First Look: Annie Leibovitz At Work

UPDATE: Annie Leibovitz passed through Seattle on her book tour, much to the delight of a few Strobist readers...
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First previewed here last August, Annie Leibovitz: At Work is finally wrapped in those little brown Amazon fold-boxes and hitting doorsteps everywhere.

I have just spent the afternoon with my copy, which I pre-ordered when it first became available. It is a departure from the previous picture books she has published, the main difference being much more back story to go along with the photos.


What to Expect

Originally, I expected to get a more nuts-and-bolts, gear-and-technique type book. But instead the she spends the time on her experiences surrounding approximately two dozen different sittings and projects.

Instead you are taken along with her on her shoots, almost as if she is sitting down after each one and talking with you about it over a cup of coffee. Much space is given to her approach, what she is thinking, problems to be solved, photographer-subject interaction and the like.

From the comments I get in the On Assignment posts, it is clear that many people put a premium on this type of information. From my perspective I have sometimes found that hard to understand. (Just shut up and tell us how to light it, Flash Boy...)

But having read through Leibovitz's book, I find her openness and honesty about the process to be far more valuable to me than the lighting stuff. The cover may show her inside of a typically Leibovitz lighting setup, but the book is not about lighting. It is more to get you inside her head.

If you are a fan of her work, you will find it very enjoyable -- and come away with a much better understanding of her motivations and how she works. If you are sick of her, this book will only make you more so.

Count me among the former.

The book comprises her entire career to date. She revisits the early days at Rolling Stone, the American Express ad campaign, Vanity Fair, etc. She spends time on those multi-panel "big pictures" that did for VF, too.




For those of you who are not near a Borders or some other big book store, I did a quick thumb through of the book simply to give an idea of the photos-to-text ratio. While not a picture book per se, it is very much a book about photography. And by that, I mean a look at everything that goes into Leibovitz's photography.

You'll remember the YouTube video (since pulled) of her session with The Queen. Having seen footage from that shoot, it is very interesting to hear her talk about it, too. She devotes ten pages to that shoot, and includes each of the photos approved released from it.

I was surprised to find that not one, but two of the Queen photos are composites. Also, I found it oddly gratifying to read how the whole thing seemed to be coming apart at the seams in Leibovitz's mind. Of course, she was still able to make four gorgeous historical portraits despite her internal panic.

That tells me much more than the shoots with her Hollywood pals who will do damn near anything for her. I expect that this is a book I will read a few times at different levels, trying to glean what information I can that will help me with my own portraiture.

She does spend a chapter on gear: Cameras, lighting, fans, music, etc. But that is not the focus if the book.

Which is fine. The lighting stuff is physics. A trained monkey can do that, my friend Jed Kirschbaum is fond of saying. (I would note that Jed shoots mostly available light, tho.)

What I am interested is learning more about the difference between the way I think and the way someone like Annie Leibovitz thinks. And for that, At Work foots the bill.

If you have gotten a copy already, sound off in the comments. More voices, the better. Didja like it? Didja not? Why? Why not?

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Annie Leibovitz: At Work is available at Amazon.com and, soon, at bookstores everywhere.

On Assignment: WiMAX

I am a geek.

For the first 30 years of my life, that was seen as a liability. But lately, it has been a lot more fun.

And as a geek, when I got a recent assignment from USA Today to shoot the first-ever rollout of WiMAX on a city-wide scale, I was stoked.

If you are not familiar with WiMAX, think Wi-Fi, stretching for several miles from each access point. Think 5 megabits downstream and 2 upstream in a car traveling 70 MPH on the interstate in the middle of nowhere -- WiMAX rocks. But as sexy as the tech is, my assignment was to shoot a photo of guys testing out the system.

(I don't care. I am still interested.)

And on top of the potentially boring picture part, the worry was that they might be showing up just for our benefit. That is always a concern on this kind of a newspaper shoot.

