Ming Thein | Photographer

What makes an outstanding image? (part 1)

October 6, 2012 by Ming Thein

Apples. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

Of the 400 or so posts I’ve published up to this point, I recently realized that the one enormously gaping hole I haven’t yet covered deals with the one of the major fundamentals: how do you actually determine if an image ‘works’ or not? What makes it good? What makes it outstanding? I think it was both a discussion on composition in our reader pool forum on Flickr, as well as the strongly mixed reactions to this photoessay post that did it – context, even a mini-article, sometimes simply isn’t enough if you’re missing a cultural familiarity, or local view. This is obviously not a simple question to answer; despite an extensive search online, I haven’t been able to find any good articles that provided any sort of conclusion. (Clearly, I must be a bit of a masochist in deciding to write this article.) Perhaps it’s because it’s an extremely subjective question to begin with; or perhaps it’s because to come up with an answer that makes sense requires a thoroughly multidisciplinary approach: strong images resonate technical, compositional, cultural, psychological and personal chords. And the final two are of course highly observer-dependant.

Two old men. Olympus OM-D, 75/1.8

In fact, it’s a wonder that we have any images at all that are globally recognized and appreciated. Rather than analyze specific images, I’m going to spend some time looking into some of the more abstract characteristics and their implications for one’s photography. I’d recommend finding a comfortable chair and grabbing a drink because this is a pretty heavy article. So heavy, in fact, I’ve decided to split it into two parts. It’s also turned out to be one of the most difficult articles to write, occupying a good couple of days thanks to the extremely vague and ill-defined nature of the subject matter. Finding the right photos to illustrate the article was just as tough; excuse me if there are some repeats of previously-posted images here.

The diving board, Hong Kong. Leica M9-P, Zeiss ZM 2.8/28

One of the most important things for a photographer to know is specifically why one of their images works, and why another one doesn’t. I was going through my contacts’ uploads on Flickr the other day and noticing that there were three types of photographers:
a) upload everything, no QC or editing whatsoever, mostly poor images;
b) upload most things, has one or two really good images, mostly mediocre;
c) only uploads good stuff, and shows a consistent level of quality.

Type a almost certainly has no idea of what makes a good image, or perhaps they don’t really care; we must remember that social media is also used for indiscriminate sharing. Type b appears to be a more serious amateur, and wants to make good images, and probably knows a good image when they see one, but is unable to deconstruct their successful images into a series of things that they can replicate. The final type, c, knows what works, and either doesn’t bother shooting the rest, or hits the delete key pretty fast when something isn’t quite right. I want to get us all to type c.

*Note that this article contains a lot more links than anything before – it’s because I’ve previously explored a lot of these individual concepts in some depth, but never unified them in a single article – this one.

Omega Speedmaster 9300. Nikon D800E, 85/2.8 PCE

Let’s begin.

1. Subject
There is simply no point to a photograph or image if there is no subject. An image is a representation of something: if there’s nothing to represent, or it isn’t clear what the representation is trying to be, then why bother at all? This doesn’t mean to say that abstract images don’t work; in such cases, the abstraction and entire frame are the subjects themselves. But in the broadest possible sense, if you look at an image and it isn’t fairly obvious what the image is about, then it fails. A photograph without a subject is like a meal with no main course, or a story without a plot – it can fill an immediate transient need, but it will not have any lasting consequence or memorability.

The cloud. Sony RX100

The sole implication for the photographer is that you need to know what the subject of your image is going to be before you take the shot, and how the other elements in the frame relate to it and tell the story. Or maybe they don’t relate to it and create an inverse story of juxtaposition and contrast; it all depends on what you’re trying to say with the image. The subject also needs to stand out and be visually obvious, it should be the (metaphorical and optical) focal point of your image. We’ll deal with that in section three. Bottom line: you need to have a clear picture in your own mind about what the image is about; invariably not everything is executable, so this picture gets increasingly blurred as it comes closer to physical execution – hence ensuring that you start off with as strong an idea as possible is paramount.

Hommage a Claude Monet. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

2. Execution and technicalities
Next comes the simplest of the ‘secondary’ criteria. Even this is relative, however. Generally speaking, a good image is properly exposed for the subject, is in focus, and doesn’t take processing to the extremes. The executional characteristics of the image should not be the first thing you notice when you look at the photograph: you can overdo it**. They should support the compositions, but not detract or outweigh it. This is one of the things I don’t like about overdone HDR, Instagram and other photo apps – the processing is so overdone to the point that fundamental compositional structure is overshadowed, and any flaws hidden. You only see the processing, and not the subject.

Seeing the wood from the trees. Leica M9-P, 21/3.4 ASPH

However, there are always exceptions to every rule. And in the case of the technical qualities of an image, if you have an exceedingly strong subject or composition, then no matter how poor your execution, the subject is what you’re going to see first. Nobody remembers Robert Capa’s iconic Normandy landing shots for their technical perfection, but rather the subject matter and how he managed to convey the chaotic, haunting, gritty sensation of actually being there.

Service – with just the right amount of motion blur. Sony RX100

I include processing under technical execution. The biggest fundamental choice you have here is whether to work in color or black and white; some subjects are particularly suited to one or the other; some could go either way. Whether you should use one or the other depends mostly on whether your subject is best isolated by luminance/ brightness or by contrast in color. (This topic is subject to an entirely separate article here.)

**I cover processing workflow in general here, and here for B&W.

After work. Olympus OM-D, 45/1.8

3. Composition
In its simplest definition, composition is how the various elements of an image are located relative to one another, and how this spatial relationship tells the story of the main subject or conveys the desired message. However, there are some restrictions – firstly, we are representing a three-dimensional space in two dimensions, and secondly, there are perspectives imposed by the field of view we choose to employ. The reduction to two dimensions has both strengths and weaknesses: you cannot rely on depth perception to create perspective; instead, we have to artificially impose it through our choice of focal length. However, its removal also means that we can do things that aren’t possible via native human vision, such as have everything in the frame simultaneously in focus. Mastery of composition is knowing when to use the right tool to enhance the presentation of the subject.

