The five-minute photo shoot

Since my posts have been less frequent lately, I wanted to hurry and do a "background" shoot. Just blocks away from my home and in front of an apple orchard sits a run-down fruit stand full of textures just begging to be used as a background. So I took Lucas for a very quick shoot amid freezing cold winds. The whole shoot lasted about 2 minutes. Better weather and more time would have been great, but neither of those was an option.

My conclusion: A short photo shoot is better than none. Try it out:

• Keep your eye out for a nearby location with color and texture (even a dumpster can fit the bill, or a school playground, or...)
• Don't worry about perfect hair. Keep it natural.
• A plain white or black shirt won't clash with the background.
• Shoot quickly and get out.
  

Here is a sampling of the results without virtually no retouching beyond cropping.

The stylized crop is actually my way of not showing that one sleeve was up and one down:

But on the other hand, the disheveled look suits his style.

If I had not told him to change into a white shirt, his clothes would have clashed with this beautifully textured shed.

Even a head-and-shoulders shot benefits from a good background. And speaking of basic shots...

Your standard mug shot à la school photos is way better with a real-world background.

So, go give it a try. And when you do, share your results.

February Monthly Special: Background

"We see your bum!"

What role does the background play in creating a good or bad photo? In my photo of children pointing at the graffiti on the backside of a statue (It reads: "On voit ton cul," which I have translated into the slightly less vulgar "We see your bum!"), the statue in the background actually becomes the central focus. Technically, I suppose it would be "middleground," or even ...Hmm. Not the best way to exemplify the theme. But technicalities aside, I wanted to look at the relation between the subject and the background. Here, we can see it quite, well, explicitly.

How much thought goes into the background in your photos? When I take group photos, most families have a strong sense of their ideal background. Trees. Mountains. Flowers. Almost always a scene of pastoral tranquility. Rare is the family that wants a portrait at a construction site. Look at a few of the photos around your home. What kinds of backgrounds do you see. Does the background add to or distract from the central focus of the image? Do you prefer a blurred background (a shallow depth of field) or a deep focus? How does color function in your backgrounds? What about texture? When we take snapshots, we don't always have time to think about background. But this month, I am challenging you to experiment with background. Scout out locations around your city. Pay attention to color and texture. Think about the meaning that a background adds.

Throughout the month, I will post some of my own experiments, hopefully an interview, and even a tutorial or two. If you're not a Photoshop user, this is a good month to participate in the Monthly Special. Have fun with it. And when you're done, post your results and link back here.

Interview with Elain Vallet of Elainev.com

I first happened upon Elaine's blog back in August when I was doing the "photo within a photo" theme. As is the case with all good French people, Elaine was taking a four-week vacation in August. Luckily, she had posted a great photo within a photo shot on her site. I have been admiring her work ever since, so I am happy to share some of it with you in this brief interview

(NOTE: As always, my guests hold the copyright to their work. Please respect it.)

Most of your photography on your blog and website is black and white, is there a reason that you favor black and white photography over color?

My first approach to photography was in black and white, through my father’s photos as a kid, seeing them appear on paper in an improvised darkroom in our flat. Then, I discovered the b&w humanist photographers such as Cartier-Bresson or Ronis and the work of Magnum agency journalists by whom I have been very much influenced.

Besides, I find it easier to convey the sense of a moment without the interference of colors and also because monochromatic settings leave more space for graphics, shadows, lights and contrasts which are very dear to me and I have to admit also much easier to shoot. As far as I’m concerned, colors are terribly difficult to handle…

Here, the use of b&w gives a sense of unity between the boy, shadow and reflection

How do you decide which photos to leave in color and which ones to convert to black and white?

I hardly ever use film cameras but if I do, it is with b&w films, so that I can do the printing myself in a darkroom, which I find fascinating.

Otherwise, I use my canon digital camera (rebel Xti), taking most of my photos in RAW, for the flexibility of the format. Yet my camera is always on b&w settings, so that I get direct b&w screen control. I have gotten used somehow to thinking in b&w, anticipating what a scene will look like once captured, focusing on lights and shadows.

Nevertheless, I can change back to colors on the computer and sometimes I am pleased with the result and decide to leave it that way, especially when there is one main color in the scene, as a sort of “bichromatic” picture. If you have a look at my galleries, all the color pictures have a clear dominant tone.

This would be more of a “black and blue” picture than a full “color” picture

Can you share how you convert your photos from color to black and white?

As I have said before, my camera is always on b&w settings, so when I upload the photos onto the computer they are already in b&w. I work on the RAW files with Canon’s software DPP and most of the time I adjust the levels or curves a little to sharpen the contrast. I also enjoy very much the filters effects, especially the red one that is always very efficient on skies and reflections.

Here the red filter effects make the clouds stand out and the light appear darker.

When I need a bit more processing, I use Photoshop to create layer masks so as to work on a selected part of the photo. And that is about it really, as I am not very good with computers and not willing to spend too much time on processing.

Do you have any advice for people who are new to black and white photography?
I got into b&w photography because I was moved by some photographers’ work. I remember the emotional shock it was for me to discover Sebastiao Salgado’s collection or “reading” Abbas’s Children of Abraham book. So I guess it mainly depends on one's sensitivity. People around me keep asking why I don’t take color pictures and the only thing I can say is that I shoot in b&w because this is the way I feel it, because this is what I find “beautiful.” So, if I were to give advice to someone, with my very small experience, it would be to shoot what you like, because it moves something in you that you want to share. The main key to a strong b&w photo is obviously the light and the shadows it creates, but it is also easy to play with transparencies, reflections, smoke etc. Marc’s rules for b&w are just the most important things you have to bear in mind. :)

The artificial mist creates a particular mood around the boy and makes him stand out in this graphic environment.

