A montage of faces from last night… click the photo to visit the full Facebook gallery!
For the second year in a row, I spent Halloween in my hometown of Ashland, Oregon photographing the revelers dressed in their midnight best. This year, I posted all photos for free on facebook for anyone who was there to tag and grab. What a blast!
For part 1 of this article, click here
I hit the streets with the big camera rig over my shoulder, layers of warmth, and an assistant strapped with a bag of backup gear and the pop-up backdrop. We went down early (barely dark) and hungry, so after a quick slice of local pizza we started shooting. Right away my assistant, Tom (a local college student) spotted some friends of his, so we hit them up first. It was pretty easy to convince people to pose; no commitment, no signature, no cost (now), just let me take your photo, take this card from me (I printed up 200 cards with the website address and a little reminder of what just happened… for those too hung over the next morning to remember!), and a request to visit the site in the next day or two. I didn’t commit to any pricing (and in reality I hadn’t had time to think about it), but all I told people was that they would be able to download a facebook-sized photo for “cheap”. I ended up pricing them at $4 for a 640x480 download, which is obviously a bargain and no way to make a living, but most of my subjects were probably college students with little spare cash anyway. And this wasn’t about making money in the first place.
Downtown Ashland has a little plaza at the base of Lithia Park, which is the primary gathering area in town, and is surrounded by restaurants and bars. This turned out to be the spot to hang out and do our shots… everyone coming and going or simply hanging out seemed to pass through here. Literally there could have been five photographers shooting, and we still wouldn’t have been able to get everyone that came through. If I saw some insanely great costume, I’d stop shooting and grab them, but far, far too many great costumes just walked on by.
Which brings up an interesting lesson that I learned in this. My intention for my assistant was that he would a) hold the backdrop, b) help reel people in to shoot, and c) hand out the info cards. It turns out he could only do a). Why? Because when you’re standing with your back to a wall holding a black 5’x7’ backdrop, your vision is… obscured. In fact, I had to pull people off the background a few times that were crushing my dude! (It’s hard to hear an assistant scream on a rowdy Halloween night). So, next year, I’ll need two people with me… one to hold the backdrop, and one to wrangle new victims customers subjects.
As mentioned earlier I decided to use a black backdrop so I didn’t have to go with high speed flash sync, however even shooting at 1/250th (top “normal” sync speed on the 1Ds), I still had to put a little distance between the subject and the background. A couple of feet was sufficient, but this proved to be a challenge on many levels. First, it was very crowded, so it was often difficult to get distance between a) backdrop, b) subject and c) myself without other people passing through. Shooting close and wide means you get more background—usually beyond the width of the backdrop. Shooting far and tight gives the compression you need to isolate a smaller background, but then other people would get in the way. It was a tough challenge. It was easiest shooting single people or pairs. Groups of three were OK, as long as I could get them to stand really close to each-other. As soon as the group got any bigger, then the edges of the background started to show.
Here’s a few photos showing these different challenges. These are completely un-retouched photos. Every image ultimately got a little curves and black level action, and some got minor retouching, while others had a lot of background to wipe out. I’ll get into that later; for now, take a look at straight-from-the-camera shots.
Nice solid black background, with just a few elements in the way
You can see above that the background is beautifully black, with only a few stray elements showing up. Mr. America here stood far enough away from the backdrop so it went pure black. Those are Tom’s fingers holding the backdrop that you see on the left, and some kind of street light or headlight. Fortunately all extremely easy to retouch.
The pair was too close to the backdrop. Notice the less-than-black background, and the ringflash shadow around them.
Above you can see what happens when they get too close to the backdrop. The background is not solid black because there’s too much spill from the strobe. You can also see the unique shadow from the ring light, casting a reverse-halo around the subjects. This isn’t a terrible example and easy enough to fix with a little black level raise, but it’s not ideal of course. Ultimately I wanted to shoot so there’d be near-zero retouching.
A group shot, where they’re too close to the backdrop, and the backdrop was too low
On the shot above, you see two problems. First, they’re too close to the background again. And of course with three subjects, I needed a wider background. No worries, the backdrop is 5’x7’, so just turn it sideways—but then, there’s a limit to Tom’s wingspan, so we got a lot of this. Again this is an easy fix with a crop and minor retouching, but it’s not ideal.
Also, this backdrop isn’t a solid wall—it’s fabric, which means it’s somewhat translucent. I found very quickly that out in the open, any bright points of light such as street lamps or headlights would shine right through the background. So we ended up positioning ourselves against walls as much as we could, and ultimately we camped out in one spot right in the traffic flow and stayed there. I was a little worried that the cops might ask us to move along, but they didn’t. We had quite a collection of officers right next to us, and they never batted an eye at me. Good stuff.
One more note here—when I had any more than three people to photograph at once, I got rid of the backdrop and just let the environment behind them be in the photo. If I couldn’t fill the background, then there wasn’t much point shooting with mine in the way. However I should have been more aggressive about that; I didn’t make the conscious decision that “more than three means no backdrop” until later, and so I have a few shots with bad backgrounds. Rookie mistake.