Dessert, before and after being enjoyed. Nikon D700, 60/2.8G

That said, for any given subject and situation, there is no one perfect composition – rather, there are probably any number of compositions that can work. However, the big difference is that they will not all tell the same story. Again, there is no right or wrong here: the best story for a given situation will depend very much on what the end objective is for the image.

This article and this article both enter into more detail on compositional theory.

Vanishing point. Leica M8, 21/1.4 ASPH

3.1 Isolation/ separation/ focus
This concept lacks a single defining word – I suppose ‘focus’ would be closest, but the problem is that tends to induce confusion between the subject distance and the concentration around the idea or subject of the image. The ideal qualitative effect is that the eye of the viewer must go straight to the primary subject of the photograph, and then only on to the context that surrounds it, in the order that the photographer desires. This can be accomplished through the use of a number of different tools – leading lines, natural frames, negative space, bokeh etc. The subject itself must stand out from the background or surroundings; in that sense, some sort of natural frame is always required to provide the necessary isolation – it could be a doorway, or a plain color background of a different color to the subject, or a contrast in texture. The sole exception is a whole-frame abstract, where the entire image is the subject. Note that lighting is the other major source of subject separation. (And yes, there is such a thing as too much bokeh.)

Before the take. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF 1.4/85

3.2 Perspective
There is no right or wrong perspective for any given subject. The sole aim of perspective is to either emphasize or de-emphasize the foreground relative to the background. Does the subject need to be larger than life, or minimized? Does the image require context to understand properly, and how prominent should these contextual elements be relative to the primary focus of the image?

Trees. Ricoh GRDIII

In general, wide-angle perspectives need a clear subject placed in the foreground. This need for a defined foreground decreases as the focal length increases, to a point where it could really go either way at roughly 50mm and above (35 equivalent). Above that, the foreground and background are of similar prominence, and subject separation is no longer achieved through perspective, insofar as depth of field is a consequence of a particular focal length and perspective. Images shot with a wide lens that lack a clear foreground can work, but only under specific circumstances which almost always involve leading lines, or large amounts of context and unusually good subject separation. Similarly, one must also take care with the use of telephotos – you can focus on the subject to the point of exclusion of all context, which can actually weaken an image.

Mt. Yotei. Nikon D700, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

3.3 Balance
I’ve always found this to be one of the more difficult things to define. Instinctively, you know whether something is balanced or not on looking at it – but what it is specifically that creates, or destroys, that sense of balance is much more difficult to quantify. The eye of the viewer needs to linger for about the same amount of time in every portion of the frame; if you have half of the frame that takes a split second to understand but produces no context, against the complex opposite half of the frame where there’s a lot going on and a few moments of deciphering are required, then you generally might as well not bother with the quicker part.

Breguet Tradition. Balanced, but not perfectly symmetric. Nikon D700, 60/2.8G

Doesn’t make sense? Boil it down to opposites. Balance is like symmetry, but not quite; the mirror images do not have to be identical, nor do they have to be symmetric around the dead center of the frame. If the left half of your frame has something in it, then the right half must too, of roughly the same size and level of detail. This is independent of the subject. Now quarters: you can do opposite top-left and bottom-right and leave the other two corners empty, but if you do three corners and omit one, the eye is going to go straight to the empty corner because it’s the odd one out. You might actually want to do that, but make sure it’s a conscious choice. You can keep subdividing your frame and finding opposing points around the middle to balance out, but generally once something gets to be say less than 10% of the frame size in any linear dimension (1% area) then it’s usually inconsequential enough to ignore – so long as it doesn’t intrude into your subject.

This of course also applies to your subject too: don’t make it too small, otherwise no matter how balanced your frame, it won’t stand out!

There are always exceptions to every rule. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

3.4 Lighting
I just completed a whole series on lighting here – intro to equipment, part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, and tips and tricks.

With no light, there can be no photography. The direct meaning of ‘photography’ is ‘writing with light’. Light identifies and isolates your subject; the softness or hardness or uniformity of it determines the amount of definition and contrast, as well as the tonality; the color and hue determine the feeling of the scene. And the absolute amount of it has an impact on the technical quality of the image, too. It’s inescapable that every good image must have good light – you can make an ordinary subject into an arresting photograph if it’s properly lit, but no amount of photoshop or the most unusual object is going to surmount flat or uninteresting light.

Prague. This would not be interesting on a flat, gray day at noon. Olympus E-PM1 Pen Mini, 45/1.8

Photographers must therefore either be able to recognize when the light is right, and seek out subjects to be illuminated by it – or go one step further and learn to control it. In fact, you have to do the former before you can do the latter – understanding the origin of a particular look makes it much, much easier to reverse engineer and replicate. Distilling things further, we’re arrive at the inescapable conclusion that successful lighting hinges on directionality, nothing more and nothing less. The right directionality creates the right kinds of shadows and highlights, which in turn creates contrast, texture and subject definition. And the less common the direction (light), the better – why do you think psychologically, we don’t find images shot in noon sunlight or under common indoor artificial light to be particularly arresting? It’s because that’s what we are conditioned to seeing most of the time. However, golden hours or special lighting effects are much less common. But I’m starting to digress into psychology, which I’ll leave for section 5.

Come back tomorrow for the conclusion in part two.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: article, composition, essay, good, lighting, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, photography, seeing, technical, thein, what makes a good image

Workshop report: 30 Sep Finding Light in Kuala Lumpur

October 5, 2012 by Ming Thein

Group portrait with chiaroscuro. Sony RX100

Two days after the Making Light Workshop, three of the original (masochistic?) participants joined three more new ones for a part two: Finding Light. I originally decided to run these as a pair to collaborate with photographer Kristian Dowling, who was unfortunately not able to make either one of the workshops in the end. No biggie.

Quartered. Sony RX100

The underlying point behind the pair of workshop sessions was that street and studio are far more related than you might think: how are you going to create stunning light and compositions if you don’t know what it looks like? Similarly, how is one going to recognize it if you don’t know what is possible when all of the elements of the photograph are within the control of the photographer?