"Use your judgement," the editor said. Which is fine up to the point to where you try to figure out what you will turn in if it turns out that the whole scene is a setup.

Needless to say I wanted to light, but I did not want the gear to create a big fuss and influence the scene. So I went with a single SB-800 on a stand. Speedlights give me the ability to light quickly, portably, and without the excess gear that can influence a situation.


Flash on a Stick

The assignment was to shoot technicians testing the WiMAX gear in Ellicott City, MD, then head up to Baltimore's Inner Harbor for a rooftop installation which would afford us a full view of the city the WiMAX was designed to cover. So I knew where my lead photo would be -- on that high-rise rooftop. My plan was to shoot the techs first for the jump page (assuming they were really working) and then move on to the second site for a cool, lit-portrait lead.

"Plan A" bit the dust as soon as I arrived at the installation testing site. Turns out the next site had the antennae enclosed in a shed on top of the building. No view for me. Now the technician/testers were gonna be lead. The good news was that they were actually working, and not just for my benefit. (That was a relief.) So I stuck the SB-800 on a stand while I wondered what the heck I was gonna do for a jump page photo.

Bare speedlight on a stand is usually the first thing I do when I get to an assignment. I am almost certainly gonna use at least one, and it allows me to appear to be doing something while in fact I am wondering what the heck I am going to shoot.

True to form, the tech was working in the strong shadow created by the morning sun. Ten years ago, this would have pissed me off as I resigned to use on-camera fill flash. But today I see this as a blessing -- it gives me nice diffuse light a few stops off of my main ambient exposure in which to build some directional light.

Looking at the photo up top, with sun coming in from back camera right, the obvious key light position is gonna be from front camera left. This crosslights the tech who is wearing a branded XOHM shirt -- as I am sure he does every day even when newspaper photogs are not there shooting him. (Hey, at least he is doing real work. I'm not complaining...)

But that key light is gonna leave me with dark, harsh shadows both on my technician and in the area where he is working. So I stuck another SB on my camera to reach up in there and provide some fill. Now we have a no-fuss, three light setup: Sun back/right; key front/left and fill from on-axis.



In a situation like this, shooting in manual is probably gonna make more sense than TTL. Reason is, that highlight on the panel at left is gonna change as you change your shooting angle. And it could very well influence your TTL response. I used both TTL and manual in this shoot, but ended up in manual just for that reason.

For a trigger, I fired my fill light on-camera and slaved the SB-800. Dear Lord, I love those perfect little flashes.

Last week, we talked about how to do this in TTL mode. It is very easy in manual, too. Crank the ISO down low. Shutter at 250th of a sec. Choose an aperture that gives you a nice, rich exposure. Bring your key light in against the ambient on manual power until it lights your subject well.

Generally, in a situation and working distance like this a 1/4-power manual shot is gonna get you very close. If it is not dead-on, it is in the ballpark for an easy, quick adjustment.

The key-to-subject distance is fixed, so nothing changes as long as your ambient is constant. If the sun goes behind the clouds, open up your shutter to adjust your ambient and then keep shooting. It's so easy, even a photographer could do it.

The one variable you'll need to keep an eye on is the on-axis fill if you are working in manual flash. I dial in the power level until the fill looks good in the screen on the camera back. Then I adjust it, based on whether or not I move in or out from the subject. Remember, this flash exposure is going to change as your camera-to-subject distance changes.

But you can use your movement as a quick flash adjustment, too. If I need a tad more fill light in manual I may just move in a foot or two and zoom out to compensate. Presto, your manual fill flash is brighter. You get the idea.

I knew a wrestling shooter who used to fine tune his focus that way before the days of autofocus. He would just sway to and fro as he shot, looking like he was lost in some sort of religious chant. Worked, too. Or maybe he was praying for sharp photos. I certainly have done that on occasion.

