A bit behind due to some good (vacation) and bad (loss of a family member and health scare with another who’s now fine). While on vacation I managed a few shoots and some images of those are coming beginning tonight. I did a couples shoot with a local model (which is a rare thing) and her boyfriend. She’s still fairly new and this was the first time he’d ever modeled. Overall I think they came out pretty nice.
This post is more personal and has little to do with photography. For those here for just photography related subjects you may safely skip it.
Death is the one thing that I think defines humanity more than any other. Alone among the inhabitants of our planet we are aware of our own mortality. Animals feel fear of the things such as predators that may hurt or kill them, but only humanity is aware that we will never avoid every ill and someday we will die.
The reason that I think death defines us is because much of what we do is a degree a defiance of the inevitability of it. We know that we cannot live forever, but we insist on creating, learning, and building. We build friendships and love each other though we know that some day the loss of some of those we care for will leave us with an absence and the pain that comes from knowing a part of our life is now gone forever. We know that the joys of the time we have together will more than compensate for the loss we may someday feel.
We also strive against this inevitability by creation. People have children in part as a way to pass part of themselves on to the future. Most of us try to leave the world improved in our time on it so that those who come after we are gone will benefit from the work we’ve done. Artists create works of art do try to capture the world as it is or how we wish it to be for the future. We all wish to leave something behind when we pass on as a marker on the world that we existed and that our time here mattered. My personal photography is partly an attempt to capture the vitality and beauty of life knowing that it is a precious gift that should be cherished.
An uncle passed away a few days ago and I write this after attending his funeral earlier tonight. He was a good man and lived a long and good life. The funeral home was filled with his family, friends, and the friends of his children and grandchildren tonight. When I say it was filled, I do mean that almost the entire chapel was full. In the end that is perhaps the best indicator of the value of a life.
I grew up very religious, but have lost some of my faith through the slings and briars of life. I still believe that something awaits us beyond this life and do believe that he is in a better place beyond the pain and suffering of life. That said, I think when one is gone and is missed and loved and remembered in the hearts of those he touched in life, then one has truly cheated death by living on with those who remain.
So to my uncle I big a fond adieu and the thanks that I had the chance to know him in this life. I also have the knowledge that I am a better person for having him in my family and knowing him.
I’m currently in the middle of a run of shoots. For some reason my artistic nude work tends to mostly come in clusters and I’m currently in the middle of a busy stretch of time. I just came back from a short vacation and while out of town I took the opportunity to connect with a model I’d worked with a number of years ago and shoot with her. Later in the day for lunch I met a friend and the topic of my photography came up. A question that I get often from friends came up, so let me answer the question here. What follows is my answer to why do I photograph nudes?
I live in a rural area in East Tennessee, a place that I think by most standards would be considered conservative. It’s a good place, with a lot of things to recommend it, but as a place to work in artistic nude photography, it’s not the center of any universe. Doing nude photography here is hard under the best of circumstances because of the lack of good models open to nude work and a pervasive belief by so many people that nudity = sex and taking photos of nudes = porn. The later concern is not just around here though. Americans in general seem to have a bit of a general love/hate relationship with nudity, but here it’s probably worse than many places.
I’ve been asked a couple of times by close friends, ones I trust, if I worry about any repercussions from the photographic work that I do. Photography isn’t my main source of making a living, the job that pays the mortgage as I often refer to it, but more of a side job or hobby. I enjoy my “real” job. I’m good at it and I feel it lets me make the world a better place. I know that going to a job you enjoy every day is a blessing and do not discount how lucky I am to have found that. It’s not a job where my photographic work would be a direct threat to my employment, but I know there could be those there who would be offended or somehow see it as wrong given how easily many are offended. It’s the main reason I started working under the alias of Candid Vision instead of my real name shortly after I began to work with the female nude as my primary subject of interest. I don’t hide what I do, but at the same time I don’t put a sign on my office door either.
Why do I shoot nudes? It’s because ultimately I’m drawn to the female form. That’s been the case honestly for as long as I remember. Even before I was old enough to really understand sex, something about the female shape intrigued me. When I began to start working in photography, I was instantly drawn to the female nude as a subject. In some ways it felt that I found a part of my life that had always been missing, the ability to express the artistic view of how I’ve always seen the body of a woman.
I don’t go as far as many and claim that there is no sexual aspect to the female nude. I think that sexuality can be present in an artistic photo and that you can have female nudes with elements of sexuality and eroticism that are not trashy or pornographic. The approach is that you treat those elements with respect toward the model and the viewer where it makes up part of the photo and not the sole purpose of the photo. I recently took some photos that I think capture this balance and will post them soon.
