Chapter
13: Strobe
Dedicated flashes were the first electronic
flashes designed to work with one particular camera system. Thus, the strobe
and camera work in tandem.
TTL= Through the Lens: With a
through the lens dedicated flash system, the camera can read the available
light of a scene and automatically set the strobe to the available light.
Strobe’s
light look artificial and throws an unnatural black shadow behind the subject’s
body. Strobes can boost the overall quality of light in a room, thus, enabling
you to set a smaller aperture for greater depth of field.
Strobes
advantage v disadvantages
Without
a flash, sometimes the subject will blend into the background. Strobes also add
highlights to black bowling balls (p. 264 picture). But, strobes interrupt
delicate situations such as a funeral. Other times, natural light can add
visual variation in pictures.
A flash picture will not come out
correctly if you set your shutter speed too fast. On some camera, the upper
limit is only 1/60 sec. Others sync limit is only 1/250, wile some are as high
as 1/500. If you have too fast a shutter speed, only part of the image receives
the strobe’s light.
Selecting a slower shutter speed often results in a more natural-looking
flash photo. Use a slow shutter speed to pick up available natural light and
combine this with light from the flash. Longer shutter speed better lightens
the background. The greater the amount of available natural light by slowing
the shutter speed, the brighter will be the background. Slower shutter also
creature blur from a moving subject, i.e. “movement:” the result of this is a
sharp picture combined with the blur of motion.
Both the strobe’s sensor and the camera’s light meter give correct readings most of the time because the average bright ness of most subjects is equal to around 18% gray. For the exceptional dark or light subject, however, most strobes with automatic sensors require adjusting the f-stop on the lens to compensate for incorrect exposure info.
The
sensor’s eye is geared to read neutral gray correctly. If, for example, a
subject is wearing jet-black leotards while standing in front of a dark wall,
the sensor will be fooled, thus, close down the lens’ aperture one or two stops
in order to avoid overexposed negatives. If the subject is wearing white cloths
in front of a white wall, the sensor eye will be misled once again, thus, open
op one or more stops to avoid underexposed pictures.
Hand-Held
Strobe Meter
The strobe
meter indicates the correct f-stop for a particular film. Leaving the strobe on
manual, the photographer adjusts the f-stop on the camera to the setting
indicated by the light meter. A strobe meter works fine for portrait shots, but
for action shots this device proves is difficult to use. For fasting moving
subjects, the internal sensor or the Through the Lens sensor is best.
To get around having black shadows, move the subject
in front of a dark wall if possible. Now the black shadow from the strobe will
blend somewhat. If you and the subject move away from the wall, keeping the
same distance between the two of you, the subject will receive the same amount
of light, but the wall behind will get less. Again, the wall will darken and
the obtrusive shadow will merge with the darkened wall and disappear.
Wearing glasses: To avoid
reflections off of polished metal, glass, or eyeglasses, keep the strobe at an
angle to the reflective surface you are shooting.
Most strobes are designed to light
an area no wider than a 35mm lens.
Bounce strobe for softer light: To
avoid the harsh effects of direct strobe, bounce the strobe’s light off a
room’s ceiling, walls, or any other light colored surface. Bounce light has two main advantages over direct strobe.
Bounce light eliminates unattractive shadows, and it helps light a group of
people evenly, removing the danger of burning out those in front or letting
those in back go dark.
Light bounced off the ceiling
results in a soft, relative shadowless effect similar to that produced by
fluorescent tubes found in most modern building.
Many photographers attach a small card (wide-panel)
behind and up about up a quarter of an inch from the top the strobe head. These
cards pick up a little light and reflects the light into the subject’s eye
sockets. This reflected light from the white card avoids the raccoon look you
can get with bounced light if you are standing near the subject. You can also
bounce off the inside of a special white or silver umbrella to emulate light
you might get from a north window.
For a soft effect photographer use a
“Soft Box.” The soft box gives a light effect similar to the umbrella, but the
photographer can control fall off at the edges of the light source more precisely.
On a sunny day, the sun’s harsh light can leave some
subjects buried in shadow while others scorch in the sunlight. Fill-flash to
the rescue. The light from the strobe opens the shadow areas of subjects within
ten to fifteen feet of strobe and fills in the shadows. This is particularly
useful when you shoot color transparencies, which can record hue and texture in
either brightly lit areas or deeply shadowed ones. Adding fill light will
probably improve your picture. Strobes today have a fill-flash setting that
automatically balances the available and strobe light some strobes allow you to
dial in just the amount of fill-flash you might want to use.
