– PopPhoto (click for full review)

Available on Amazon.

Hi Thorsten,

Funny you should ask – I’m in the process of preparing a webinar for Sekonic meters that covers the exact topic you are asking about (among others).

The answer is a bit more complicated than it first appears because most often there is a second light source (or fill card) lighting my subject or I am not photographing a single subject but a group of subjects instead.
Here is the technique I use:
1. If the two light sources are of similar or only slightly differing intensities (power level and distance) AND there are multiple subjects being lit I aim the meter’s dome at the camera.
2. When I am metering a single subject and my two light sources are of similar or slightly differing intensities, I position the dome of the meter so that it points at an imaginary point approximately about half-way between the lens axis and the main light. I often call this “feathering the dome” towards the key (or main) light.
3. As the difference in intensity between the main light and any secondary light source increases (say over 2 f-stops), or as my single subject turns towards the main light I aim the dome directly at the main light instead of feathering it at all.
4. Lastly, if I am lighting a group of subjects, and they are arranged so that they all are turned towards the main light and all the subjects are approximately the same distance from the main light I aim the dome directly at the main light.

Using the four techniques above seems to give me the most consistent exposure levels from image to image but I mention the difference in metering technique between single and multiple subjects because if you feather the dome when photographing multiple subjects the subject farthest away from the main light always seems to get short changed in its exposure level which (in turn) makes the subject closest to the main light seem to be most important (which is often not the case).

Importantly, before I start using a single reading with a dome receptor I most often read each light source individually either with the dome retracted (on Sekonic meters) or using a flat receptor (on meters not equipped with a retracting dome), or blocking secondary light sources from hitting the dome with my hand so as to read each light’s intensity individually. So, it might be said that I first decide how steep a ratio I want between my multiple light sources and the adjust my metering technique to take that difference into account.

Finally, I read background or hair lights by pointing the dome directly at those light sources and placing the dome in the same place as the portion of the subject or background I am lighting and the adjust these light’s output to fit into the exposure setting I’m using to light the primary subject of my image.

The real point is I always try to use a consistent technique that is dependent of the subject and lighting I’m using.
As an example of this, in the image below there is an approximate 2.5-3 stop difference between the main light and the fill light on the primary subject, I aimed my dome at the main (or key light), and the light wiping across the background was set at the same intensity as the light reading for the primary subject be reading it individually.

I hope this info is helpful to you.

I firmly believe that perfect posing results in portraits that don’t look posed. The idea that a photographer’s best work should not be seen is a difficult concept for many photographers to accept because of the competitive nature of a profession where everyone wants to stand out. Imagine the consternation we egocentric photographers feel knowing that our goal is not to be seen? Regardless of our desire to shout about our competence from every hilltop and steeple, or the necessity for proving talent and creativity in competing for assignments, I still come back to the truism that the very best posing is invisible. The whole idea behind great portraiture is that it’s not about the photographer’s technical virtuosity, but instead about the subject and his, her, or their message. So let’s talk about posing: the invisible art form.

Posing and the Camera

Many artistic techniques in portrait photography are best when they don’t call attention to themselves. If the viewer is distracted by any photographic technique, it obscures the subject who should be the focus of the portrait. There’s a phrase that magazine and book publishers use to describe a great editing job: The perfect editor never leaves footprints. The editor’s job is to make the words organized and easily understandable so the message comes through without losing the author’s unique voice and, in a way, that’s a good description of the portrait photographer’s job, too. If a portrait photographer’s posing technique looks stilted, uncomfortable, or unnatural, then the photographer is leaving footprints, and those very footprints can doom the portrait to mediocrity, or worse still, a cliché.

Even though posing is an invisible art form, when done carefully and with a plan, it can do wonders for a less than perfect face. In reality, there are very few “perfect faces” to begin with, so posing is an invaluable technique. Shortening noses, accentuating eyes, hiding lazy or different-sized eyes, strengthening weak chins, and a host of other common “problems” can easily be dispatched by posing. Like the magician’s sleight of hand, much of this visual trickery is based on controlling what the viewer can see, and probably more importantly, what they can’t. While you can accentuate something by lighting it, or minimize it by hiding it, or placing it in the shadows, another way to do this is by carefully choosing your point of view. What this boils down to is your camera’s position in relation to the face, and while it may not seem to be connected to posing, it can be considered as a block in the foundation you’re building to support everything else you’re going to do. That being the case, let’s start there.

