If you’re a PR photographer you probably know most of this stuff; if you’re commissioning PR photography you must read it. These are the opinions of exactly the person your PR shoot will end up in front of, so pay attention!

My favourite – “No line ups, no handshakes, no town mayors.” You’d be amazed the number of jobs I get asked to do where the best photo idea the client has is to line up a bunch of people and plonk the mayor in the middle. It doesn’t work.

I often find, when Googling to find other corporate or commercial photographers, that a large proportion of the results are actually for wedding photographers. Wedding photography and corporate photography are different. A great portfolio of wedding photographs (and wedding photography is difficult and demanding) does not show that the same photographer can take a great environmental portrait of an executive in a factory or an interesting photograph of a construction worker up in a cherry picker, or even a basic studio headshot.

Photographers all have their specialities and you should always look for a photographer who has a portfolio which shows the kind of work you want and a proven track record of delivering high quality work.

Here’s the link to the Skillset document - Corporate Photographer Job Profile

And here’s the main page, giving descriptions of other kinds of photography jobs - Photo Imaging Job Profiles

Now that I have done this so many times, I have a well tested setup for these shoots that has served me well in many different locations. However, it does involve a fair bit of kit and some setup time. Once the setup is complete I can shoot as fast as the people can put themselves in front of the camera!

This shoot for the Wales Audit office was carried out over two half-days and the client wanted three different backgrounds as well as headshot, half-length and full length portraits, looking left, looking right and smiling/serious. This added up to a LOT of different combinations and I had to work out a system to make sure I got all the required shots for each person as efficiently as possible.

Here’s the setup…

As you can see, I’m using red gels on the background lights to give a red background for one set of shots. Removing the gels gave me the pure white background and over on the left you can see the black cloth background clamped to a boom stand which I was able to swing into position for a pure black background. (with the back lights switched off of course!)

The main problem I had with the gelled red background was the low white ceiling causing a lot of light to bounce around and wash out the red colour. Since there was nothing I could do to prevent this (other than painting the ceiling black!) we got the best red we could and the client was happy with the results after checking them on screen.

I shot tethered in to the Powerbook you can see on the left so each person was able to see their pictures immediately and I was able to check that all the lights were firing and I wasn’t getting any nasty reflections in glasses etc.

Here’s just a few of the shots…

And that’s just one pose with each person! There were a lot more. Because all the lighting had been arranged carefully, I only needed each person for around 10-15 minutes to do all the background and pose combinations. In an ideal world each pose and background combination would have been lit differently with the lighting tailored to the individual picture, but there was no way we were going to have time for that. The lighting had to be designed to work as a compromise for all the shots.

Once we’d done all these I needed to get some more portraits of the auditor general. We had planned for around an hour with him in between meetings. However, at the last minute we discovered that he was going to be required for a live radio interview and then have just 15 minutes between arriving back (hopefully on time) and his next meeting.

I broke down all the lighting and worked on setting up lights around the office and corridors to enable me to move from one setup to the next as quickly as possible, so that when my subject arrived back we would be able to shoot straight away and not worry about lights, exposure, background etc.

I set up in four locations and did test shots with a stand-in. We waited for the arrival of my subject and then got to work…

Location 1:

Location 2 :

Location 3 :

Location 4 :

He got to his next meeting bang on time.

Are these photographs great artistic creations? No, not really. But the client got exactly what they needed with the minimum of fuss and disruption for their staff. If time is tight then my job is to make quick decisions about what is and isn’t possible under the circumstances. And then be prepared to change my plans when the circumstances change!

Being able to do shoots like this under pressure requires a thorough understanding of equipment and technique, good logistical skills, careful planning and a willingness and ability to change those plans and still get the job done.

This was shot on the Canon 85mm/f1.2 at settings of 1/100s at f1.6 on ISO800. That’s really dark! And they were moving about a lot! At 1/100s the only way to get anything pin sharp was to wait for moments when the action peaked and the dancers were relatively still.

