A little while ago, I was happy to be asked to photograph a Bar Mitzvah party for a young man named Sam (pictured above), held upstairs at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. I’d done a headshot session for Sam before, and it was nice to see him and his parents again, especially on such a happy occasion.
It was a great evening, with a lovely setting up on the terrace of the Center, and a mixture of Sam’s school friends and older family friends and relatives as guests.
Photographing parties events like this is nerve-wracking to a degree, and being there as a professional is very different from just firing off some images as a guest.
There’s an obligation to get good shots of everyone there if it’s a small enough party (as this was) while also trying to get excellent shots of the key folks and key moments. Sometimes it’s the little details or less than crucial events that really tell the story of the party, so you have to look out for those too. And not get in people’s way, while they’re enjoying themselves.
On the other hand, it’s an honour to be invited into people’s special occasions, and the guests tend to be in a good mood and looking good, and are very tolerant of a photographer they don’t know milling about.
It’s hard work, but I was happy with the results I got, and more importantly, so were Sam and his parents.
So I’m now the proud owner of an Olympus E-PL2 – one of the well-regarded Olympus EP PEN series. My experience lugging the big lad around Legoland was a step too far.
Despite only being released in January, the E-PL2 (which I’ll just call the EPL2 from now on to save on hyphens) is now on the virtual scrap-heap, having been superseded by the new E-P3. Which is why I got such a good price on it – with the kit lens I got it for $500 (from Amazon), while the E-P3 with the same lens is $900 (if you can find it at the moment).
(Technically, the E-P3 replaces the older E-P2, but the EPL2 was released in between these two, and so while it was supposed to be the less-impressive kid brother of the EP series cameras, it performs better than the (at the time) more expensive EP-2. You can get the EP-2 for around $500 too, which is nominally a bigger saving, but the EPL2 is a better camera, so I think that’s the one to get between the two old versions).
It lacks some of the things the new camera has – notably the touchscreen that lets you point to focus, faster autofocus all around, higher max ISO, and better movie capabilities – but interestingly DxO tests actually give the EPL2 better image quality results than its successors. Its results aren’t too far off the Canon Rebel XT body I bought as my first digital SLR five years ago. Impressive how far we’ve come technologically in a few short years.
I’d take an E-P3 if someone gave me, but the price difference between the two made the EPL2 an easy choice, especially as I was planning on using the camera as a more casual, walk around device than my main shooter.
And for that it does really well. It’s small, but not tiny – you can’t stick it in a trouser pocket (especially with the kit 14-42mm lens (which comes out at 28 – 84mm equivalent). but it’s certainly lighter and more manageable than my workhorse 5D Mark II with any lens attached.
What’s this Micro 4/3rds format anyway?
Jointly developed by Olympus and Panasonic (the lenses each make for the format are interchangeable across the manufacturers), the aim of this format is to put a pretty good-sized sensor into a smaller body, with smaller but interchangeable lenses.
These cameras work well for people moving up from point and shoots, looking for more quality and more control (although there are the usual Scene modes and auto-everything as options). But they also work for more experienced photographers like me, who don’t want to lug a chunky DLSR around all the time but can be demanding about performance.
A lot of the size reduction over DSLRs comes from not having a mirror system to project the image you’re intending to take into a viewfinder. Instead you either use the LCD screen (as most point and shoots do), or an electronic viewfinder which actually contains a small screen that displays what the lens is seeing. (For that reason these type of cameras are sometimes described using the clunky acronym EVIL – for Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens).
The $1200 Fujifilm X100 has recently got a ton of attention for doing most of this, and by all accounts it’s nice to use and delivers good quality (and looks gorgeous), but if you don’t like the 35mm equivalent focal length, then you’re out of luck (making it EV, but not EVIL, I guess) as it only comes with one lens.
But the Micro 4/3rds format offers a good range of interchangeable lenses that work with all the M4/3rds cameras. There are wide primes, long zooms and even adaptors for a range of old-school legacy lenses from Voigtlander, Leica, Olympus and other brands – most of them you’ll have to focus manually.
