Attention Amateur Photographers: It's Not About the Camera

I was photographing my local high school hockey team last night and there was a father of a player on the opposing team alongside me.  As photographers secretly always do, we were both sneaking peeks at the other's choice of camera and lenses.  He had a high-end Canon camera and lens, both of which are often seen in the hands of professionals.  He held the camera dearly, shooting and immediately checking the results on the camera's LCD screen, and seemed genuinely interested in why I was just standing there calmly watching the teams warm up, my camera snuggled in my bag.  Surely I couldn't know what I was doing.

During the player introductions, I pulled the camera out, took one test shot, and stood at attention during the national anthem, while he was still shooting and frowning at the results.  Once the game was about to begin, we exchanged pleasantries, and that's when the chat-fest began.  He was having trouble getting good color rendition, exposure, and asked me what I was doing.  I explained that I had previously set a custom white balance for the ice rink so that my colors were perfect, and I know the light levels in the rink, so that my exposures were always consistent.

Sports Team Portraits a Different Way

Field hockey team that was composited from 26 individual photos of the individual athletes

Luke Photography has been working with the booster clubs at the local high school do create unique and interesting team and individual portraits of the high school athletes. Sports are really a big part of Fairport High School's environment, and they really were interested in something different than the tried-and-true standard athletic photos that most teams get.

Lighting set up:
Overhead beauty dish, two gridded soft boxes
left and right behind the subject, and an umbrella
on the background

After arranging for use of the school's cafeteria, I set up my mobile studio using a four light setup and grey paper background.  The main light on the subject is an overhead strobe in a 24 inch beauty dish, which gives off a soft but edgy light that I love for athletic portraits. There are two strobes placed diagonally behind the subject that are outfitted with medium-sized gridded soft boxes. These lights provide nice separation light behind the subject, and are usually placed to match the digital that I plan on putting behind the subjects. Finally, there is a strobe that is bounced out of an umbrella that lights up the background.

The Fairport Modified girls' softball team ready
for their Hollywood close-up.

Raw image

The raw image out of the camera looks like this. A quick pass of retouching is usually done on the face, if there are any blemishes or shadows that can easily be taken care of.

Background stripped out

I usually Topaz Remask, a Photoshop plug-in, to strip out the subject from the background.  Each player can be done in 8-10 seconds.

New background image inserted behind subject

A new digital background is placed behind the subject. I create many of my own urban backgrounds (e.g parking garages, industrial buildings, etc.), but these stadium backgrounds were purchased from StreetscapeBackgrounds.

Raw image

To create the composited team  portrait, I photograph each player facing directly towards the camera, then at a 45-degree angle to the right, then to the left. Using Adobe Lightroom to filter through the images, I pick the best image of each player, trying to get equal numbers of "lefts" and "rights", and several facing directly at the camera.

Background stripped out

Using Topaz Remask, the subject is stripped out of the background.

Using Adobe Photoshop, each player is placed into the image, row-by-row to create a pleasing arrangement.  There are multiple blank layers that are added above and below each player's layer on which I brush in shadows, which would occur naturally if the team was actually photographed all together. These shadows make all the difference in the image, and although time consuming, turns this from a run-of-the-mill fake image into one where most of the parents can't believe the athletes were not all photographed together. 

When complete, there are often 45-50 layers in the Photoshop file: one for each player, at least one shadow layer per player, and several other shadow layers where their feet are touching the ground. In the photo above, several players were wearing flip flops or were in stocking feet, so the team name banner covers up the bare feet of the front row players that could not be hidden in the back row.

Everyone is still smiling when they're done.

The JV hockey team shown below was one of the first teams that I created this way.  The individual player's photos again were close ups of their faces in front of a really nice rink background.  When the hockey parents show the team photos around, I soon had baseball, field hockey, softball, football, boy's lacrosse and girl's volleyball teams on board.  

