Halloween

There's some work I'll still do for free. Today I lugged 2 AB400's, 2 SB-600's, 4 umbrellas, 6 lightstands, my new Yongnuo radio triggers, and a 4' roll of white seamless to my daughters first grade classroom. Carrying all of that gear reminded me of my days as a divemaster, when I'd carry my gear, an instructor's gear, and sometimes student gear as well. I'd look and feel like a shambling mound of baggage...

This was the setup:

I shot about 47 kids in an hour and a half. 2-5 shots of each, depending on the kid and the results. Then, I spend the afternoon cropping, dodging the background a bit, and generally tweaking the images in lightroom. Two images of my final 103 hit photoshop for a quick touch. The result?

I suppose we could call today's efforts "marketing"? "Personal work"? Call it what you will, I had a heck of a fun day. The punchline? I get to do it all over again tomorrow for my preschooler's class! Think I'll get to bed early...

Not one misfire on the Yongnuo's. This was their first real test, and I must say, I'm sold. And they only set me back $80 for 2 transmitters and 2 receivers.  (The N1 Nikon set for my D300s is a little more expensive than some of the other sets. Buying the right set for your camera lets you also use them as a wireless shutter release! I haven't tried this yet but I will soon.)

10/28 Edit, the Preschoolers:

One good way to measure a year: Shutter Actuations

Once I was comfortable with my new D300s, I decided not to keep the old D90 sitting on the shelf as a backup. So, I sold it on Craigslist. A potential buyer asked how many shutter actuations it had, which I initially couldn't answer.

I'd had it just over a year, every day of which I took between 0 (shame, shame) and 4-500 pictures. Probably 30 a day on average, so I guessed 10-15k. But, suddenly I *had* to know the actual figure, and no matter how much I looked, I couldn't find it anywhere in-camera.

Opanda Iexif 2.3 to the rescue! 18,504 shutter releases. (Just open any image from the camera with IExif, and scroll around to find all sorts of cool embedded info.)

Poking around a bit more, I noticed that my Lightroom catalog had grown by only about 6-7k images in that same year.

What did I learn?

1. I shot approximately 50% more than I thought I did in the past year.
2. I throw out about two images for every one I keep.

Upon deeper reflection, of those thousands of new images on my drives, I'm pretty sure that only a few hundred are any good. I think I shoot a lot that I shouldn't bother with, and I keep a lot that I really should be tossing. I'm going to look into a better selection process.

Oh, and an image from yesterday's stock shoot:

Just a bit underexposed. Looked fine on the back of the camera, but I should have looked more carefully at the histogram. Not catastrophic, but needed a little brightening, then some noise reduction and smoothing in the darker tones. And then some color correction, which still isn't perfect. I'd switched my shutter speed to 1/250, the flash sync speed of the D300s, but I am wondering if the delays that come from optically triggering the AB-400's (which also sync at 1/250) are moving some of the light outside of my exposure window.

There's three things I can think of trying:

1. more power
2. shoot at 1/500, 1/250, and 1/125 with the same strobe settings, and compare exposures
3. use a sync cable

We'll see how it goes.

Optical slaves, a cautionary tale.

I spent about an hour last night thinking my new camera was defective. After repositioning a few of my strobes, trying for whiter backgrounds with less spill onto my subject, I took a few test shots, and noticed that my background wasn't blowing out. This was not completely unexpected, I had moved the lights after all... I watched carefully to make sure that all the strobes were firing for every shot, and they were.

So, I bumped the power a little on the strobes, from 1/2 or so to 3/4 (AB-400's). No luck. Wondering how far off I was, I opened up a lot, from f/8 to f/4. Nope. Dropped from 1/250 to 1/125. That started to help, now some of the background was blowing out. Bumped the AB's to full power, and now I had it, but this seemed like way too much light.

Spot metering with the light meter I almost never use, the background read f/22. So why no blowout? Worse still, as I kept shooting, the background would blow out sometimes, but not always. Had I really moved the lights that much? I didn't think so, but I put them back where they were, and the problems remained.

Before pitching a fit, I sat down and went through all the camera settings, hoping a clue would hit me. And that's when I noticed it. The on-camera flash was set to manual, as usual. But A and B were set to TTL! Ugh. So, my TTL pre-communications were firing all the strobes. After they fired, or at the end of their output, my shutter opened and an image was recorded. Obviously, all of this was way too fast to see by eye. It looked like everything was working fine, until I checked the exposure, that is.