As well as the kit lens, I got the well-regarded Panasonic LUMIX 20mm f/1.7 to create a more portable low-light monster. Especially with the in-camera stabilization, I’ve got sharp shots of (still) subjects hand-held at 1/4 second, which is insane, and something my 5D II can’t match with most my lenses.
It was really pretty dark at this point, but the Oly and the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 kept on trucking without having to jack up the ISO too much.
Look, no viewfinder
Some other micro-4/3rds cameras sport viewfinders, but for the PEN series they’re an optional (and expensive extra). But the electronic viewfinder actually shows you what your image will be like (black and white, for example if you’ve selected that art mode, or with the correct depth of field if you’re shooting wide open).
Forget the size, look at the sensor size
The solid image quality is largely down to the size of the sensor. At 13 x 17.3mm it’s not too far from the APS-C size in most consumer and prosumer DSLRs at 14.9 x 22.3mm – for comparison, the Canon G-series high-end point and shoots have sensors that measure 5.6 x 7.5mm – less than a fifth of the area.
Other smaller cameras have 12MP, but that file size is derived from the smaller sensors, compromising image quality, especially at higher ISOs.
Using it in real life
All this information might explain why it’s a good choice on paper, but what’s it like actually using the EPL2?
After nearly a week of shooting with it, mainly at relaxed social occasions rather than going out specifically to shoot, I can say I really like it, and I’m pleasantly surprised at the image quality.
This camera works brilliantly for casual situations like this, where photography isn’t your main objective but you’d like to have a good enough camera with you just in case. It’s small, light and unobtrusive. Especially if you compose using the LCD, it looks pretty much the same as a whole bunch of consumer point and shoots, so doesn’t attract the same sort of attention as a 5D Mark II with an L-series zoom on it. And you can drop another lens in your pocket and be ready for anything.
I mainly shoot in Aperture Priority, and I’ve customized the controls so I can adjust aperture, ISO, exposure compensation, focus point and face detection all very easily. I normally shoot with a single centre focus point (a throwback to my days using the Canon 5D, where only the centre point is reliable). This means I normally focus and then recompose, and I’m fine with that.
But with the accurate face detection enabled, that’s often faster, and so it’s nice to have that option when I’m photography my daughter, for example. It also allows you to shoot with the camera well away from your eyes and still be pretty confident you’ll get the focus you want. There’s very little shutter lag, and a usable but not super speedy burst mode.
Getting the focus right in this shot with my camera above my head would be tricky without the good face recognition feature in the E-PL2
Composing and shooting via the LCD gives me a bit less confidence I’m getting the shot I want, after so long using a viewfinder. But when I review the shots, it seems I’ve got what I was looking for most of the time.
Wolf in sheep’s clothing
When I was taking some shots of the great band (Felix y Los Gatos) playing on the Plaza during the week, it seemed like I was just another local or tourist with a point and shoot, which was fine. But with the fast Panasonic prime attached, I was getting a nice narrow depth of field, and some reasonable shutter speeds even as it got dark.
It’s perfect for street photography (not that I do much), especially if you set it to zone focus manually (i.e set a aperture than creates a wide depth of field so you know that, say, everything from 4 to 15 feet is in focus). The bright LCD and dazzling small blue power light on the top might give you away though, so perhaps a black Sharpie and the electronic viewfinder’s a good combinations for situations when you want to be particularly stealthy.
How I learned to stop worrying and love JPGs
To keep everything simple and relaxed, I’m trying out shooting JPGs, so I’m not tempted to do any processing on images that are taken more for fun than business.
The camera supports RAW and there’s even some RAW + JPG options that I could use, but the appeal of just shooting and being done is pretty strong for me. I’ll let you know if I stick with this plan, but the Oly JPGs come out pretty well.
Conclusion
I’m really enjoying the little Oly, and while I’m sure the new E-P3 and forthcoming E-PL3 offer better performance (especially focussing), If you’re looking for a good deal the E-PL2 is worth looking at. The money you save over the new versions could be put towards the view-finder or a nice prime like the Panasonic 20mm that I got, or the apparently very nice (but pricey) Olympus M. Zuiko 12mm f/2.0.
