The City of Sydney Council is running a photography course and Sydney Commercial Photography will be teaching it. The course is 5 weeks long starting Saturday the 4th of June and the cost is just $113.

Class will be hands on, students must bring their cameras each week and will have an opportunity to practice the techniques during the lesson. Homework will be given each week.

Course content:
Changing your mindset to take control of your camera.
Camera basics: aperture, shutter speed, metering modes and focus.
Flash: how to use and get good results from your flash.
How to light and take portraits using natural or studio lighting.
How to deal with bright and low light outdoors.
Very basic introduction to studio lighting (with a chance to give it a go).

Course Information:
The course will start on the 4th of June and run for 5 Saturdays 10am to 12pm, finishing on the 2nd of July. One class may be exchanged for a night excursion should there be class interest. The course will be held at the Juanita Nielsen Community Centre, Corner of Nicholson and Dowling Streets Woolloomooloo.

See the facebook event page and be sure to ‘like’ SCPhoto while you are there.

To book phone the Council on 8374 6323 or email them at jnlc@cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au. Cash bookings can be made directly at the community centre.

Sydney Commercial Photography is expanding. We are looking for a casual photographer.

Amount of work will vary from week to week and depends on our workload, but one third time to be expected. The person we are seeking would need to be computer literate, reliable and have at least some experience in photography including lighting scenes. Assessment of your current photography skill level and training will be provided. We want somebody who can grow with the company. Outstanding candidates with no professional photographic experience may be considered.

We are located a short walk from either Erskineville or Redfern train station. Majority of work is business hours, though occasionally outside business hours.

If you feel you meet our criteria and have a passion for photography: email both your resume AND a description of a recent cool/fun/serious photography project you have worked on. Address correspondence to Alex Green at our main email address.

Job advert on JobSerach.gov.au, and GumTree.

The SCPhoto blog posts seem to be gaining a style; general tips and tricks on the topic followed by deconstructing an example image. Today we will be covering tips on macro using available light. A future post will cover macro using flash.

Get close to the insects:

Every shots in this post was taken in one sitting. One very long sitting; five hours ‘small game hunting’. When you can figure out an insect’s behaviour, you can get closer to it. Some insects will stay while you remain still but flee if you move towards them. Try lying still and use your free hand or a stick to shoo the insects toward the camera. The subjects in these shots were typically 10-15cm from the camera.

Be Careful with the focus:

The depth of focus becomes shallower the closer you move in. Focus will be razor thin; use this to your make your shots interesting. A lot of throwaway images will be due to bad focus.  For live insects use auto focus. Even so, think about the focus for every shot. Which focus point is your camera using? With subjects parallel to the film plane (photo above) you can get away with less depth of focus. Always try to get the eyes of the insect in focus (click twice on shot below to see full size).

Lighting Insects:

Without even trying you can get some fantastic lighting with macro shots. As always think about what light is falling on your subject and your positioning. Don’t be afraid to carry a white piece of paper or Styrofoam to use as a reflector where a bit more, or different, light is needed. The shot below was taken in direct afternoon sun giving a warm feel.

Enjoy the Colours:

The background will be so far out of focus that it is going to turn into an abstract colour scape. The shot above shows green mixed with brown which gives a stereotypically Australian look. Use the colours to your advantage.

Example Photo and How it was Taken:

I love the shot below. But how was it taken? It was taken at 1/160 shutter speed and f6.3 aperture with a 50mm macro lens. Aesthetically, three things make it look good.

1. At f6.3 the depth of field is ~2mm thin. Notice that the thin focal plane intersects the eye, one full antenna, the front legs and a swath of grass blade. This is good use of the available plane of focus.
2. The colours. Subtle and muted, but awesome, particularly in print. See “Enjoy the Colours” section above.
3. The perspective. Great photography presents people with an angle they have never seen. The moth below is 1cm by 1cm. No joke, and that is a blade of grass it is sitting on. Looking at the image you automatically assume it is larger, but strangely the eye and other aspects look out of proportion. This effect is easy to achieve with macro photography. Experiment and enjoy the process!

I recently stood in for an unwell baby photographer. Babies are both easy and hard to photograph. Easy as they are adorable and they take care of looking cute. Hard as they are unpredictable.

Happy babies make for great photographs: Always have the parents nearby and ensure they are enjoying the process. If the parents are happy, it rubs off on the baby. Use the parents to catch and direct the baby’s gaze. If the baby cries non-stop wait for it to catch its breath and capture a few frames; this works surprisingly well.

Posing babies: To get that ‘child like’ quality to the image you want to emphasise the big eyes and large head. To do this get in closer with a wider angle lens. This distorts the ‘depth of perspective’ (how 3D images are captured in two dimensions) . Experiment.

What to bring: Hand puppets and other toys have an amazing ability to capture the attention of kids. Don’t forget to bring wet-wipes to clean drool, backdrops and the props. Have the parents to bring two outfits.

How to light: Think about the lighting before you point the camera at your pride and joy. Light (but not direct sunlight) coming from a single window is a really good place to start. Have the window over your shoulder so the light hits the subject at an angle. If the lighting is too harsh or the shadows on the face are unpleasant use a reflector (anything white will do, even a piece of paper) to reflect some light from the opposite side.

How the example photo was taken: The baby in his adorable bear outfit was placed on a sheet of Perspex on a table. Two lights at the back white out the background. Two soft lights at the front light his face and body. These were placed symmetrically, but one was turned up brighter than the other. Amazingly the shot below has no ‘photoshopping’. Only colour and tone have been corrected. The edge of the Perspex blurred out very nicely. Focal length was 32mm and aperture was f10.

Ever wondered what it looks like behind the scenes on a professional photography shoot? Wonder no more, we are going behind the scenes at Sydney Commercial Photography. The first picture shows on-site product shots. Four lights are used, two are shaded and spill across the background to white it out. The remaining two are arranged to give either no shadows, or more frequently to throw a slight, but pleasing shadow to one side.

Keeping one light high and just forward of the product and the second one at a 45degree angle gives good control of contrast. Turing up the top light reduces shadows and lowers the contrast, turning up the second light, empathises the texture, throws a shadow and adds some mood to the product. This set up is in no way suitable for every product (that is why you hire an experienced photographer), but it is a safe place to start and suitable for situations requiring fast turnover. We covered about ~30 products with the above set up and here are some of the results.

Now we go behind the scenes with some brochure shots.  Not so pretty from this angle with all the equipment in the scene.

Here are the results. The lighting was changed for each scene and may differ from that shown above.

I have plenty more behind the scenes examples, but I will leave them for a future post. Contact us or use the comments (no login required, but they are moderated) to ask any questions.

And as always please recommend SCPhoto. Our work and our prices will impress you, and we always work hard to meet your business requirements.

-alex

This blog is brand new as of 21st Oct 2010 and replaces the old fashioned scphoto news page. Very soon (tomorrow hopefully) there will be posts with some substance. The plan is photography how-to articles that are short and to the point, behind the scenes images and occasional bits of scphoto news.

-alex