What do you hope to share with others with your photography?

This is a very tricky question actually. I guess I just want to provoke emotions in others the way some photos do for me, either because it tells a story (funny, tragic, informational...) or because the aesthetic or the mood in the picture gets at you. It is mainly about sharing a point of view on one moment in time. The theme that keeps coming back in my photos is the isolation of men in their self-made environment, and my photos are probably my way to show that I care....

Could you comment on a few of your favorite black and white photos?

There are a few of my pictures that are important to me for the moment they represent or for the time I put into them or simply because I was lucky to be there at the right moment.

"Adieu"

Adieu was taken in New York City. There was a big puddle on the ground and some NYC-style buildings were reflecting in it. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with this and I put my hand over my eyes to protect them from the sun. This is when I realized my hand appeared in the sky, as if coming out from the cloud. It is one of my first water reflection experiences and it has opened up lots of new perspectives to my photographic habits. I didn’t do any processing on it. (1/400 sec f 3.5)

"Rrrrr"

I like the story in this picture which I find quite funny, this little boy escaping from the roaring man on the poster. This is a photo I had to process bits by bits to get the poster up front bright enough and to get rid of the reflections on it. I also appreciate the general graphic of the composition.

"Grand Ecran"

"Grand Ecran" is an example of human isolation in big cities, everyone in his box, letter ...no communication… and yet a beautiful surrounding. Here I used the red filter to make the letters stand out (as they were red lights) and the light coming from the back helped a lot to darken the silhouettes.

Thanks Marc for having me on take-out photo.

Thank you, Elaine, for sharing your work and insight.

As a side note to my readers, I have to say how impressed I am with both Marcel and Elaine for their willingness to talk about their work and their ability to discuss it so eloquently in a second language. Ever since my interview with Lorrie McClanahan in August I have been wanting to do more interviews, so being able to do two this month has been great.

The month is almost over, but there is still time to post your own black and white work as part of the Monthly Special. [New to Take-out photo? Check out the FAQ page.]

The Zone System

Because we are doing black and white this month, I thought I would share some photo history. This post is not meant to be a tutorial about the zone system. In fact, I never use it in my own work, most likely because I tend to be more intuitive (a euphemism for undisciplined?) rather than methodical. However, given that many of the great masters swear by the zone system, you may want to know about it.

A brief history of the zone system

Ansel Adams and Fred Archer created the zone system around 1941. I think it is safe to assume that you have heard of Ansel Adams and seen some of his stunning black and white landscapes. Every poster store in America carries reproductions of his work. Fred Archer, on the other hand, has never achieved a comparable level of popularity, and is often eclipsed by Adams even in accounts of the zone system. Some would argue that Archer first came up with the idea and that Adams, after having read about it in a series of articles, helped to formalize the system.

The goal of the zone system is to have better control over exposure. The first step in achieving good exposure is to visualize the entire photograph and to study the gradations from blackest black (zone 0) to whitest white (zone 10). You can see a good chart of the 11 zones (typically labeled with roman numerals) on Wikipedia. Ansel Adams only considered zones I to IX to be useful for film density.

I asked my assistant, Lucy, who uses the zone system all the time, to help out by labeling one of her photos according to zones:

Photo by Lucy Call

If you are just reading to get a basic understanding of the zone system, you might be satisfied by looking at the photo above and then skipping to the conclusion, but if you want to plunge into the more technical aspects and try it out (this is a darkroom process), here is an explanation from Lucy:

1. You must find your effective film speed. With large format camera and B&W sheet film, I use Kodak T-Max 400, expose five sheets of film. You bracket these exposures, so that one exposure is right on and one is ½ stop under and another is 1 stop underexposed. Then the other two are ½ stop over exposed and 1 full stop overexposed. These are all developed at the suggested time for your film and developer type. Then to determine the effective ISO, you look at the different exposures and find where you think your values, mainly shadows, look best. So if you like the one that was exposed for what the meter said, then you would shoot your film at 400. I believe that the ½ stop underexposed would be ISO 320 if I remember correctly.
2. Now that you have your ISO, you want to find your effective developing time. So expose 5 sheets of film at your new ISO and develop each sheet. If your suggested developing time was 7 ½ minutes, then you would put one sheet of film into the tray of developer and wait thirty seconds and then another and wait thirty seconds and another and so on, until the first sheet has been in the developer for 8 ½ seconds and the last one put in has been in it for 6 ½ seconds. Once this is finished you can determine your effective developing time. Look at highlights.
3. Then go shoot and use the zone system. The first thing I do is look to see what I think should be in zone III (my darkest darks that still have full detail) and then I meter that and stop down two because it is giving me middle gray. Then with that I meter where other values will fall accordingly. If I don’t like where some of my highlights are falling than I adjust that with my developing time. So if my highlights needed to be brighter, I would push my developing or develop for longer. You determine this by step 2.

Conclusion
If you read Lucy's explanation, you can see why someone as distracted as myself might shy away from that process. If, on the other hand, you want to learn more, check out usefilm's article, the Wikipedia entry, the Luminous Landscape article, and a host of books for further reading.

But even if you find the system not applicable to your needs or too intimidating, your awareness of the zones will help you better appreciate black and white, Archer and Adams, and the photographic process.