Finally, I’d like to thank (and point you to) two resources that were really valuable while I was trying to figure out which smaller camera to get. Kirk Tuck, a photographer in Austin, Texas has a great blog that often covers Micro 4/3rds cameras, and Steve Huff is also well-informed and interesting on Leicas, Olympuses (Olympi?) and other non-DLSR stuff. Both well worth following if you’re interested in this area of photography.
I was delighted to be booked to photograph an evening of the q-bio conference in Santa Fe this weekend.
Held at St John’s College, but organized by the Center for Non-Linear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the event explores cellular information processing and ‘is intended to advance predictive modeling of cellular regulation’ — (no, I don’t really know what that is either, but everyone there obviously did).
The organizers wanted photographs of the biologists enjoying pizza and beer after the daytime sessions, then heading in to take part in the evening events.
These included a brilliant talk (complete with songs) by iconoclastic Israeli scientist Uri Alon, who gave a compelling account of the need to acknowledge the subjective and emotional side to life as a researcher.
You don’t expect a guitar in a science lecture, but Uri Alon’s not the average scientist
And then the attendees broke out into the poster sessions, where their fellow delegates put up posters outlining their projects and then discuss them long into the night.
The organizers used the images as part of a slideshow at the banquet held on the final evening of the conference, and will use them in print and online publicity for next year’s event.
One of the joys of being a photographer is being invited into a world you’d normally never venture into to. This is what drew me to print journalism — just for a little while, you get to explore what other people’s lives are like, and try to understand things enough to tell an interesting and accurate story about it. The same is true with photography.
Attendees talking through and debating their projects with other delegates in ‘poster sessions’
I was delighted to be booked to photograph an evening of the q-bio conference in Santa Fe this weekend.
Held at St John’s College, but organized by the Center for Non-Linear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the event explores cellular information processing and ‘is intended to advance predictive modeling of cellular regulation’ – (no, I don’t really know what that is either, but everyone there obviously did).
Some photographers see these kind of jobs as a bit dull – the photos matter to the organizers and attendees, but they’re not that exciting to the photographer. I don’t agree.
My natural curiosity and my willingness to explore what you can produce under specific constraints always makes me look forward to the shoot. If you think you’re going to get just ordinary images, then you probably will, but if you’re open to trying things, and genuinely interested in what’s going on, then you’ll do better.
The organizers wanted photographs of the biologists enjoying pizza and beer after the daytime sessions, then heading in to take part in the evening events.
These included a brilliant talk (complete with songs) by iconoclastic Israeli scientist Uri Alon, who gave a compelling account of the need to acknowledge the subjective and emotional side to life as a researcher.
You don't expect a guitar in a science lecture, but Uri Alon's not the average scientist
And then the attendees broke out into the poster sessions, where their fellow delegates put up posters outlining their projects and then discuss them long into the night.
The organizers used the images as part of a slideshow at the banquet held on the final evening of the conference, and will use them in print and online publicity for next year’s event.
One of the joys of being a photographer is being invited into a world you’d normally never venture into to. This is what drew me to print journalism – just for a little while, you get to explore what other people’s lives are like, and try to understand things enough to tell an interesting and accurate story about it. The same is true with photography.
Attendees talking through and debating their projects with other delegates in 'poster sessions'
Next time, I'll follow her lead and just bring the point and shoot
Every now and again someone who sees some of my work tells me, ‘Your pictures are really good, you must have a really good camera.”
I know they mean well, but it’s a bit like telling Lionel Messi that his football boots must cost a lot, or a chef that she must have a really good stove.
Most of the time, it’s not about the gear, it’s about the intent and skill with which it’s used. You could put me in a Formula 1 car but I’m not going to set any lap records around the Nürburgring.
The right tool for the job
I’m just back from a week’s vacation in California with the family. I took hundreds of photographs, almost exclusively with the intent of helping me remember the good time we were having. I had no time or inclination to get more serious than that, and it shows in the pictures. I like lots of them, but I don’t think they’re anything special.
I used my 5D Mark II and the 24-105mm f/4L. It’s a great combination – I recently shot a whole feature assignment for a magazine with it – but it was massive overkill for family shots in Legoland.