Back to the light, the on-axis fill defines the contrast range of the photo. Ambient sets the environment, key light properly exposes the subject and on-axis fill dials in the shadow contrast. He wasn't doing anything sexy (unless pumping stream after stream of throbbing test data through a network turns you on) but I was able to get quite a few different looks very quickly with this lighting setup.


On to Plan B

So, now that the skyline is a bust and the jump photo has just bubbled up to the lead, I need a new jump photo. A few questions later, we find out that other engineers are testing WiMAX bandwidth with mobile laptops nearby.

That is not the kind of photo that would normally excite me. But compared to not having a jump photo, it is absolutely fantastic. A half hour later we caught up with them, sitting in their car in crappy overhead light.


Once again, what I used to consider as a liability is now an opportunity. My guy is sitting in a car in backish/overhead light, working on a laptop in a car. (Yeah, I know -- they can't all be firefighters tossing babies out of burning buildings.) But, like I said, compared to having no jump photo I'll certainly take it.

Again, bare flash on a stand makes easy work of a guy in a car. I just walk it around to the front of the car and aim it through the front windshield by sighting the angle from the flash. I aimed it to hit his face from a profile-to-slightly-backlight position. I set the flash on 1/4 power (I hang out there a lot) and walked around to check the intensity and direction of the light.

Direction was good, but the light level was a little off. A quick adjustment of the flash's power level and I was in business. Trigger on this setup was a Pocketwizard. (Since I was not using on-axis fill, I had no light to trigger the key via optical slave.)

Are these sexy, glamorous photos? No. They are simple, block-and-tackle, hit-for-average shots that define what you settle for on the low end of the quality scale.

I have said it before, and I will say it again: I consider these photos just as important to light effectively as is the bigger stuff. All the more so, really, when you consider that what you do with these types of jobs define the "floor" on range of what you produce.


CYA With a Detail

One last thing. Like Bob Hamilton, my DOP at The Sun, used to tell me: Always look for a detail photo.

If you get into a practice of grabbing at least one relevant detail on every assignment, you frequently will save a page designer's butt. And occasionally you'll save your own. And if your light-on-a-stick is already set up, adding dimension to the detail shot is a very easy thing to do.

For this close-up shot of the XOHM WiMAX card, I already had back/overhead key from the sun. So sticking my flash down close to the ground in front and uplighting the card was the best way to cross light it to give it a little more pop. Nothing earth-shattering, but it gives a secondary highlight and makes it look better than a one-light-source shot.

Did I mention how much I love those 5-section, compact light stands? This is one reason why: You can crank them down to the height of a tiny background stand for a quick uplight when you need it.

Again, nothing sexy. But being in the habit of lighting the details (and shooting them, for that matter) is a good work ethic and will pay you dividends down the road.
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NEXT: On Assignment: Manil Suri

Jerry Vo Takes October -- With a Pair of 'Ebay Remotes'

Congrats to Jerry Vo, whose days of annoying strobe misfires are history. Vo shot his way to a free pair of Pocketwizards for the month of October in the Going Wireless contest by using a pair of what have ironically become known as "poverty wizards."

He'll be able to shoot his next model from 1600 feet away.

If you want a shot at the last set of PW's to be given away, you'd better hustle up. The last day to enter a video (or re-tag an existing video) is November 30th. Chop chop.

More on Vo, including links to more of his work, at the Pocketwizard Blog.

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Orbis Enters the Ring

The much-awaited Orbis Ring Flash Adapter is finally coming off the production lines. Enlight Photo has moved from a teaser site to the Full Monty, with lots more details and pix.

Orbis is the first (non-DIY) competitor to the Ray Flash, and lowers the entry cost for a commercial ring flash adapter.

Highlights:

• Introductory Price: $169 US (with $16.99 shipping to US - for other areas see site)

• One size fits most all shoe-mount flashes -- except the big-headed Vivitar 285, apparently.

