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It’s a new week and I’ve got a new set of tips to improve your photography. This week’s tips focus on planning and decision making while taking your shots…. Eventually it will feel like second nature and you won’t even be aware of the process, until then… keep these tips in mind.
1. Daydream
Yes, that’s right keep dreaming about your shot. Pre-Visualize in your mind what it will look like and walk through the steps you need to take to get it. This is a shot I thought about for several weeks before finally setting it up and taking it. With only one camera, I often feel like I’m constantly juggling lenses!
2. Use wide lens
Continue reading 10 Quick and Easy Tips to improve your Photography
Hey gang…couple of questions from yesterday. The combo of the 600 plus TC1.7 was, frankly, all about, uh, size. Bigger lens, bigger moon. The above is shot with a straight up six. Below, I’m at about 170 zoom on a 70-200.
Figured we’re all up here in north country, howlin’ at the moon, so might as well shoot it. Above is lit with an Elinchrom Quadra, running through a Deep Octa soft box. Way up top, same deal as yesterday–line of sight TTL, raw flash, SB 900, hand held, camera right.
You get the moon and the lens big, what suffers? DOF for sure. The shot from yesterday was racked out to f11. Otherwise the moon looks like an out of focus blob in the sky, which it sorta does even at f11.
Have had notions of doing stuff like mixing flash portraits and the moon for years, and I suspect I’ll just keep after it. One of these days, might just nail it….you never know….more tk….
A guest post by Music Photographer Rick Bennett.
Bars are challenging shooting environments now matter how you slice it–crappy lighting, drunk crowds, cramped spaces. Add in musicians who like to move around a lot, speakers in photographically inconvenient locations, and microphone stands that tend to bisect heads, and you’ve got an ideal situation for a photographer who likes a challenge. In Part 1, I covered the basics of equipment needed to shoot bands in bars: low-noise-at-high-iso cameras, off-camera flash, and mongo glass. In Part 2 I talked about where I’ve found success with placing my flashes, and the camera settings that have yielded the best results. Finally, in this part, I get to the shooting.
Before you start shooting, take care of your ears so that you can do this more than a couple of times–buy some ear plugs at your local hardware store (near the goggles and other protective gear) or pharmacy (near the sleep aids). I find I spend a significant amount of time standing right in front of the speakers, and my ears are ringing pretty badly by the end of a performance if I don’t use ear plugs. Even with the plugs in, you’ll be able to hear every part of the performance. Continue reading How to Photograph Bands in Bars, Part 3 – Shooting
A guest post by Music Photographer Rick Bennett.
 Band photography in bars can be very challenging, but with a little bit of knowledge and planning you can make images that blow away the standard fan photo. In Part 1, I discussed equipment choices: cameras, lenses and flashes. In this article, I’ll describe how to set up just before the performance to get the best shots.
First and foremost, you need to attempt to assess the security of your gear before you pull anything out. No band photographs are worth losing a camera or lens or flash over. The bands I’ve tended to shoot have played in nice neighborhoods in well established bars with well behaved clientele. But I’m constantly on the alert because the clientele could change in a heartbeat. In some situations, I’ll leave flashes and camera bags unattended, but I’ll never walk away from my camera. A VAL (voice activated light stand) can certainly help keep an eye on your gear, but the best place for the bag with extra gear is with the band’s gear, usually close to the stage. Having it close to their things means they’re more likely to help keep an eye on it as well. That being said, I’ve never had a problem with gear walking off, but that is something you’ll have to assess at every gig.
I generally try to find a seat (if they have seats) near to the front of the audience, left of center from the audience’s perspective. If there is an obvious front-row of fans, I’ll put my “home base” behind them since a) those fans would be the most irritated by a blocked view, and b) their excitement can make great framing devices. I choose left-of center because most guitar players are right handed, and I prefer pictures where the body of the guitar is closer to the camera. I want to be off-center because it generally results in better images of singers if the microphone doesn’t cover the lower half of their face. But this is just a “home base” where I’ll come back to in order to change lenses or enjoy some of the music. This is not where you’ll park your camera the whole performance. More on that in Part 3. After you’ve determined your home base, try to introduce yourself to the band, if this wasn’t arranged ahead of time. Get their permission to shoot their performance–I can’t imagine they would be upset by it, but it helps to build rapport by asking. Continue reading Photographing Bands in Bars, Part 2 – Set Up
A Guest Post by Viennese Concert Photographer Matthias Hombauer
Being a concert photographer can be very exciting. Imagine yourself standing 6 feet away in front of your beloved idol and taking portraits of them. Not only do you have the ability to shoot one image but can take hundreds of pictures that you can carry home. As a passionate music lover this seems to be heaven and indeed this is a close description how it can feel.