By the end of the second day of lugging it around, I would gladly have swapped it for a Canon G12, Panasonic Lumix LX5 or a bunch of other decent point-and-shoots. The images would have been more than good enough and my back would have thanked me.
I’m not going print my family shots very large, the light was bright and so long as I shot RAW I could easily make any minor processing adjustments. Given my intentions and constraints, a smaller camera would have worked a lot better. I might not have been able to shoot in burst mode to get decent images of my wife and daughter as they sped by on a roller coaster, but that’s about the only concession I would have had to make.
If I’m taking my time and am serious about the images I’m working on (especially if someone’s paying me), or if the environment is tricky in some way, then I’ll follow Samuel Jackson’s advice in Jackie Brown: ‘The Canon 5D Mark II – the very best there is. When you absolutely positively gotta kill every image in the room, except no substitute.’ (at least I think that’s what he said, more or less).
But you don’t need such firepower a lot of the time, and the camera’s not going to create great images if the person behind it isn’t really trying.
So yes, I do have a really good camera, but I still take bad pictures with it. And I take much better pictures with a less good camera – some of my favorite images were taken with my old Rebel XT and the plasticky 50mm f/1.8, and I love some of my iPhone shots.
Where’s the Un-Suck button?
The takeaway from this is two-fold. Firstly, a good camera isn’t going to get you good images by itself. I know this sounds obvious, but I also know how long I’ve spent poring over camera and lens reviews, when I could have been taking photos with the camera I already have, or learning something from a good e-Book (this one on black and white processing is great, by the way).
The second conclusion is that (fortunately), the things that will get you good images don’t cost very much – intention, time, practice, experience, patience, thought.
Canon and Nikon don’t sell those, just like there’s no Unsuck button in Photoshop, and they do take effort to acquire but they’re light, cross-platform and you always have them with you.
But sometimes you’re just taking photos of your kid like a normal civilian; and that’s OK too.
This is a long post about a lens that almost no-one here (including me) is ever likely to buy, but we don’t stop watching Top Gear just because we’re not in the market for the latest Ferrari, so here goes anyway:
When you’re a kid there are some things you lust after with a passion beyond all reason. Like a Millennium Falcon to go with your Star Wars figures. The longer you peruse the catalogue, or hear your friends talk about it, the more you’re convinced that this thing is the best thing in the world, and having it it will make you happier than anything.
And then you get it. And it’s pretty good, and you can see why everyone likes it. But your life goes on pretty much unchanged – even with the new bauble given pride of place in your room, you still have to tidy up that room, and go to school, and get soaked at the bus stop on the way home. A bit of a let-down, then.
As photographers, we’re always told that we need to hold on to our child-like sense of play, our joy in being in the moment. Which is great, but I think that also means we sometimes keep that child-like irrational longing for an object. And when we get it, life goes on pretty much unchanged.
Canon L-series lenses attract a lot of that longing, and for me it’s the L primes that I’ve figuratively and actually ogled in shop windows. I’ve got a 24-105mm f/4 L, used to have the 17-40mm f/4 L and the 70-200mm f/4L and while I appreciate those L zooms, the compromises inherent in making zooms seemed to limit my enthusiasm for them. They’re fine, good even, but I’m not going to put a poster of any of them on my wall.
But the primes are a different breed altogether. Partly because I love primes of all stripes, but also because if you’re going to make a great lens, shouldn’t it be as uncompromising as possible – really excellent at doing just one thing? And what could be more madly committed than the Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II (that’s an Amazon affiliate link, if you think you’re man enough). That’s f/1.2, just to repeat it. It costs over $2000 and looks like a magic black grapefruit (with a little red line around the end).
Thanks to borrowlenses.com the 85mm arrived on my doorstep in time for this year’s Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, where I was due to be taking photographs of the amazing artists and their work.
85mm is my favorite portrait length, and it was with great joy that I unscrewed the lens’ back cap to put it on to my 5D II. Holy scratching, Batman! The rear element is so close to the mount that it seems impossible to attach it to the camera without gouging the glass. Luckily for me (and borrowlenses.com) I got it on OK, but if you’re cack-handed or have to swap lenses in a hurry, you’ll constantly be worried about dinging your beauty.