Why would this not be street photography? Olympus OM-D, ZD60/2.8

We started off with the obligatory coffee, a discussion on what street photography is and isn’t, and some thoughts on etiquette, before finishing with a quick critique of participant images. Street photography, to me, is something that is a very ill-defined genre (and to be the subject of another article, I think) – let’s just say for now that anything you see when walking is fair game – people, street scenes, abstracts, architecture. I generally approach it from a reportage perspective. On the subject of etiquette, I think it’s simple: don’t do anything you wouldn’t want done to you. This includes unflattering images and invasion of personal space.

Untitled. Sony RX100

For the first hour or so, we just walked – no cameras were allowed. This was to encourage participants to start seeing and looking for frames; I would stop and point out interesting things, compositions, geometries and other potential shots, to the point that before we reached the first staging point, there were several cameras out…

Exercise one covered seeing in place: conveniently, the place I selected for lunch was deliberately done so because of both the quality of its beef noodles, as well more importantly, the fact that it was an extremely rich photographic hunting ground. Once duly refueled, the participants were required to stay in their seats, and shoot from that position. Lens changes were allowed. This forced them to think carefully about perspectives, foregrounds, potentially intrusive elements, as well as of course composition and light.

Shooting in place. It forces you to find compositions in a scene; those little documentary moments.

For the second exercise we did something I like to call ‘stages’. The stage, in street photography, is a background or backdrop with a interesting texture or light; it’s a good way of teaching anticipation and timing because the composition is predetermined, and the photographer just waits for subject to walk through the right portion of the stage before pressing the shutter button.

A staged example. Sony RX100

Next came timing and anticipation – I like to use point and shoots to teach this because they have just about the right amount of shutter lag to represent your reaction time when shooting with a responsive camera; however for this exercise we substituted with a 2-second self timer.

Practicing timing with the help of a handy wall, and lots of pedestrians. The objective was to trap the pedestrian at the very edge of the wall – but while the 2-second self timer was running. Olympus OM-D, ZD60/2.8

Another tool I like to use is layering; this can be achieved by means of reflections, stacked foregrounds and backgrounds, or longer perspectives – or perhaps a combination of all three. This technique works quite well when there’s a lot of glass around, but becomes more challenging when you are in a ‘dirty’ environment and nothing is clean or reflective.

Bus reflections. Olympus OM-D, ZD60/2.8

The final, and most difficult exercise of the day was to learn to hold your ground and shoot through people – this lets you get very, very close indeed, to the point of having headshots with a 50mm. It requires some courage to position yourself in the middle of a stream of pedestrians, but once the participants built up their confidence, it became easy – just look like you belong.

Shoot through exercise. Sony RX100

And a result of this technique. Olympus OM-D, ZD60/2.8

Putting everything together wrapped up the day – an opportunity for the participants to figure out which of the techniques best suited their style by just shooting anything and everything – and I’m pleased to report a huge improvement in composition and angle from the images I saw at the first briefing. I think what was most telling is that none of them really had the same style – it was a consistent mix of the various techniques taught, and with different subjects. Well done!

Divided reality – my personal shot of the day. Note leading lines, quadrants, context, perspective use, human elements…Sony RX100

Based on the success and feedback of this session, I’ll probably be doing another introduction to street photography workshop in Kuala Lumpur at some point, as well as a standalone introduction to Photoshop day – both will be for a very limited number of participants – I like to keep things small because it allows me to give each person more attention – please visit again regularly for updates. MT

A visual metaphor for our banking system. Sony RX100

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Filed Under: Teaching Tagged With: 30 september 2012, finding light, kuala lumpur, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, street, street photography, teaching, thein, Workshop

OpEd: The democratization of photography and the state of affairs in Malaysia

October 4, 2012 by Ming Thein

Inclusive? Exclusive? Fair? You be the judge. Nikon D5100, AFS 85/1.4 G

This article was originally written by me to provide context for the 2012 Maybank Photographer of The Year Awards, for which I’m serving as Chief Judge. It was published in The Malaysian Reserve, 14 September 2012 edition. Reproduced with permission. A scan of the original article is available here.

Humans are visual people: we are drawn to things that look different, things that are aesthetically pleasing, and above all, things that communicate with us at an emotional level. This applies to both objects and photographs; in fact, half of the neural connections in our brains are related to vision in some way. What’s changed notably in the last eight years – since 2004 – is an explosion in visual content creation, sharing and awareness, fueled by proliferation of internet access, falling prices of digital cameras, and more recently, the rise of social media.

I pick 2004 as the turning point because it was a landmark year for photographers: it brought the affordable consumer digital SLR. Professional quality was now accessible to the masses at a tenth of the former cost, reducing the sole differentiator of photographers again to skill. More importantly, the learning process became extremely fast thanks to instant feedback. With film, you might not see the results of your experiments for days or weeks.

This gave birth to a new generation of digital-only photographers who have no affinity to Velvia or Neopan or Tri-X. Today’s generation even further removed – film is merely what the various Insta-whatsit or Hipsta-thingy app filters try to emulate. Yet, mostly due to that instant feedback loop, the average standard of today’s generation of photographers is higher than ever, with increasing numbers of people getting interested in and trying to make a living from photography. In fact, there are so many photographers everywhere now that it’s normal for the most people to sling a DSLR around their necks when they leave the house, and share everything with their friends online later. We communicate visually.

I’m of the transitional generation. I started pre-2004 with both film and digital – one helped me understand the other – and ‘turned pro’ in early 2012. There are two definitions ‘pro’: one, is that you make the vast majority of your income from photography or related activities; the other is that your images are of a consistently high standard, regardless of the conditions or subject. There are plenty of the former, but precious few of the latter – and the majority cut their teeth during the silver halide days. I aim to be both.

