It always makes me wonder how in the world we were able to make photos when the film of choice was Kodachrome. I say film of choice because virtually everyone I knew shot it. Except for when I was shooting for AP and UPI in the seventies, and we rated Ektachrome up to ASA 1600, I would shoot with Kodachrome because the color was soooooo much better looking.

In my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, I’m always asked what ISO (ASA) I keep my camera on? Do I increase it in low light situations? How do I remind myself to change it back?

My answer is always the same. I now keep it at 800 and forget about it no matter what the situation is. Since I’m on a tripod nearly 100% of the time, I’m in complete control. I can shoot at any shutter speed/aperture combination in any low light situations, and walk away with the photo I was after.

In the Kodachrome days, I got use to and became comfortable with shooting people at very slow shutter speeds. Taking a portrait at a 1/4 sec, 1/2, or even a full second was the norm. It’s what I had to do if I wanted the rich saturated colors that came from shooting Kodachrome 25….meaning ASA or ISO of 25.

One of the many problems that came with the digital camera and the new photographers that came with it was the idea that in order to shoot good photos, you have to manipulate the many camera settings from situation to situation, and from location to location. Trust me when I tell you that YOU DON’T!!!!!

Try taking the “Baraban Challenge” sometime. Change all your setting back to their default, and put your camera back in the box it came in; then pretend that you just bought it. Open it (with great enthusiasm and excitement) and start reading the parts of the manual that shows you where the shutter release is, where you change out the card, the location of the manual setting, where you change the shutter speed, and oh yes…where you turn it on!!!

After learning all this hard stuff, go out and start shooting. You don’t even need the AF mode. After all, auto-focusing is a luxury not a necessity.

Toooooooo scary????????????? That’s OK, I understand. If you’re scared, just put all the settings back to where you’re not scared anymore!!!!

One last thing: When someone asks me what I did when I needed a faster ISO/ASA, I tell them I would switch to Kodachrome 64.

🙂

Boy do I miss my Kodachrome!!!

🙁

Visit my website at:www.joebaraban.com and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot the low light with me sometime.

JoeB

If you were a race driver you would immediately know what the expression ’10’ and ‘2’ meant. That’s when your left hand is at the ’10’ position on the steering wheel and your right hand is at the ‘2’ position. In the old days, this was the recommended position and all student driver classes taught you to drive this way.

In photography, there’s a term called “The Law of the light”. This is also referred to as “The Angle of Reflection”, although I’m not sure why since it doesn’t cover the full meaning? What this does means is that when light falls (incident light) on a subject it falls at a particular angle. This is called “the Angle of Incidence”. When this light bounces (reflects) off this subject, it also bounces off at a particular angle and is called the Angle of Reflection. When both the Angle of Incidence and the Angle of Reflection are the same, you are in The Law of the Light.

Have you ever driven by a tall glass office building and noticed that at a certain point the glass seems to glow, and as you pass by that point the glow fades away? That’s because at that point in time both the angle from the light falling on the building and the angle of the light reflecting off it to your eyes were the same. Well, imagine having a camera in your hand and you happen to record it…pretty dramatic, right?

I use this same law when shooting environmental portraits, as it’s my favorite way to light people. Imagine a clock in your viewfinder and placing your subject in such a way (right in the center of the clock) as to have the source of the light coming from either ’10’ or ‘2’.  What this does is to create a rim of light that runs down the person’s face and body. It adds a dramatic gesture that seems to add to whatever facial expression, or body language that the subject is communicating. In my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops, we spend time working on this lighting concept.

In the photo above, I positioned the girl so I would have the sun not only back-lighting the water, but at ‘2’ on the clock in my viewfinder to get that wonderful rim lighting on her profile.

FYI, because of air bags installed in current model cars, the recommended position of the hands is now ‘9’ and ‘3’.

Here’s some examples of the light coming from ’10’or ‘2’ position:

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Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and be sure to check out my new workshop schedule at the top of this blog.Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

  Besides being an advertising, corporate, and editorial photographer for the past fifty-three years that has been a lifelong dream come true, photography has not been my only love for dare I say…half a century!!

I also come from a background that started out with a BA degree in Journalism. Over the years I have done a lot of writing, some of which have been published, and two screenplays, and a novel I hope to be bought someday.

With that in mind, I have often sought to combine the two and create in a single photo a story that can be understood without actually putting anything down on paper.

I have shared this over the years with those that take my online classes with the BPSOP and those that join me in one of my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct throughout the world.

As I said, with a college education based in Journalism (with a minor in art), we were trained to answer these five questions when writing an article. Over the course of my career in photography, I have often applied these same five questions when thinking about ‘making’ a photograph.

Of course, it’s difficult if not impossible to produce one single image that includes all five. I can say that looking back at my calling, I have a pretty good job in including as many as possible.