Once in place it’s heavy, but because it’s so short it doesn’t seem unwieldy, and on a chunky body like the 5D II, it lends the whole thing a nice balance. The weight is noticeable, but I found it much more manageable than the 24-70mm f/2.8.
Steady as she goes
Every review says it so you shouldn’t be surprised, but the first thing you notice in real use is that the 85mm f/1.2 focuses slowly. It’s smooth, but stately, like a luxury liner changing direction. It gets there in the end (more or less – see below) but if you’re shooting fast-moving things, then flat out, this lens isn’t for you. Manually focusing isn’t any faster, by the way.
Use the narrow depth of focus for good, not ill.
Missed shots
At the Market, as with all portrait-style shooting, I make a point of getting at least two shots of each artist in each composition I wanted. This is normally to cover for blinking or weird micro-expressions from the subjects. In this case, it ended up being crucial in ensuring that at least one was in focus.
It was very strange. The artists weren’t moving, the light was good, I was using the center focus point only, and I’d wait until the camera told me it had focused. But more times than with any other lens, one of my series would be out of focus. It wasn’t always the first one, either.
The only thing I can think is that something happened while I recomposed after I’d focused – I normally do it all the time with complete confidence. But not with this lens. Maybe I’m doing something wrong and there’s a simple solution, but if you don’t have confidence that you’re going to get what you expect, then you’re in for a torrid time on shoots that matter.
Narrow depth of field
If a lens offers f/1.2, you’re going to want to use it. But the irony is that for the classic headshot – the bread and butter of the 85mm focal length, f/1.2 offers way too narrow a depth of field for most practical uses.
My nifty iPhone depth of field app tells me that at 5 feet (about the right distance to fill the frame with the head and bit of shoulder) and a full-frame camera, the depth of field at f/1.2 is 0.07ft (near limit 4.96 ft, far limit 5.04 ft). How much is 0.07ft? 0.84 inches, or 2.1 centimeters. In other words, if the eye is in focus then the end of the nose will be blurred. If the subject turns their head slightly and you get the closer eye in focus, then the further eye will be out of focus.
Just to put your mind at rest, I wasn’t shooting at f/1.2 at the Market. But I could see how when the subject was further away so you had a workable depth of field (say, a depth of field of 8 inches at 15 ft), f/1.2 could get you shots you just couldn’t get with any other lens, especially in the pitch black.
So the impossibly narrow potential depth of field isn’t a criticism, just a caveat that you need to be careful with all that power.
On the Other Hand
So let’s recap – it’s heavy, it looks like you could wreck it if you’re not careful, it focuses slowly, still doesn’t focus accurately, and the crazy narrow depth of field is unusable a lot of the time. Maybe I should have just stuck to ogling it in shop windows (like the Millennium Falcon). Except that it helped me produce some great images.
When the heavens aligned, the pictures sung. Everything that I’d been trying to show in the picture was there, more pronounced and more attractive than I expected. From small details, like catchlights in eyes, to broad strokes like the amazing contrast and rich colors. Not forgetting the dreamy creamy bokeh.
It’s not often I peak at the LCD on the back of the camera and utter an audible ‘Woh.’ (never, in fact), but this lens got me like that a few times.
Some of the differences between this and my sturdy 85mm f/1.8 (lighter, faster and more accurate focusing, around 20% of the price) you could make up in processing. But not all of it.
Would I buy it?
If someone gave me $2000 and told me I had to spend it on camera gear (don’t tell me you’ve don’t think about that situation), the truth is I probably wouldn’t buy it. For me, the f/1.8 is more practical and reliable (and I already own it). The fantastic shots I got with the 1.2 that I couldn’t get with the 1.8 to me would be made up for by the shots the 1.2 missed with its weird focus that the 1.8 would nail every time. But I shoot a lot of fast-moving children and need bang-on focus.