What photography clients often overlook is that you generally pay more for experience, translating into consistency. And it’s as much about time as it is about the number of experiments you’ve done or things you’ve tried. A chimpanzee could probably make ten incredible images out of a million through random chance alone. A professional should hit that mark nine times out of ten. As the client, it’s your responsibility to be educated about the services you’re paying for. Needless to say, selecting a provider with price as sole criteria – sadly a common practice in Malaysia – is a poor guarantor of quality. Thanks to the internet, it’s very easy to find specialist photographers and quickly identify if they’re good or not; in fact, picking a niche and excelling at it is probably the only way professional photographers can survive commercially in the longer term.

There are actually a number of world-class commercial photographers in Malaysia – but we don’t hear much about them here because they do the majority of their work outside the country. Much of my own business comes from Singapore and Switzerland – I specialize in watches, food and architecture, which also happen to be personal passions.

As organizations and individuals, it’s important that we do what we can to support the creative industries, beyond photography. The government can budget for ‘innovation incentives’, but something more than that is needed to make creativity flourish and grow: an ecosystem. Any industry creative will agree that inspiration isn’t always available on demand, but the environment is a large contributing factor. Take The Louvre, for example. Its archive gives inspiration to budding artists, and supports an ecosystem of its own, providing intellectual nourishment for future generations. Malaysia needs a legacy like that.

In a previous life, I was a director in the education and professional services sectors. Come recruitment time, I was saddened after interviewing many graduates with great paper scores – they were simply unable to perform at all in a professional environment. The missing elements? Creative thinking and initiative. At the same time, there’s still a ray of hope: at a recent major competition I judged, the best entries by far – and the bulk of the shortlisted ones – came from the student category. There is potential out there; we need to nurture it.

Support comes in many forms. There is commercial recognition – giving fair value for a professional service, recognizing and rewarding quality. Then there is also intellectual recognition – public acknowledgement and respect for the creator’s (and photographer) intellectual property rights. (Don’t know what an image license is? Don’t be afraid to ask). People are proud to show their best work – especially to a wide audience.

Equally important is teaching and encouragement. Since early this year, I’ve tried to do my part via http://www.mingthein.com. I aim to give back to the greater photographic community by openly sharing thoughts on technique, philosophy, and the life of a professional photographer – something beyond the other million gear reviews. The response has been fantastic so far – over a quarter of a million international visitors every month.

Collectively, this is why as a professional, a creative, and a Malaysian, I was proud to be invited to serve as Chief Judge for the inaugural Maybank Photographer of The Year Awards. It’s great to see a major company recognizing the importance of creativity, and giving Malaysians an opportunity to showcase their work, and the incentive to up their game. There are some pretty sweet prizes, too. As tempted as I am to enter instead of judging, I’m much more excited about seeing the entries. MT

The Maybank Photographer of The Year Awards may be entered online at www.maybankphotoawards.com. Submissions are open from 3 September to 31 October.

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: democratization of photography, malaysian reserve, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, thein, unreserved

ACR and DNG converter 7.2 now available

October 3, 2012 by Ming Thein

Download it here for Mac, and here for Windows.

Just about every new camera released at Photokina is supported, including the D600, XF1, X-E1, LX7/ D-Lux 6, NEX-6, NEX-5R, A99 and final support for the RX100. It also adds tethered shooting capability for the D800/ D800E. Personally, this is great news as there’s new functionality for three of my regularly used cameras…and I can finally do a full evaluation of the D600’s image quality.

Deciding what to bring for the Japan workshop just got harder. Right now it’s a three-way battle between the D600/ 28/1.8G/ 85/1.8G, M9-P/ ZM28/ ZM2/50 and the OM-D/ 12/ 45/1.8…thoughts, anybody? MT

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Workshop report: 28 Sep Making Light in Kuala Lumpur

October 3, 2012 by Ming Thein

Our model for the day, Aliza Kim. Nikon D800E, 85/1.8 G

Although unfortunately Kristian Dowling couldn’t co-present in the end due to food poisoning, the show must go on, and it did: an intimate and dedicated class of participants joined me for a different look at making light in the studio. We started with a deconstruction and minor reprogramming of preconceptions: the use of a studio is about total control for all aspects of the image, not just lighting; why compromise when you are in a repeatable, 100% controllable environment?

A simple one-light portrait. Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/100 Makro-Planar

And setup shot for the above: only the 4×6″ softbox was in play.

The morning was spent examining firstly the basics of the principles of composition, color theory and psychology, the importance of perfect color and how to achieve it, and finally, deconstructing lighting under several increasingly complex scenarios – one light, two lights, reflectors, multiple lights, balancing with ambient…I’m proud to say that the students did an increasingly good job of figuring out what the light setups used were, even if I did throw them a few curve balls 🙂 (There’s a reason why this post comes at the end of the last week’s focus on lighting articles!)

After lunch, we moved on to replicating most of these setups, starting simple with one large softbox…

…a variety of poses, practice with timing, framing and anticipating where to leave space when the model moved…

…including setups involving two lights:

…harsh contrast…

…strong backlight (that’s the 4×6 softbox serving as backdrop in the left edge of the frame)…

…the addition of beauty dishes to balance out the background to provide a clean white look with flattering light bleed around the edges of limbs and torso…

Nikon D800E, Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 Makro-Planar

Setup shot

…some occasional theatrical emoting from the coach…

…and the use of a single-beauty light from a more oblique angle to create interesting silhouettes:

One more costume change later, and I demonstrated the versatility of speedlights for location work and ease of creating completely different effects by mixing diffuse and harsh light. Here, we used a three-light setup to create a very edgy, moody, feel; later on adding a cinematic and emotional element by varying the color tone of the final shot, or omitting it completely. The speedlights were set to manual output, triggered and controlled via iTTL for the Nikon shooters, and switched over to SU4 slave mode for the Canon shooters (and lone Sony RX100, the B-roll camera of yours truly.)

