A fun video project. Kids are always fun to work with....

You can see it much bigger on Vimeo:  http://vimeo.com/15334802

Will van Overbeek and I were hired to do a video project last week.  Several organizations here in Austin were being awarded by The Austin Children in Nature Collaborative and the videos will be used as showcase introductions at a special program at the Austin Four Seasons Hotel.  We needed to make an introductory piece for the award program.  The only problems we had were:  No script, no actors, no direction and a lot of rain.  Since the program celebrates getting kids outdoors the rain was kind of a major issue.  The rest just go with the territory.

We made it to the Austin Nature Center just in time for the big rain.  But it let up after a while and we got to work.  For this project we used a Canon 7D with a 24-105mm L lens, a Rode Videomic and the Rode Stereomic,  a Gitzo tripod with a Manfrotto fluid head and a small, LED light (more about that later....).  For this project I operated the camera and Will did the sound.

I think we were all pretty amazed at how well the sound turned out.  The center is located near a major, elevated highway and there's random noise coming in from every direction.  Our method is to put the microphone on a "fish pole" and get it in as close to the speaker as possible without getting an image of the mic (or its shadow) in the final video.  We found the ALC (auto level control)  on the 7D does a pretty good job on its own.

Our biggest challenge was to get interviews with four and five year old kids.  They're not really good at hitting their marks and they don't "do" lines.  But with a smile on your face and a big enough memory card you're sure to get something.....then all you have to do is edit it all together.  I like sound effects but I don't think Will is as enthusiastic about them.  He did allow me to add a few "dinosaur roars", "chimpanzee chatters" and "jungle" noise from the sound library.  I think it's fun.

Since we're all about keeping things simple and fun we jumped right into editing this thing with iMovie 09 from Apple.  We used an old laptop and a calibrated, 23 inch Apple monitor to do our edit on.  We did add a firewire 800 outboard HD to the mix.  No stutters in the editing or the output.  The edit took about an hour and fifteen minutes this morning.

We did some interviews with grownups in order to get information across.

While we were waiting for the rain to stop we did an interview with the program director from the Center.  I was happy to have the new little LED light with me.  We needed a bit more light to brighten up our talent's face.  The light is called a DLC DL-DV60 and it's the perfect light to keep in a side pocket of your camera bag.  It uses 60 individual LEDs to provide a fairly small, bright source.  You won't be overpowering sunlight with it but it might be just what you need in a pinch for a little more punch.

I first played with a light like this one when I was writing my book, Photographic Lighting Equipment.
The one that was available at the time was a LitePanel Micro from LitePanels.  It was about the same size as my new DL-DV60 but it put out significantly less light.  It also sold for somewhere near $300.  The one feature that the LitePanels Micro had that I did like was the ability to turn the light down with a control knob.  It was also cool that the color temperature of the light didn't change as you turned down the power.  The DL-DV60 doesn't have any control other than on and off.  But here's the deal:  It's a little bit shy of $100.  The one "feature" it does have (and I'm still not sure if I like it...) is this:  it comes with a rechargable Li-ion camcorder battery for power.  It's a common Sony battery so replacements are widely available and it does have enough power to punch out light for about an hour and a half.

In the video we used the light about seven feet away from the program director and about three feet above her head.  It was enough to minimize shadows on her face and bring her a bit forward from the tungsten lit room.

I liked the DL-DV60 enough to buy a second one.  They can be clipped together to make little light banks and I think that's a fun thing to have in a pinch.  I've also order some bigger ePhoto panels that plug in the way and use hundreds of individual bulbs.  I'll let you know how those work when they arrive.

Will and I are starting to get into a groove with our little video projects.  It's different than still photography but in some ways the same.  Directing is always fraught with peril that mostly becomes obvious at editing time.......

This is the DL-DV60 as it sits on top of my camera.  It's too bright to aim directly at innocent people indoors without some sort of diffusion but it works well in conjunction with other light sources.  It also works well as an accent light in the same way you might use a flash on an off camera cord, over to one side.  The benefit is that you don't ever need to sync it with the camera.  It also doesn't get too hot and it doesn't flicker.  It's pretty perfect for a combination/crossover photographer/videographer.

More to come.

I'm accepting more and more video projects and finding that I like the process pretty well.  I try to stay away from clients who want to micro-manage projects.....it's almost a given that they will slow the editing process down to a crawl.  So far all of the clients have been perfect.  And the Canon cameras are working well.




    

Just some street photography from Lisbon.

I put on my cloak of invisibility one day and went out to shoot in the streets of Lisbon, Portugal.  I like these photographs.   Simple camera and lens.  Lots of feet action.  Lots of moving around.  I like being anonymous in a foreign city.  I think it's all  about the "blend in".  And a little practice.  Not great art, just snapshots that remind me of a pleasant day.  And that's a decent use of photography as well.

I went through a stage when all I used was hot lights. I think I'm going back....

I trouped up to Dallas to take this shot.  It was many years ago.  It was the first time I worked with Anne B. as my assistant.  Maybe that's why I remember this particular shoot.  Anne and I are still close friends over a decade later.  But what really brought this image to mind is that I've been getting back to real lighting control and I remember going thru a period when I shot almost everything with "hot lights".  I may be going back to that style because it offers such tight control for the kind of work I light to do.

This image was done to accompany a story in Prevention Magazine.  The story was about how and why to stop smoking.  The woman in the portrait above had kicked the habit and the magazine was doing a story about her experiences.

In those days I travelled with a box of interesting "hot (tungsten halogen) lights".   The box had a few Lowell Totalights,  some Lowell Pro Lights ( small focusable lights with "peanut" bulbs that put out 250 watts for light), and a couple of small, 125 watt, fresnel spotlights.  I'd use a small Pro-light shining thru a layer of Rosco diffusion gel about two feet above the subjects head in order to get the little butterfly shadow under the nose, and the flattering shadow under the chin.  I'd use another light, bounced into something flat and white, right behind the camera position, about 2 and 1/2 stops down from the main light.  Maybe a carefully snooted back light and then, finally, a "sprayed" light on the background.

The benefits of working with the hot lights were threefold.  First, it was so easy to focus the camera accurately as the image coming through the finder was much brighter than that given by the diffused and reduced light coming thru a big softbox from a modeling light in an electronic flash set up.  Second, everything about continuous light is WYSIWYG.  You can see the effects easily as you build your lighting.  Very nice change from the vagaries of flash.  Finally,  you have total control about which f-stop to use.  I used something like f4 with a 150mm lens on a medium format camera.  You can see what that gives you in terms of depth of field.  

Another thing that's nice about using smaller lights, closer in is that the inverse square law works for you beautifully.  Look how quickly the light falls off from the subject's face to her arms and mid torso.  This serves to naturally keep the attention on her face.....the lightest thing of interest in the frame.

I thought about this today on my job.  I was shooting portraits for one of the hot public relations agencies in town and I was using Westcott nets and Westcott flags to control light spill and to keep the light levels on people's hands a few stops darker than the light on their faces.  More control means a more three dimensional photograph.  And that means more return clients for me.  While I was using flash I was thinking about the creative control of hot lights and how the use of flags was really only getting me half way there.

Looks like the remainder of the month will be a search for the Holy Grail as expressed through tungsten lighting and flags.  Stay tuned.

Kirk