With my $2000 I’d probably get the 35mm f/1.4 L (which I’m guessing is more obviously superior in more ways to the 35mm f/2 that I’m currently using), and most of the 135mm f/2 L. Although come to think of it, I’d actually be more likely to get the Fuji X100 and most of the 135mm f/2.
But that doesn’t mean I’m sad I rented the 85mm, or that I can’t appreciate it’s great strong points. If you’re going to make a crazy money prime lens, then I love the way it comes with impractical quirks. It’s capable of fantastic images, but it’s not an easy thing to use, and it has some annoying habits.
Much like a Ferrari (so I’m told) – it does one thing (driving in an exhilarating fashion) better than almost anything else in the world. But you can’t park it, the dashboard controls are unusable, you can’t see out of the back and the ride’s so stiff you’ll feel like you got beaten up if you drive it for a couple of hours.
But that one thing it does well, well that’s the effin’ ineffable, isn’t it? Just like with the 85mm f/1.2.
Shooting film seems to be enjoying something of a renaissance, especially among young people of the hipster persuasion. Loyal readers will remember a recent blog post where I promised to dig out the old film camera my Dad had given me more than 20 years ago. I did, and here’s what I learned (or relearned) about the joys and frustrations of shooting film.
Note that this is based on running a roll of Ilford XP2 through a (not very good even at the time) Canon 1000, photographing a kids’ summer camp presentation – depending on what you shoot and with what film camera, you might end up with very different results.
1) Film still looks gorgeous
Partly thanks to the great developing and printing from the Camera Shop of Santa Fe (although they’re not cheap), the images came out looking contrasty and very attractive. I shot in black and white, and the skin tones were smooth and there was a nice touch of grain in the shadows.
You could probably fuss in Aperture or Lightroom to get the same sort of results from shooting digital, but this saved me all that effort, and the prints had that indescribable film quality. Sometimes there’s something a little too squeaky clean about the technically perfect files DSLRs put out today.
In fact while you might be able to get the same effect processing digitally, what’s interesting is that I probably wouldn’t have gone as far with the processing if I were doing it. There’s a lot of solid black in them, which I would have shied away from, trying to keep some of that shadow detail. Just goes to show there’s no such thing a perfect histogram, just good images.
2) You pick your shots more carefully
It’s true that firing off a load of shots on a DSLR can yield some great results that you just couldn’t get any other way – especially in sports photography, for example. But sometimes the ‘spray and pray’ approach is just replacing thoughtfulness with a numbers game. Rather than slowing down and choosing your moment carefully, you just shoot a ton in the hope that you’ll get something good.
When you’re paying more than 50c each time you press the shutter (and swapping rolls is a bit of a pain), you’re definitely less trigger happy.
I normally reckon on a 25% selects rate when I’m shooting digital – in other words of fifty images I make, around 12 of them I’ll like well enough to do some processing work on and/or show to the client if it’s a paying job.
With my roll of 36, I’d say I was happy with at least two-thirds of them. A good lesson in slowing down and being more careful.
3) It’s still a pain in the behind
Friends wanted some of these photos from the camp. So I had to get the film developed (with extra CD of digital files because I don’t have a scanner or the time to scan the files) pronto. We’re so blasé about shooting digital and being able to have the results across the world in minutes that we forget how amazing it is.
And there’s no bumping up the ISO because you’ve moved inside or it’s getting dark. And knowing that you’ve only 36 frames before you have to swap rolls is always praying on your mind. That and the fact that you can’t see what you’ve got until potentially days later – no chimping here, of course.
4) Digital’s sort of cheap
While it costs to develop a roll of film in a way it doesn’t for the same number of digital shots, there’s an interesting side argument here. A pro-grade film body such as the Canon EOS 1N can be picked up on eBay for less than $300. A new 5d Mark II is around $2500. I know it’s not comparing like with like, but you could buy and develop a lot of film for the difference for $2200, and you wouldn’t need to upgrade in another three years.
The cost of clicking a shutter on a digital camera appears cheap, because it’s free at the point of use, but the total cost of ownership starts to look a lot more expensive when you factor in the actual costs.
