Home Studio—or Nature's Studio?

For many years, most portraits were created in a studio of some sort. This custom pre-dates photography by a handful of centuries, because, unless you were royalty and were able to do exactly as you pleased, it was more common to venture to the artist's studio, where the lighting, background, props, and other elements could be easily controlled. That soft and flattering "north light" used to illuminate portraits could be best guaranteed by painting in a space designed for that purpose.

Studio portrait sittings remained the norm after the invention of photography, because photos often took minutes to create. Traveling photographers sometimes carried along tents that could be used as portable darkrooms or studios. Even after more portable cameras and faster films and lenses freed photographers to capture documentary images and insightful candid pictures anywhere, portraits were still most often confined to studio settings.

Chapter 6. People Photography

Some digital photographers specialize in one kind of picture or another, such as landscapes, sports, or close-ups. But everyone who uses a camera enjoys taking pictures of people, even if their main efforts are concentrated elsewhere. Unless you're a hermit, you love to photograph your friends, family, colleagues, and even perfect strangers. Human beings are the most fascinating subjects of all.

The person you photograph today may look completely different tomorrow, or might even adopt several different looks in a single afternoon with a quick change of clothing or hairstyle. Change the environment and surroundings, and you can change the way you capture your subject's personality. Modify the lighting, and a person can be pictured as sinister, powerful, or glamorous. It's your choice.

Project for Individual Study: Stop a Bullet

If you're at all serious about photography, you've seen and, perhaps, studied those stroboscopic pictures of bullets stopped in mid-air, light bulbs captured in the act of breaking, or droplets of water frozen as they erupt from a bowl, as you can see in Figure 5.37. Your project for this chapter is to explore the world of high-speed motion stopping. Your digital camera and a little ingenuity may be all you need. I'll give you some tips to get started in this section.

Figure 5.37. Frozen droplets like these call for very, very fast shutter speeds or the action-stopping capabilities of electronic flash.

Shooting Sequences

Whether you call it sequence shooting, burst mode, continuous advance, or "motor drive" mode, the ability to take multiple shots of fast-moving action is a valuable capability found in an increasing number of digital cameras. On the plus side, ripping off five or ten shots as the action unfolds can increase your chances of catching the peak moment(s) in one or more of them. Unfortunately, you can also end up with the best shot of all occurring between frames. Sequence shooting is a valuable tool, but it's not a panacea.

Back when I was shooting sports professionally, a motor drive for my Nikon was the first accessory I purchased after a 400mm lens. Digital "motor drives" are way cooler than the mechanical variety. The biggest problem with motor transport on a conventional camera was that, at, say, three frames per second, you could eat up an entire 36 exposure roll of film with fewer than a half dozen action sequences. Remember, film can't be erased and re-used if you point the camera and shoot a busted play. For the big time pros traveling around the world to cover a major sports event, film is likely to be the least expensive part of the cost equation, so special camera backs that could hold 33 or more feet of film and expose hundreds of images in one shoot became common.

Here's the Drill

Now you know the basics. It's time to set up some real-life scenarios and see just how you'd tackle them with a digital camera. This section will take you through a few typical action photography assignments.

Preparation and Setup

Before you go out on the shoot, it's a good idea to make sure you're well-prepared. You'll never get good pictures of any type if you don't do the right prep and setup beforehand, but action photography is particularly unforgiving. If you goof, forget an important accessory, or neglect to take care of a crucial detail you probably won't be able to go home and get what you need, nor find a substitute. So, following a checklist like this is a good idea:

Taking a Position

One of the keys to taking great action photos is getting a favorable vantage point. Some locations just lend themselves to better viewpoints and improved photographic opportunities. Gain access to the pit at an auto race, and you'll not only get incredible photos of cars on the track, but you'll be able to capture the excitement of the crew servicing a dusty, steaming hot vehicle that pauses just long enough for a picture or two before peeling back out to the competition. (This assumes you know how to stay out of the way of the professionals!)

