Author Archives: bobshank

Portrait Lighting

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Getting your flash off the camera makes a huge difference. It is even better to diffuse the light.

I use a Lastolite Soft Box and have enjoyed very nice results. Even with just one off-camera flash the difference is incredible. Learn how to set up the light to create a variety of looks with your subject. Experiment by taking some photos, move the off-camera flash, and take some more photos.

David Ziser communicates this very well in his new book, “Captured by the Light.” I just received my copy yesterday and after just reading the way to change the studio lighting is most excellent! I am sure I will enjoy this book and learn a lot in the process. Oh, and don’t worry if you are not a wedding photographer–this book will still apply to some of your photography nevertheless.

Portrait lighting is intimidating to some photographers but it doesn’t need to be this way. With just a few simple tips and suggestions you can use portrait lighting to make awesome photos. Give it a try!

Photography Books

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Have you read any good photography books lately?

Scott Kelby’s 3-book series on Digital Photography is definitely worth a read. I gleaned many photo tips and tricks from these books and I refer back to them quite often. They are a valuable resource. I also like Lennie Rue, III’s books on wildlife photography. He not only talks about photo techniques, but also how to find the animals and what to look for to help find them. His books are so informative that I keep them close at hand and take them on extended photo trips so I can consult them. John Shaw’s books are also very good. They are instructive and allow the reader to see what this photographer sees even before he clicks the shutter. Technical advice is also in great abundance with any of his books.

So, what good photo books have you read lately? Any worth recommending?

Print Quality Prints

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This might sound like nothing more than common sense, but I see it happen way too often and I just shake my head. Be sure to print quality prints. This is vital whether you are printing your own prints at home or if you send them out to be printed. Do not settle for low quality, high volume prints.

To see what I am talking about, take the same five photographs to a variety of printers and check the results. Like many things, you usually get what you pay for these days. Spend a few pennies for a 4″ x 6″ print and you will get a photo worth just a few pennies. Go to a quality printer, print that same print, and you will be amazed at the difference!

One of the drawbacks to digital photography is that now many photos are stored safely away on hard drives but rarely if ever see the light of day. Print some prints! Make some enlargements and display some of your photographs. But remember–print quality prints!

My Drobo & Organizing Photographs

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My new desktop computer is up and running with my Drobo attached and running properly to store and backup my photographs. My first step in the process is to back up my photographs by copying them from two external drives to the Drobo. This would not be a hard task if I had adequately managed my photos in the first place. Different folder-naming schemes was the main problem and this is taking time to resolve.

I now see the advantage of sticking to one naming convention!

How do you organize your photographs? What folder naming scheme do you put into practice? Can you find photos from a specific shoot just by the way your folders are organized?

These questions and more are important to answer. I am forced to answer them now and find specific ways to maintain my consistency in naming my folders because I want things well-organized on my Drobo. It will take some more time, but in the end I believe the effort will be well worth it. And next time this should all be much easier!

Think about Depth of Field

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Depth of Field is an important concept for photographers. How much of your photograph is going to be in focus? Is it a landscape scene where you want the viewer to see pretty much everything in focus, or is a portrait where you only want the subject to be in focus?

Depth of Field will determine how much of a photograph is in focus and which parts of the photograph will be out of focus. Here is a quick way to illustrate this in a visual way. Find a long fence or a series of many parking meters. Angle your camera to catch us much of the fence or parking meters as possible. Ideally you will have your camera on a tripod to keep each shot the same. Now, close the aperture way down to something like 22 or even 32 if you can and focus about half-way into the scene. Take the photograph. Now take a second shot with your aperture somewhere in the middle range like f/8 or f/11. Finally take a third shot with the aperture fully opened.

When you get back to your computer compare the three photographs. The depth of field should be the greatest in the first shot. That is, you should see more of the fence or parking meters in focus. In the third photo you should see the least depth of focus–just a small part of the fence or a parking meter or two in clear focus. Do you see the differences?

Now, this concept needs to be applied in the photographs you are creating with your camera in all different situations. Let’s say that you are shooting a baseball game. You only care about the player at the plate and the baseball, not the dugout or the fans in the background. So you will use a shallow depth of field by opening up your aperture as wide as possible. Be careful though, because if the baseball and the player are not fairly close together, only one will be in clear focus. Many sports photographers shoot at f/4 or even f/5.6 to try to get the best of both worlds–shallow depth of field, but not too shallow.

Let’s consider another scenario. Say you are on vacation and see this beautiful sunset that lights up the valley all the way up to an incredible mountain. The sun is behind  you but the light is long and amazing. Your goal in this photo is to capture as much of the beautiful scenery as possible. This is where a deep depth of field can really help to keep as much of the scene in focus as possible. So you close down the aperture to f/22 or even more to capture this photograph.