• Requires off-camera sync of some kind (can use off-camera TTL cord)

• Larger lighting surface area than Ray Flash - (should be softer light, will test soon)

• First units ship in December, in three weeks

More details, FAQ, pix, etc., at Orbis website.

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There Goes the Neighborhood

I first got to know Drew Gardner by reputation before I ever met him. I was standing in The Flash Centre's London store and I saw these amazing, humongous photos on the wall. They were beautifully lit, but they also had a unique personal style and were full of humor. Anyone who makes shots like this has got to be fun to hang around with, I remember thinking.

The first time I met Drew in person, we had both just arrived at a hotel in Dubai in the middle of the night. I knew he would be there and recognized him from the accent and the clean-shaven head from the back.

We were both dog-tired from the flight. He did not know who I was. We had not yet even met. Perfect time to have a little fun...

So, here's drag-assed Drew, looking like a boneless chicken trying to get registered at the hotel. The only thing he is still carrying is his California Sunbounce kit, which only weighs a few pounds. But we can fix that.

As he talks with the desk clerk, I very lightly place a hand on the CSB kit hanging on his shoulder. If you are going to do this kind of thing, always start with a very light touch. Then add just the tiniest amount of weight to your hand. A little more. A little more.

The object is to make that thing go from a couple of pounds to twenty or thirty pounds without the guy noticing the change. One's goal is to boil the frong, as they say.

About 30 seconds into it, he finally gives up on resisting the pressure. He collapses his shoulder, turns around saying "What the...?" and sees a smartass photographer whom he had never met smiling at him with a hand still on his CSB.

I am happy to report that Drew didn't punch me in the face. Which, of course, means that he truly is a guy who you'd want to hang out and have beers with. And we have tested that beers thing on several occasions since.

But Drew is more than just a good guy, he is a helluva photographer. He is an A-lister out of the UK, and I am very pleased to welcome him to the world of photographers who are blogging with the goal of teaching others.

The guys makes some amazing photos, and has a wonderful sense of humor and whimsy that shows in his work.

He likes to play with the big toys, as shown in this video of him testing out the brand new Phase P65+ medium format digital back:




Drew's world is one of big lights and big ideas. I mean, when is the last time you rented a water buffalo for a shoot?

He has been blogging for a little while now at "The Dark Art," his quirky little corner of the photo world.

I very much hope you'll put him on your rounds / RSS feeds / whatever, as I can tell you from experience that you'll learn a lot hanging out with him.

Right out of the blocks, he has pieces on subtractive fill for white-on-white, the anatomy of a composite shot and a test drive of the new P65+ back.

He even takes you back to a time long ago, when he had youthful idealism and hair, to tell you how it all began.

The world of photographers educating other photographers just got a little bit better. I hope you'll join me in welcoming him to the neighborhood. And if you want to see more of Drew's work, his main photography website is here.

Light Fare in Bilbao

If you happen to get hungry for tapas in Bilbao, Spain this month, be sure to stop by Café Iruña. The restaurant, which has been in continuous operation for over 100 years, is featuring an exhibition of photographs by Strobist readers.

There's even a meetup scheduled. Thanks much to Rafa at SeE for the assist.

If you are looking for an outlet for your local band of lighting enthusiasts, consider offering to do a group show at a coffee shop of local café, etc. They are always looking for local art that has a little edge to it. And it will help you hook up with more people in your community, be they fellow photographers or future clients.
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MORE INFO:

Map/Info
Newspaper story on exhibition (in Spanish)
More photos (slideshow)
(Photo: El Correo Digital)

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On-Axis Fill: Run-and-Gun Version

These days when I shoot something my workflow is such that I make time to light it. My assignment pace is a little more sane than the two- to three-a-day pace of my days as a newspaper shooter.

Actually, I have had had five- or even six-assignment days on occasion. But thanks to my therapist, I have learned to repress most of those memories. (Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean...)