Flash cunningly triggered by the built-in on a Sony RX100, shot in manual mode

Sony RX100

Nikon D800E

We finished up the day with a quick Photoshop postprocessing demonstration to clean up a few files for print by the studio’s resident print master, Wesley Wong of Giclee Art – thus completing the imaging chain, and showing just how much further you can take your images when you’re in control of all of the elements. Even at 13×19″, the RX100 images were virtually indistinguishable from the D800E – we would have to go even further, probably to 25×40″ or so, before a significant difference would be discernable. Score one for the argument for sufficiency! I’m pleased to report that everybody had a great time and learned a lot (or at least were polite enough not to say otherwise 🙂 – in the words of one participant, “I think my head just exploded.”

Our group and model.

I’d like to conclude with a quick note on equipment: we were using Profoto Pro heads, a D4 pack, one beauty dish with and without 25deg grid, 4×6′ and 1×4′ softboxes, three Nikon SB900s, umbrellas and a whole array of clamps and stands for lighting; the model images in this post were shot by me (except for the one ‘Charlie’s Angels’ shot where noted) using a Nikon D800E, Nikon AFS 85/1.8 G, Zeiss ZF.2 2/50 and 2/100 Makro-Planars. B-roll, documentary, and one of the model images was shot using a Sony RX100, except of course the images of me which were shot by the students as the camera made its rounds to be fondled…

I’d like to say a big thank you to the participants, and Shriro-Malaysia/ Profoto for the use of the studio and lighting equipment. Stay tuned for more upcoming workshops!

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Filed Under: Teaching Tagged With: 28 september 2012, flash, kuala lumpur, lighting, making light, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, speedlight, studio, teaching, thein, Workshop

Lighting tips and tricks

October 2, 2012 by Ming Thein

A little bonus to follow on from the previous five part series* on lighting.

*A primer on lighting equipment is here. Part one on single sources can be found here; part two on multiple sources, here; part three on balancing ambient, here; part four on continuous sources, here.

There are a few things worth bearing in mind when creating your own lighting:

There should always be a top.
This usually means lighting in such a way that the orientation of the subject is obvious; it doesn’t always mean that it has to be shot in this orientation. Often, this is physically impossible with some subjects. But what you can do is rotate camera, place your stronger light sources at the perceptual ‘top’ of the subject, then rotate the image afterwards. I frequently do this with watches – they don’t stand up by themselves!

DIY
Not all lighting equipment has to be bought. Some can be made at home – a rolled cardboard cone makes a fine snoot; you can cut gobos out of mount board with a hobby knife, and even softboxes can be made from wire and mount board with a little forethought. The most critical bit of equipment in my own arsenal – the watch diffuser – I made myself.

Start simple
Beginners often make the mistake of buying too many lights, stands, umbrellas etc. and then trying to deploy them all at once – you often don’t need to. The most effective, dramatic lighting setups usually only require one, or at most two, sources. Only increase the complexity of your setup if you absolutely have to – remember the number of variables for each light in the first article on single sources?

Use what you’ve got
Building on starting simple, often ambient light is both difficult to replicate and offers invaluable context. Don’t overlook it in your quest for control of light: it can be very helpful indeed. This is where the next tip comes in:

Master manual metering
Controlling all of the exposure parameters manually gives you perfect control over the relationship between ambient and made light; if you’re particularly masochistic or have a difficult subject (reflective objects for instance) you might even go manual for the flash output, too. Learn to visualize what various exposures look like, and you can both work a lot faster, and create better results, too.

Imperfection is perfection
Natural light is never perfectly even, or diffuse, or directional; it’s the little variations and imperfections caused by shoddy internal baffling in your home-made softbox that gives an image character. Embrace the imperfection, and let it work for you.

Watch your color termperatures
You can use a difference in color temperature between sources (differently gelled flashes, or ambient vs flash etc.) to isolate a subject or different zones in your image. You can also overdo it and land up with very strange color in some parts of your image; as with everything, just enough is the difference between something different and something overcooked.

There is such a thing as too much diffusion
Very large, flat sources are great when shooting a large object, but remember that the only thing that defines the shape of an object – any object, be it a car or person or watch – is the way the shadows and highlights fall. If you have very flat, even light, then you might find there is very little distinction between shadow and highlight; this is great for maximizing dynamic range, but it’s also going to make your subject look incredibly flat, too. What does work with such sources is to use the big soft light as the secondary source, dialled in a a stop or two below your primary source – something harder, and more directional, to maintain texture and shape in your subjects.

Zoom head settings don’t have to match lens position
Flashes have internal mechanisms to move the tube and/or reflectors and fresnel grids around so that the angle of coverage of the beam matches the angle of view of the lens used; this doesn’t always have to be the case. If you use a narrow beam with a wide lens, you create a spotlight effect; this can be useful to highlight a particular subject. Just don’t make the difference in exposure too great, or it’ll look unnatural.

High sync speed and lots of power are your friends
Higher sync speeds enable you to do many things: freeze motion, fill in very bright sunlight, and use less power while doing so. It isn’t so much a special trick on its own per se, but more of a means of extending your shooting envelope so you have more control and more options when ambient light is extremely bright. And more power means more control over apertures, more ability to use diffusers and modifiers (they all eat light – at least a stop, sometimes as much as two or three) without compromising range or depth of field. MT

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Deconstructing light, part four: continuous sources

October 1, 2012 by Ming Thein

The final part in this introduction to lighting mini-series is a look at when continuous light sources can be useful, and how to best deploy them.

I use continuous lighting primarily for food photography – specifically, large, high-CRI LED panels – because the low temperature of the source doesn’t interfere with the subject. (Try blasting sashimi with flash repeatedly, and you’ll soon see just how fast delicate fish can cook.) However, it’s also useful in other situations – obviously, to give clients an idea of what the end result will look like; for videography, when flashes obviously aren’t feasible, and less obviously, when you’re working in a dark environment and actually need a reasonably accurate representation of what the light will look like in order to compose and focus.

