Covering The Reynoldsburg Civil War Re-Enactment - 2013 Edition

I cover the Reynoldsburg Civil War Encampment every year.  It is an event that never disappoints with its colorful characters, knowledgeable and friendly re-enactors, and the skillfully crafted battle sequences.

Sometimes I shoot for just me, but most of the time I am hired for event coverage.

Ever since watching the Jay Maisel videos on KelbyTraining.com, I've tried to take a different attitude toward these kinds of events.  It is far too easy to get into a place where images from year to year look all too much like the ones from the year before.   In that sense, I think about something that Jay talked about, which is "Going out empty".   This means that sometimes you  have to go out with no pre-conceived notion of what you want.  You very well could miss some great images because you set yourself up to be looking for images that fit a mindset.  You very well could be missing a great opportunity.

I also went out with a few other Maisel gems in my head:

• No chimping - I check one or two images in tricky lighting situations to make sure that I did not botch a shot completely.  Other than that - stop looking at the LCD!!
• Find something that you've not seen before and get that shot.
• Get images of things that interest you.
• When you find that great image, you know that the center or the subject is there.  The thing that can kill your shot is not paying attention to the edges.
• Get the framing of the shot the way you want it in camera if at all possible.  Crop only when you meet a focal length limitation, not because you were too lazy to frame it correctly to start with!

Gear:

• Nikon D700 with Nikon 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5(SB-600 attached, but only on when I really needed a bit of fill light)
• Nikon D300(MB-D10 battery grip) with Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8
• BlackRapid DoubleStrap(DR-1)
• RainSleeve
• Powerade Zero/Water
• Cabelas Boonie Hat/Sunscreen

Post Processing:

• Lightroom 4.4 - basic adjustments to color, contrast, vibrance, sharpness and clarity.
• onOne Software Perfect B&W

I've taken now to shooting with a "flatter" tone curve.  I toyed in the past with tweaking the in camera JPG engines to add more contrast, boost the colors - even shoot straight to B&W.  I will still do this on those occassions I need to shoot directly for print....but I find it better to have a more versatile dynamic range then use the Camera RAW or editing tools in Lightroom and Photoshop to get the final product the way I want it.

Also, shot the whole event in JPG.

An Over Nighter - Destination -- Pittsburgh, PA

As some of you may know, I'm a big fan of Jay Maisel.  Not just his work, but his mindset toward bettering your photography.  He has many a profound thing to say, not that they have never been said before, I just think that he happened to be there when I needed to hear them the most.

Cathedral of Learning

One thing I learned from Jay Maisel is that you need to do your "visual pushups" everyday.  This means going out and looking for image capture opportunities.  It doesn't mean you need to take pictures, but you need to make the attempt.  Find something that is interesting or that you've never seen before.

To that end, the family and I decided to take a trip to Pittsburgh, PA.   I've driven through before, but never stayed.  My wife, had occasion to travel there a short while back and recommended it as a great place for photographic opportunities.

We did some pre-planning and decided on one or two places that we wanted to visit, but we did not plan exactly when.  We do this to keep the flexibility of the trip to a maximum.  You do have some ideas of when the best time would be for lighting for outdoor locations, and we also had some places on the back burner in case the weather did not lend itself for outdoor photo opportunities.

Gear For The Trip

I wanted to travel light, but also use a good low light, high ISO performer.  I also wanted to keep it simple and not be dragging tons of lenses.

List:

Nikon D700
Nikkor 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5 Macro
Nikkon 24mm f/2.8
Nikon SB-600
Gorillapod DSLR tripod

I was able to get all this plus extra batteries, memory cards and lens hood into a Tamrac System 6 shoulder bag.

I picked this setup as I am slowly starting to get to the point where I am wanting to use my Fuji X-E1 setup for travel photography like this.  It does appear that the Fuji will fit the bill.  It has the hi ISO performance I would want and once I get the 55-200mm to go along with the 18mm/35mm primes I already have.

Interesting locations

Cathedral of Learning

An absolutely unique place to visit.   This 42 story, 535ft tall building is the tallest educational building in the western hemisphere.   it is built in the Gothic Revival style and broke ground in 1926, with the first class usage in 1931.  There are 29 "Nationality Rooms" which are all built with techniques and materials from the country of its origin.  Additional information regarding the Cathedral of Learning can be found here in this detailed Wikipedia entry.