Focusing was probably one of biggest challenges I faced. I always have the focus-assist lamp disabled on my speedlites (I really can’t stand that red lamp shining on people), and besides with my strobe in the position it was in, all it’d probably manage to do is illuminate their chests. So I relied on street light to focus, which was definitely a challenge. There wasn’t always enough light, especially when photographing some lower contrast costumes. One guy was dressed as a shadow… I tried to get three shots of him and gave up. Notice these are also over-exposed, because I didn’t compensate for the all-black outfit in the metering. But I couldn’t get focus anyway, so chased him away without a card.
Focusing was a challenge — especially on the shadow costume (cropped but otherwise original. Trust me, you don’t want to see the rest of his costume)
So how do you fix this? I’m thinking next year, I’ll mount a video light onto the camera to shine on the subjects to focus. This will give the added benefit of slamming their pupils down to reduce redeye, and also attracting a bit more attention to what I’m doing. I couldn’t manually focus (I couldn’t see well enough!) and if the auto-focus didn’t nail it, then I got a blurry shot.
Jay and Silent Bob. Cropped to show redeye.
What I’m really hoping to find is an LED rig that will automatically turn on when I press the shutter half-way, then turn off for the shot. If anyone knows of such a device, please do let me know.
This was the easy part. This is probably the only day of the year you can walk up to a half-naked woman, ask “can I take your picture?” — and get a positive response! (Imagine trying that on the beach!) Obviously being Halloween, people are out in costume wanting to be seen. The only people who refused photos were either getting dragged off with friends or admitting up front they wouldn’t buy a picture (appreciated, thanks!). Everyone else jumped at it. Most common question was “what are these for?” to which I’d reply, “they’re for you!”. Some asked if they had to pay, and of course I told them it was free to have their photo made, and they could buy the ones they wanted later. One guy did take out his wallet and try to pay me on the spot. I shoulda taken it… ;-) It took very little convincing to get people in front of the camera. This buxom beauty was probably the hardest to convince, but once she saw the shot on the LCD, she was dancing with joy.
Very few people took convincing to step in front of the lens. She didn’t want to do it, but eventually relented—and was very pleased that she did!
It was a great experience on honing people skills. Talking to complete strangers and asking them to pose for you isn’t the most comfortable thing in the world, but of all nights to do it, this is probably the easiest. Near-zero rejection rate and a lot of people that are just as happy as can be. Great combination.
I shot in manual mode at ISO 400, 1/250th and ƒ/5.6, and let the flash go TTL (full auto). If I’d gone manual on the flash too, then I wouldn’t have had problems like I did with the shadow guy up above — the exposure would have been perfect across the board. However, since I was shooting some people closer, some farther back, some solos and some groups, shooting manual wasn’t an option. So I had to rely on the TTL, and it did a stellar job. That shadow dude is pretty much the only overexposed image, and I think I can forgive the camera for that.
I should have shot at ƒ/8 though, or maybe even ƒ/11. I have a few photos of multiple people where one is slightly soft, due to too-shallow depth of field. I don’t usually like stopping my lenses down that small, and I also didn’t want to over-tax the flash and have long recycle times, but I should have just done it. Next time.
Here’s the list of changes and notes I’ve jotted down to consider next year.
…will come in the third and final installment. I’ll discuss the photo edit and retouching required, as well as the mechanism for selling the images.
A few people have asked about the setup I used for my Halloween shoot, and the editing that went into the photos. So here’s the background, the tech, and more!
The first question is simply “why”. Easy enough; I’m new in town and figured this would be a fun way to get to know some people, get my name as a photographer out there, and with any luck, make a little money. It’s hard to make any real money selling $4 facebook-size images, and I know that’s the only thing most people will buy, but that’s OK. It’s fun, it’s a good experience, and again, it gets my name and face out there.
I did something similar two years ago when I lived in Pasadena, except that I set up a studio on my front lawn and photographed (with parental permission of course) the kids that came trick-or-treating. However now in Ashland, where I live, no one comes knocking, so I figured I’d better bring the studio to them! Hence this idea was born.
I wanted this to look as much like a studio shoot as possible, but still be completely portable. I had no idea if I’d be walking the streets all night or staying in one place (it turns out I was in the same plaza all night; absolute party central), but even then, without permission from the city, I wouldn’t be able to set up a permanent backdrop, lights on stands, etc. So I had to be 100% portable.
Let’s start with the backdrop. I wanted a pure black background, and I figured there were two ways to do this. Either get a black background, or shoot at high speed sync with a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second or so, which would eliminate most background clutter. However I knew there would be a few problems with this. For one, any really bright light (car headlight, shop window, etc.) would still show through. For another, shooting high speed sync takes longer to recycle the flash (you’re asking for max power and flickering at an extremely high frequency instead of a single pop; google “high speed flash sync” for more on how that works) and chews through batteries. The batteries I wasn’t so worried about, but fast recycle time I knew would be key. I could have doubled-up the flash heads to split the load, but a) that’d get even heavier and more cumbersome (remember I needed to carry this thing), and b) then I wouldn’t be able to use the modifier that I wanted to. So, I really needed a black backdrop.