Ultimately I think that there is something in many people, myself included, that draws us to working with the human nude either as models, photographers, painters, or some other form of artist. I think we share a sense that general society’s view of nudity is missing something. Something seems lacking in the traditional view that being nude should be reserved for specific circumstances such as our most intimate partners which leads many to the lesson that is that there is something wrong or shameful about the human body. We do not see the human body as something to be ashamed about, but something wonderful to be cherished and explored.
I’ve known models who dealt with hostility from friends, family, and romantic partners over posing nude and some stopped working because of it. But for many something deep inside us drives us to work with the nude figure either posing nude or capture the nude form in paint or on camera. These two groups form a symbiotic relationship as the artist needs the model to pose as much as the model needs the artist to capture them. If I may borrow from Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, this need is a higher level construct. It is not a basic need like food or security, or friendship, but tied into esteem and self-actualization. It’s a part of what I need as a person to feel completed. It overrides these other concerns and the opinions of those who may disapprove of my work. That is why I shoot nudes.
In my earlier post on equipment, I mentioned that equipment doesn’t matter as much as people might think. For proof see this video of what can be done using the camera in an iPhone. Again it’s technique that makes the difference.
A little late in posting this as I’ve been putting together a new gallery. Now that it’s up and working I have a few backlogged shoots to post about. Back in May I found myself in southwest Virginia and specifically in the lovely little town of Blacksburg for a few days. While there I had a chance to shoot with the lovely Rachel.
Working with models while traveling gives the chance to work with new models and the interesting challenges that come from limited equipment. In this case I only had what I could fit in a camera bag and part of a suitcase. The first problem that comes up usually is location and in this case we actually did the shoot in my hotel room when a hoped for spot fell through at the last minute.
Working in a hotel room is especially challenging given the small space of many hotel rooms. In this case I had Rachel, myself, and the friend she brought to the shoot leaving us a tight space. The key as in any shoot is to make your location work for you and not against you.
A few of my favorite photos and some thoughts about them.
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Rachel is a model with experience doing nude work. She’d brought a friend with her to the shoot so I wasn’t worried about making her feel safe as much as making her feel comfortable working with me. I usually do this by starting with some non-nude work. It gives me a chance to build some interaction with the model in a more relaxed environment than when the clothes come off. I also thought that lingerie images would go well with the bedding of this hotel room. I think the expression on her face sells this one as it adds a sense of playfulness sexiness to it. The lighting for the photo was done by pointing a Canon 580 Speedlight on the camera hot shoe straight up where it bounced off the ceiling and then down onto her. |
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Here Rachel is posed next to a window. It was late evening when we did the shoot and we had bright indirect sunlight coming in the window to the room. For most of the shoot I left the curtains closed, but for a series of shots I placed her at the window lit only by the sunlight coming in. The room was on the second floor and looked out over the mostly empty parking lot of an apartment complex. While comfortable working nude, Rachel did have some concerns about being seen from outside standing next to the window so we left the translucent curtain in place. In this photo I like the way the shadows clearly highlighting her curves and general form along with the sad look on her face. I intentionally broke one rule by cropping away space she’s looking into in favor of show the emptiness behind her which I think gives it more of a lonely feel. |
I also enjoy these more candid type images (hence the title of this blog). It looks like it could be a picture of Rachel getting ready for her day or even a background photo taken while getting ready for the shoot. Someone asked me if I thought of taking out the tattoo, but I like the aspect of her personality that it gives to the image. The photo is of Rachel’s reflection in the bathroom mirror. The biggest problem in taking this photo was finding an angle I liked while keeping myself out of the reflection in the tight quarters of a hotel bathroom.
Exposure is the amount of light you allow to reach the film or image sensor when you take a photo. This amount of light is largely determined by the aperture and shutter speed you set along with the ISO of your image sensor or film which we covered in the last article.
A scene has an exposure that determines the amount of light needed to correctly light the scene. The exposure needed for a scene is generally measured in exposure values or EV. An EV of zero represents the exposure obtained from an aperture of f/1 along with shutter speed of 1 second and an ISO of 100. Every change you make that halves the amount of light such as doubling the shutter speed or halving the aperture will increase the exposure by 1 EV. So a scene with an EV of 5 represents half the light that an EV of 4 does. This means that an aperture of f/5.6 (which is 5 stops or ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ the light) with the shutter speed left at 1 second and ISO left at 100 would result in an EV of 5. If we leave the aperture at f/5.6 and reduce our shutter speed to 1/125 of a second while leaving the ISO at 100, we would now have an EV of 12 as 1 second to 1/125 of a second is 7 stops (or ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½ x ½) less light.
