I was asked to do a live digital photography demo at CDIA’s Open House last week. I was obviously flattered, but I also couldn’t help wondering why they would ask me, the new guy, to represent and encapsulate the entire program in a concise 15 minute show-and tell. I mentioned it to my friend and colleague Tim Lynch, and he said something like “I used to do them, but….” His voice trailed off and his eyes were locked in a kind of haunted thousand-yard stare. In the back of my mind I had that old Three Stooges routine running as a loop, the one where the boys are in the army and their sergeant asks for three volunteers to step forward for a dangerous mission. All at once the rest of the squad takes a giant step backwards leaving, you guessed it, three hapless heroes-to-be. Suddenly I felt like one of them, Curly being the most likely.
But it turned out to be a blast.
First I had to decide what I was going to do. Bob Daniels, CDIA’s Executive Director, asked only that I do a portrait demonstration. I didn’t want to do a boring three-light headshot; I wanted something a little more dynamic that showed the integration of the camera, RAW development in Lightroom, and a little Photoshop magic. But it had to be something I could start and finish in front of a studio full of people in about 15 minutes. I quickly arrived at a concept for an image that I hoped would look fresh and exciting to an audience of mixed age, experience and expectations.
I got to school early enough to make a quick shot of Queen’s, a dry-cleaning establishment two doors down Moody Street. One of the things I love about Waltham is its aging architecture, much of it supporting evidence of the city’s claim to be the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. Queen’s probably wasn't doing Francis Cabot Lowell's laundry when he built the first power loom in 1813, but the great old neon sign above the front door looks like it might have been first plugged in 1954 or so. Close enough. I laid the camera and wide-angle lens down on the sidewalk in front of a manhole cover, pointed it up at the sign, waited for a break in the traffic in the background, and let ‘er rip. I “chimped” the LCD and the histogram instead of using the viewfinder to compose and expose— I thought I already looked odd enough kneeling down in front of a dry-cleaner’s on a bitter-cold afternoon without having to actually lay down on the sidewalk to look through the camera. Satisfied that I had the background for my final shot, I went inside and set up some lights.
We had a standing-room only crowd for the Open House, somewhere upwards of 150 people or so. After some introductory remarks from Bob, people started heading off in different directions to listen to more focused presentations from each program’s faculty and staff. As usual, nearly half of the attendees were there for the Photography program. That meant that as many as 70 people would be watching my demo.
I went on about an hour later. After telling some lame story about my never being very good at “shooting in a pack”, I explained what I was going to (hopefully) do, and then asked for a volunteer from the audience. No sooner had I gotten the first two syllables of the word out of my mouth when a hand shot up on the left side of the room and a young woman bounced to her feet. Her name was Aurora, she had already signed up for the photography program and would be starting in two weeks. I told her she would probably be spending much of the next 7 weeks with me in a pair of modules called Camera And Workflow, but I think at that moment she just wanted to have her picture taken.
I directed Aurora to a low platform I had set up in front of a dark gray seamless sweep and asked her to stoop down. Because I had shot the “background” of Queen’s from such a low angle I needed to do the same with Aurora. And this time, even with her up on apple boxes, I’d be laying on the floor. Being mindful not to flash a plumber’s smile at the folks sitting in the front row, I got on down and started shooting. I was tethered to Lightroom in my laptop using Nikon Camera Control Pro, so the audience could see the shots projected at the front of the room as I made them.
This shot called for motivated lighting, meaning it needed to be lit in a way that was believable when stripped into the existing background shot. I needed to suggest high overhead sunlight with a soft “kicker” low on the opposite side for separation. To do so, I hung a Profoto head shot into a beauty dish high to camera left, with a second head diffused through a 1x4 striplight on camera right rimlighting Aurora’s shadow side. I positioned a large black flag between the camera and the striplight to kill any lens flare that might result from the strong backlight.
After I had made a dozen or so shots, I stood up and thanked Aurora. I used Lightroom’s Library module to compare and rate the shots I had just taken, and we all decided that one of the last images appeared to be the best. Because I had processed the background shot of Queen’s using Lightroom’s Cold Tone preset as a starting point, (resulting in a contemporary-looking color palette of mostly desaturated cool blues and greens) I used the same preset again to develop Aurora’s shot. Finally, I sent both shots into Photoshop to make the final composite image.
At this point, Damian Hickey, a talented graduate of CDIA’s program and one of our TA’s, stood up to talk about the program from an alumni’s perspective. This was prearranged, so I could do the compositing work in the background as he spoke. I separated Aurora from the rest of the shot using Photoshop’s Magnetic Lasso, refined the selection edge a bit, and dragged her into the Queen’s shot. I flipped her horizontally so she would work better compositionally (meaning that my lighting notes above are actually reversed in the final composite image). A few quick tonality changes to the background, some Lens Blur added to Aurora’s lower body so she would blend better with the shallow focus in the low foreground, and some fussing with the shadows underneath her feet all resulted in the image you see at the top of this post. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but not bad for about 15 minutes with a bunch of strangers watching.
During Bob’s introduction, he mentioned how our faculty was comprised mostly of “old guys” schooled in the “purer” methods of film, but who had all done whatever was necessary to evolve into successful and enthusiastic digital photographers. I liked that, and I made sure that I left the audience with two important thoughts. First, as I have written in this blog before, being a purist with a digital camera is as easy as being a purist with a film camera— it all comes down to discipline, vision, intent and restraint. But maybe more relevant to the aspiring professionals in the room, what I had just demonstrated, for better or worse, is the way photography is done in the commercial world of the twenty-first century. As a purist, I find it pretty interesting that I find that kind of cool.
