…low-resolution images. Uh oh, we’re not there yet.

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While this might seem counter-intuitive at first, magazines actually have a technical edge over computer monitors, iPads and all those other devices when it comes to viewing images. (And since I’m in the business of making images, that’s important to me!)

Think about the benefits of the ‘lowly’ printed magazine for a minute:

• Very large, high resolution images are possible. The Italian issue of Vogue is sized at 8.25″ x 11″. With a print resolution equivalent of 300 dpi, that’s roughly 2400 x 3300 pixels. Compare that to the iPad at 768 x 1024. And when you go for the larger format magazines, it’s even greater. Your computer monitor might have a little more…the one I’m typing on right now is 1024 x 1280. Still nowhere near the detail. If you want big, gorgeous, extremely detailed images, magazines will be your best bet for a long time to come.

• They’re cheap! National Geographic’s cover price is $4.95. The iPad starts at $600. And then you still have to buy the magazines to put in it.

• They’re disposable. If you leave your copy of Maxim on the train, you won’t cry. If you leave your digital copy of Maxim (and the rest of your music, movie and reading library) on the train, you will certainly cry.

• They’re portable and flexible. Oh sure, an iPad is portable to a degree, and a laptop less so. But a magazine you can tuck under your arm. You can swat bugs with it. You can rip pages out and put them on your wall. You can put it over your face to shade the sun, when you’d rather just take a nap than keep reading.

• They’re recyclable. And you can just throw them in an ordinary recycling bin, rather than having to take it to a special HazMat center.

The magazine industry is in the dumps right now, and I think that’s partly because they haven’t figured out how to work the advertising revenue stream properly, in the internet age. But from a consumer point of view, magazines have a lot going for them. And I think the magazine titles that rely on beautiful images, and/or stories with longevity have a real chance of surviving. Let’s hope so, because I don’t want to take out a loan to feed my reading habit.

[I love blog comments! If you leave a comment, and I'll donate a canned good to the local food bank, FoodShare.]

http://www.newmodels.com/

Here’s a family portrait I did just before Christmas. The client called me the day after I’d marked as my cut-off point for Christmas card portrait sessions. But she was willing to shoot immediately, and desperately needed images for her holiday cards. So I agreed. We picked a day that fit everyone’s schedule, but our start time would be only 45 minutes before sunset. And since this was a park in Thousand Oaks, CA, there are mountains and trees to contend with. I had only shot at this park once, long ago, and so wasn’t really familiar with the way the light falls there. But there simply wasn’t time to scout the location ahead of time.

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(As always, if you leave a comment, I donate a food item to FoodShare, the local food bank.)

I hired an assistant since I knew this was going to be high pressure: seven people, tricky location and do-or-die requirement to get the shot. I wouldn’t have time to fumble with light stands…I needed someone to hold the lights while I ran around in a barely-disguised panic!

Heading over there to the shoot, I began to worry. There was an accident on the freeway, so I was running late. I had planned to be there 15 minutes early to look for locations, but I ended up getting there right at our start time. And then it was cloudy, the sun dipping in and out. I was worried about the light being cruddy. By the time I got there, I was a stress ball.

And where were my clients? Not there! So I tore off around the park, sizing up locations as fast as I could. I headed back to the parking lot ten minutes later, still no sign of them. But my assistant had arrived by this point, and we chatted for a little while. Then, off in the distance, I see someone waiving: it’s my client. They’d been there the entire time, but on the other end of the parking lot. No matter, I had needed the time to pick the spot, and we quickly set up.

This was definitely a place for using a tripod. With a large group, I always used a tripod in case I have to do “head replacement surgery”. Having the camera set to a consistent focal length, with the frame locked down, makes head-swapping much easier. However in this case that proved unnecessary! The tripod also allowed me to shoot a lot longer as the sun set, without having to choose noisy, high ISOs or worry about camera shake.

And we nailed it! We were able to get the full family, the husband and wife, and shots of each child as well. The sun peaked through for the first shots in a lovely warm light on the background, while I lit the family subtly using strobe. I didn’t do my beach-style backs-to-the-sun lighting, since the sun was pretty weak. Instead I placed my clients so the sun was over my right shoulder, and they were shaded by a tree. I set the camera for normal exposure, instead of a more typical underexposure, and then gently lit them with my Metz Mecablitz 60 from camera left, through a shoot-through umbrella. My assistant was perched on a rock on the same side of the stream as I, with the family on the other side. The cross-stream shooting did however make communication difficult, as they couldn’t hear me very well over the running water. So I just yelled and monkeyed about and they mostly got the point.