Most digital cameras can meter a scene and provide a pretty accurate exposure in most cases. This is usually a mode on the camera called something like automatic or automatic exposure. There might be several of these modes that give varying degrees of freedom to control settings other than shutter speed and aperture. The camera does this by analyzing the amount of light that is reflected off of the scene and back to the camera.
You can also use a light meter to determine the exposure for a scene. Most light meters can measure the light reflected back much as the meter inside your digital camera does. You can also use a light meter to measure the amount of light that is falling on the scene directly. This is called incident light. We will talk about light meters and using them in the next entry in this series.
There are also a few handy rules of thumb that can give you the exposure needed for a scene. The rule of 16 is a common one that states on a sunny day the correct exposure would be achieved with an ISO of 100, an aperture of f/16 along with a shutter speed of 1/100 second.
However you arrive at the exposure needed for the scene, once you have it the next task is to determine what combination of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO that you wish to use to produce this light. You will generally be mostly concerned with aperture and shutter speed with the ISO set to allow correct exposure. As we mentioned in the last article, shutter speed primarily allows you to freeze or show motion while aperture allows you to control depth of field or how much of your photo is in focus. After setting either aperture or shutter speed depending on what you wish to do in the photo, you must then set the other along with the ISO to produce the correct exposure to capture an image.
Once you have set the three to produce the perfect exposure you will sometimes find that things are a little off. The shutter speed may be a little too long allowing blurring of the subject or the aperture may be too large blurring parts of the image you wish to keep in focus. The benefit of knowing exposure is that you can adjust these values and keep them in balance. The concept of the stop, a change that doubles or halved the amount of light falling on the sensor, allows us to make an adjustment and keep the exposure in balance.
For example if your image is taken with a shutter speed of 1/60 second, and ISO of 100, and an aperture of f/5.6. You find that the subject of you photo is moving too much and blurry. So you decide to reduce the shutter speed to 1/125. This halves the amount of light reaching the sensor so you’ve decreased the exposure one stop. To compensate you must either increase the aperture one stop to f/4 or decrease the ISO one stop to 50.
This also allows you to make compensations if your image is underexposed (too little light reaching the sensor) or overexposed (too much light reaching the sensor). If your image is overexposed then you can decrease the aperture or shorten the shutter speed will reduce the amount of light falling on the sensor. A small adjustment will bring a slightly off image into balance.
The digital camera is the perfect tool for learning exposure because your results show immediately through the LCD on the back along with the ability to display the histogram for each image. Looking at the image on the back will visually allow you to tell if the image doesn’t look right. The histogram is a graph that represents how light is distributed in your photo. The left end represents the shadows or dark areas of the photo while the right end represents the highlights or bright areas. In the middle are the mid-tones of your photo.
A properly exposed image should look like a nice gentle curve starting at zero on the left, be higher in the middle, and then drop down to zero again on the right like this:
An underexposed image the histogram will show will be shifted to the left starting above zero on the left usually meaning there is image data “lost” in the shadows. In an overexposed image, the histogram will be shifted to the right ending with the histogram at above zero meaning that there is data likely lost in the highlights. Don’t worry as much about the heights of the bars or the overall shape, but if there is a sign that data is being lost off either the right or left side.
With digital cameras it is easier to correct underexposure than overexposure. If you shoot in RAW mode (more about this to come) then you can pull data out of a slightly underexposed image, but things in an overexposed area are usually lost.
Sorry that the next article in my Getting Started series is running late. The next article is on exposure and I wasn’t happy with the first draft. I’d hoped to post one article a week, but I’d rather get a good article posted late than a bad one on time. Look for it later this week or during the weekend.
I have created a page that will list all the articles and provide updates in the getting started guide that I’ve begun. This page will be found here or in the Pages list to the right.
When it comes to photography, the most important element that you must master is light. I’ve heard photography referred to as painting with light. That is because the basic element of your image is exposure, the amount of light that falls on the film or image sensor when taking a photograph. It sounds like a simple concept, but as with most simple things there are complications. Today we are going to talk about the three basic elements that together make up exposure. The three elements are shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Let’s take each of these individually first. Balancing these elements to achieve the results that you want in your photos will be a crucial skill in bringing your artistic vision to your photographs.