Switching off the A and B units in the commander mode menu fixed everything, almost. Now, at 1/125 f/4 and all strobes at full, EVERYTHING was blown out. Way blown out. Back to about 3/8 power on the strobes, f/8 and 1/250. All better after a few more deep breaths.

Perhaps I should try a sync cord, now that I have a camera with a port... But more importantly, I need to remember the lesson: When it seems like my gear isn't working properly, assume user error, and re-check the setup.

Today's Shoot

Looking back over some of my older images, I really liked some of my tighter shots, so today I shot a little closer...

I went back to my favorite lens, the Nikor 80-200 1:2.8 AF-S. I also moved my lights around a lot, but still have 2 on the background, 1 overhead and behind the model, 1 in a big parabolic softbox camera right, and a reflector camera left.

I'm much happier with the lighting on my model here than in some of my recent images. Here's two more from today:

Gear

As I frequently think about what piece of gear I *need* to buy next, I thought I'd have a look at the stuff I've already bought. A while back I listed approx $10k in camera, lenses, light modifiers, strobes, flashes, and various other gear. While I use just about all of this stuff, my stated goal here is to use the gear to take pictures, which I then sell as microstock to pay back the cost of the gear. The following is a look at what portion of my purchases are being put to use.

My typical stock shoot setup uses the following:

1 kid, shot on 104-inch-wide white seamless. $160 for the paper and the stands to hold it.
2 AlienBee 400s to light the background, on cheap stands with umbrella reflectors. $580
3 sheets of fiberglass panel to make a durable, white, glossy floor. $90
AlienBee 400 in a 64" PLM umbrella, in a softbox configuration on a cheap stand. $350
48" Reflector on a reflector stand as fill. $100
Tripod and ball head $235
D90 $1000
Nikon 80-200 2.8 $1300 (I love this lens in my current garage studio!)

That's $3800! It would seem I've spent a lot on gear that isn't going to help with the cause here... If I only knew then what I know now, I may have chosen differently.

I definitely love some of the "other $6200" stuff. My Nikon 17-55 2.8 DX is an awesome walkaround lens, and is almost always on my D90, except when I'm in the garage shooting stock. I love taking pictures of bugs, so the 60mm Micro is also a lot of fun. My 2 SB-600's work great with the D90's CLS, I just don't use them to shoot much stock.

Overall, the stuff that is hopefully going to pay the bills and the fun toys were purchased at a roughly 40:60 ratio. I wonder how that compares to others' experience.

In the future, I'll have to weigh how much I want something against how likely I'll be to use it to generate income. Or maybe I need to separate the "toy" budget from the "tool" budget. A 4th strobe would be a nice next "tool", whereas a 200mm f4 Micro would be a totally awesome next "toy"!

For the fun of it.

Although I do hope to eventually profit through the selling of microstock, it certainly felt in no way like "work" today! Here's a sample image:

Sure, it's a lot of work planning, shooting, editing, keywording, uploading, managing the portfolio, etc., but the work I put in today sure was a lot of fun.

As a bonus, we sure are accumulating a lot of cute shots of our kids. Soon, we'll need a Drobo just to store them all safely...

If only I had ______

On a nearly daily basis, several variations of the following thoughts will run through my head:

• "If only I had one more light for the studio, I could get this shot right."
• "I really should buy another lens. It'll take better pictures than the ones I ended up with today."
• "That new camera body looks awesome, I should get it!"

Sometimes, I go straight to the computer, or to the camera store, and make the purchase. Other times, I can resist. I realize that whether I buy this shiny new toy or not, I'll still want something else tomorrow, or the next day. It's a never-ending uphill struggle, in which there's always something newer, faster, and/or better available. And if there isn't, there will soon be.

Don't get me wrong, I love new toys. It's a ton of fun setting them up, figuring them out, and putting them to use. And this is a kind of learning. But, I have yet to see a new purchase catapult my photography into the next level of awesomeness. I'm getting better, yes, but not because of the things I buy.

I'm truly envious of those that can happily make do with what they have, upgrading or expanding upon their tools only when there is a clear need to do so. I'd love to hear about the internal dialogue of those who could easily afford the latest and greatest gizmo, but choose to stick with what they have until they need better. What do these folks say to themselves?

Fortunately, the overall experiment here (to pay for my gear with microstock sales) is helping, as I'm pretty sure there's nothing on my want list that would result in an earlier break-even point. In other words, there's no new lens or light that's going to magically result in thousands of additional image sales. What I need now can't necessarily be bought: good ideas, better execution, practice, knowledge, and patience.