- But how do you start to become a concert photographer?
- What equipment do you need?
- How do you get the shot?
In this short tutorial I will write about my experience of being a concert photographer – I hope it will improve your skills in this exciting field of photography.
1. Getting started! Prepare yourself to become a concert photographer
What is the best way to start? The easiest way to build your career is to begin in small clubs. In these venues it’s more likely that you can enter with your camera equipment without any special press accreditation. Therefore this is the perfect playground for you to change your camera settings and getting used to be in front of a stage. Why not ask some friends who play in a band and offer them your skills next time? For sure they would be more than happy to have pictures of their next concert.
But all beginnings are difficult and so is concert photography. Continue reading 6 Tips for Budding Live Concert Photographers
 by Gavin Seim: So Power Worklfow3 has finally arrived, representing three total years of Lightroom study and experimentation since this all started. I’m really excited. I feel they set a standard for workflow presets that fit just about any situation you need to edit. You can see the details, video, samples etc, on the PW3 info page.
As always, I wanted to post up a freebie sample pack so readers can get some goodies and a small taste of what in store inside my latest collection. Below you’ll find a download with 6 presets from Power Worklfow3, including Super Hero2 and my new LOTR effect. Now the full collection has more than 70 presets, so if love them there’s lots more where these came from. Download and enjoy… Gav
 Pop quiz: What is your camera’s maximum sync speed?
Much like the interstate highway at 3:00am, in some situations your max sync speed is not so much a law as a suggestion.
And by the same token, sometimes your instruction manual can lie: Your camera may not be able to truly hit its advertised sync speed at all.
__________
 As many of you may know, a camera that says it syncs at 1/250th might go a little better than that if you use a fast flash and a hard cord instead of a PW. And that little bit of non-sync strip at the bottom of your frame at a 1/320th might not be very noticeable.
Or it might actually help the frame, as in the not-quite-synced sunset shot at left. (More on that photo, here.)
And, speaking of that shot, if I wanted to I could easily have synced this shot at a 1/500th. Just turn the camera upside down and let the unsynced half of the frame fall on the sky. The sky needs no sync — it is all ambient, right? Continue reading Know Your Sync Speed Camera Settings
 Do you feel completely in the dark about setting your prices? Do you have a formal price structure or are you just coming up with numbers? Do you constantly change your price list? Then you’re just like me. Well…me a few months ago anyway. It’s funny – you can be the best photographer, but knowing what to charge can be an un-slayable dragon. And when you’re not quite sure why you charge what you charge, it’s hard to remain firm on your prices when your clients want to haggle you down to nothing. I learned everything I needed to know about setting my prices from Alicia Caine’s eBook. I’m not getting paid for telling you that. I swear by that book. It changed the entire face of my business.
These are the top three things I learned from Alicia’s book:
- You should publish some of your prices on your website. This is the first step in managing client expectations and not getting the sticker-shocked client trying to weasel their way out of paying your prices. Just publish a couple of guide prices as a reference.
- I don’t have to do friends and family discounts. I don’t do mates rates. I don’t expect them from others and I don’t give them. Well…I don’t allow it to be expected. But I might knock some off or give an unexpected gift to a friend. In my experience, it just doesn’t go well when I under price my services. They value me less and I feel a bit of resentment about spending an entire week editing a wedding I was expected to do for free. Alicia empowered me to say no.
- There are a few very easy calculations you can use to price your stuff in a way that keeps everything nice and uniform and my pricing makes sense. I used to price my stuff according to the square inches of the product. Lol that took a bit of work! Alicia’s calculations are waaay easier. Continue reading 6 Tips for How to Set your Photography Prices
There is undeniable demonstrable value in social media for artists and other entrepreneurs.
 Social media is not some flash in the pan phenomenon that soon will be replaced by the next “Big Thing.” It is a pervasive transformative form of communication that continues to take larger share of time and interest for participants.
Social media is far more than the ubiquitous Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn mentions. It includes blogging, publishing. networking, commenting, photo sharing, and more.
Is Social Media An Asset to You?
The question visual artists have to ask themselves is are they getting a return on the investment of time from their social media involvement. While I do not have any hard facts or research to answer this question, I believe the answer is a mixed bag of results. That is, there obviously are some artists who are making great use of social media, and there are many more who are struggling to figure out if it is working and what to do if it is not. Continue reading Does Social Media Work for Visual Artists?
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