Shutter speed is simply how long the shutter is open and the film or image sensor is exposed to light. It should be obvious that the longer the shutter is open, the more light will reach the sensor and the brighter the image will be. The other effect of leaving the shutter open longer is that any motion by the subject will appear on the final image. This can sometimes be a desirable effect. For example when photographing a waterfall you will often want the movement of the water over the falls to show on the image and this can be achieved by lengthening the time the shutter is open. In general fast shutter speeds freeze motion while a slow shutter speed will blur motion.
Shutter speeds are expressed in a fraction of seconds. A digital SLR camera will normally show only the bottom part of the fraction. For example a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second, meaning the shutter is open for one two hundredth of a second, will usually show on the camera as 200. Times greater than or equal to one second will normally show the number or seconds along with an indicator, often an s, to show that it should be seen as seconds and not a fraction of a second. A change in the shutter speed that either doubles (for example changing from 1/200 to 1/100) or halves it (changing from 1/200 to 1/400) will double or halve the amount of light that reaches the sensor respectively. This change is often referred to as a stop.
The biggest problem that can occur with longer shutter speeds is camera shake, where the movement of the camera causes the image to blur. It takes surprisingly little movement to introduce a blur into the image. A good rule is that with a steady hand you can generally use an exposure of 1 over the focal length of the lens or shorter without worrying about camera shake. With image stabilization on the camera or lens or developing a way to steady your hand, you can often get away with a longer exposure than that rule would indicate. For very long exposures a tripod can provide a stable camera platform.
Most cameras have a mode call shutter priority mode that allows you to set a desired shutter speed and the camera will determine the aperture to provide a proper exposure.
Where shutter speed determines how long light is allowed to reach the sensor or film, aperture is how large the opening light comes through is set. As you might guess the larger the aperture, the brighter the image with the shutter speed and ISO set the same as more light will be allowed in to the image.
The effect of aperture on an image is to control the depth of field, or how much of your image is in focus. You can think of depth of field as the distance in front of and behind the point of focus or focal point of your image that will be in focus. A larger aperture will have a smaller depth of field than a smaller aperture. So the larger your aperture, the more of the image will be in focus. Commonly in portrait photography, the aperture is set to be large so the subject is in focus and the background will be softly blurred. In a landscape image you would normally want a small aperture so the entire landscape is sharp and crisp.
Aperture is expressed in terms of f-stops such as f/2, f/4, etc. Again as with shutter speed most cameras only show the number so that f/2 will be shown by the camera as 2 and f/22 will be shown by the camera as 22. When determining if you have a large or small aperture, remember that these are fractions so an aperture of f/2 (shown on the camera as 2) will actually be larger than an aperture of f/4 (shown on the camera as 4). Moving from one aperture (such as f/4) to the next (such as f/5.6) is referred to as one stop. Note that a stop is not quite a simple doubling or halving of the number as it is with shutter speed (and ISO to come). A list of the full stops you’ll encounter most are:
f/2 f/2.8 f/4 f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16 f/22 f/32
Moving from one of these to the next is a full stop. Many camera lenses will have settings between these full stop values that are either ½ or 1/3 of a stop each. For example the lens I have on my camera right now gives me these aperture options:
f/4.5 f/5 f/5.6 f/6.3 f/7.1 f/8 f/9 f/10 f/11 f/13 f/14 f/16 f/18 f/20 f/22 f/25 f/29
Each lens will have a range of f-stops that it is capable of providing. The minimum and maximum apertures the lens is capable of will normally be printed on it or in the documentation with the lens. You will often hear the terms fast and slow to describe a lens. This is in reference to the maximum aperture of the lens. A lens with a maximum aperture of f/8 is slower than one with a maximum aperture of f/4.5.
Most cameras have a mode that allows you to set the aperture to a desired value and the camera will calculate the appropriate shutter speed to produce a correct exposure.
ISO is how sensitive that your film or sensor is to light. This is measured as ISO or ISO equivalent for digital cameras. The normal ISO for outside on a sunny day is 100. A doubling scale is used with ISO and most digital cameras will start at ISO 100 and go up from there. Increasing the ISO will produce a brighter image with the shutter speed and aperture left constant.
Most digital cameras produce the best quality image at their lowest ISO setting. As you increase the ISO you will begin to introduce unwanted noise into the image. This noise will usually appear in a digital image as a multicolor grain or dots in the image. Some sensors will see more noise than others, but as ISO increases an increase in noise is unavoidable. Most modern digital cameras can produce acceptable images even at higher ISO values. If quality of the image is most important, then you want to use the lowest ISO value that you can.