Days like that are a recipe to just say "screw it" and shoot everything available light. Or on-camera bounce flash. But it doesn't have to be that way. And on-camera fill against off-camera flash is one technique that would have been a tremendous help to me as a newspaper shooter on those days from hell.

Keep reading for one way to light when you don't have time to light.


Hey, What's This Flash Bracket Thing on Top of My Camera?

Okay, let's be clear here. I am talking about direct, on-camera flash. And before you jump all over me, think about what on-camera fill flash is designed to do: Tame the shadows.

The problems -- the sameness -- that results from typical "3-D, matrixed-balanced, whizz-bang TTL fill flash" when it is used on-camera for ambient fill is that you are still at the mercy of your available light. The flash is merely there to fix the eye sockets. Or whatever else is going too dark.

But we can take that straight fill concept one step further, and add it to light that we have designed. In this environment, bare, on-camera flash can do some cool things for us.

When I say "on-camera," I am talking about either a shoe flash or a pop-up -- either can do the job. But the key difference is that we can use this flash as a third light source if we have a second flash.

For people who own a pop-up flash camera and a shoe-mount flash, this is a great run-and-gun setup. The on-camera flash gets used the same way a ring light would be used -- while crappy as a main, it is pretty cool as fill.

When I say "third light source," I am including the ambient as one of the first two sources. Which means if you have two shoe-mount flashes (or a single shoe-mount and a pop-up flash) you have a three light setup at your disposal. You just need to design the light so all three sources are working for you in concert.

Let's back up. If you are pushing on-camera fill into directional ambient light, you are doing one of two things: You are either filling angular front light or filling a backlit situation.

With the former, you still have no edge lighting to give you three-dimensional form. With the latter, you are basically key-lighting with direct, on-camera flash. Neither is going to be very interesting, and you will have very little control over your exposure choices, either -- it is either right or wrong.

But when you introduce a second flash (which means a third light source) you get the ability to cross-light and fill at the same time.


Take Me to the River

Let's do a walk-through of the above photo as an example. I was shooting a graduate school project to assess the health of a local stream. The light was what I would formerly consider horrible: Mid-day, high, back-ish overhead sun in a mottled, wooded environment.

If I fill that using only on-camera flash it is gonna look like crap. Well, maybe not crap but certainly not very interesting. No, check that. It'll look like crap.

And if I turn around, stick the sun behind me and fill it on-camera, it looks like every other fill flash photo in the back of every camera brochure in the world.

My goal in this setting is to use the sun as my backlight. Why? Because the exact lighting angle does not matter nearly as much as it would if I used it as a key, and it does not get in peoples' eyes. So no squinting.

Given that I am gonna backlight with sun and key light with off-camera flash, I can choose to set the entire scene at any tone I want. Start at a 250th of a second shutter speed to get a friendly aperture. Then dial that aperture around until I see a nice look for the environment. For me this usually means underexposing the ambient by a stop or so.

Essentially, I am exposing for the highlights, as if I were shooting chrome in the old days. (Back when we had to walk to our assignments, barefoot, in the snow, uphill, both ways.) Except that this time, we are not gonna let the shadows fall off the table into the deep, black abyss.

My back light and full scene established with the manual ambient exposure, I can now think about the key light. Since I am walking around on slippery rocks with a few thou in camera gear dangling from my neck, I am gonna go handheld and light them from the left side. Nothing fancy, and no stands. Camera in right hand, flash in left hand.

I normally shoot manual flash, but I am perfectly willing to use whatever mode works best for me in a given situation. So in this case, I stick the flash on TTL. (WTF? On-camera and TTL?)

Yep. For the flash, anyway.

I am in manual mode on the overall exposure, which means a straight TTL flash will be neutral. If I were underexposing the ambient by one stop in shutter priority (to keep a constant 1/250th of a sec shutter speed) I would juice the TTL flash by one stop to compensate for the overall "-1 stop" exposure compensation. That's just the way the camera settings work.