Two Planes Floating in Space

In your mind’s eye, imagine two planes floating in space; one represents the subject’s face (the facial plane) and the other represents either the digital chip or the piece of film within your camera (the imaging plane). Do you have a mental picture of this? Good. While these two planes are not physically connected, moving either of them affects how the facial plane is shown on the imaging plane. Not only does moving either plane left, right, up, or down change how the subject’s face is portrayed on the imaging plane, but depending upon whether the planes are parallel or not also affects how the face is portrayed. If the two planes are parallel and centered on one another, then the imaging plane will record an “accurate” rendition of the facial plane. But if they’re offset or not parallel, then things start to get interesting.

When I talk about centering the lens (or lens axis) on the subject, you should imagine a straight line that passes through the exact center of the front element of the lens and hits both the imaging and subject planes at a right (90°) angle. While centering the lens can be exact, the center of a subject’s face is not as easily defined. If we were to center the face on the lens axis, it is likely that the centered lens axis line would hit the average subject somewhere between the bridge and the tip of their nose. However, when we get a mental image of a face the first thing we usually see in our mind is the subject’s eyes. This means that there are two centers of the face; one is the physical center (somewhere approximately on the nose), while the other is the center of interest (usually the eyes). If I’m doing a bust-length portrait, I usually start with the camera centered on the physical center of the face. But if I’m doing a close-up portrait, which is primarily the subject’s face, I start off with my camera centered on the center of interest—the eyes.

Full-lengths are a bit easier because the subject’s eyes, while still important, are a much smaller part of the whole. I was taught that the approximate starting off point for a full-length portrait is to center the camera on the subject’s belly button. In general, I find the least amount of subject distortion happens when my camera’s imaging plane is approximately parallel to the subject plane, be it their face or their body. Remember though, that like all rules, this rule is ripe for breaking.

Depending on what kind of portrait you are composing, you’ll want to consider the camera height in relation to the subject’s face. For bust-length poses (top), center your lens on the subject’s nose. For close-ups, center your lens on the subject’s eyes (bottom).

Working With Planes and Distances

Let’s talk about the changes that take place when you start to move out of parallel in the imaging and subject planes. If you’re shooting a subject and the imaging plane is centered on the eyes (and thus slightly higher than the face’s center), and you tilt the camera downwards to reframe and center the face, you have accomplished a few things, some good, some bad. Because the imaging plane is now higher and tilted downward toward the face’s physical center, the subject’s eyes are closer to the imaging plane while their chin is farther away. This is almost always a good thing. At the same time, the higher point of view and the downward tilt of the imaging plane makes the subject’s nose look longer. This is not always a good thing! The higher viewpoint will also minimize the subject’s nostrils and weaken a strong chin (or even worse, weaken an already weak chin). Often, you’ll find that trying to accentuate or minimize one feature of a subject’s face results in the accentuating or minimizing of another feature at the same time. That’s because all of a subject’s facial parts are connected and, sadly, you can’t remove your subject’s nose and move it a quarter of an inch up or down and then reconnect it! So whenever you adjust the camera angle to better portray one feature, be prepared for resulting changes in other features.

As you consider this point, remember that the facial plane is not fixed—it’s also free to move and tilt, which will also change the results you’ll see. For example, if you center your lens on the subject’s eyes or even higher, which is slightly higher than the physical center of the face, and then have your subject tilt their head up slightly to bring the face’s plane back into parallel with the imaging plane, then the folds of a double chin are stretched open and start to disappear. Without a doubt, 99.9 percent of your double-chinned subjects will applaud this change. As an additional bonus, any double chin still remaining will be hidden and minimized because the high point of view puts it under the primary chin. But remember to look for those resulting changes to other features and weigh their effect on the portrait; in this case, you will end up with a longer-nosed subject who has a weaker chin. I find it very interesting that even slight alterations in camera height usually create simultaneous positive and negative changes, and having to constantly evaluate these changes and make compromises is one of the reasons I’m still not bored with portraiture after all these years.

For changing the distance between camera and subject planes, small increments are usually best. If you were to draw a horizontal line through the center of most subjects’ faces (the nose) and another horizontal line through their eyes, you’d find that the distance between the lines on most faces is only about two inches. So when raising the camera as in the example above, I would consider a “high” camera position to be one in which the center of the imaging plane is no more than approximately 4 – 6 inches (10.2 – 15.2 cm) above the center of the subject’s face. Go much higher (like a foot or two) and the camera’s height starts to leave a signature. What is a signature, you might ask? Any time you choose a point of view that is so radical that it detracts from the subject by calling more attention to itself, that point of view is leaving its signature on the photograph. I think very high and very low viewpoints trigger associations about the subject in the mind of the person viewing the photograph.