Of course, at professional sports events you probably won't have much choice about where you position yourself unless you have press credentials. College games are big business, too, so you may run into restrictions there as well. (An amateur photographer doesn't have a prayer of getting down on the field at a Big 10 football game.) However, once you lower your expectations a notch, you'll be amazed at how easy it is to gain a prime location (again, remembering to stay out of the way of the press photographers who are covering the event professionally). I've taken pictures at women's professional fast-pitch softball games, grabbed next-to-dugout seats at AA-class minor league baseball contests, shot lower-division college football, basketball, and soccer, and the whole range of high school sports with nary a problem.

Lens

Virtually all of the readers of this book will be using zoom lenses rather than fixed focal length lenses. Today, all non-SLR digital cameras are furnished with a zoom lens, and even dSLRs with interchangeable lenses are usually used with a zoom of some type. However, action images are one type of photography that does benefit from the use of specialized lenses, so if you do have a digital SLR you can make the swap. For example, a fixed focal length telephoto with a large maximum aperture can help you shoot in lower light levels. For digital SLR sports photographers, an 85mm f1.8 lens or 400mm f2.8 lens can be a godsend. Fast wide aperture prime lenses can be a lot cheaper than zoom lenses with the same speed, too, because they are simpler to design.

The three things to consider about a lens used for action photography are the focal length, aperture, and whether the camera uses optical or digital magnification.

Your Action Arsenal

You don't need an expensive camera to take action photos. I once wrote an article for Petersen's PhotoGraphic Magazine, which I illustrated with sports photos taken with both a $100 point-and-shoot amateur camera as well as with a $2,000 professional SLR. When my results were reproduced in the magazine at a small size, and subjected to halftone screening, it was difficult to tell which photos were taken with which camera.

Any digital camera can do the job, assuming you can work your way around the shutter lag problem described earlier. That's not to say you won't need to compensate for other limitations, too. If your camera has a modest zoom range, you might have to limit your photography to action that's close to the sidelines. Puny electronic flashes have a limited range, so you won't be taking photos dozens of feet from the camera at night. Some digital cameras offer shutter speeds as fast as 1/16,000th of a second; if yours can slice time into slivers no thinner than 1/250th second, you'll have to use other techniques to freeze the action (or learn to use blur creatively).

This section explains the key features to look for in a camera used for action photography. I explained most of these features briefly in Chapter 2. Now it's time to see how they relate to capturing fast-moving subjects.

Digital Cameras and Shutter Lag

We might as well get the topic of shutter lag out of the way immediately. That awful gap between the time when you press the shutter release on your camera and when the picture is actually taken is probably the number one complaint photographers have about digital cameras. You know the sequence: You see a great shot, put your camera's viewfinder to your eye, and press the shutter button.

Nothing happens. There's a lag of what seems to be several seconds before your camera takes the photo. That's frustrating enough when you're shooting a portrait. When your subject is an action picture, that lag can be fatal. Figure 5.2 at top shows what you saw, while the version at bottom shows the photo you ended up with.

The Two Keys to Great Action Shots

Yes, action photography requires a little technical knowledge. You'll need to understand how to select the shutter speed that will freeze action when you want to, or choose a longer shutter speed to allow for some creative blurring effects when you want to do that. But neither of those skills are the real keys to getting great action pictures.

The two most important things you must master are

• Choosing the right subject. Know who to photograph, why they are important, what they might do that's photo worthy, and where to stand to capture them. (As photojournalism immortal Robert Capa once said, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough.")
• Choosing the right moment. Snap a photo a fraction of a second too late (and that's easy to do with a slow-responding digital camera) or too early, and you may capture the immortal instants that happen just after or just before the decisive moment. There were lots of photographs of the Hindenberg as it started its descent in Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937, and quite a few of the charred rubble on the ground afterwards, but none of them made the cover of a Led Zeppelin album.