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Fashion Photography for Dummies
Some pointers based on a stroll down Haight Street last Friday night…
Subtle use of a fog filter can provide a dreamy image that evokes romance or mystery.
Complimentary eye and clothing color is a winner for high-key fashion portraits.
Hats can make a classy gal even classier. A slightly exaggerated tilt will avoid facial shadows.
Shooting lingerie in black and white is a true sign of sophistication for any photographer.
Fashionable eyeglasses, if shot correctly, can draw attention to beautiful eyes.
Have your subject focus his attention on something outside the field of view to create a feeling of candidness and intrigue.
And lastly, tasteful post-processing using a bit of tone mapping and HDR can bring out shadow details without losing a sense of realism.
Posted in Uncategorized
Stealth
I vividly recall the first time I walked into the production line at Lockheed Burbank and saw a floor full of F-117s. I think the Lockheed engineers really enjoyed watching the reaction of people seeing the odd looking aircraft for the first time. Expectations for what it would look like had been carefully set by a very effective misinformation campaign around the concept of stealth. You were expecting to see something really sleek an low-profile; instead, there was this Buck Rogers 1950′s view of the space age thing that seemed to have the frontal area of a small house. How could that be invisible to radar? Those were fun days.
The F-117s are now all retired, declassified, and available to be photographed. This one is in the National Museum of the US Air Force, which has free admission and allows the use of tripods – essential because it’s dark in there.
Posted in Photos
Another Useless Apple Product
Photos look great on the iPad. As long as you’re pulling them from a website. Noting a lot of hype last year about the iPad being a photographer’s best friend I recently bought an iPad camera connection kit (beautifully packaged, like everything from Apple) so I could view photos straight from the camera. I plugged my CF card into the camera connection kit and my iPad complained that the connected USB device requires too much power.
Apparently Apple reduced the USB output by 80% in iOS 4.2, rendering the camera kit useless for CF cards and didn’t bother reporting that fact to prospective consumers of the camera kit. Their site still says: “The iPad Camera Connection Kit gives you two ways to import photos and videos from a digital camera: using your camera’s USB cable or directly from an SD card.”
Many others reported what I found. One photographer reported specifically buying an iPad to review photos with clients at the end of a shoot. “The fact that Apple has suddenly and without any warning stopped supporting the camera connection kit is appalling.”
I might have researched the issue in advance if not for the constant praise of iPad I hear from photograpers. E.g., Apple iPad – A Photographer’s Best Friend and The iPad – The Best Device For Photographers.
Really? You can’t use the iPad to transfer photos from a camera or its memory card onto a portable hard drive. Even if the iPad’s memory were large enough to hold all the images from a photo vacation, you can’t transfer them to the iPad without using a bunch of hardware that negates the iPad’s weight and size advantage. A Toshiba mini-laptop with the same size screen as an iPad costs half as much, has a keyboard, and can actually transfer images between external memory devices.
As long as you are in consumption mode, the iPad works well. The minute you try to produce, arrange, annotate, edit, or do anything creative, the thing is useless. There’s some degree of humor in this, given Apple’s stated commitment to creativity.
I’m not the first to offer this sentiment. Vivek Wadhwa, an eloquent and bold individual who regularly calls Silicon Valley on its fanboy silliness, notes in Why I’m Craigslisting My iPads that the iPad’s “means of transferring documents—through iTunes—is pathetic.”
Despite the fact that Safari crashes evey time I visit an interesting site, I still use it often. My iPad answers two important questions for me each day:
1.) What other movie was that actor in?
2.) What ingredients do I need for Thai green curry?
A1: M. Emmet Walsh was also in Blood Simple: “Now in Russia, they got it mapped out so that everyone pulls for everyone else - that’s the theory, anyway. But what I know about is Texas, an’ down here – you’re on your own.”
A2:
1 pound chicken breast cut into 1 inch cubes
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2 tablespoons cooking oil
2 tablespoons green curry paste
2 green onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 cups coconut milk
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup cilantro leaves, for garnish
Posted in Opinion
Damn You, Geico
It is noon on Mother’s Day. Geico’s advertising airplane has been circling my house for the last hour. It ‘s pulling a giant advertising banner against the relentless San Francisco wind. I can’t hear myself think.
This is the un-cropped frame from a Canon 400 mm lens with a 1.4 teleconverter, yielding an effective lens length of 560 mm (or 576 mm if the 1.4x converter is actually a 1.44x converter as I suspect). At 1.4x, the effective angular width across the diagonal of a frame (35 mm full frame body) is 4.4 degrees.
This aircraft looks to me to be a late 1950s Piper PA-18-150 Super Cub, having a wingspan of 35 feet. With some arithmetic, I can calculate how far away this aircraft is. The plane isn’t directly above me. The shot’s about 15 degrees off vertical (perhaps more, but I’ll be conservative for calculations, erring in Geico’s favor). It’s wingspan occupies 0.39 of the diagonal image, meaning the full diagonal span of this photo is 90 feet. If I’m right about the aircraft model, that means this airplane is 1170 feet away from me. I shot the picture from the 9th floor of a building, 90 feet above ground. Ground elevation is 10 feet.
So the maximum altitude for this aircraft - assuming 35 foot wingspan - is 1270 feet. Given that the photo angle is about 15 degrees from vertical, it’s altitude is more likely about 100 feet lower. Trigonometry-aware readers will note that you can adjust for both the departure from vertical and the departure from perpendicularity of the wingspan by about sin(15) squared = .93, yielding a likely elevation of 1180 feet above sea level.
My reading of Federal Aviation Regulations, title 14, Part 91.119 (Minimum Safe Altitudes) specifies a minimum distance over congested areas of 1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft. The residential building at One Rincon Hill is over 600 feet high, above a base at elevation around 100 feet, so it tops out at over 700 feet above sea level. One Rincon is about 800 feet north from where I shot this picture.
Based on my math above and my reading of FAR 91.119, Geico’s airplane should be flying at an altitude of at least 1700 feet. It’s clearly well below that – my math can’t be that far off. And if I’m missing some exemption to the FAR that allows Geico to buzz my patio on Mother’s Day for more that an hour straight, Geico is still bunch of bastards with very bad manners.
Posted in Uncategorized