It’s important to consider what the height of your camera says about your subject. A high camera position can make them seem small or young, while a low position can make them seem overbearing or larger than life.

I believe everyone naturally makes assumptions about things they see that are based, in part, on past experiences, and camera height as interpreted by a viewer can be a prime example of this concept. If you start to bring up mental images of children you know, you might realize that in the vast majority of these instances, you are looking down at them because kids are smaller than adults. I believe that when we look at a portrait of a single subject done from a radically high viewpoint, it triggers our mental associations about children and makes us feel that the subject is young. If you accept this, then when we look at a portrait of a single subject from a radically low viewpoint, the opposite occurs—the subject looks heroic, powerful, and larger than life because of their dominant, overbearing position in relation to the camera.

While this may seem like a logical concept, I can’t tell you how many photographers I’ve encountered who give no thought to how the camera’s height in relation to the subject changes things. Worse still, these photographers often choose a camera height based on their own comfort or convenience, rather than the best choice for the portrait. I’ve seen very tall photographers doing portraits of small kids with the camera held at their own eye level. I find this unbelievable because they are giving up a useful tool without even considering how their camera’s height might be used to their benefit in portraiture.

Off-Camera Metering with Steve Sint from Sekonic Webinars on Vimeo.

When: Thursday, 04/21/11

Time: 7:00 PM sharp

What: Still Life Photography

Where: Great Neck House

65 Arrandale Ave., Great Neck, NY 11023

(516) 487-7665

Sponsored by: The Great Neck Camera Club and The Set Shop (SetShop.com)

Admission is Free. There will be a drawing for Door Prizes at the end of the evening

More info in the future: http://www.greatneckcameraclub.org/index.html

MAC-On-Campus has posted an excerpt from the Digital Portrait Photography book here.

It’s a step by step account of organizing a 100 subject shoot at Avatar Studios. Also avaliable as a pdf.

Surprisingly to me, since the mentorship program announcement, a few photographers in my geographic area (New York) have contacted me about personal, one on one, private photography workshops. I have worked with two photographers already and just booked a third photographer for a session. While not inexpensive, they do give an individual a chance to get focused, specific, information on exactly what they are interested in finding out about. These sessions are not for real beginners, but for those more advanced photographers who already have an understanding of basic photography and know the difference between an f-stop and a bus stop… ☺! While my schedule is pretty busy with assignments, writing, and keeping up with this website, if you are interested in this kind of meeting go to my contact page and give me a call – I can probably work something out that suits both of us.

Secondly, to borrow a bit from Bill Maher, there are some New Rules about comments sent to this webpage.

1. The only comments that will be accepted and/or posted must be written in English – sorry but I just don’t have the time to translate those that are not in English. So, if you want to get your comment read or even possibly posted (see the next rule) and not immediately trashed write it in English or don’t bother to write it at all.
2. No comment or website that is an advertisement for pornography, videos, pharmaceuticals, software, or any other product except those that deal directly with serious photography will be accepted. Except as noted, they will all get trashed without being opened – all the time.
3. If you send a comment that doesn’t have a valid email address it will end up in the trash – sorry, but it has become a new rule for comments at this site. But, please note: No one who comments on this site will have his or her email address or website shared publicly.
4. If you are incensed or crazy mad about something I post on this site it will always be posted, as long as it doesn’t break any of the three rules above. While I’ll never avoid a good, clean argument or discussion, I just hate BS spam and phony email addresses – it’s a total waste of time!
5. All words and images on this site are ©Steve Sint (various years) and will be defended vigorously. If you want to use some of the information posted here with a link back to this site please feel free to contact me by private email before you do. Just a word to the wise.
6. The final arbiter in any questions or comments about any of these rules is SteveSint.com. What you write or post on your own site is your own business but this site is mine.

Thanks for your understanding.
Take care.

Digital Wedding Photography: Art, Business, and Style by Steve Sint

About 275 pages, its release date is June 7, 2011. Just in time for the wedding season!

More words than my portrait book (it’s thicker!), even more pictures, but this time, for a change, a lot of the images in it are from my students and friends at the Maine Media Workshops, plus some from two younger, second generation photographers from photographer parents who I consider friends, along with images from my own assignments and ones from the studios I shoot for.

Digital Wedding Photography: Art, Business, and Style by Steve Sint (that’s me!)

Keep an eye out for it!

