It All Comes Out in the Wash

January 7, 2020

You ever just decide to hit the streets with your camera in search of some good frames? No? Just me?? Okay… Well, lately I’ve been coming home empty-handed. It’s like I’m battling this creative block where I just can’t get the right shot, or at least none of the photos I take resonate with me the way I want them to. And rather than go into all the details about my creative block and the struggle therein (I’ve rewritten this opening paragraph at least five times…), suffice it to say I got over it - at least for a day - in the simplest way imaginable.

It was a weekend like any other. Candice and I were dividing and conquering our household responsibilities; she was grocery shopping while I made my way through several loads of laundry. While putting another load in the washing machine, I started wondering what kind of shots I could get in our musty laundry room. Much to my pleasure and surprise, I wound up with a few I really liked!!

This first one was shot with the Canon 100mm f/2.8L Macro lens. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with this lens. It takes beautiful photos, but its depth of field is so shallow at just about any aperture that it can be very unforgiving if your focus isn’t dead on. Think about how close together the quarters are, and then look at how suddenly focus falls off as your eye moves across the photo from left to right. This photo could have turned out poorly with just the slightest move in the wrong direction, but luck was on my side here!

For this one, I used the Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L and put the camera in the barrel of the washing machine, facing back at me. Even at a focal length of 16mm, it wasn’t as wide as I had hoped. Before taking the photo, I envisioned seeing the holes in the barrel of the machine. I thought they would provide cool texture, maybe some lines leading towards the center of the frame. Even though it didn’t turn out how I had pictured, I was thrilled to check the display and see this one. I love how my face is just slightly out of focus, and how the center column of the machine is just obscuring my face. And those concentric white and black rings that line up perfectly!!

Above all else, I like these photos because they present a mundane task in an interesting way. Everyone does laundry, and unless you’re some kind of weirdo the task doesn’t likely conjure feelings of excitement in you. But have you ever wondered what your clothes see, looking back up at you before you close the lid and send them on a wild ride to cleanliness and fresh smells? Well… this is it. Pretty cool, huh??

Editing Your Photos, Vol. 1

October 14, 2019

Alright - I’m going to try something new today! I’ve only ever featured my own photos on this site and on my Instagram feed, but the other day my cousin Kevin sent me a photo he took during a recent trip to Italy, and asked if I wouldn’t mind doing a quick edit for him. I thought it would be fun, and it was! Here’s the original photo from Kevin:

Positano, Italy

Right off the bat, I really liked this photo. There wasn’t very much I wanted to change! The fact that it was sort of overcast on this day gave the photo nice even light distribution. I love the unique and colorful tenements perched on the hillside, and how the lines of blue chairs on the beach draw the eye towards the middle of the frame. The mountain juts up and out of the earth, extending towards the sky, and… uh oh. Now we’ve found our problem. Or at least I’ve found MY problem with this photo: that big, bright hole in an otherwise beautifully textured sky.

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that photography is subjective. Give this photo to two or three other photographers, and we’ll most likely all produce different finished products. My way is not necessarily “right” or “wrong”, it’s more about what appeals to me and what I think looks good.

For this edit, I started with some very minor adjustments to balance the highlights with the shadows, and added a bit more color to make the oranges, greens, and blues stand out a bit more. The photo was starting to look better overall, but the hole in the sky was actually starting to look worse!

 So, what to do? When Kevin first reached out to me to work on this photo, I figured I’d just give it a quick little tweak and shoot it back to him, but after putting a certain amount of effort into making it look good, I decided I needed to bring it all the way home and just fill in that hole in the sky. I brought it into Photoshop, and with the clever use of the patch and clone stamp tools, managed to come up with something infinitely better!

 Kevin’s photo, colors adjusted, and big hole Photoshop’d out.

Overall, I think this turned out great. It’s kind of straddling the line between real and fake, which I think is a good place to be. The clouds and colors look like something nearly out of a storybook, but maybe someone just took this photo around sunset with some heavy clouds starting to roll in.

A fun little exercise - would do it again! If you liked seeing this process and want me to do more, shoot over some photos and we’ll see what I can cook up!

Concert Photography and Shooting in Low Light

Some of my most recent work has been photographing concerts around LA. Being an avid music fan, I jump at any opportunity to shoot something I love. I even have an entire page of this website dedicated to it!

There are exceptions, but for the most part, concerts are poorly lit, at least as far as ideal conditions go. And unless you’re trying for a particular artistic effect, a fast shutter is necessary to capture your subject(s) in focus. So how do you shoot with a fast shutter in low light? Crank the ISO.

What’s ISO, you ask? If you’ve ever bought a roll of film for your camera, you probably noticed that the packaging has different numbers on it. You could, for example, buy film that has a 100, 200, 400, etc. on the box. That’s the film’s ISO, or its light sensitivity.

ISO 400 Film

The amazing thing about digital cameras is that you can control the sensor’s light sensitivity by turning the digital ISO speed up or down to suit your shooting conditions. No need to have several different types of film - hooray!! But as is the case with many things, with this benefit comes a downside: The higher the ISO, the more digital noise you’re going to see on the image. That’s why your nighttime iPhone pictures look so grainy! Some people aren’t bothered by the noise as much as I am; sometimes that look is even intentional! But for me personally, this is mostly an undesirable look:

Before retouching. This photo was shot at f/3.5, 1/200sec, 12,800 ISO!! Notice the grain/noise around the edges and in the corners.

This particular show was at night in a Downtown LA warehouse. I had my shutter set at 1/200 of a second, and at this speed an ISO of 12,800 (!!!) was necessary for a proper exposure. The result is what you see above - very grainy! Luckily for me, there are several pieces of software that can help remove noise, and you end up with something like this:

After retouching. Dylan Taylor of AHZ at 1720 Warehouse in Los Angeles. Summer 2019.

So yeah… throw in some smoke and laser beams, and I’ll be there!!