Many people ask me why I photograph team portraits this way, because it is much more a time investment than just lining a team up and photographing them all together.  First and foremost, it allows me to get great, consistent light on each and every player's face.  This is not always easy to do in a large group.  The accent lights that appear on each player's face helps define it and delineate it from the players behind them.  There is no way this accent light would get onto the player's faces at the center of the group if they were all photographed together simultaneously.  The second reason is that it looks different. Being different gets you noticed.  Executing this different vision on a consistent basis keeps you moving forward, onward and upward.

One of the first team composites that I created.
Once other teams caught wind of this , they were lining up to take part

Lighting a Gymnasium for Sports

Nikon speedlight, battery and wireless sync

When HS seniors that are athletes come through the studio for their senior portraits, I like to support the teams they play for.  During this time of the year, I am fairly active with winter sports.  Because a large majority of the HS seniors that came through the studio this year were athletes, I find myself out many nights or weekend mornings at boys' and girls' basketball games, hockey games and wrestling matches.

Even thought modern SLR cameras work extremely well in low-light conditions, I am not thrilled with the quality of light that most high school gymnasiums provide, so I like to supplement the existing light with my one.  This does two things: 1) help stop the action; and B). helps to add definition to the athletes, depending on where the lights are placed.

The End of a Kodak Era

This week Kodak announced that it was getting out of the camera business in order to save money.  No, that’s not a typo.  The company that brought photography to the masses in 1884 is exiting the business.

Kodak did not invent the camera.  Cameras were around for decades before.  In fact, the first known photograph dates back to 1825.  For the next 60 years, large box cameras were used to expose light onto glass or metal plates that were coated with light-sensitive materials, making it a very time intensive and laborious process.  Taking photographs often involved a strong-willed photographer, a couple of Sherpas, and a mule train to carry all the equipment.

What George Eastman did when he patented roll film in 1885 was to make it easier for everyday people to take photographs, without Sherpas or mule teams.  He coined the phrase “YouPush the Button, We Do the Rest”, which described the process by which a camera owner would send the whole camera back to Kodak when the roll was completely shot, and Kodak would process the film, make prints, and load film back in the camera, which it would then return to the owner.

Kodak started making cameras in 1891, introduced the No.2 Brownie in 1903 (which basically invented the photography enthusiast), and invented the first digital camera by Steve Sasson in 1975.

Fast-forward all the way to 1999, when I worked in Kodak Professional, testing the DCS professional digital cameras.  Kodak would buy camera bodies from Canon and Nikon and strip out all the film parts and replace them with all the digital components.  Half the Canon cameras would have a Kodak logo on them and were sold by Kodak, and half got the Canon logo and were sold by Canon.  Likewise with the Nikon cameras.

These cameras were the best digital cameras in the world.  I remember watching events like the Super Bowl, and noticed that at least 90% of the photographers on the sidelines were using Kodak cameras.  Only a photography geek would notice that, although I apologize to no one for that.  The cameras were also used by photojournalists all over the world, who happily used the amazing 2-megapixel cameras and could send photos all over the world…within hours…not days as with film.  We laugh at that now...but at the time, they were the cat's pajamas.

I also worked on the DCS Pro Back system, which was a 16-megapixel back that would fit on a medium format camera.  The camera back was amazing, but at $10,000, you weren’t expecting to sell a lot of them.  I felt very fortunate to be able to use that system, knowing that it was going to go into the hands of the best commercial photographers in the world.

In 2001 or 2002, Nikon introduced their own digital SLR camera.  Although it didn’t have all the bells and whistles, it was priced at about half of what the Kodak cameras were selling for.  I remember it being really quiet around the Kodak offices for almost a week.  As other camera manufacturers came up to speed on digital technology, other cameras came to market.  None of them had the quality of the Kodak digital SLRs, but they were good enough for the common man.  Sales of the Kodak cameras dropped, and Kodak Professional stopped making professional digital SLRs in 2005.  And this week, the announcement came that consumer cameras would no longer be made.

It is the end of an era.  I have a collection of old Kodak cameras, some dating back to the 1920s.  As a Rochester resident, the home of Kodak, we lived and breathed Kodak cameras our whole lives….for the better part of 120 years.  Until this week.  Now we get to witness Kodak moving off in another direction.