Fill-grain transparency film requires lots of light.
And transparency film cannot handle great brightness differences within a
scene, e.g. floor and the sun-drenched, spectacular view outside his window.
You may need to set up several lights to bring the two worlds into brightness
balance.
To light an entire room, you can set up several
strobes around the room and bounce all of them off the ceiling or off
umbrellas. Even if a room is unevenly lit, a common problem, you can still
shoot freely by taking a reading with your hand held strobe meter at different
parts of the room ahead of time. With predetermined exposure readings, you can
leave the lights in one place, and as you move from one area to another, adjust
the aperture for each section of the room.
You
can use a “photo slave,” which attaches
to your strobe either through the hot shoe or PC connection. Now the light from
the camera’s strobe will activate the photo slave and trip a remote
strobe. This allows you to fire as many
strobes as you like, as long as you have a photo salve attached to each.
You can also fire multiple strobes without cords by
using a “radio slave,” but many
photographers find that the infrared setup is more reliable.
The Dilemma-personal choice
vs. professional responsibility (p. 302)
“Utilitarian”
principle as defined by ethicists: The overriding consideration is “the
greatest good for the greatest number of people.”
The utilitarian principle of the greatest good bumps
up against a competing ethical principle that says, “people have certain
rights, among them, the right to privacy.”
These rights are absolute and inviolable regardless of the benefits to society,
says this principle.
“Do
unto others as you would have them do unto do.” This rule, too, sometimes
conflicts both with professional standards and with actions that might benefit
a democratic society in need of information.
Removing a Coke bottle to improve the scene. When can
you alter the scene without altering the message and creating an untruth?
92% of the public, 93% of photographers, and 99% of
the editors said the court photographer was wrong to photographer was wrong to
photograph one person and claim it is another (this example was a defendant in
court who would not show their face).
83% of the public, 88% of the photographers, and 94%
of the managing editors said it was not unethical to re-stage a groundbreaking
ceremony for a new church.
Capturing a cricket plague in which the photographer
collected and choreographed the crickets, general readers were almost evenly
divided along the three-point ethics scale: 29% considered the photographer’s
actions “definitely unethical,” 39% considered it “doubtful,” and the remaining
32% considered it “not unethical.”
Managing
editors were similarly split between “definitely unethical (23%),” “doubtful
(34%),” and not unethical (44%).
Photographers that consider amassing
the crickets part of the job: 7% felt that it is definitely unethical, 30%
consider it doubtful, and 63% said that the cricket photographer was wrong. One
could assume that two-thirds of the photographers polled would have rigged the
shot if faced with the same situation.
In a 1987 study for the National Press Photographers
Association (NPPA), Ben Brink found that re-creating a situation was acceptable
to more than 1/3 of the pros surveyed. However, re-staging a scene from scratch
was acceptable to only 2%.
A visiting nurse in a rural farming community: a
photographer has seen her walk across the field before, but she’s never been at
the right place at the right time to get the shot. So she asks the nurse to
walk across the field again, as normal, until she could get the shot. Of 116
people, 38% would re-create the scene, 28% were not sure, and 34% indicated
that they definitely would not have the visiting nurse walk across the field
just for the camera.
Photojournalists’ ethics are changing. Walter Wilcox
found that repeating a groundbreaking ceremony of a new church for the camera
bothered none of the pros in 1961. 26 years later Ben Brink’s National Press
Photographers Association (NPPA) survey found that 1/3 of the photographers
sampled would not repeat such an event.
33% of the photographers no longer found staging the
picture itself unethical if they explained the facts to their editors. Telling
a higher authority seemed to eliminate feelings of responsibility on the part
of the pros.
How widespread is disbelief in photojournalism?
“Girls on the street;” a special report a child-prostitution, which included
little towns like Waterville, Maine. A local Maine paper challenged the story.
Reporters discovered that the Attorney General’s office in the Maine
jurisdiction has prosecuted only two cases of prostitution in Waterville, none
involving teenagers-and that the young Waterville “prostitute” in the photo was
actually a model. When Dean Abramson was unable to fins an actual street
walking teen in Waterville, his Parade magazine editors told him to hire a
model.
Neal
Preston verified that his assignment for Parade of the same situation “could
have saved him time and film if I had hired a model. I’m proud of that mine is
real.”
In such situations, the reader has no way of knowing
the difference. A photographer as a photojournalist should “produce both a
truthful picture and one that demonstrates artistic merit.” Reality will
suffice. The photographer is to record, not influence.