Common Area Inside The Cathedral of Learning

The interior common areas are intricately built like an old cathedral.  University of Pittsburgh students can be seen frequenting the common areas, studying.
Lighting here is a bit of a challenge.  There is a strong tungsten light cast(red) and the lighting is very dim.  Fast glass and high ISO gear will help you a lot if you want to shoot hand held.  Otherwise, I'd recommend a tripod.

The first floor nationality rooms require you to pay a $4 fee per person to see.  Go to the gift shop/information room to pay and they will give you a key and audio player.  The audio player plays a description of the room for you. 

View From The Third Floor

 When done on the first floor, head to the third floor for more nationality rooms.  Before you do, you can return the key and audio player.  The rooms on the third floor are unlocked and have a switch in them for the audio information.

The English Room

Its hard for me to pick a favorite room as I loved them all.  It was a different look at the all the cultures represented.

Entrance to the English Room

Heinz Memorial Chapel

Henry John Heinz, founder of the HJ Heinz Co wanted to dedicate a building to his mother at the University of Pittsburgh.  Mr Heinz, upon his death in 1919 left money to build the Heinz Memorial Chapel just a short hop, skip and jump from the Cathedral of Learning.

Heinz memorial Chapel

This chapel has splendid exterior features as well as interior features.  Some of the most beautiful stained glass I've seen in quite some time.  Again, like the Cathedral of Learning, interior of the chapel is low light, see prepare accordingly.

Duquesne Incline / Mt. Washington

Mt. Washington give you the absolutely best view of the Pittsburgh skyline, day or night!  For a reasonable $5 round trip fee, the trolley car takes you from the Station A parking lot at the street level all the way up to the top of Mt. Washington.   Outside the station is an observation deck.

St. Benedict The Moor Church

St. Benedict The Moor was a freed slave that impressed the Catholic priests of his region, they invited him to join a hermit order.He is known as the patron saint of African-Americans.

St. Paul's Catholic Church

Located across the street from the Carnegie School of Software Engineering, this church has that great, old world architecture that will have you snapping pictures of it for hours!

Parting Notes

 While there are some places, like the ones I've listed above, Pittsburgh is a great city just to walk about and grab images.  The people and architecture leave almost limitless opportunities.  Here are just a few images of street photography I found close to our hotel as well as down side streets from the other places we visited.

 

How I Got The Shot #36 - Large Group Family Portraits

Individual portraits and couples portraits are one thing, but what do you do when you run into a large group?  When I was originally called to do this photo shoot, I was told 15 people, and I planned accordingly.  What I should have done was planned accordingly and then some!!  What I thought was 15, really ended up being close to 30!    The only thing that I had to get creative one was the background.  The 10x20 black backdrop was just not enough to encompass the entire group.   Keep reading to see how we handled this shoot and covered the background issues.

Creative Process:

The client had a once in a lifetime chance - three full generations of family from all over the United States would be in town for one weekend only.  It may not happen again, we needed to make this happen.
She wanted the whole group as well as individual shots of each of the families.

One helpful reminder - have an assistant or two to help with setup, tear down and "client control".  During the shoot, you need to be engaging the client, but there are times you'll be making gear tweaks or solving technical issues.  The assistant can be organizing the group to be photographed and staging the ones after that.  Invaluable, even if you have to pay for an assistant - I highly recommend it.

Location:

The original shoot location was supposed to be an outdoor park.  However, the Ohio weather can be unpredictable, and a a nice cool, spring day we did not get.   It was cooler than it should be this time of the spring.   The client had an alternative - a gymnasium.
This presents its own obstacles as you don't have a ceiling to bounce off, and generally the color of the ambient lights can be less than desirable.

Obstacle 1 - high ceiling.
We handled this by using umbrella boxes, 2 to be precise.  We angled one from each side to do our best  to get a good coverage of all the large groups.

Obstacle 2 - color casts of the ambient lights.
3 words for you - kill the ambient.   We made our shutter speed 1/250th and that was enough to kill the ambient light of the gym.  This way, we only have the color of the strobes we were using to contend with.

Obstacle 3 - power.
I mean power to our studio lights.  There were outlets and we brought plenty of extension cords.  However, if there is no power to the outlets - no beautiful pops from the Alien Bees!  Alway be prepared.  We brought our Vagabond Mini Lithium power supply with us.