The rules for using continuous lights are pretty much the same, but with a few limitations:
1. Color temperature usually isn’t variable, and for large sources, you might not be able to find gels big enough – so you will probably have to go with almost 100% artificial light in your exposure. Note that you can also find continuous tungsten lights, but these run very hot and have a very low color temperature, which can lead to problems with blues.
2. LED panels aren’t that bright, so you will need to work with a tripod, and again, watch ambient light – it will creep in because the exposure times will necessarily be longer than for flash photography.
3. Subject motion – another consequence of longer exposures, especially with human subjects.
4. Heat. If you’re using tungsten light, be careful with things accidentally coming in contact with the bulbs or heads and catching fire or burning. That includes your skin.
5. Power. You’ll need to be plugged into mains or large batteries for lights of any consequential power. Ensure you take this into account when planning for a shoot – extension cables and power strips are your friend!

Let’s look at some examples, shall we?

The end of sorbet. Leica D-Lux 5

Single small LED panel to the top; note the hot spot on the spoon. The problem with using panels is that they’re difficult diffuse without a significant loss in power; the only way to make it work is either live with the hot spots (not a major problem for food) or get bigger panels (very expensive). I wanted my panels to be versatile, so I’m now using 45x45cm models.

Test shot from the M-Monochrom review. Leica M-Monochrom, 50/2 APO

One large LED panel off to the right; since it was a test shot, I didn’t bother to clear the wire from the foreground…with human subjects, LED panels enable faster, more comfortable working as you don’t have to make as many trial and error adjustments with the flash, and it’s simply not as hot.

Bread. Leica D-Lux 5

Part of a series from a food photography class I ran for Leica earlier in the year. I had two small LED panels for this, spread out around the top of the image and on even power; they provided definition and shadow. Image was shot top-down, obviously.

Foie gras. Leica D-Lux 5

Two LED panels; one top left, one top right. Both slightly above the subject to highlight that moisty, oily sheen on the seared foie gras. LED panels are quite directional but yet with short throw; this means they’ve got to be fairly close to your subject, and you’ll need more than one to fill in the shadows.

Leica S2, using the D-Lux 5

This is an example of what you can do when you have 40 LED panels at your disposal – I demonstrated product photography using the mini-panels to create a ring of light around the subject, with some actually providing light on the subject, and some just there to provide background texture.

Sushi platter. Leica D-Lux 5

One medium panel from the top took care of lighting here – getting the height and angle right is the critical part, so that the subject is evenly lit but yet has definition to preserve the shape and texture of the fish. Panels were about 30cm above the subject in this case.

Rice cones. Olympus OM-D

I used two panels here – one on full power from the right side, slightly elevated relative to the plane of the plate, and slightly behind; the other was to the left and running 1/8th power to provide fill and keep the food looking fresh and ‘bright’ rather than shadowy and ‘heavy’. Lighting is all about psychology and creating the desired mood in the viewer…

A primer on lighting equipment is here. Part one on single sources can be found here; part two on multiple sources, here; part three on balancing ambient, here.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: continuous source, deconstructing, diffuser, flash, how to, lighting, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, speedlight, thein

Deconstructing light, part three: balancing ambient

September 30, 2012 by Ming Thein

One of the neat things you can do when you’re controlling the light is highlighting your subject, but preserving the ambient atmosphere. Today’s post focuses on how to do that.

Ambient light is your friend: it helps you to fill in the background with pre-lit object, providing compositional context; but more importantly, you can use it to preserve the atmosphere of the scene, which can be difficult to recreate if you’re using 100% flash or strobe only. All of the previous control points for single and multiple lights apply, of course. The two major challenges with balancing ambient are exposure and color. I’ll deal with exposure first.

There’s no fixed rule for this, but the more ambient you want to preserve, the closer your exposure must be to ambient exposure; the best way to do this is by shooting in manual mode and balancing out your shutter speed and aperture until you’re around one stop underexposed; I wouldn’t do anything more than three stops of difference (unless you have very bright ambient point sources) because very little, if any, ambient sources will remain. You’ve got three parameters to play with here – shutter speed, aperture and ISO. Shutter speed should fall somewhere between your max sync speed and around 1/30s if you’re dealing with people; higher if there are moving objects, lower if static. Aperture should allow you to hold in focus whatever you need to. ISO is the remaining balancing factor once you have set the other two – try and keep this low to maintain image quality, however. I generally don’t go higher than 800. Note that flash power should be the last thing that’s altered (and done by the camera’s meter to balance out the required exposure) – this is because you are firstly setting your exposure based on ambient, then filling the primary subject with the precise amount of flash required for a proper exposure.

Color is actually simpler: if it’s daylight, or close to it, there’s no need to gel your flashes, because they operate at fairly close to daylight Kelvin temperatures. If it’s tungsten or fluorescent, you’ll need to use the correct gels over the front of the flash so they provide the same temperature color source as the ambient lighting; you’ll also then have to set the white balance in-camera to match ambient. Note that you don’t always have to match the flashes to ambient; sometimes having a bit of temperature difference isn’t a bad thing, as it can help to highlight the subject. Just don’t make the difference too glaringly obvious.

Let’s move on to the examples.

Omega Speedmaster 9300. Nikon D800E

One of the more common situations I face where I have to balance flash and ambient are lume shots of watches – you need a very long exposure to capture the glow luminous material; often 30s at f16 ISO 100, or longer. However, a luminous dial pattern on its own isn’t very interesting, so I usually supplement this with some ambient. You could do this two ways – composite a regular (but underexposed by several stops) shot in, or just add a manual flash kicker to define the case. Here, I used 1/16th power from top left through the diffuser box.

Sandwich. Nikon D700

The background glow is the restaurant decor; I had flashes reflecting off umbrellas left and right to illuminate the sandwich. Exposure was balanced out to expose two stops under ambient for the restaurant, with a longer exposure time and base ISO (sandwiches don’t do much moving).

Autumn texture. Nikon D90

One flash from the left, not diffused to provide a bit of harsh light to add texture and definition to the subject; exposure 1/2 stop under ambient. I wanted to fill the shadows and create some cross-lighting effects rather than make things soft and diffuse; a very flat angle for the flash position was used to accomplish this.