Professional standards are changing and so are
reader’s expectations. Setting up feature pictures used to be perfectly
acceptable to most newspaper photojournalist. New York Post photographer Barney
Stein, in his 1950’s book, describes as photojournalist activity how he went
about setting up feature pictures of a cowboy performing for crippled
kids.
In 9161, Wilcox found that no photojournalist
objected to re-staging a ceremony for a photo. Yet, today, according to the Brink
survey, al least 1/3 of the photographers who are NPPA members would reject to
re-staging an event.
In
1948, photo stories required a certain amount of “setting up” to make things seem
more dramatic.
Janet Cooke, a reporter for the
Washington Post, won a Pulitzer Prize based on a story she wrote about a
6-year-old drug addict. After she was awarded, investigators discovered that
the child had never existed. Cooke lost the prize and gained a place of
dishonor in journalism history.
Covering instances of injury in car crashes, fires,
or natural disasters “photographers have acquired a reputation of being
indifferent to the human suffering the frame in their cameras.
Do we have the right to shoot moments of individual
loss?
Behavior in traumatic situations: photographers have
a responsibility not to inflict greater suffering than necessary on survivors
of a tragedy. “Than necessary” is a troublesome phrase, one defining that
difficult gray zone. Unfortunately there is no clear measure of necessity. You
must balance the harm to an individual caught in the jaws of tragedy with the
long-range needs of society to see an unvarnished picture of the world.
Do all tragedies need photo coverage?
Eddie Adams, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his
photograph of a Viet Cong suspect being assassinated in the streets of Saigon,
told the author about a photo he “didn’t” take while covering the war: “On a
hilltop in Vietnam, I was pinned down with a Marine company. Machine guns were
going off. Dead bodies were lying on either side of me. I was lying on the
ground fine feet from an 18-year-old Marine. I saw fear on that kid’s face. His
and me face said WAR, but I still think I did the right by not taking the
picture.”
Adams chose to invoke the “do unto others…” Golden
Rule. His Pulitzer Prize winning picture of the Vietnamese colonel executing a
suspected Vietcong did not help change the course of Vietnam. But, society’s
greater good was served by photographing the scene. Adam’s hesitation at taking
pictures on the hilltop in Vietnam was rare. Most photographers don’t hesitate
to take pictures.
Craige Hartley surveyed NPPA members and citizens in
Austin, Texas and found that although 63% of the news photographers found
photojournalist’s behavior at the funeral “ethical,” 85% of the public found
the behavior “unethical.” (Be sure to check your class notes on how to approach
shooting a funeral.)
When should the photographer act as
a professional, and when should he or she act as a responsible citizen? What
happens when the roles conflict?
The photojournalist’s role is to inform the public.
By capturing what is going on citizens can perhaps learn enough or be moved
enough to prevent such things from happening in the future. Information can
lead to changes in public policy, laws, funding, or perhaps just improved
behavior.
The Good Samaritan argument, on the other hand, is
absolutist: a photojournalist is, first and foremost a human being. A
photojournalist’s primary responsibility to the human being needs in terms of
immediate help. Journalism comes second.
No on attempted to stop a Buddhist monk who set
himself on fire protesting the 1963 Diem government in South Vietnam. The monk
used his death as the ultimate form of political expression.
Peter
Arnett of the Associated Press, who reported the event, said that he could have
prevented the immolation by rushing at the monk and kicking the gasoline away.
“As a human being I want to; as a reporter I couldn’t.”
A photographer does not have the time to determine
if a particular picture is too gruesome to appear on the paper’s front page.
The reader might gag on a gory front-page accident photo. Editors sometimes
refer to this as the “breakfast test” for hard to digest pictures.
Life magazine ran a photo showing dead soldiers strewn
on a beach, the public was sheltered visually from some of the war’s impact. Is
it right or even responsible for the press to protect the public in this way?
Is it possible that, by withholding these scenes, the press actually prevented
Americans from developing a healthy outrage about events in Europe, a fury that
perhaps could have fueled the war effort?
Author Curtis MacDougall, a managing editor, spent a
full hour soliciting the opinions of everyone in the newsroom regarding the
propriety of using a picture of a lynching. The decision was made to black out
the body and substitute an artist’s drawn ‘X’ to mark the spot.” No one thought
to add that lynching pictures might have positive benefit by stirring up moral
outrage against mob rule.
Editors rationalized that accident pictures served
as a warning to careless drivers and thus improved highway safety.