Now, if I TTL my flash (using, say, an off-camera TTL cord) then any frontal area that is not lit by the flash (or the sun) is gonna be very dark. That includes up under chins and the camera right sides of Charlotte and Chris, my stream diggers du jour.

And the more I saturate that environment the more the flash shadows are gonna drop. This will make the scene look very "flashed" and the overall lighting will look very harsh. But the object here is more legibility, a more natural look and total control of the various tones in the whole photo.

That's where the on-camera fill comes in. By dialing that in fill to, say, minus 2 1/3 stops, I can keep my lighting controlled and see up into my shadows. This gives me total control over three light zones of the photo: Environment/backlight, key-lit areas and fill areas.




Take a look at the lit areas up close in this sectional detail of the photo above. Examples of the fill areas would be the shadow side of Charlotte's face and under Chris's chin. Key light areas would be anything that is lit from camera left.

Environment is controlled by overall exposure. Key is controlled by the relative (+-) TTL setting on the key flash. Fill is controlled by the relative TTL setting on the on-camera flash.

If you look at Chris's neck, you can see both a fill area and a small, very dark, no-flash area that shows you how deep all of the key shadows would be without the on-camera fill. You can also see the no-flash area Charlotte's chin. Imagine all of the key shadows being that dark. That's the difference between on-camera fill and not, when key lighting off camera.


Camera/Flash Settings

Yes, you could do this with manual flash very easily if you are not moving around too much. But this is a good example of when to offload that extra thinking and minute control in exchange for mobility. When you are looking for good footing, you can just find a safe spot, compose and zoom to compose. The camera and flash will get it pretty close. If it misses, adjust the key or fill TTL level to taste.

Two light modifiers are being used here: I have a dome on each flash. This does not affect the light quality (no walls or ceiling to bounce off of) but makes both lights pretty omnidirectional. It helps the on-camera flash put out a signal that the off-camera flash can easily see. At this working distance, I got a 1.000 batting average that way -- no misfires at all.

It does force your flash to put out more of it's power to compensate for the light being eaten by the dome. That will shorten the range in which you can work and/or increase recycle time. But it is offset by the fact that this flash is firing at two and a third stops under TTL, which pretty much negates dome-induced problems.

The key light has a dome and a 1/8 CTO get to warm things up a bit. This is a standard gel for my key light. And the dome means I do not have to concentrate on having good aim with my hand-held key. It lights in all directions.

Pop-up flashes work great as fill for this look, as you can see here, but you'll need to work pretty close to your subject. Also, you'll wanna lose the lens shade as it will throw a shadow from the pop-up (which is so close to the lens axis.) But honestly, if you can get away with a pop-up, the fact that the axis is closer makes it work better for this kind of on-axis fill.

In Nikon-CLS speak, my on-camera flash is the master flash and the handheld flash is the remote. They are both set to fire at TTL setting, with the on-camera fill dialed down 2 1/3 stops. Hopefully, people with other camera brands will interpolate these settings in the comments and post a translation. I no speak de Canon.


Recommended by Lazy Photographers Everywhere

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, it's not. Start at a 250th to get a friendly aperture, dial in the aperture that gives you the best saturated-looking scene. Set your key light at TTL and your on-camera flash at -2 to -3 stops under TTL for this look.

These setting are not set in stone, either. Play around. You can go for a natural look or really amp it. Keep your key light close to straight TTL for some level of "visual anchor" if you want to get weird with it. Drop the ambient a little more. Amp the fill a little more. Better to work against the ambient, too. That is to say, shoot into the light.

You'll get a wide variety of looks, and each will be suitable for different situations. But the important thing is the light-against-light control. And even more so, the ability to light three dimensionally on the run without stands, time or worry.
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NOTE:

If you are already using this quickie two-flash technique please hit us in the comments on how you are doing it, and what you are shooting with it.