Copyright

I'm working on a new series of images, of my kids at the piano. For some of the shots I wanted sheet music in front of them, but most music on my shelf would have copyright issues. Even old pieces are relatively newly published. As I understand things, my picture of their publication of the older work would infringe on the publisher's copyright...

The solution? MuseScore! Using this free music scoring software, I composed and printed my own piece for the shots:

One cool feature of the software is it will play your composition for you. Surprisingly, Der Musica didin't sound completely horrible. Here's an image of Model #2 "performing" the piece:

I'm still working on the photographic composition here, but I already have a few images I like.

Shot with no plan.

For the most part, I'm trying to have a good idea of what I want to shoot before I set up the studio. In this case, I was shooting some "bathtime" type shots: Girl in comfy bathrobe brushing her hair, brushing her teeth, or just showing various expressions.

But, there's one important factor in working with the average 5-year-old. If they're not having any fun, you've got maybe two minutes (if that) before they stop giving you anything worth shooting.

So, with Model #1, we take turns. I get to take a few of the shots I have in mind, then it's her turn. She liked the shots I took of myself a couple of weeks ago with binoculars, and she loves looking at stuff through said binoculars, so it wasn't a huge surprise that she had the above idea on her shot list for the night. I should note that I gave her no direction, other than, "Here is where you stand." She's looking at nothing, straight into a blank wall, but doing a pretty convincing acting job!

Anyway, as I continue to build my portfolio at various agencies, I'm noticing that some of my best selling images were planned and executed by one pretty amazing 5-year-old!

Re-Shooting

On the advice of a helpful reviewer, I re-shot some of my "guy with binoculars" images. This time, I lit the background for better isolation. Of course, I also took a careful look at the first batch. I still wasn't getting the lighting perfect- wisps of hair on the top of my head were getting blown out along with the background. This means too much light was bouncing off the background, and overexposing my hair. As a fix, I moved my mark a bit farther from the background, and this did help a bit, but I can still see slight traces of the problem. I think I need to increase the background-to-model distance a bit more. Here's what I ended up with for the re-shoot, though. (I also dug out my jacket!)



Notes on the lighting: I went from 2 background lights to one, placed directly behind me, and aimed straight back at my background. I used my other two lights as key and fill. Key was a socked beauty dish overhead and a bit camera right. Fill was a shoot-through umbrella about waist level, camera left. (With one light I was getting shadows and uneven lighting on my face.)

If I do a re-re-shoot:

1) Bigger key. (I have on order an Alien Bees PLM mid-size parabolic silver bounce umbrella with a diffuser attachment. It's much bigger than the beauty dish, and my give me enough wrap to replace the fill light with a reflector and put the second light back on the background.) If all else fails, maybe a 4th AB400 will do the trick.

2) I'm using the little metal reflectors on my background lights, but they don't spread the light very much. I will try to even out the background by using two umbrella reflectors instead. This may also mean I won't need gobos to block their spill.

I do get the feeling I'm closing in on finding one lighting setup I like, but I'm not quite there yet. Of course, once I do find one I'll start looking for another...

While I was at it, I dug out another prop. My Glock model 30, a very compact .45.

Rejections

I still catch myself thinking unproductively in the face of a fresh rejection. The word on my "binoculars shoot" is coming in from Fotolia. Of the first batch of 6 shots, four were selected, and two were declined.

Of the two refusals, one was, "Your photograph did not reach our desired level of aesthetic quality," and the other was, "The object will not be easily isolated from the background. The object must be captured on a bright seamless background."

There is nothing I can learn from the first message. The reviewer didn't like it. Maybe they didn't like the lighting, the pose, the wardrobe, the focus, the color, the idea- who knows. Whatever they didn't like about it, they couldn't be bothered or didn't have time to give me anything specific. Since I don't have a clue what the issue is, I'll probably send that same reviewer more shots with the exact same problem.

The second one got me. My first response was, "Oh? But the other four on the exact same background were fine? I must have got a bad reviewer. *grumble* *pout*" What's more, the rejected two images were accepted at Shutterstock anyway, and generated three sales there today alone. So, I almost just let it go at that.

But then I thought about it some more. Maybe I got a great reviewer. Maybe he had other uses of my images in mind, like compositing me into something more interesting than a grey background. And maybe he thought about how much easier that would be if I'd lit the background to pure white for him. And last, he could have just given me the lazy rejection response of "Your photograph did not reach our desired level of aesthetic quality," and been done with it. But he didn't, he took the time to let me know what he didn't like, and for a moment, I was acting like a spoiled child.