In Craig Hartley’s survey comparing
photojournalists’ and general readers’ reactions, he found that 59% of the pros
considered ethical the actions of a hypothetical photojournalists who
photographed the removal of a famous actress’ body from an automobile crash and
the editors’ subsequent decision to send the pictures over wires. However,
nearly ľ (71%) of the public disapproved of the journalists’ actions.
Hiding
Dead Bodies
The Washington Post ombudsman takes an absolutist
position by pointing out that if the picture hurts just a few relatives and
friends, it is wrong to run the picture because the media must protect those
few from more pain.
When
a child fell through the ice and drowned in a pond in Columbia Missouri, after
much discussion regarding the family’s feelings, ran a picture showing rescuers
recovering the child’s body. The next day, the child’s mother came to the
office, where she picked up extra copies of the newspaper after thanking the
editors for running the photo. She said she hoped that the front-page picture
of her child would help deter others from playing on the thin pond ice.
Nudity in pictures generates more disagreement among
editors then even the most gruesome picture. This is a more matter of taste
than a question of ethics. Most American newspapers and magazines refrain from
printing nudity on their pages. A newspaper’s job is to inform and mainstream
advertisers would not like supporting publications with pornographic appeal.
A
picture of a woman glancing disapprovingly at a longhaired “hippie” wearing
only his birthday suit was not too spicy for judges of the White House News
Photographers Association (WHNPA) photo contest, who awarded it a first place
for features. The Washing Times did not publish the picture, but the competing
Washington Post did, with a discreetly placed black bar over the offending body
part.
A
photographer might not photograph two men holding hands, for fear that the
community “is not ready to deal with homosexuality” or “that my paper won’t run
that.”
You
must weigh an individual’s rights against society’s need for correct and
complete information.
Curtis
MacDougall struggled to find a common rule to help editors decide when to
splash a controversial picture on the front page or when to file the picture in
the bottom desk drawer. “My yardstick is the public interest.” MacDougall’s
yardstick does not take into account competing claims like privacy, which in
certain circumstances must also be considered.
Each
editor will use a personal yardstick of public v. private interest, but
photographers should not rely on editors to shoulder the ethics burden. The
photographer provides the first line of ethical defense, and in the end, the
photographer’s name runs under the photo.
Features (Chp. 5)
Feature photos provide a visual dessert to
subscribers who digest a daily diet of accident, fire, political, and economic
news, “Slice of Life.”
Mark Johnsonargues that most feature pictures are
interesting only to the people in the pictures. While Gordon Converse of the
Christian Science Monitor describes features as the “seach for moments in time
that are worth preserving forever.”
A
news picture portrays something new. Because news is timely, news pictures get
stale quickly. Features don’t improve with time. Feature pictures, on the other
hand, are timeless. Feature do not improve with time. Feature pictures will
retain their holding power.
A
news picture accrues value when (1) its subject is famous, (2) the event is of
large magnitute, or (3) the outcome is tragic.
A
feature picture records the common place slice of life. It tell an old story in
a new way, with a new slant. Many newspapers call features “enterprise
pictures.”
The
sensitive photographer could uncover features even at a major catastrophe. This
is called “featurizing the news.” The news photo might show the firefighter
rescuing the victims with the building burning in the background. For a news feature, a photographer might
take a photo of a firefighter being nic to a dog.
Universal
Emotions
When viewers look at a powerful feature photo they might laugh, cry, stand back in amazement, or look more closely. When people from numerous countires respond to the same photo, the the photo has tapped into the universally understood language of a feature photo.
To find good features you can’t go wrong with kids
(imitating adults), animals (acting like people), and even nuns.
Ulrich
Welsch, a specialist in photographing children, always asked permission of
parents before photographing children. “That way the perent does not interupt
the shooting.”
A photo of a nun holding guns looks odd because nuns
and guns don’t seem to go together. Such a photo would provide eye-catching
features. Though this is all true, children, animals, and nuns are not required
for features, there is just a better chance of publication if one of these
elements is presents.
Keep a Fresh Eye
Ulrike Welsch gets in her car and drives to an area
she’s never been before in order to get features. When ever you live in the
same place you grow accustomed to your surroundings. Psychologist call this “habituation.”
Those
first impressions usually lead to her best photos. “I take phots that I might
have overlooked in my backyard.
Charlie
Riedel says that he finds 95% of his features by driving around. Alan Berner
says that if you see a picture when you are driving, stop the car and shoot.
“If you don’t, you’ll regret it later.
Take
a Candid (street photography)
Henri-Cartier-Bresson,
refered to as the father of candid photography, used a different approach for
taking street pictures. Cartier-Bresson liked to pop up, as if out of
knowwhere, take a picture, and then innocently walk on as if nothing has
happened.