Get the idea? Depth of field exists in every photograph to some degree. The goal is to get the proper depth of field for what you are trying to achieve. Practice and experiment with depth of field. You’ll be very glad you did when the photograph of a lifetime presents itself to you!

Backup Strategy

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A photographer’s backup strategy is crucial. Without such a strategy we risk losing important photographs that can never be recovered? Sound scary; it should!

I’ve had one hard drive failure many years ago. It was only 20mb in size, believe it or not (I did say it was many years ago!) and it only contained documents that I had backed up to 3.5″ floppy disks. About a year ago, I had another hard drive problem. It did not fail, but it did cause me to lose some files–mainly my email messages, calendar, and some other personal management software. Much of it was backed up, but I did lose all of my email messages. But thankfully, I’ve never lost a photograph, at least not yet.

My previous strategy was to use external hard drives to backup my photographs. As time passed and more and more photographs began to be stored, I purchased a second hard drive. This worked until this year when one of the drives became completely filled. So now I have some photographs that are not being backed up. Yikes!

So, my newest strategy included purchasing a Drobo, but then I also had to upgrade my desktop computer. The new one just arrived today! What timing, too! It is raining cats and dogs outside and while I have many projects to do around the house, this project is a great rainy-day project.

I put the desktop pc together and attached the Drobo. I also made sure to install McAfee on the new pc, too. Then I hooked up my biggest external drive and started copying most of my photographs to the Drobo. The dialog box says that it is copying the photographs, but it is going to take a whopping 14 hours to complete!

I will still have quite a few folders to copy over to my Drobo from my second external drive and then my laptop. It will take time, but I will finally have a solid backup strategy in place once again. The only problem with my strategy is to implement an off-site strategy in case of a fire, tornado, etc. Then I will have a solid backup strategy and will be able to sleep at night.

What is your backup strategy? Is it solid? And are you using it faithfully?

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, & Web Pages

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Which do you prefer–blogs, Facebook, Twitter, or Web Pages?

I actually enjoy keeping up with all of these social networking tools. My website was started first and continues to be the main place where my photography services and photographs are shared with anyone who cares to see them. I keep adding information to my website such as new photo shoots, information about upcoming workshops, and upcoming Pennsylvania Elk Photo opportunities.

On my blog, I share some photography educational thoughts and other interesting photo info. I also enjoy hearing what others think about the topics I bring up in my blog. The feedback is fun and helpful.

On Twitter I post a new photo tip each day.

And on Facebook I replicate some of the educational photo information and sometimes discuss other photo topics.

Check it all out by going to my website at Bob Shank Photography

Batteries Keep Getting Better

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Have you tried the Energizer rechargeable Ni-MH batteries yet?

If not, I strongly encourage you do try to them. They work great and recharge fast! I have the Energizer 15-minute charger and it is fantastic! When you load the batteries and then plug it in, you hear the fan blowing to keep the unit cool. The batteries charge in no time which makes using rechargeable batteries a great option now.

I was using some other rechargeable batteries for my speedlight but they require overnight charging. This is much different than the short 15 minutes to charge the Energizer batteries. So I plan on replacing these older batteries with the Energizer batteries. Besides, then I only have to carry one charger along with me, too.

Wondering how best to proceed…

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Sometime next week I will be receiving shipment of a new desktop computer that I will devote exclusively for my photography. I will attach my Drobo to it so I can have all my photographs on the Drobo and my Lightroom catalog on the pc. Currently my photos are on two external hard drives and a few on my laptop.

My question is how to best proceed in moving the photographs over to the Drobo so that Lightroom can find them. Since I’ve done quite a bit of editing already on some of these photos, I am thinking that importing the catalogs is the best way to go.

Have any of you done this before?

I was waiting for the new pc because with Windows 7 I can view the Drobo as one complete disk. With Windows XP there was a 2GB limit for each drive. But now I have to find the best way to get everything over the Drobo and as efficiently as possible. If you have any thoughts on how best to proceed, I’d love to hear from you!

It’s always fun to buy new equipment!

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Today I received shipment of the MB-D10 Multi-Power Battery Grip to be used with my Nikon D300. And I cannot wait to put it into use!

I recently watched DTown TV, hosted by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. I love this show! On a recent episode they talked about the MB-D10 and how with using 8 AA batteries you can get 8 frames per second from the D300. Since I shoot a lot of baseball games, I figured this would be a great addition to my setup.

Ordering from B&H is always a pleasure and some day I am actually going to get to see their store in New York City. Then with the informative UPS tracking system I could confirm the expected delivery date and watch the packages make their way to my front door. Amazing! It sure beats the Pony Express!

Opening new camera equipment is fun, too. So fun, in fact, that I always forget to take a photo of the unopened package sitting before me. Oh well, now it’s time to start putting this puppy into use!