Now that we’ve discussed the three basic concepts, next time we will discuss more how they relate with the idea of exposure and how to use them together to get the images that you want.
Recently I had someone ask me for advice about buying a new camera. They were looking for something more advanced than the point and shoot model they’d had in the past and wanted a more advanced digital SLR camera. While they have no interest in using it for the same type of photography that I do, it brought to mind something that I’d first considered back when I worked with Melissa in late March. Working with her again almost four years after our first shoot gave me a chance to consider some of the things that I’d learned between the two shoots. So I’m beginning a series of posts today written for anyone thinking about or just starting to do nude photography. I hope to cover equipment, basic concepts, locations, finding models, working with models, and some tips and ideas to get started. My goal is not to cover every detail or concept about creating great nude photos, but to share some tips and advice from what I’ve learned over the last four years. Basically these are the things that I wish I’d known back when I first started.
In this first post we’ll start with equipment. This will be a short one because to be honest equipment doesn’t matter as much as most people think. I say that as someone who will spend hours researching any technology related purchase. There are basically two types of cameras. The first types consists of point and shoot models that are mainly designed for simple operation. They make most of the decisions for you and are often very compact. These are great for the types of photos that most people want to make. That is quick shots to capture memories with friends and family. The second type is the SLR or single lens reflex camera named for the mirror system that directs light from the lens to either the viewfinder or image sensor/film. When the camera uses an image sensor instead of film, they are usually referred to as digital SLR or DSLR cameras. The first obvious difference of the DSLR from the point and shoot is that the DSLR camera will be larger. It also features interchangeable lenses that can be changed depending on the type of photos being taken. They also normally offer much greater control when taking the photo. The other big advantage is that what you see through the viewfinder is exactly what photo you will take. Many DSLR cameras also offer a way to preview effects such as depth of field that will be seen on the final photo which is critical in certain types of photography. You may have guessed that you’ll want the control and features that a DSLR offers for any kind of advanced photography. Artistic nude photography in particular often needs careful lighting and control that only a DSLR can provide.
There are many brands of good cameras and other equipment out there and I’m not going to get into what brand is better because ultimately it doesn’t matter as much as most people think. You can go out and buy the same guitar and amplifier as Eddie Van Halen or Stevie Ray Vaughn, but when you play it’s still going to sound like you playing the guitar. Likewise you can buy the exact same camera gear as your photography hero, but you will be the one taking the photos. You need to know and learn how to get the most out of your equipment. Technical ability is the start, not the end of producing work that you’re proud of showing to others.
As I stated, you’ll want the control and extra functionality that a DSLR offers, but don’t feel that you need to buy the top of the line pro model and a dozen different lenses before you take a single photo. Start small and keep things affordable. Photography equipment can be expensive and it’s easy to spend a lot of money very quickly if you’re not careful. By starting small you can learn your equipment and when you start to hit the limitations of the equipment that you have, you’ll know it’s time look at an upgrade. A couple of sites that I like and use when considering new purchases are Digital Photography Review and Digital Camera Resource Page. Reading a number of sites to get a variety of opinions will serve you well and before buying any camera you should definitely hold it in your hands to make sure you like how it feels and can work the buttons and controls easily.
And just for the record, I use a Canon camera.
Once you have a camera, you will likely want at least one light. Natural light and sunlight can go a long way (and for some things may be all that you need), most photographers of the nude will want at least one flash. Again starting small with a single light is a good path to take. For good examples and demonstrations of what can be done with just one flash, check out Strobist. The Lighting 101 article there is a great place to start, but ultimately you will need to learn lighting by practice and experimentation. Learn to use one light and use it well before you begin to buy or bring in more lights.
One other piece of equipment to consider is a light meter. There is a lot of debate on whether you really need one given the digital camera’s ability to let you see results instantly on the back of the camera. After a long time in that camp, I’ve recently started using a light meter in shooting and am finding it quite useful, especially when working with rapidly changing outdoor conditions and complex lighting effects. I’ll discuss using a light meter in a later entry, but for now I’m going to suggest getting a light meter, but also state that you can get along without one for quite a while.
I’ve tried to suggest frugality in your equipment. You do get what you pay for to a degree in photography equipment. In most cases lenses, cameras, and lights that cost more do so because they have better quality or more features (though there are always exceptions). That said, for a beginner, you probably don’t need many of these advanced features. The key is to buy solid equipment when starting out, but to be smart about spending money. Good reviews are your best route here as any advice I give today on models will be outdated next week.
In our next article in the series, we’ll discuss the three basic concepts of photography you must learn: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed.