thought.

Personally, I don't like providing a client with only a digital version of my work. Where possible, even if that was all that was required for the job specs, I try to include something printed to go with the digital versions such as proof sheets. That way they see what I want them to see - they have an example of what  the images should look like. Should they choose to print them somewhere unreliable or to view them on something that isn't going to render them favourably such as an old dodgy computer screen, new dodgy computer screen, television etc. you have something to uphold your vision. They may even choose to make their own prints at home (read colour profiling minefields) .There is so much potential for your images to not look the way you intended them to, the more you can give your client to protect your reputation - and keep them satisfied and happy - the better.