So, my fellow photographers, you should give it a try. The next time you go out think about telling a story in a single photograph. A story that will keep the viewer around for as long as possible, and as I always say, the more we can make the viewer an active participant in our imagery the more he’ll stick around…isn’t that what we want him/her to do?

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

How do you decide to either keep a photo or delete it?

First and most important, stay objective. Whatever you do, don’t even think about letting sentiment enter into your thought process.

For example, when I’m shooting pictures of all my kids and grandchildren, if an image doesn’t meet the criteria I’ve long ago set for myself, I have no problem deleting it…but deleting where is the question.

There is deleting, and then there’s deleting. This is a topic that frequently comes up in either my online classes with the BPSOP or in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” I conduct all over the place.

If the shot really sucks, then it immediately goes in the trash bin lost forever somewhere in the digital cosmos, a.k.a. “the new gender-free intellectual cosmos”. If it represents a timeline, as in photographing them growing up, but not the yardstick that measures creativity, it goes into a folder marked ‘The family’.

That folder is saved for the day when one of my kids gets engaged and during the reception or engagement party those photos hopefully, one of them, is a shot of them naked as a small child is shown in a digital slideshow….always good for a laugh!!!!

Now, if it does meet the personal benchmark I’ve set up for myself, then it just might make it to my website, a future post on my blog, or in some teaching capacity.

Whatever standards you’ve set up for yourself, stick with it no matter what. Editing is a huge part of the process and can be as relaxing or frustrating as you make it.

Visit my website at www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come shoot with me sometime.

JoeB

LIGHT IS EVERYTHING!!!

That’s what I keep telling my online students with the BPSOP, and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet.

Having said that, what happens if you suddenly lose the light or needed it when it just wasn’t there in the first place? In my forty-six year career, I’ve been in situations where I wasn’t allowed to prepare for by scouting ahead of time or a photo op that was thought up by a client at the last moment and expecting me to “come through”.

I just love it when an art director or a graphic designer forgets to tell me something that was requested by the “powers that be”, and if I don’t figure something out…and quick, all of a sudden there’s a bad taste in everyone’s mouth; I become  persona non grata (not welcomed at the agency anymore)  for any chance at new work.

So, what do I do? I improvise!!!

The above photo is a good example of improvising when your forced to shot where there’s no light, and since I was shooting at a rig, bringing in lights was not an option. I was shooting for Budweiser and they wanted a portrait of some of the Roughnecks. It started out as a potential great sunset, but thirty minutes before I started shooting , a thunderstorm began to develop bringing with it some very dark ominous clouds. and before I knew it covered most of the late afternoon light.

In a matter of minutes, everything became very dark and because of some new pipe being brought in, I couldn’t stand on the other side of the rig where I would have has at least a little light. I looked around for something, anything I could use to cast light on their faces. I looked over on the ground and saw the welding equipment. I had one of the men fire it up so that it wold make as large of a flame as possible, and that’s what I used to light the men.

Here are a few more photos where I had to come up with a way to light the people. In each photo, I added light that I found nearby:

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In the photo of the man behind the Coke truck, the client wanted the lettering on the truck to show up, so I took a small flashlight out of my bag and had him hold it on the truck’s door. The man about to swallow the torch was shot during a Luau in Hawaii. The man shoveling coal was actually in another part of the building. i brought him over and put him in the light. I also put the man reading off his clipboard in front of the headlight, and I used the lantern to light the grandfather reading to his granddaughter since there was no other source of light.

The next time you’re in a similar situation, look around because the answer might be right in front of you. It could be anything from a flashlight to a headlight. You just gotta use your imagination, and when you can do that, the skies the limit!!!

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and watch for my new workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come improvise with me sometime.

JoeB

LIGHT IS EVERYTHING!!!

That’s what I keep telling my online students with the BPSOP, and my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet.

Having said that, what happens if you suddenly lose the light or needed it when it just wasn’t there in the first place? In my forty-six year career, I’ve been in situations where I wasn’t allowed to prepare for by scouting ahead of time or a photo op that was thought up by a client at the last moment and expecting me to “come through”.

I just love it when an art director or a graphic designer forgets to tell me something that was requested by the “powers that be”, and if I don’t figure something out…and quick, all of a sudden there’s a bad taste in everyone’s mouth; I become  persona non grata (not welcomed at the agency anymore)  for any chance at new work.

So, what do I do? I improvise!!!

The above photo is a good example of improvising when your forced to shot where there’s no light, and since I was shooting at a rig, bringing in lights was not an option. I was shooting for Budweiser and they wanted a portrait of some of the Roughnecks. It started out as a potential great sunset, but thirty minutes before I started shooting , a thunderstorm began to develop bringing with it some very dark ominous clouds. and before I knew it covered most of the late afternoon light.