And the result? Well I’m very happy with it! Gorgeous setting, great light, nice family…can’t beat it. Amazing that we were able to pull this all off in 45 minutes. And I had the honor of making a 24×30″ canvas print for the family as well, which really came out beautifully.

P.S. The irony of this location is that a) it’s usually pretty crowded, b) that stream is man-made and c) you have to carefully line up your shot to avoid swingsets, benches and other park equipment. Such is the magic of photography!

Do you need wonderful, evocative portraits for your family? Contact me here.

Great light Matt,

Is that a paper backdrop? I am using a bed sheet but the wrinkles are overwhelming and I can’t get rid of them. Have you ever encountered this? If so, how did you deal with it until you were successful enough to buy high end equipment?

Thanks! Yes it’s a paper backdrop. You can’t beat paper for wrinkle-free backgrounds! (Well a permanent ‘cyc’ wall is even better, but hardly anyone ever paints them black)

An alternative to paper is black faux-velvet cloth. It reflects even less light than black paper, and while it might wrinkle a little, they don’t show because it’s so dark. It has a different look though, as it’s completely black and there’s no detail in the background whatsoever. Also rolling up the cloth instead of folding will reduce wrinkles. The trick is to find a piece of cloth wide enough.

But really, a roll of paper isn’t “high end”. A 9 ft wide roll is about $43 at the local Samy’s. The trick is to have a local store that sells it, because shipping is expensive on these rolls (freight only).

I have a portable backdrop stand I often use that cost me $60 used. You can find new ones here, for about $100. This is what I use if there’s nothing available in a studio.

In this shoot above, the studio had a pole on a pulley system for seamless paper, which was very quick and convenient. In my garage, I have two large hooks on the rafters about 9.5 ft apart, and I have an 11 ft length of 2″ PVC pipe, which I run through the seamless paper core and simply suspend from the hooks. My garage isn’t really big enough for full-length shots, but I have pulled it off on occasion when necessary.

Or you can make one yourself. DIYP has a few different articles on this, including one here.

Today my family and I attended a soap box derby race, held semi-annually in Ventura by the California Family Soap Box Derby Association. We had also planned on going on a short hike afterward, but that got postponed as we were having too much fun watching the cars go down the track! I’ve been itching to shake up my family-snapshot photography lately, and decided I’d leave the house armed only with my homemade ’tilt’ lens (attached to a Fuji S5 Pro). This lens is a little like a ‘lensbaby‘, except it’s harder to use and cost me about $5 to make! You can see a picture of it at the bottom of this post. Basically, the lens is tilted relative to the film/sensor/camera plane, rather than being parallel to it as in most cameras. The effect is that the in-focus areas of an image are not all the same distance from the camera. This leads to out-of-focus areas in surprising places.

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This was the first time I actually used this lens for anything other than test shots, even though I’ve had it sitting around for about six months. I built it out of an old ‘process’ lens someone had given me, which has no shutter, only aperture blades. I hacked part of a broken Nikon lens so that only the mount side was left, so that it would fit easily onto my dSLR. This in turn is attached to two sections of concentric PVC pipe, sprayed black. To focus, I slide the tube in and out. Not very accurate, of course! If I want to adjust the focal plane, I rotate the lens in the tube. I can’t actually adjust the amount of tilt, only the direction.

Sort of crazy then that I decided to use such a hard-to-focus lens in an action-packed event. I was successful because (for the moving shots) I would pre-focus on a spot on the road, and then wait for the car to reach that spot as it rolled down the hill. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t…but even when the cars are pretty blurry, it can sometimes have a nice look.

I also think that this sort of tilt-lens look works best in either black and white, or with a vintage look to photos. Bright colors don’t go well with the dreamy look.

I think ths one below is my favorite racing image. Lots of determination in the child’s face.

Looks like she’s racked up a few wins before now! Look at those decals…probably an old pro at the age of 14 or so.

Monochrome image below.

And a more normal treatment, this time of my lovely wife in the parking lot. this lens works for dreamy portraits too!

And finally, the homemade tilt lens. It ain’t pretty, but is fun to use. It also lets me use some of my vintage-camera sensibility (i.e. “sharpness is soooo overrated”) on a dSLR. Just guess the focus and take the shot, rather than obsessing over the technology.