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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Filed under: Market Served •Nature •People, Personalities, Interviews •Sports •Stock •Travel •Technique •

Capture emotion.

Tom Bol | 03/17

Caputure mood and emotion to improve your images.

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I’m in Buenos Aires right now getting ready to head to Patagonia for a week.  Buenos Aires is one of my favorite cities; tango dancers in the cobblestone streets, colorful buildings and architecture, fantastic wine and steak (food is important for the travel photographer!).  Since this is such a vibrant city, I like to capture what I love about this city, the passion of the people.

Capturing emotion is a great self assignment.  You can have technically correct images, but these shots don’t evoke a strong response in the viewer.  I may follow the rule of thirds, get my exposure and focus just perfect, but if the image has no emotion or mood then it won’t be a great shot.  Seek out strong colors, interesting light and physical displays of emotion, all of which will produce an emotional response in the viewer.

Capturing passion in Buenos Aires isn’t to difficult.  Many of the popular plazas have tango dancers on the corner.  This dance is all about passion, and the best dancers ooze out fiery passionate expressions.  The couple in this image worked with us to dance in a cobble street right at twilight.  This scene can’t get much hotter!

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Use gels on your flash for special effects.

Tom Bol | 05/11- 05:35 AM

Adding gels to your flash and changing white balance creates unique images.

I like to follow this principle.  “The more skills you have, the better your chances for success.”  I used to use this principle as a climbing instructor when teaching students rope systems.  Inevitably on some climb something wouldn’t go right, maybe a simple thing like getting a rope stuck.  The more rescue and climbing systems you knew, the better your chances of having a solution to fix the problem.
The same is true for photographers.  Every photographer has a story about a ‘photo shoot gone bad.’  Strobes don’t fire, talent doesn’t show up, permits aren’t in order.  What separates one photographer from another is how they deal with these situations.  Clients like photographers who have solutions, not problems.  Knowing more technical skills behind the camera also helps.  And one of my favorite things to do is add gels to flash to spice things up.

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Creative Use of High Speed Sync

Tom Bol | 04/29- 10:11 AM

Use high speed sync to add mood to your shot.

When most people think of high speed sync, they think fast shutter speeds and freezing the action.  True, shooting at 1/8000 with flash is going to freeze the action no matter what the main light source is illuminating the subject.  But what about other uses of high speed sync and flash.  Until the release of the Pocket Wizard Flex system and Hypersync (see my last post), I was often frustrated shooting in bright sun.  I needed an aperture of F16 to get the right exposure at 1/200, my fastest sync speed using my Elinchrom Rangers.  What if I wanted to use a wide open aperture like F2.8 to get soft focus and blur out the background?  The answer is use high speed sync for selective focus shots in bright, sunny conditions.  Maybe high speed sync should be called ‘soft focus sync.’

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