A Photographer Should Be In Every Photograph

Team Building at Luke Photography.
This is where I literally and figuratively put myself into my photography.

I saw a question recently that struck home with me….and I think the answer should be blatantly obvious to anyone in any creative field.

“What’s more important as a photographer… to remove yourself from the photograph, or to make the photograph about you as a photographer?”  - fashion photographer Jay McLaughlin

See the Light, Not the Camera

I just saw a really great quote about photography, and it really resonated with me, especially after the last session I just shot:

Beginning photographers think about cameras.
Intermediate photographers think about composition.
Advanced photographers think about light. 

The photography industry has been bombarded with new photographers in the last 5 or so years, now that digital cameras have come down in price, and produce such high quality results.  Now stop right there if you think this article is going to lambaste all those new photographers.  Let's get beyond that.

1-on-1 Training

I received an e-mail over a month ago from a photographer that attended an all-day seminar I gave during the May 2011 Super Monday program I put on sponsored by the PPA.  She enjoyed the class, and really wanted to get a little more education under her belt.  She was getting nowhere with other photographers in her area, so she wondered, if she drove the 2.5 hours to my studio, would I give her an all-day, 1-on-1 training.

The DoubleTree Hotel Knows Customer Service

I was in the middle leg of a three-part trip that took me from my home in Rochester to NYC for the day, then an evening flight to Chicago, where I was to meet a client the next day.

I had to wake at 4am to catch a 6am flight to LaGuardia.  I ate two bagels when I landed.  Breakfast accomplished.  I worked all day...skipping lunch...at a client's location, then proceeded on to what is normally a half-hour drive to the airport to catch my flight to Chicago.  After two hours in traffic, I got to the airport, ran through security, ran through the terminal, ran to my gate and was the last one to board the flight.  The plane pushed away from the gate at 7pm, and we didn't take off until 8pm.  For dinner, I had a wonderful can of ginger ale as I sat cramped in my seat, elbow-to-elbow with my seatmates, with my underwear giving me a screaming wedgie.

Free Generic Photos on Your Website Cost More Than You Think

Sure...using free or low-cost stock generic images on your web site can be quite a cost effective means of adding content to your website,  but like the old adage says, "You get what you pay for".

The New York Times published a recent study by Jakob Nielsen, a web site consultant and author of several books about web design and user interface.  The research showed that most people that browse web sites ignore royalty-free or generic images that were purchased from stock agencies.  Not only that, but the images only added clutter to the page and didn’t necessarily help from a business standpoint.

Just a Pinch of Light - DIY Grid Snoots

Chefs who cook without recipes go on instinct, knowing when to add a pinch of ‘this’, or a pinch of ‘that’.  If a newbie cook were learning from them, they’d ask: “how much is a pinch”?  Almost always, the answer would be: “it’s just the right amount, and you’ll know if it is too much.  Like the kid who gets his pudgy cheeks pinched by his scary Aunt Betty, too much is too much.

Photographers cook with light.  As you get better and better at it, you start realizing when and where you need a pinch of light to set your image apart from everything else out there.  Often, an umbrella or soft box over your light source will add too much light.  Like the kid with the pinched cheeks, you’ll get all irritated and run screaming into the other room.

Beauty and the Booth

 

I’ve been getting a lot of comments from the HS Seniors and their parents when they look at the images after the HS Senior portrait sessions:  “Wow! That looks like it should be in a magazine!”  Well, what is it about the images that say to them ‘it should be in a magazine’?

Well, it takes a nice looking model.  That’s a ginormous step in the right direction, but it is not always necessary.  But there is one thing that links all these images together: the lighting.  During high school senior sessions, I set up a Beauty Booth, which is a lighting set up used by…you guessed it....photographers that shoot magazine cover shots.  It’s not always an easy set up, seeing that I employ five different lights to get it to look the way I want it to.  However, instead of spending thousands of dollars on equipment, I’ve manufactured much of it myself…and that money instead stays in my pocket.  Here's how it's done.

Beach Photography Quiz – The Lightning Round

One of my recent high school seniors, Becky from Churchville-Chili, requested that we photograph part of her session on the beach at Lake Ontario, because she likes to spend time there with her friends.  I was happy to oblige, because I don’t get many requests to shoot on the beach.  We scheduled her session for later in the day, so we could finish at the beach near sundown.

As we were driving north to the beach, I could see some nasty-looking clouds ahead.  About 5 minutes from the beach, the clouds unleashed a new challenge in the form of lightning bolts out over the lake.  Several questions popped into my head:

       1.      Does she still want to hit the beach?

       2.      How desperate am I to please this client?

       3.      How many shots can I get in before the lighting gets in a shot of its own?

The Ladder to Success

I was faced with a dilemma recently: how do you photograph a tennis player differently than everyone else does?  Tennis takes place on the ground, on a standard sized court, in daylight.  Usually.  That is, unless you fly over Arthur Ashe Stadium in NY in the evening and get to see the US Open Tennis Championships from 800 feet in the air, like I did last night.  I swear I could hear Maria Sharapova grunting from that high up.

Kayla is a Rush-Henrietta high school senior who plays tennis.  When she came to my studio, and I felt like I owed her something different…something that no one else had.  It required a change of perspective…a different point of view.  After photographing her near the net in different standing and sitting poses, I brought out a new weapon: an 8 ft. step ladder.

“So the Man Says to the Duck…”

 

The greatest thing about having babies enrolled in my Lifetime of Memories program is that I get to photograph these children up to four times in the first year of their life.  Patrick Luke of Luke Photography, recently photographed one year old Zachary, who I’d photographed as a six-month old.  Between these two sessions, he had surgery to correct an issue with his eyes which caused double vision.  He was quiet and well-behaved during his six-month session with double vision, but he was downright giddy during his year-old session.  I’m guessing that he finally got a good look at what my face looked like…and he couldn’t stop laughing.