Worth the effort
I was pleased with the images I took and enjoyed the experience of shooting film again. It’s worth doing even if you end up concluding how glad you are you never have to shoot film any more. But for me it was more rewarding than that, making me think about how I shoot, and also reminding me how good film can look.
I’m not saying I’m going back to shooting film exclusively, or even very often. But throwing a decent film body in the bag when the conditions are right – outside daytime portrait session for example – might not be a bad idea.
The current issue of New Mexico Magazine includes a full-page photograph of mine from last year’s Santa Fe International Folk Art Market.
It shows a little girl standing in front of the lovely decorated archway at the top of the stairs at the Market, and it introduces the magazine’s Going Places section.
I’m particularly pleased because the model in this case is my daughter. I try not to include her in my work too much, but I made an exception in this case.
In one of my other lives, I’m a journalist and writer. I used to write for The Irish Times in Dublin, I’ve published a book of travel writing (it’s a lasting regret that it has no photographs in it, but at the time I was taking rubbish photos), and I now write for New Mexico Magazine and other places at times. (I outlined what I learned about photography from being a writer here).
I’m storyteller when I’m stringing words together. And I’m increasingly realizing, they key to good images (at least of the style I prefer) is to be a good storyteller when you’ve got a camera in your hand.
A good picture, or a set of pictures, tells a story. Images can be beautifully lit and technically perfect, but if they doesn’t say something, then what’s the point?
Everything in the image needs to contribute to the narrative you intend. Sometimes what you’re trying to say is simple – this is a happy girl – but for more complicated events, it’s worth having a think about how best to get your message across: what to include and what to leave out.
Imagine you’re talking to a friend
Ashley Biggers, my talented editor at New Mexico Magazine recently made a suggestion about a travel piece I’m writing for her, which is also appropriate to making images at an event or portrait session:
‘Imagine you’re excitedly telling your friend about the best parts of your visit. What would you say?’
This gets to the heart of the matter – you wouldn’t start at the beginning and give equal importance to every last thing you did (‘First I drove there, then I parked the car, then I put on my coat . . . ‘), but you also wouldn’t spend all your time talking about one aspect of the event.
So in photography terms, you wouldn’t photograph everything, or only take lots of the same sort of photographs.
Some things are just more important than other things, and you’ll get excited over some things and not others – so keep asking yourself what those key things are and make sure you show them clearly.
Telling the story of a party
Our daughter had her sixth birthday recently, and chose a princess theme for party (naturally).
My wife had spent a lot of time and effort preparing the room for the party, going so far as to build a castle facade with working doors (she’s an architect).
As I photographed the event, I wanted to make sure I set the scene with the images, as well capturing the key events.
When we look back in years to come, some of what we’ll want to recall will be the way the whole thing looked, not just tight shots of our daughter.
So if I’m telling you about what the party was like, I’d start with ‘The room looked amazing. We had tons of balloons all over the ceiling.’ (as you can see from the photograph at the top of this story)
‘There were princess sceptres to decorate. And Miss F’s mum made a fabulous castle facade with working doors and ramparts and stuff.’
‘Each time a new guest arrived, Miss F closed the door and then got really excited when they knocked and asked to come in. And all the princesses looked so cute sitting down at the table in their ‘castle’.’
‘They went outside and our older friend read them princess stories.’
If the photographs do their job, then the text descriptions are unnecessary – and the images add some details and visual appeal that the words don’t contain.
I have the obligatory photographs of my daughter blowing out the candles as well, but some of these wider shots (all taken with a 35mm lens) tell a more complete story of the day.
So don’t be afraid to shoot wide, and imagine you’re talking to someone about the highpoints of the event you’re photographing.
My Dad, Jim Moore. Photo by yours truly when I was in college I think.
On this Father’s Day, it’s time for a quick look at just three of the many things I learned from my Dad, all of which are related to photography in some way.
1) Follow your folly
Before I was born, my Dad was a jazz musician. He played on cruise ships that went around the world in the 1950s and 60s. Pretty cool, right? This was a working class boy from Wealdstone in west London – not known as a hotbed of the jazz scene – but despite the many reasons not to, he earned a living playing summer seasons in English seaside resorts before taking to the high seas for some amazing experiences.