PLEASE NOTE: Before the new book is released you can pre-order on Amazon If you are interested in a copy I want to ask that you get to Amazon’s page for the new book through this website. Doing so will keep this site alive and healthy. Thanks.

BTW, my publisher is really happy with it. In truth, I don’t know if she’s happy with the book or just that I finished it! Regardless, she wants me to do another book on an entirely different photography topic – partly because I’m tired of doing books about wedding photography! That’s all I can say for now but there’ll be another News Flash about that soon…I’m very excited about it!

Take care

But, I’ve been on enough video (and cine) shoots to know that lighting designers on those sets use the still photographer’s technique of lighting the subject when the subject of the shot is static or when the talent hits a spot and delivers his (or her) lines and expressions from that specific spot. I’ve watched a gaffer on a film set use 15 (or more!) little inky spots to highlight each detail on a beautiful banquet table that the camera was only going to dolly past. And, I’ve watched assistant camera operators put tape marks on the floor for the talent to hit and then watched as the gaffers lit a same sized stand-in to still photographer perfection while the stand-in was standing on the tape mark.

So the question then becomes: If cine and video shooters adopt still shooter’s techniques when they are applicable to their subjects, why shouldn’t still photographers adopt cine and video shooter’s techniques when they are applicable to the still shooter’s subjects? Why not exactly!

As a matter of fact, when I shoot a formal portrait I light the subject (see the family portrait and the girl in the piano immediately below), but whenever I light a scene to record my subject’s action (i.e. people on a dance floor or a couple during their wedding ceremony) I no longer try to light them but instead, I light the area they are in. Because I’m trying to freeze a moment, this second style of lighting is not perfect 100 percent of the time because sometimes an individual subject might have a misplaced shadow falling across their face but I think it’s a fair trade off because I can capture the raw emotion of the moment without having to interject myself into what’s happening. Who likes a photographer that stops the fun to get his (or her) picture anyway?

To be totally transparent with you, I’ve even developed a hybrid lighting style that incorporates both of the lighting techniques I described above. In it, I use my flash on camera as a weak fill light, a second flash unit on a pole held by my assistant as my main light on my primary subject, and one or two AC powered flash units along the room’s perimeter to light the entire area or add highlights to my primary subjects. I have even started to refer to these AC powered lights as my “room lights” and their job is to light the entire area that my subjects are in – just like the cine and video guys do! By throttling down the power of the AC powered room lights, and making sure the flash on the pole held by my assistant is the strongest of all the flash units I’m using, I can get my primary subject to look more three-dimensional and appear to “pop off the page” and my resulting pictures don’t have that “flash in the face/dark background” look the guests get with their little digital cameras. Did I mention that I use Pocket Wizard radio slaves instead of light actuated slaves? That way, none of the guests with their little digi-cams can steal the lighting I’ve worked so hard to create! I’m often told by my clients that my pictures probably look so good because my camera is better than those their guests use, but in reality I know it’s not that I am using a better camera but better lighting instead. I never mention this though – I’m just happy they keep calling to offer me assignments! See the photo taken at a 13-year old girl’s birthday party immediately below.

If you are willing to try this more advanced lighting style yourself, there are two cardinal rules I suggest you try to observe: 1. I try to position my primary room light (the stronger of the two I use) on the same side of the subjects as my assistant holding the light on a pole – that way his light and the room light cast shadows in the same direction so the lighting looks more natural, and 2. See the photo and a bird’s eye view of the ballroom and where my lights are placed to better understand what I’m talking about plus the photo of the bride sitting on a chair as her friends dance in front of her while her family and friends look on so as to understand what I’m talking about.

When I wear my wedding photographer hat (which I wear quite often!), I shoot traditional portraits in every sense of the word and for those images I light my subject but, when I’m shooting the guests on the dance floor, I switch to the cine/video technique of lighting the area my subjects are doing their thing in instead.

For those of you that can’t imagine (or be bothered with!) using four flash units simultaneously I must point out that even adding one room light and breaking the cardinal rule of not shooting into it can result in a unique image (again, compared to the guest’s digi-cam photos). As most of the guests milled around the dance floor while the best man gave his toast, after I got my shot of him, I turned around and captured this image of a reaction shot to his toast at a tent wedding on a rainy afternoon. The tent rental company was nice enough to have run a few power lines out to the tent so the band, the caterer, and me too had some AC power available. So, up went a room light! Next, and last, here’s the same lighting style using one on camera flash and one room light but this time I didn’t get the room light flash in my frame. Although I like the second shot better, I don’t think the light in the frame on the first shot matters because both pictures “pop”!

Till next time, take care and good shooting!

A photographer from England recently asked a question and also asked if I would be willing to offer a subscription mentor program! After a few emails between us I decided to offer just such a service.

So, here’s the deal.

As of today, and through this website, I’m offering a Limited Enrollment Subscription Mentor Program to other serious photographers. The price is $ 20 (US) per month and for that subscribers can get three to four questions or critiques answered by private email. A second option is a 12-month subscription for $ 200 – a savings of $ 40 over the price of 12 month by month subscriptions; plus it’s more convenient to only have to subscribe once. If the answer is involved, or complicated, or just takes a lot of time, the question/critique limit will be three, if they are relatively easy for me to answer you get to ask and get my response for four. It’s my call, but I think you’ll find I’m fair in deciding what each subscriber’s question or critique limit is. You’ll get your answer within about one week (seven business days or less) except in May, June, September, October, and December when my shooting workload gets a bit crazy and it might take me a bit longer at those times. The last point to mention is that any of the answers I provide remain my property because, if I think an answer to your question is worthwhile in increasing everyone’s general knowledge, I might want to use the information in a future book, article, or blog post.

As the legalese often says, these terms are subject to change depending on the response to the program, but if they do, whatever terms exist at the beginning of the month (or year) you’re subscribed for will continue through that month (or year). Payment will only be through PayPal and if you’re interested in the program, and serious about our craft, contact me through private email (see the contact page on this page) and we can get started! As sponsors often say when advertising my workshops…seating is limited!

Thanks.

To get an idea of what a sample question and response might be here is the exchange between photographer X and myself:

On 15 January 2011 15:24, Steven Sint wrote:
On 1/13/11 8:25 PM, “Photographer X” wrote:
I am currently thinking about how to create an excellent studio set-up whilst minimizing outlay. With 2 x Nikon SB600s flashes with diffusers I hope to have good sufficient main and fill light. It’s the background and hair light that I’m trying to provide without big £. I’m tempted to try halogen bulbs in flexible clip-on spot lights and am hoping that being just for background and hair they won’t warm the colour of the most important parts of the image. I shall have to suck it and see!

The thought has crossed my mind; do you have a mentoring programme based on monthly subscription where the student sends the odd email and photo for comment?

Hi X,

I’m not a big fan of using hot lights (either quartz or tungsten) for people. They create too much heat which makes subject perspire and uncomfortable and, unless they are very powerful (which increases the heat problem) or you shoot at very high ISOs (which lowers image quality), you end up working with a very limited range of apertures at longish shutter speeds which (for people anyway) leaves you open to either subject or camera motion problems. You can solve the camera motion part of the equation by always using a tripod but that can then limit your ability to position the camera quickly and explore multiple camera angles easily – to the point of cramping your creativity.

If you are truly set on trying this (personally, I try stuff like this all the time!), you can use polymer filters to bring different K value light sources into balance with one another but if you do so I would suggest using orange polymer filters over your flash units because putting blue polymer filters over your hot lights can lead to a fire hazard and even if they don’t burst into flame they still will discolor prematurely from the light’s excessive heat (especially so if the heat is trapped in a bowl shaped reflector covered with the polymer filter. I currently have a piece of Lee #204 polymer semi-permanently taped over one of my SB 800’s reflectors (see photo) and use that on-camera flash when working on assignments with cine or video shooters using high output lights. When I use my orange-filtered flash unit I set my camera’s WB to 3130 K (it’s the closest K setting my D300’s have to 3200K) so the flash balances to the hot lights and my camera knows what I’m doing! Compare the next two attached photos to see the difference between using unfiltered flash mixed with ambient indoor lighting (WB set to 5560) while in the second one I’m using a flash unit filtered with a Lee 204 and the ambient room lighting (plus the video lights) while setting my camera’s WB to 3130K. Note that if you go this route, the continuous light source intensity can be adjusted by changing your shutter speed without affecting the flash exposure to any great degree but changing your aperture will affect both the flash and the tungsten light intensity. All of this is covered in my upcoming book, Digital Wedding Photography: Art, Business, and Style that will be out in June and is already listed at Amazon, UK.

Lee Filters is a UK company < http://www.leefilters.com/lighting/ > and I use one of their swatch books of filters for experimentation by cutting the filter I want to try out of the book and taping it over one of my SB800s (although they can obviously be used on Canon flash units too). The website address cited above is in the UK and I mention it because of your spelling of “colour” and “programme” but their US website is < http://www.leefiltersusa.com/lighting/ >.

Thanks for contacting me,
–
Steve Sint