Obstacle 4 - too small a backdrop.
We will cover this more in detail in the post processing section, but a little hint for you - Photoshop CS6 and a little third party plugin power!  :)

Gear:

Nikon D700

Nikon 28-85mm f/3.5-4.5

Alien Bee B400 x 2
Umbrella Box x 2
Radio Popper JrX Studio transmitter/receiver
Background stand
Light stand x 2
10 x 20 black backdrop

EXIF Info:

Shot in manual mode

Camera quality setting - JPG fine
exposure: 1/250, f/8, ISO 200
Strobe power between 1/4 and 1/2 power

Lighting Setup:

As stated earlier, we used the umbrella boxes and used this basic setup seen below.  Time was a factor so we needed something versatile for both the large and small groups we would be working with.

I skimmed the back edges of the umbrellas across the back of the groups and let the rest of the light overlap through the middle of the group.

Post Processing:
We strive to get the best possible image in the camera at the time of the shoot.  This keeps out need for post processing down.

We used onOne Software Portrait 2.0 software to get rid of the fly away hairs, sharpen the eyes and do some basic touch ups.

We handled the backdrop shortcoming by using another plugin from Topaz Labs called Remask 3.  This tool makes doing cut outs a relatively simple task, even for the hardest of subjects.   Basically, you make in red what you don't want, green what you do, and blue marks what you want the program to determine.  You do a little cleanup and you go from an image like this:

To this:

After the parts of the image you do not want are removed, you placed a black color layer behind the portrait image.  We then used the burn tool set to shadows at 65% to blend in the backdrop to the other portions of the black layer.  Some cloning was also needed for the green flooring to extend it out.

Gear Organization Series #2 - Modifying an EDC Bag For Camera Use

We are all looking for that "perfect" camera bag.  Problem is, perfect is a relative term.  Perfect for me is something that I can have my "take everywhere" camera or a "light" DSLR kit.

I did a lot of looking and I just didn't see any camera bags that fit the bill for me.  So I started looking at other bags.  That is when I stumbled across the Maxpedition line of bags.  Maxpedition builds their bags for outdoor enthusiasts.  They do have some unique options like the  Jumbo Versipak.  This is a sling/cross body style of bag that has a low foot print, but can hold quite a bit of gear.
The bags are also built to rugged military standard of durability.  So believe me when I say that this thing will last you for quite some time.  It is also coated in a Teflon water resistance, so handling the wet elements is also a bonus feature!

As you can see there is a padded shoulder strap, and a waist strap to add more security and to keep the bag from sliding about.  There are also quite a few molle straps and velcro sections for adding on expansion pouches if you need the extra room.

While this is a nice bag, it definitely was not made with camera gear in mind.  What does that mean?  Well, it is not padded on the sides or the bottom of the main pouch.  Easy solution - I have quite a few pieces of padded dividers from my Tamrac and Lowepro bags, so I re-purposed them!!

I lined the inside of the main compartment(bottom and sides) with the padded dividers.

The main compartment can hold my Fuji X-E1 with 18mm lens attached, the Fuji 35mm lens and still have room for many kinds of extra stuff - like more lenses, wallet, etc.

The main compartment also has a built in rain fly, so if the weather gets extra dicey, you know your gear has added protection from the elements!!

It also has many zippered pockets.

In front of the main compartment you'll find a medium size pocket.  Currently, I have 2 filters, cables, extra batteries and memory cards.  When I had my Fuji X10, it was small enough to inside this pouch.  You could fit a similar sized small compact camera in there, leaving the main compartment wide open.  Great for a day hike where you might want to bring some food, water, first aid kit or similar items along with a compact camera system.

To the righ of the main compartment is a smaller zippered side pouch.  I keep my pens, sharpie, pocket knife, leatherman and flashlight here.

To the left of the main compartment is a pocket originally designed for holding a Nalgene water bottle.    I find this useful for carrying extra lenses or additional cables that you might need.  A flash unit also fits in here nicely.

On top of the bag is another zippered pouch.  I keep first aid stuff and smaller electronics in here - radio triggers(Radio Popper or RF-602 type one should fit fine), BlueTooth headset.

Finally, just behind the main compartment is a zippered pocket that can fit a 7" tablet or similar size device.  I keep my Google Nexus 7 in there.  It would also be a good spot for camera manuals, model released, business cards.