MRI room. Some of you might recognize this from a previous on assignment post. Nikon D800E

The objective of this shoot was to show the clean, high-tech environment of the hospital’s new MRI machine. The MRI and room itself had ambient lighting on both the machine and ceiling; if we shot with this alone, firstly our models wouldn’t have been able to keep still for long enough, and secondly, the ambient light was far too cool with a large difference in color temperature to the machine. Hence, flashes were used to illuminate the room and models – one in a reflective umbrella to the top right corner of the room; I needed throw and definition for the whites. The second one was placed on top of the rear casing of the MRI to fill the back of the room.

Mammogram. Nikon D800E

Here, the client wanted to convey a warm, friendly feeling to the room; nothing says this better than warm lighting. The color temperature of the flashes were shifted with gels; the primary source source was a flash reflected off an umbrella behind and above the machine; a secondary flash was bounced off the wall behind me (and to the right of the patient) to provide fill at 1.5 stops under the main flash.

Sony RX100 product shot. Nikon D700

The final example is one of those deceptively complex shots: one flash from top right was fired through the diffuser to light the camera body and background, but the exposure was altered until it balanced out that of the screen. If I’d just used the native sync speed of 1/250s and stopped down, the screen would black out because it isn’t that bright.

Come back again tomorrow for the final part in this series! MT

A primer on lighting equipment is here. Part one on single sources can be found here; part two on multiple sources, here.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: balancing ambient, deconstructing, diffuser, flash, how to, lighting, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, speedlight, thein

Deconstructing light, part two: multiple sources

September 29, 2012 by Ming Thein

Part two deals with multiple sources: how and where do you use them? What is the one key rule to remember?

Although you can do a lot with a single flash, there’s even more that can be done with two or more. For starters, you can fill in shadows; or if you want to get more adventurous, you can mix both hard and soft light (direct and diffused) for better definition, or more accurate replication of found light sources. (There’s one particular shot I’m rather fond of that I call ‘the Hollywood’, which I’ll go into later).

There’s one critical thing to remember when using multiple sources, though: there must always be a primary source. If you don’t have one, then you won’t have any subject definition – opposing sources will fill in the shadows, and shadows are what defines the shape of an object.

The same parameters you can control with a single source apply to multiple sources, of course. The more sources you have, the more complicated things get. It’s useful to decompose your thinking thusly:
1. Primary source, on main subject
2. Secondary source, on main subject – definition (rim light, not diffused) or fill (diffused, or reflected)?
3. Other sources, for background objects or secondary subject – take steps 1 and 2 and repeat.

I’m sure you can now see why Joe McNally needs several trunks full of speedlights. I’m not quite there yet, but I find that most of the time a two-light setup is sufficient; there are times where I’ll use three for watches, but I’ve yet to require four sources (except in situations where I need more power from one location, and have to add a second flash to turn the wick up a notch).

Let’s look at some examples.

Ferrari 250 GTO. Sadly, not a real one. Nikon D200

This one has two distinct sources, both flashes behind diffuser panels – one at left, and one at right. They’re actually slightly behind the subject to create a nice specular highlight that defines the curvature in the panels; if I’d put the sources at right angles, you’d have very flat illumination and not much of a feel for the 3-D shape of the car.

Nikon 14-24. Nikon D3

Some objects betray their lighting secrets very clearly – reflective hemispheres are perhaps the worst culprits. For something like this, the best thing to do is keep the light source simple; in this case, two softboxes from the left and right. Power was equal; if not, you wouldn’t get the nice multi-colored reflections off the coatings on the lens. Note that the softboxes were actually pretty close to the subject; the hemispherical shape makes them appear further away.

Lange Datograph. Nikon D700

Through a trick of optical projection, the watch actually appears floating in mid-air and truncated, even though it’s resting securely on the surface behind. Note that this was shot with the lens and watch resting on a flat surface, but lit as though vertical. The primary source was through a diffuser, aimed at the watch and shielded from lighting the lens in front; a secondary source, at reduced power, lit the nameplate of the lens; finally, a third source – again at reduced power – lit the background. A simple-looking shot, but a bugger to light.

Panerai Arktos. Nikon D200

Sometimes you want hard definition; in such cases, a concentrated, direct source is the best way to go, without diffusion. Here, I used one flash from the top, and one from the bottom to provide fill. Both were positioned at a low angle to avoid flat-looking interference at the point of the subject closest to the camera, with a small baffle on one side of the flash preventing light spillage.

Steak. Nikon D700

This example is an instance of when two light sources look like one. A flash with reflective umbrella was used from the top right; you actually need to see a bit of harsh reflection off the oil on the steak to know it’s a juicy steak, making a reflective umbrella ideal. However, you still need to soften out the edges a bit, which is where the very low power secondary source comes in; if it’s too diffuse, you lose the defining effect of the first source, so there’s another flash reflecting off an umbrella from the left, too.

The Hollywood. Nikon D3

There are actually four flashes in play here: two at the back to provide the spotlight effect and backlit definition on the subject’s hair; one from the right in a softbox as the primary source, and a fourth on the D3 to serve as remote commander.

Jaeger-LeCoultre Gyrotourbillon I. Nikon D700

Lighting at the macro scale is extremely tricky – partially because you don’t have a lot of working distance, and partially because your source has to be the right size: too large, and the light is too soft and lacks definition; too small, and you’re going to get harsh reflections and rough-looking surfaces. Here, I used one flash fairly close to the topmost diffuser, with a secondary one through the back diffuser to provide fill of the shadows – thanks to the handy aperture in the watch dial.

Seiko Fifty-five Fathoms. Nikon D700

We finish this section with a classic two-light: primary source upper back center, and secondary fill from the left to give the transparent domed objects – water and watch crystal – some definition. Not much power difference between the two flashes; the bigger difference was the location of the flashes. The back one was further away and with a wider spread than the left one; this created a larger source of almost equal brightness.

Come back tomorrow for part three! MT

A primer on lighting equipment is here. Part one on single sources can be found here.

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Filed Under: On Photography Tagged With: balancing ambient, deconstructing, diffuser, flash, how to, lighting, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, speedlight, thein

Deconstructing light, part one: one light

September 28, 2012 by Ming Thein

Over the next few days, we’ll look at a few examples of lighting, and specifically, deconstructing it: what lights were positioned where, and what was the logic of doing so?