Photographing dance is not easy but its the dancers that are doing most of the work for you – its just a naturally photogenic subject. As long as you get the technical aspects right, its hard not to get great pictures.

]]> http://www.simonridgwayphotography.co.uk/2009/07/random-shots-diversions-dance/feed/ 0 http://www.simonridgwayphotography.co.uk/2009/07/bits-bytes-dell-mini-9-mac-laptop-photographers/ http://www.simonridgwayphotography.co.uk/2009/07/bits-bytes-dell-mini-9-mac-laptop-photographers/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:45:13 +0000 simonridgway http://www.simonridgwayphotography.co.uk/?p=466 As a Mac user, I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing that Apple would design a smaller, more portable laptop (call it a netbook if you like) for working on the go. Something that would fit in a camera bag and be robust and easy to just whip out and quickly get online or check images out in the field.

Well, Apple have repeatedly said that they won’t do it. So, after waiting for this year’s WWDC and still no announcement, I decided to take matters into my own hands and go down the route of the “hackintosh” – a Windows machine, hacked to run Mac OS X.

My machine of choice was the Dell Mini 9 netbook. This is generally considered to be the most OSX compatible machine around and much work has been done by people way cleverer than me in order to get it all working as it should. I’m not going to go into the actual setup process, but will instead direct you to www.mydellmini.com where all the information you need is in the very friendly and knowledgable forums. All you need is a Mini 9 (preferably with a 16GB SSD or larger), an 8GB or larger USB stick and a full retail copy of Mac OSX Leopard.

The machine I ended up with was a Dell Mini 9 with 2GB RAM and a 32GB SSD. It also, crucially has a built in 3G data card. You just put your SIM card (any network) in the slot in the battery compartment and you’re online anywhere.

I’m really very pleased with the little machine. Its surprisingly responsive for general web browsing, email, and OS use. It has no moving parts (no spinning hard drive and no fan), its light, the screen is bright and sharp (but glossy) and the battery life seems pretty good so far at about 2-3 hours of real use with WiFi switched on. It even sleeps when you shut the lid, just like a Mac. I’ll go into more detail about its photo-related usefulness shortly.

Are there disadvantages? Of course. The main ones are the screen resolution and keyboard size. But these are pretty obviously going to be small on a laptop with a 9″ screen. The whole point of the machine is that its small and light, so these are compromises that must be made. To be honest, the keyboard is really not that bad once you get used to it (I’m typing out this article on it right now), but if you have fat fingers it may prove to be a problem.

The screen has a resolution of 1024×600. Now this is OK for most applications but there a few occasions where this can cause problems.

Here’s some screen shots of various apps, so you can get an idea of what it looks like in practice…

PhotoMechanic

PhotoMechanic runs fine and is actually quite snappy for browsing through images and viewing previews etc. There are a couple of dialog screens which are cut off at the bottom due to the lack of vertical screen resolution, but if you know the app well enough you can get around this with keyboard commands quite easily.

Photoshop

I’m still running Photoshop CS, so can’t vouch for later versions, but CS runs fine.

Aperture

Aperture v2 is my main workflow app on my Mac Pro workstation. I’ve installed it to the Mini, but don’t really use it much. It runs fine though.

Safari

Safari 4 is nice and snappy, I use a lot of web apps and these run well.

Transmit

For FTP, I use Panic’s Transmit app. No problems with this at all.

So, how does it fair for the day-to-day use that a photographer might want it for?

So far, as you can see from the above screenshots, I’ve managed to install Photoshop, Photo Mechanic, Aperture and Transmit – pretty much everything I need for portable computing.

I’ve also installed and have successfully used the Canon Utilities for shooting tethered. I’ve only tested this with a Canon 5D, but it works perfectly. There is a trick to this however. The Canon installation software complains that it cannot install the latest version of these utilities because it requires a screen resolution of 1024×768. Its easy to get around this limitation. Install the software on your main Mac and then just drag the application onto the Mini 9. It will then run with no problems at all.