Even back on shore working a regular job as my sister and I were growing up, he’d still play semi-pro gigs on a lot of Saturday evenings. I fondly remember him doing a quick soundcheck in the hall by the front door as the football results came in on Saturday evening.
He’d play the theme from the kids’ TV programme The Wombles before loading the car up with the big Vox amp and electric bass and heading off to play at a dinner dance somewhere.
I was in a band in college, and still plink on the guitar a little bit, but the larger lesson he taught me is that it was worth taking a punt on what you really wanted to do, even if you have to hold down a day job too.
2) Old Ektachrome slides make the world look great
Safely back in Buckinghamshire from his travels, Dad had a bunch of slides he’d taken on his adventures. On rainy weekend afternoons we’d occasionally get out the little slide viewer (that kind of looked like this one) and go through some of the boxes.
There was the Sydney Harbour Bridge; there was Dad with his double bass standing under a Sunset Boulevard sign in LA (how strange that fifty years later my in-laws would live just off Sunset in West LA). Backlit by the viewer, the skies in the slides looked a deep deep blue, the exotic locations tantalising, and my Dad cut a dashing figure (jazz men always look dapper).
3) Letting your kids commandeer a present can be worth it
One Christmas when I was a teenager, my Dad got a SLR as a present from Mum. It was a sturdy East German Praktica and it came in a light brown bag with a shoulder strap. Mum also bought a little introduction to photography book.
I don’t know how interested Dad was in photography, to be honest (up to that point most of our family photographs were from a succession of cheap Kodak point and shoots), but I pored over the book, and Dad kindly let me use the camera quite a bit.
Exhibit A - from a trip to Brittany in c. 1992. Clean strong landscape.
I can’t remember what kind of lens it had on it – definitely manual focus though. I ended up using it more than my Dad, but disaster struck when it was stolen while I was taking a shower in a Venice youth hostel while on a trip during college.
I reported it stolen and with the insurance money (based on a generously inflated estimate for replacement from the local camera shop) we bought one of the first autofocus Canon EOS 35mm cameras (a Canon EOS 1000 with a Sigma zoom).
By this stage I’d basically commandeered the camera with my Dad’s blessing, and I pootled around running plenty of rolls of Ilford XP2 film through it – black and white film that can be processed using standard C-41 colour processing systems.
Now when I look back at the images, I’m still proud of some of them, and they clearly show the twin paths that most of my work has taken. First (see Exhibit A above) is the clean almost abstract landscapes that I sell on my Etsy store, and second (see Exhibit B below) is the photojournalism-style children’s portraits that people hire me to shoot.
It would take me nearly 20 years to come back to these two types of work and take them more seriously, but there was definitely a seed sown in the early 90s, thanks to that camera.
Beautiful cousin Sarah c. 1993, taken in our Aunt Pauline's front room. Sarah graduated from architecture school last year, and it's a bit embarrassing for me that it's take most of her life for me to realise I should be taking more photographs like this one.
I still have the old EOS 1000, and after a pause when a) I mistakenly thought the camera was irreparably borked and b) I foolishly had my head turned by succession of rubbish digital point-and-shoots, it was that camera I picked back up when my daughter was born – the first step on the path that’s brought me here.
So have a good Father’s day, Jim Moore. And thanks for the loan of the camera. Think I’ll get a new battery for it and shoot some rolls of XP-2 with it, for old time’s sake.
), while the E-P3 with the same lens is $900 (if you can find it at the moment).
has recently got a ton of attention for doing most of this, and by all accounts it’s nice to use and delivers good quality (and looks gorgeous), but if you don’t like the 35mm equivalent focal length, then you’re out of luck (making it EV, but not EVIL, I guess) as it only comes with one lens.
to create a more portable low-light monster. Especially with the in-camera stabilization, I’ve got sharp shots of (still) subjects hand-held at 1/4 second, which is insane, and something my 5D II can’t match with most my lenses.
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(that’s an Amazon affiliate link, if you think you’re man enough). That’s f/1.2, just to repeat it. It costs over $2000 and looks like a magic black grapefruit (with a little red line around the end).