Emily Nottingham found that forming a relationship
with the subjects as people rather than simply as subjects received more
favorable response from the people they were photographing. This study shows
that sensitive photographers will find their subjects more receptive.
Though Cartier-Bresson and Nottingham’s styles
differ, neither one is best.
Sometimes
the key to a feature photo is not a candid moment found on the street, but
rather taking the viewer to see a common event from a unique vantage point.
Charlie Riedel has climbed into radio towers, puts cameras on bikes, airplanes,
parachutes, and even climbs down manholes to bring out a unique low-angle
perspective. Experimenting never hurt anyone.
If
you would like, see the twenty ways to find a feature on page 97.
Portraits (Chp. 9)
To tell each person’s story, photojournalists shoot
both posed and candid prtraits. Candid photography can produce honest
believable portraits. Even when you arrange elements for a portrait, photojournalists
look for honest, candid moments.
If you don’t feel comfortable in front of a camera,
no technique in the world will help you produce a revealing portrait. Try
self-portraits in order to under stand the mind-set “the subject.” The
following are some different ways to loosen up your subject.
When
people talk, they often forget about the camera, thus, possible candid moments.
When we put the camera to our eye it block our face.
David Leeson solved this problem by taking the prism off of his camera and
positioning it at about waist high, thus, he get eye contact.
Alfred
Eisenstaedt used a tripod and a cable release in order to keep eye contact.
Sibylla Herrich says “during the time you meet them
and while you are setting up lights, you can watch for the subject’s natural
body language. Are they erect, relaxed, etc? Look to see how comfortable they
are with their own body give them some suggestions in order to change the
subject body language, i.e. variety.
Be
a Bore (But not a Bore)
When you have the time, the boredom technique works
well; if you wait long enough, the subject often gets tired of posing, and you
can shoot natural-looking photos that result in casual, relaxed portraits.
Some photographers find it valuable to shoot
pictures while the subject is being interviewed. In volved in conversation, the
subject becomes animated, and the resulting photo is natural.
When photographers shoot a picture that is lit
brightly but has only a few shadows, the photo is called “high-key.”
They often employ high-key lighting for pictures of brides because they want
the phototo have an upbeat mood.
“Low-key”
lighting, on the other hand, would be used to capture a more moody effect, such
as a tough police officer photographers at night with onlt the available light
coming from a street lamp. The photo’s dominant tones are dark grey and black.
If you have great light, you have everything going
for you. Always look around and find the best available light whether it may be
in a hallway, breezeway, treeline, field, etc. Nicole Bengiveno even uses the
head light of a car, street lamps, or table lamps at times in order to get a
certain feel that she is after. She also uses light in which reflects off of
fire escapes because such light has an interesting appeal and casts awesome
shadows (a cool effect).
Let There be Light
David Leeson has a “mulilayered” process for
photos.
“My
primary concern is lighting, the background is secondary, and the angle is my
third concern. I want viewers’ eyes to flow from bottom to top.”
To add depth to a subject’s face, arrange the person
so that the main light, whether it is from flood, flash, or window, falls
toward the side of the subject’s face. Unlike direct frontal light, side light
adds a roundness and 3-D-ality to the portait. Side light also emphasizes the
textural details of the face-a technique especially suited for bringing out the
character lines in person’s features.
To portray a person as stable a sense of balance and
dignity must be illustrated in the way in which you frame your suject. To
obtain this, a good way is to place the subject in the middle of the frame.
To
assert visual suspense, you can place the director on the edge of the view
finder , leaving the remaining area black, thus creating an off-balanced shot.
An exreme close up con the subject evokes a feeling
of unusual intimacy, but panning out, bring body language and cloths into the
view finder, can help reveal personality characteristics.
Alfred Eisenstaedt, one of the original Life
photographers, wrote, “By now I’ve learned that the most important thing to do
when you photograph someone in a room or outside is not to look at the subject
but at the background.” Because, (1) the background details help report the
story, and (2) the backgrous affects a photograph’s “readabilty.” Readability
means that the subject must not get lost in details of the environment.
Arnold Newmam, a mster of environmental portrait,
often arranges his portraits so the background dominates. The subject in the
fore ground is relatively small. Newman says that the subject’s image is
important, but “alone is not enough. We must also show the subject’s
relationship too the world.” Newman is know for photographing artist Piet
Mandrian at his easel, creatinf a photograph that suggested the artist’s own
style by framing this subject in the right manner.