So, I suppose the all-important question is this – how slow is the machine at processing images? Its no speed demon but I think its perfectly acceptable for a small number of images if you need to transmit something on deadline, review images with a client on location or use the internal drive as a backup location for dumping cards during a shoot. By my reckoning its about the same speed as my other laptop – a 1.5GHz 15″ Powerbook G4. So not too shabby!

I could do a whole set of timings for various operations, but instead I’ve done a couple of short videos, showing some typical workflows that a photographer might go through on location. Hopefully, this will give you an idea of what using this machine is like in real life – Not just specs and theory.

(hopefully there will be a couple of videos here soon, I’m having some problems successfully recording a good quality screencast with audio, but I’m working on it!)

Some random observations:

• BBC iPlayer works, but its not perfectly smooth, watchable in a pinch. Flash video is notoriously processor intensive.

• Playing a Video_TS file from a DVD off a USB stick or SD card works fine using VLC player.

• The machine gets quite hot when working hard, but then its got no fan, so its no surprise.

• The lack of fan means its got no moving parts. Its silent and you can pick it up and wave it about while its doing stuff! Or, more realistically, you can leave it sending/processing on the front seat of your car while your driving and not have to worry about bumps in the road!

• iTunes, Spotify, Tweetie, Front Row, Plex, VLC all work.

• I’ve successfully calibrated the screen using an X-Rite ColorMunki.

• The WiFi seems pretty sensitive and able to pick up surrounding hotspots without problems.

• iChat works fine with the built in webcam and microphone.

• There’s no way of knowing how strong a 3G signal the internal card is picking up. Connecting via the modem menu bar works fine (once the correct driver has been installed) but you don’t know if a signal is available or what speed its going to be until you try and connect.

This is never going to be your main computer. I treat it as a small, light, convenient machine and use it as such and it has become tremendously useful. I take it with me all the time to places where I wouldn’t take my Powerbook, either because of weight or size or fragility. I can fit this machine in a camera bag instead of carrying yet another separate laptop bag. And I don’t have to worry too much about how much it cost, or what data is stored on it, or what would happen if I lost it.

Now for the bad news – Dell have just discontinued the Mini 9! They’re still available in the Dell Outlet though, and there’s currently a good number available on ebay. So, if you’re interested, get your skates on!

The good news is that the clever people at www.mydellmini.com have already started getting OSX working on the Mini 10v…

So my first instinct was to find an indoor location. Fortunately the chapel was free and when I walked in and saw the amazing windows, I knew I had my first location. These shots were done using one hotshoe flash in a brolly as the key light with a second flash balanced on the pew behind her, providing a rim light to simulate the light coming from the windows. Keeping that second light coming from roughly the same direction as the natural light makes it look real and doesn’t call attention to the lighting.

I shot plenty of variations using these windows as a backdrop and, although I was happy with these, I needed to offer my editor an alternative so we moved outside into the harsh sunlight to find a possible shot.

With the sun so high in the sky, there was very little shade around but we managed to find a spot right up against the chapel wall, under a tree. By putting the subject in the shade I was able to expose for the background ambient and then add my own light to the subject. This was again just a hotshoe flash at full power, fired into a medium size brolly and moved in as  close as possible to make the most of the power available from the small flash.

This lady was not at all keen on having her picture taken. I can understand that, as I really don’t like it myself. Hopefully though you can’t tell from the photos that she wasn’t enjoying it!

The shoot was done in a hotel conference room, where the makeup artists were getting training before the launch day. Some portraits had already been done in other cities and mine had to match the style of the others. Here’s the very simple setup. One light with a grid to stop it spilling onto the black cloth background.

And here are the results…

My favourite is the corporate photography session, where he runs through a complete corporate location shoot using a combination of big Elinchrom Ranger lights and small hotshoe flashes and solving problems along the way.

The price is a bargain $19.95 for a month’s access. So sign up and settle back for a full-on cramming session and see how one of the most versatile corporate, commercial and editorial shooters in the world does his thing.