#lightschoolasks

Hi! Kaitlin here:

Shooting anything at night—especially something that requires action—can be really, really difficult. 

There is a lot of equipment you could get to solve this. A lot of event photographers I know use strobes, because they’re lightweight, unobtrusive, and really solve a lot of issues. There are a number of really powerful flashes out there on the market that can help a lot. However, if you’re not an event photographer by trade, investing in the equipment it takes to get really solid event photos might not be worth it. (For example, in the few times I’ve been asked to cover events for friends, I’ve just used my dad’s old 1970s Nikon manual flash. Works well, it’s powerful enough that when I need bright flash fill it’s there, and most of all I got it for free.)

There are some things you can do, though, to make a situation like that easier without buying new equipment:

Don’t use your flash, and bump up the ISO instead. A weak on-board flash is going to just cause more problems than solutions. However, many modern cameras (especially Nikons) have great high-ISO performance will much less grain/noise than they use to have. Given film, our eyes are much more accepting of seeing grain than you’d believe, and I truly find as a Nikon shooter that Nikon’s digital noise actually is more similar in pattern to high ISO film stock. Using a high ISO and the slowest shutter speed you can get away with without blurring movement will at least make sure you’re getting a shot, even if grainy, that has everything evenly lit and in focus, versus weird shadows or worst of all, a flash that reflected off something too close to the camera and failed to get the subject.

Shoot in RAW. You’ll have much more latitude in post with your light. You can really bump up the exposure and the shadows to get an image that’s much brighter and clearer than you’d get in JPG. 

Make grain and darkness an aesthetic choice. If you’re shooting a night event, whether it’s zombies or a masquerade, you can make grain and shadows work in your favor. Maybe do some really stark, contrasty black and whites! Amp up the grain in photoshop and tinge things green to give it a creepy, apocalyptic look! You can also invest in in the VSCO film packs for Lightroom, which are great for giving problem photos a much more intentionally lo-fi look. 

Carry an iPhone or other powerful smartphone camera. It sounds weird, but these cameras are built for getting pretty great results in a variety of light. Whenever I’ve had to shoot at event spaces, I’ve used my iPhone as a sort of backup camera to get wide, group shots on the fly. They’re good as a backup and the flash on them is really powerful that up close enough, you can get pretty good fill. Also, using the Torch/Flashlight function can be a quick fill light if you’re doing an up close shot. 

If you do want to drop some $, buy a lightbox or ring with a shoe mount. I have a small light box with a shoe mount that’s perfect for close-quarters events. It throws off enough light to make a huge difference, especially in medium to close up shots, and wasn’t very expensive. It’s not high tech; it’s dimmable and comes with different plastic sheets that act as gels that slide into a slot in front of the light, and that’s it. On it’s brightest setting it throws off a lot of light. 

You’re using pounds so I’ll assume you’re in the UK, like myself. I get all my gear used from MPBPhotographic just because it’s a little cheaper second hand. They’re the cheapest I’ve found but feel free to shop around.

Your budget isn’t too small, I’m gonna talk Used Canon gear, because that’s the brand I know and there’s a Nikon equivalent for pretty much all their stuff.

Okay, so for that price you could actually get a 600D and a 50mm 1.4. The 600D has a flippy rotating screen which can be handy for a lot of things but if you feel you don’t need that, get a 500D and then you’ll have an extra £100 for lenses.

So, right now I’m seeing this;

500D: £150

600D: £250

That leaves you with £350-£450 to play around with lenses, of course you could always buy a cheap versatile zoom but I’d recommend getting something better like the 50mm f1.4 for £200. Or you could get the non-is 35mm f2 for about £170, then you’ll be getting a little more image quality for your bucks.

Answered by Iain A

Hi! Kaitlin here:To be honest, the answer is: when YOU feel that it’s enough. Okay, it might be a bit more complicated than that. Art is often a balance between what you want and what others want to see. Having the audience in mind can help inform our decisions and feedback can really give us good structure. But it’s your photos, your art. Some of my favorite edits of my photos are intense Photoshop sessions that really transform the shot and some of them are the barest of minimums. 

And our styles evolve! When I first got into photography in the early 2000s, I was all into that selective color pop, deviantART fluorescent aesthetic, which I look back on and gag—but even photos I edited five years ago I re-edit. I’ve gained so many new skills and techniques in that time that a photo I edited one way really benefits from a lighter (or heavier!) touch. The idea that photography MUST be a truthful translation from reality to image is pedantic and untrue; even before Photoshop, famous photographers spent hours in the darkroom creating their masterpieces. Photography is reality augmented. It’s what separates our work from the sea of vacation photos and Instagrams: we are artists. 

Hi there! Kaitlin here.Basically, you’re suffering from every artists’ nightmare: compression. When we shoot in RAW, we’re capturing a ton of light and color information, and as you’ll probably notice, those files are huge. Even when you save them as a PNG or a JPG for web presentation right out of CS6′s “Save As” dialog, those files are going to be big. Now, I’m not going to get into the technical aspects of specifically what happens, but essentially, (nearly) all websites have a limit to the size of photo you can upload. This can either be explicit like on Tumblr, or just sort of accepted on the site’s backend, which results in them compressing the photo for you. Facebook does it quite severely with JPGs (for them, it’s better to upload a PNG). Basically, they reduce the amount of color information etc in the photo to make it take up less space on the servers. Sometimes this can be really minimal, but for really vibrant or highly constrasted images, it can be devastating. So what can you do?1. Use Photoshop’s Save For Web & Devices Dialog

Right near the Save As command is another one: Save for Web & Devices. You can find more advanced tutorials on exactly how to get the best image out of this, but this method of saving will make sure that whatever you upload will be a lot closer to your actual intent than if you just use Save As. 

2. Know the Best Specs for Each Site

Tumblr will show giant images, but will automatically resize them down to 540px wide to fit in the dashboard. Facebook plays nicer with PNGs than JPGs and will compress you photo less if it’s 1000px wide or less. Some of this you can do via guesswork (e.g. for tumblr, I size everything to around 1080px so it sizes at 50% nicely and has a nice dashboard view, while still being big once clicked, which I just sort of… figured out), but there are also websites aimed at photographers/online artists that will explain exactly the best settings for each website. 

3. Give A Little

Hi there, Bex here.

I feel your pain - as someone who regularly shoots kids (what?) I know how quickly they move and how frustrating that can be to get shots of them that look great. I asked a couple of photographer friends of mine about this specific question the other night around a table at our favorite bar. Here’s what they had to say:

Sean: Oh! It’s like shooting weddings way back in the film days. The best rule is to move with the kids - to get your focus so precise and then keep the kids the same distance away from you at all times.

Jack: Yeah! You get really, REALLY good at judging distances really, REALLY fast. Also, if she wears glasses, tell her to make sure her diopter is adjusted to her glasses, not to her eyes!

Zosia: Do you ever ask the kids to stop so you can shoot them?

Sean: Sometimes. It can be cute. But getting them running by in a motion blur mess is kind of cool too, if you keep the rest of the photo sharp.

Zosia: I couldn’t do it. It’s too hard. 

Phil: You only get about 10 usable shots out of 100. If you’re lucky. it’s not like that’s a sure fire rule for every image. Your success rate goes way down. But, if you insist on doing it manually, that’s what you have to deal with.

Hi Anon! This is Bex!

I know EXACTLY what you did wrong, because I not only have that exact same lens but also I did the SAME thing when I was shooting LA from up there. Luckily I fixed it before I finished shooting and was able to come home with some usable images.

I am willing to bet all of my savings account that the little button next to “Stabilizer” was switched to ON - meaning that your camera was trying to stabilize the image. You might think, “Well, that doesn’t make sense, because they still came out blurry!” Here’s the thing - the stabilizer is working at all times when the button is turned on. So, when you have your camera secured on a tripod, it is still working trying to stabilize the photo by making small, micro movements to try to eliminate any kind of hand shake - meaning it does the exact opposite of what you want it to.

Hi, Anon! Bex here! I chose to answer this for you because I think it’s my photographs you’re referring to in your question. 

You’re right in assuming that my stars & stuff posts aren’t “real” images. They’re all composites made from photographs I’ve taken. Here are a couple of my favorite examples:

So, how do I make them? It’s actually surprisingly simple. If you know how to make a mask in Photoshop, you can make one of these in minutes. Let’s make one together - I’ll walk you through it!

I always start by going through my catalogue of images and choosing one I think would blend well with a star photograph. I like images with wide open skies taken as close to darkness as possible. Sunset is my favorite. I import the two images together as layers in Photoshop, and I immediately adjust the opacity of the star layer and reposition it to get the best composition. I don’t worry about the edges of the photograph that you can see clearly at the red arrow, because I’m going to mask it so it won’t be a part of the final image.

Turn off the star layer and create a mask around the sky on the base image layer. In this case, the mask was simple to do, but bear in mind that it’s not always easy (like in the image of the snowy pines above).

Once the mask has been created, move it up to the star layer and turn it back on. Adjust the opacity of the star layer for the look you want. You will probably also want to get into that mask with the brush tool to make local adjustments to help it look more realistic - in this case, I needed the left part of the sky to have fewer stars than the right, so I had to extend the mask upward. When I make local adjustments, I ALWAYS keep the “Flow” on the top toolbar around 3-5%, and use a very soft brush. 

Lastly, to tie it all together, I put a gradient map over everything, and adjust the opacity as I see fit. Here’s the final image:

Hi there! Bex here.

Here’s the thing about Tumblr - it’s not always an accurate gauge of how “good” your work is. The aesthetic on here is very specific, and it takes a certain kind of image to make it big. With that being said, here are some ways you can increase your visibility on Tumblr.

1. TAGS! Make sure you use tags. Your first five will show up in the tag search, so make them count. 

2. Make friends!Tumblr is not only a blogging platform, but also a social network. Who you know and who sees your work are very important to getting your work out there to everyone. Send messages to other photographers, and make friends. Sooner or later, you will grow your follower base and you will get more and more recognition.

3. Be consistent!If you want to showcase your photography, make sure you have a blog dedicated to just that - no other posts with poems, inspirational quotes of photos of the Avengers dressed like cats. Post regularly, and set up a queue if you have to.

4. Make note of the time!The time of day (and actual day) you post is also important. If I post something at 2pm on Monday it won’t be seen by as many people as a post at 7 or 8pm on Sunday. 

5. Be patient!It takes time to build up a successful blog, and none of us started with 10,000 followers. Relax, post good work and the notes will come.

With that being said, your work being “good” or not is a hard thing to measure. None of us are Ansel Adams, and even if we were, it’s hard to get everyone to agree on one assessment of someone’s work. My dad hates Ansel Adams, and thinks his work is boring, so go figure. Just keep doing you and making sure you learn along the way.