In a matter of minutes, everything became very dark and because of some new pipe being brought in, I couldn’t stand on the other side of the rig where I would have has at least a little light. I looked around for something, anything I could use to cast light on their faces. I looked over on the ground and saw the welding equipment. I had one of the men fire it up so that it wold make as large of a flame as possible, and that’s what I used to light the men.

Here are a few more photos where I had to come up with a way to light the people. In each photo, I added light that I found nearby:

PausePlayPlayPrev|Next

In the photo of the man behind the Coke truck, the client wanted the lettering on the truck to show up, so I took a small flashlight out of my bag and had him hold it on the truck’s door. The man about to swallow the torch was shot during a Luau in Hawaii. The man shoveling coal was actually in another part of the building. i brought him over and put him in the light. I also put the man reading off his clipboard in front of the headlight, and I used the lantern to light the grandfather reading to his granddaughter since there was no other source of light.

The next time you’re in a similar situation, look around because the answer might be right in front of you. It could be anything from a flashlight to a headlight. You just gotta use your imagination, and when you can do that, the skies the limit!!!

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and watch for my new workshop schedule at the top of this blog. Come improvise with me sometime.

JoeB

I don’t know about you, but I’m never totally satisfied with the way my photos turn out …what do I mean?

I’m a painter, In my much younger days I used a brush, and then I started to have a lot less time…especially to spend time to cleaning said brushes.  That was the point when I changed from a paint brush, colored pencils, etc., to a camera as the medium of choice.

Sometimes I painted exactly what I saw, and sometimes what flowed from the various brushes and palette knives came strictly from my imagination. As a photographer, I pretty much look at things the same way. Sometimes I photograph what I see, but most of the time I take pictures of what I’d like to see.

Photography is very different to painting in one important respect. When I was painting, I started out with a blank canvas on an easel and began to fill it in until I had what I though was a work of art. Now the canvas on an easel is a camera on a tripod and I take away things until I’m satisfied with what I consider to be a work of art. But am I ever satisfied?

In my online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshop I conduct around the planet, I’m always telling my fellow photographers to take more than one photo. That thought of creating one photo during one photo op, without any geographic criteria, as the one and only is to dream the “Impossible Dream”. That photo that’s taken when the camera is brought up to one’s eye (the usual height for all one’s photos), and without any thought to light, exposure, or point of view the shutter release is depressed.

BtW, every so often someone tells me that they took a workshop and was told by the instructor to never alter anything or you’ll surely go to photo hell; it has to be photographed as it is. Well that’s certainly admirable, and I can only think that a painter was not behind the camera. Those people take pictures and to each his own. I make pictures.

Don’t be satisfied with your first idea as the odds of it being a “keeper” or an “OMG” photo are mighty slim. Walk around, look it from different points of view, underexpose or overexpose, give yourself choices.

As far as ever being satisfied. Sometimes I am, and sometimes after looking at it later on my monitor, I wish I had done more…looked at it even another way. To me that’s a good thing that keeps me sharp and interested in the the future…photographically speaking. After all, the best picture I’ve ever taken may very well be my next one.

Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com, and check out my workshop schedule at the top of this blog.  Come shoot with me sometime

JoeB

I teach fellow photographers how to incorporate the elements of visual design and composition into their imagery.

In my part I and part II online class with the BPSOP, and in my “Stretching Your Frame of Mind” workshops I conduct around the planet, one of the basic elements and probably the most important of them all is LINE. Without Line, the other elements of visual design wouldn’t be elements, and worse, the world as we know it wouldn’t exist…why you ask????

For the simple reason that Pattern, Texture, Vanishing Points, Shape, Form, and Perspective are made up of Line. The world wouldn’t exist because everything around us from buildings to forms of locomotion to flowers to humans, etc. all have an implied outLINE.

When I’m photographing people, I almost always have my subject looking into the lens.  One of the most important implied lines is the imaginary line that runs from the subject’s eyes to the center of the lens. Not only does it suggest a certain intimacy and private bond between the subject and the photographer, but it also creates visual tension and intellectual energy.

As I always say, “Tension=Energy”.

I don’t mean the Tension that comes from mental or emotional strain, but the Tension that comes from forces acting in opposition to one another…as in the subject and the camera looking at each other.

At one time taking pictures of people use to be thought as “robbing oneself of their soul”. Having said that, I’m not looking to steal someone’s soul (what would I do with it once I had it? Craig’s List or eBay?), however, I like the old adage that suggests the eyes are the doorway to one’s soul, and I do like the idea of looking into one’s inner spirit.

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Visit my website at: www.joebaraban.com and check out my workshop schedule. Come shoot with me sometimes and maybe we’ll go steal some ‘souls’ together!!!

🙂

JoeB