So, I say, "thank you!" to the reviewer, for taking the time to help me take a better picture next time. Tonight, I'll get myself back in the garage, don my "business guy" shirt and tie, and put some light on that background for you. While I'm at it, I'll shoot a few in portrait orientation as well.

Lessons learned:

1) Rejections can be an opportunity. They can help me expand my thinking, add a twist to a concept, or give me something technical to work on.

2) I should try to think more about how my images will be used, and not just worry about getting a technically good image. For example, there's not necessarily anything wrong with a grey background, but for many uses a blown-out white one will be a lot easier to work with. I'll try for a mix of both in the future.

3) Not every rejection is an opportunity. If the reviewer gives me nothing specific, then there's nothing I can fix. Perhaps the microstock agencies have some things they could improve upon as well...

Changing the subject, I'd been collecting a list of other blogs I follow for a post "one of these days", but today I noticed that one of them had mentioned me! When I first found ShootingStock (Thanks to Bob at picNiche), I immediately went to the oldest post and read the whole thing through in order. Like me, David is just getting started in microstock photography. I loved getting his perspectives on a lot of the same challenges I face. There's something uplifting about knowing there's other people out there on the same journey as I am. Thanks for sharing, David!

On1 DSLR Remote - Now I can shoot myself!

I've got a few shots in my portfolio in which I am the model. These shots were a pain, as I shot them without a good tethering solution. I did have my camera's video out running to a portable 7" DVD player, so I could watch the LiveView. I also used the Nikon remote trigger to fire the shutter. Adding the D90's few-second delay gave me time to hide the trigger before the shot fired, but since overall the setup was cumbersome, I didn't end up being my own model very often.

Last night, I'm shot myself again, but in a new way. I bought the On1 software for my iPhone, and downloaded the server software to my laptop. I put my camera on a tripod and tethered it to a laptop via the camera's standard USB cable. My iPhone then became a remote trigger, plus a lot much more. I had full access to the camera settings, could toggle live view on and off, could review my shots on the iphone screen as I took them, and could even set the phone to fire the camera every 3-5 seconds while I was in supermodel mode.

I had a lot of fun, stayed up way to late, and ended up with a bunch of images to upload to my microstock sites today.

Blue Battle Fairy

It was hot as heck, but we shot a quick series in the garage yesterday anyway. Since I had to mess around with the lighting a bit, I thought I'd describe where I ended up.

The background is a wide (104"?) roll of white paper, hung high on the garage wall on L-brackets. It is lit by 2 AB-400's each aimed across the paper, for overlapping "field of fire". I have a light meter, but just winged it this time to play around. I adjusted strobe power and placement,the model's distance from the paper, and my camera settings until I liked what I was seeing.

She is standing on the flip-side of some speckled fiberglass bathroom paneling I got at Home Depot. It's not perfectly smooth, but it still blows out really well when I blast it with this much light, and it's not too hard to clean. I've been walking on it for 2 weeks, every time I go in and out of the garage, and all I had to do was hit it with a wet sponge for 2 minutes.

The Blue Battle Fairy has her own light, too. A 22" beauty dish with a third AB-400 in it, and a diffusion sock on it. It' is close to straight on, a little above her head, and aimed down to light her from head to toe. It also adds some light to the floor, whitening it up. I tried some shots with the dish to her side, with a white posterboard to fill her other side, but it was tough to get all that close enough while still leaving her some room to play. So I backed up, centered, raised the dish, and then angled it down some.

I really had to push my main light a lot harder to do these full body shots. (Mostly I've been in a lot closer until now.) In close, it is easy to get the beauty dish really close on one side, and a reflector in really close on the other side. For these wider shots I think it'd be really nice to have 2 lights on the model...

I edited four of the images last night. In Lightroom I cleaned up the background, darkened the wings a bit, and did some basic global adjustments. Then, I made a path selection with the pen tool in Photoshop to remove the shadows under her feet, as I just didn't like the way they looked.

The first four are up at Shutterstock and 3DS already, and as usual I'll wait a while to hear from iStock, Fotolia, and Stockxpert.

Update

We've finished our move from old home to apartment to new home, and we're finally all unpacked. Just a little more work to do in the garage:


Only problem was, this week has been super hot, so shooting in there was not an option. That plus model #1 started Kindergarten... Gotta work on model #2 as soon as it cools off a little!

I did some shooting in the living room over the past few weeks, and submitted some images here and there...

My results: Today I hit $100. Small change for some, I know, but a happy milestone for me. Reaching another milestone also gives me more incentive to keep going. I'll post a full sales update at month's end.