I was fortunately in New York last week so was able to stop by the king of all camera stores; B&H. I wanted a pop-up background that my assistant could easily collapse to carry around and expand to use, and be light-weight enough to hold up all night. I ended up with a Botero #035 Collapsible Background (5x7’). It’s easy to collapse (with a little practice), light weight, and a good solid black. It’s not quite the black-hole, all-light-sucking black that I would have liked, but they didn’t have anything like that.
I chose to use my Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III for this, even though it’s heavier, because the focusing system is better than on the 5D Mk II—and I knew it’d be a challenge to focus in low light (which it was, and I have changes to make for that). I used the ol’ standby 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 lens, and that’s it for the camera.
Lighting was of course the big question; how do you light people so it looks like studio lighting, but with a single on-camera flash? I’ve used mini soft-boxes, big reflectors, the Gary Fong Lightsphere, and more, and while they’re all OK (and way better than un-modified on-camera light), none of them are great. So I decided to try something new; I’ve been eyeing those funky ring-light modifiers that you slap on a regular strobe for a while now. The two products that have the market share seem to be ExpoImaging Ray Flash and the orbis by enlight photo. I liked the idea of the Ray Flash more because it looked simpler to set up; put the flash on the hot shoe, slap on the Ray Flash, and you’re in business. However there are at least ten (yes, ten) different models to choose from, depending on the the camera body (determining the height of the modifier) and lens (width of the modifier) that you’re going to use. This did not appeal—at all. The orbis, on the other hand, doesn’t attach to the camera, so you either hand-hold it (so, which hand do I steady the camera and zoom with, exactly?) or mount it onto this ridiculous looking bracket. Because these were the two choices, I never bought either, even though I’ve visited their websites and toyed with the idea several times over the last year or so.
Since I was at PhotoPlus Expo in NY last week, one of my plans was to see either of these things in action, and make a decision. I never did check out the Ray Flash (again… being locked into a single body/lens combo seems ridiculous), but fortunately James Madelin, the inventor of the orbis, was there showing off his creation. He spent quite a bit of time with me showing off the modifier (he had a tethered shooting rig and a model at the show), and showing different ways to use it. Truth be told, I like the look you get holding the orbis above the lens better than sticking the lens through it, but that requires hand-holding it. For my Halloween needs, I had to get it all together into a single, portable contraption. I loved the results, and decided to make the purchase—even with the silly looking bracket to hold it all together.
Once assembled, here’s what it looked like. I posted this photo on Instagram (@travel_junkie, same as twitter, if you’re not already following!) the day before Halloween:
orbis ring flash modifier on a Canon 1Ds Mk III, 24-70 ƒ/2.8 lens, 580EX II Speedlite and ST-E2 trigger
As you can see, the assembly is a bit ridiculous. BUT… it works. That blue cold shoe under the strobe is another James Madelin creation; the frio (cold shoe… cold… frio… get it?) but for this use it wasn’t stable enough and I swapped it out for a generic, blocky but solid cold shoe. I also wrapped little padding around the vertical bracket so it’d be more comfortable to hold, although I usually just wedged my hand under the lens and held the camera as you normally would while shooting.
Also, see the wireless trigger on the top of the camera? That failed about half-way through the night (dead lithium battery probably), so I swapped it out for a cable (the Canon Off Camera Shoe Cord). Much more reliable, and I should have just done that in the first place.
Lesson: Always carry backup! I would have been dead in the water without that cable, since stores were closed (assuming it even was the battery). I had a backup camera body, lens, strobe and more in a backpack that I locked and strapped to my assistant.
Finally I attached my Black¤Rapid RS-5 strap to the bottom of the camera (that bracket has a tripod bolt under it, as you can see in the lower-right photo) and slung that eight lb. rig (yep, I just weighed it) over my shoulder.
…will have to wait. Tomorrow I’ll talk about the shoot itself, the photo edit, sharing/selling the photos, and finally what I’ll do differently next time. Hmm, this might take two more posts!
What a night, and what an edit! Exactly 400 photos are now online for public consumption. Some absolutely insane costumes out there on Monday night. What a great time!
In a future post, I’ll talk photo-geek about what I did (and why). This worked out really well, and I definitely know a few things I’ll do differently next year. This is the second time I’ve done something like this; two years ago I set up an outdoor studio at my home in Pasadena (click here to see a few of those photos).
This time, I went mobile.
Click the photo to open the gallery launch page.
I went into downtown Ashland, OR last night (Halloween night) armed with my 1Ds Mk III and 24-70 rigged with an orbis light modifier, and an assistant carrying a pop-up black backdrop. I had no idea Ashland was this insane for Halloween. I printed out 200 cards with the URL for the photos on them, and handed out 190 of them. I left only because I was exhausted, and it got to a point where most people asking for their photo to be taken were probably going to be too drunk to remember to look for the photos afterwards.
Here’s a preview of the photos to come… the zombies were out in force with some seriously impressive makeup!
The full gallery will be on PhotoJoseph.com/Halloween hopefully today.