Today, I’m going to start with some relatively simple setups: they only use one light, with or without additional modifiers. Quite often, you don’t actually need much more than that. Single light setups tend to have very well defined shadows and highlights; chiaroscuro is the term that’s used to refer to an image that is predominantly described by it shadows and negative spaces. Classical painters were masters of this technique; they lit things in ways that are very difficult to replicate in real life – partially because of the size of their sources, and partially because they weren’t strictly limited by the laws of physics.

For simplicity, let us assume that you’re shooting at your camera’s highest sync speed, and that ambient light is not really a factor into the equation. Note that everything said here applies to both speedlights and studio strobes. I’m not going to discuss built in or on-camera flash, because it simply will not give you the results you need or offer the flexibility required. There are few variables in a one-light setup:

1. Output power
How bright do you want it? Usually, your lights will alter power based solely on your desired depth of field – which translates into aperture, which in turn translates into the amount of power required to provide a correct exposure. Note that the shutter speed only affects ambient light, not the power output of the flash. Flash duration is often 1/1000s or even much shorter. Most cameras will sync to 1/250s or thereabouts; this is the maximum duration of a full power flash. Those that sync at higher speeds require the flash to fire several times to cover the focal plane, as this is the highest speed at which the entire sensor area is exposed at the same time. (Anything faster, and the opening between shutter curtains is effectively a narrow moving slit.)

2. Distance
More distance requires a higher guide number to provide the same given illumination. Distance also affects the perceived size of your source – in general, providing the light isn’t a single point, the farther away you are, the brighter your source has to be for a given illumination level. For more diffuse light, you want your primary source to be further away.

3. Beam coverage/ angle
Most flashes and heads can have their beam angle changed – you want to match the beam angle to the focal length to produce the optimal balance frame coverage and power consumption; lighting more than you need to is a waste of power, but less than your angle of view will produce hot spots. Of course, you could always do this deliberately for a spotlight effect. Note that a wide beam close to the subject and diffuser will not look the same as a spot (telephoto setting on the flash) beam farther away with a big diffuser; the latter will produce far softer light.

4. Diffusion
The best example of diffusion is the difference between a clear, cloudless day and an overcast one: look at the difference in shadows. A cloudless day produces very harsh shadows and wide dynamic range with high brightness in the highlights; it’s a dynamic range nightmare (especially for outdoor wedding shooters, because of all that black and white involved). The opposite is true for cloudy days – note how soft and diffuse the light is. The clouds are effectively adding as a diffuser. For photographic/ flash purposes, you can use a diffuser – not a small clip-on thing that goes on your flash, but something larger like a softbox. The further away your source is from the diffuser, the softer the light is going to be. Control diffusion, and you effectively control the subject’s tonal differentiation.

5. Angle of incidence/ positioning
This seems obvious, but where you put your light and how you aim it can make a huge difference to the look of the image. In fact, it’s possible to leave the orientation of subject and camera fixed in one position, and just move your lights to create several completely different-looking images.

A quicks note on color and white balance: assuming all of your exposure comes from flash, just set your white balance to flash or daylight – most cameras will do this automatically. We do need to start worrying about mixed color temperatures, but only when balancing ambient and artificial light.

Let’s look at some examples.

Hair. Leica X1

Single speedlight in softbox; shot at 1/2000s sync speed – to freeze motion, I used a camera with a leaf shutter and high flash sync speed. The source was positioned at 45 degrees to the subject and camera to provide definition; it was not that far away from the subject to avoid too much diffusion – this way, you still get some highlight definition which helps give the subject shape.

Maitres du Temps Chapter 3 prototype dial. Nikon D800

Single speedlight behind diffuser panel to the top of the watch. The watch was inside a diffuser box to control reflections of surrounding objects off its polished surfaces. For images like this, the precise position of the flash relative to the diffuser and subject, as well as the beam angle, are very important – a small change in the position of the flash or beam angle changes the nature of the reflection significantly, as you will see demonstrated by the next image. For this image, the source was reasonably high up, far away, and with a wide beam angle to produce a soft reflection.

Lange Datograph. Nikon D700

This shot employed an almost identical setup to the previous one, except the flash was at a lower angle, much closer to the watch and with a tighter beam spread (longer zoom setting). Note how the reflection in this shot is very concentrated in one spot close to the top edge of the crystal, and is much ‘harder’ and more defined than in the previous shot.

Seasoning. Nikon D700

I used a flash in an reflective umbrella to the back left of the subject here; I wanted some diffusion but also some definition – too much diffusion and the pasta looks like a flat, matte amorphous blob. The source was partially behind the subject to provide a bit of backlight, which would define the grains of seasoning against the dark background of the person’s shirt. Note: there is such a thing as too much diffusion!

Girard-Perregaux F1-047. Nikon D700

Despite appearances, this shot actually employed direct flash with almost no diffusion. The watch itself is fairly matte, and the texture of the carbon-fiber dial is only apparent when struck with strongly directional light. I used a single flash to the right of the subject, almost touching the diffuser panel; this provided a minimal amount of softening of the edge of the flash source (so it wouldn’t appear as a hard point source in the minor reflections) but enough directionality to give the dial definition.

Prawns. Nikon D700

This example involves one flash again, but bounced off an umbrella fairly far away from the subject. Given that the room, tablecloth and surroundings were predominantly white, any light source used would reflect and provide some fill. This meant that the primary source had to be diffuse, yet directional – making an umbrella ideal.

Eugenie. Nikon D200

The final example involves a combination of light modifiers – a snoot and a diffuser box. The snoot was used to concentrate the light to the center of the diffuser; the diffuser was used to soften the skin of the subject. The net effect was a soft spot – imagine a source about the size of a large dinner plate, with intensity dropping off towards the edges. Thus, we get the best of both worlds – chiaroscuro definition, and gentle tonal rolloff in the shadows and highlights.

Come back tomorrow for part two. MT

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