TASMANIAN Exhibition, September 7-11th.

We have booked the Design Space for a short exhibition from September 7-11 with an opening on Tuesday the 8th. for the Tasmanian Field Trip group. We'll each have around 1.5m of horizontal wall space. I'm suggesting we hang the work on the morning of Monday the 7th of September, although I'll check the availability of the space on the Friday before. You'll need to provide all your own hanging materials. I am happy to make name tags for us but if someone would like to produce a poster and invitation with a suitable name for the exhibition that would be great. I have emailed Senator Bob Brown to ask him to open the exhibition but have had no response so far. I'll follow this up this week. I'd like some ideas for what you'd like as an opening, do you want a big affair, food, drink and speeches or a small affair (if I can't get Bob) with just drinks and snacks and more drinks and no speeches, or something in between? Please get back to me with your thoughts ASAP. For those that are completing a Tassie Negotiated Study this will draw a line under it and you'll earn a result based on the work hung.

Food Photography

You know how I said we couldn't cook in the studio, well I've kind of had a rethink. If you want to bring things that can be reheated in the microwave, that's fine. Could be soup, noodles, curry etc. We just won't be able to cook from scratch. So beat yourself up, bring lots of interesting stuff, you may also need something refreshing to place with the food.

Check the food photos on Kate Luke's website, some lovely shots of simple things...even a cabbage can be made to look great.

http://www.katelukephotography.com.au/Food.html

Styling, what's that?

An important part of the food photography team is the 'stylist', horrible word but that's what they do, they 'style' the shot. From the client/publisher's point of view it's mainly the stylist's responsibility to ensure that the feel, mood, theme, style or concept is maintained throughout the shoot, series of shots or book by using appropriate plates, cutlery, napkins and so on. For example, how would you 'style' a photograph of a plate of sushi? A book concept might be 'slow food', and the styling would therefore need to be earthy and rustic perhaps. The photographs below were all taken from different books that had distinct themes or concepts, can you match them to the book name and themes, concepts listed?

Real Food - Healthy, Delicious, Easy to Prepare

Danks Street Depot - "Jared Ingersoll's rustic recipes reflect the seasonal offerings of growers' markets and urban providores" (A Sydney restaurant)

Italian Country Cooking - "is about the real food of Italy,.... the more you spend the worse you eat".

Secrets of the Red Lantern - "stories and ....... recipes from the heart"

Fresh and Healthy - The all new Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Cookbook.

Alan Benson - ACP Publishing

Alan Benson - Murdoch Books

Alan Benson - ACP Publishing

Alan Benson - Park Street Press

Alan Benson - Murdoch Books

Can you pick the era, decade, century?

The following photographs have been sourced from the early 1970's through to the present. Can you identify which decade each of the photographs comes from. Good prep for the workshop next week.

Images: Murdoch Press, Australian Women's Weekly, Landsdowne Press, ACP Publishing.

Update on the Handout distributed in class this WED/THURS. For the workshop next week you may not drag your dodgy peanut butter sandwhich from your pocket and shoot it. You need to bring items like those identified in the handout. The workshop will last all day so please don't plan anything else. The morning will be info, presentation, discussion then you'll be shooting from 1pm until 4:30pm. Well review all work at that time and close shop at 5pm. Oh, and you cannot use the crockery and glasses in the kitchen, they are awful anyway, you gotta bring everything.

Saturday Fashion Shoot with Andrew Gash

What a fantastic day, everyone was raving about the great job that you guys did. It really was a taste of the real world of professional photography. Lots of hard work, heaps of adrenalin, teamwork and great satisfaction at the end. Thanks to Jason, Scott, Pamela, Sarah, Jeremy, Nathan, Amy and also to Tate for being invaluable as usual.

Friday's Fashion Shoot

Let’s start with some basics.

Flash Synchronisation Speed: DSLR with focal plane shutter, no higher than around 1/250th sec (depending upon camera). Film SLR with focal plane shutter, older models around 1/125th sec (depending upon camera). Camera with BTL/Leaf shutter, all speeds to maximum of 1/500th sec. For the shoot on Friday that means a shutter speed NO higher than 1/250th sec.

Daylight Exposure: Daylight exposure is controlled by BOTH shutter speed and aperture and as you know it is possible to capture the shot with numerous combinations that provide the same overall exposure, eg, 500 @ f8 is the same as 250 @f11 and so on.

Flash Exposure: Flash exposure is NOT affected by your choice of shutter speed (not talking about flash synch here). Flash exposure IS affected by your choice of aperture.

Flash unit: Most flash units have variable output that can be raised or lowered, ie, more output or less.Interestingly this occurs because the duration of the flash can be controlled as opposed to its intensity. The effect is the same however and will not affect our discussion here.

There are two paths we can take when using flash on location, we can use it to fill shadows slightly to increase detail in those areas or we can use it as a main source and let daylight be the fill, this latter choice is effectively what you used on Friday. This choice allows us to create a lighting scheme rather than to simply accept the location lighting as we find it.

Using Flash as Fill: Take an incident reading to determine daylight exposure, let’s assume it to be 60 @ f11, then adjust the monobloc flash unit output and/or position until an incident reading of the flash is 2 stops less than the daylight, f5.6. Your exposure will still be 60 @ f11 but the flash will provide some light to fill shadows only.

Using Flash as Main Source: (what you did on Friday) The task here is to underexpose the daylight by 1-2 stops compared to the flash. Lets assume you wish to underexpose daylight by 2 stops and the daylight incident reading was 60 @ f11, set the camera to 250 @ f11. This does two things, firstly 250 UNDEREXPOSES daylight by two stops, thereby reducing daylight to a fill level, sky is dark etc. Set-up your desired monobloc unit and adjust the position, size and output until an incident reading of the flash on the subject is f11.

Result: Subject is lit with flash which is correctly exposed, daylight exists at a level ¼ that of flash (due to the faster shutter speed) which results in it being a fill light, this has the added advantage of the sky and other background areas to be rendered darker and perhaps richer with the subject cleanly illuminated by the flash, your preferred lighting, size, quality etc.

You’ll remember that Andrew tended to use f11 or at least was aiming for that, depth of field is an issue so f11 would be a good choice. He also recommended you set your DSLR ISO as low as possible. A higher ISO could result in a faster shutter speed than 250 being required to keep daylight exposure down but of course this would be outside your flash synch speed limit.

Summary:

Set ISO as low as possible, ISO 50 perhaps

Calculate daylight exposure and underexpose daylight 1-2 stops with shutter speed ensuring you don’t go higher than the flash synch speed, ie, if daylight is 60 @ f11, use 125 @ f11 or 250 @ f11

Adjust flash size, position and output until your daylight f-number is achieved, ie, f11.

You could also start by setting either 125 or 250 on the camera, calculating a daylight exposure that used a shutter speed 1-2 settings slower and then set-up the flash to match whatever the daylight aperture was, it’s exactly the same just approached from a different angle.

Looking at the metadata on the files from Friday and recalling some discussions about cameras used on the day there were some limitations on flash synch and ISO which affected the exposure decisions.

Remember: daylight is controlled by shutter speed and aperture, flash is controlled by aperture.

FASHION SHOOT TOMORROW

Reminders:

Be at the Studio at 10am, bring cameras (lenses etc), warm clothes and lots of enthusiasm.

Job reminders:

Contact Co-ordinator: Christina
Food and Drink: Nathan, Tegan, Sarah
Care of Models: Emily and Jenna
Image Co-ordinator: Matthew
Image Editors - CD/DVD Prep: Jeremy, Julian L, Elmo
Video: Amy

We will be moving lots of gear so if you have a large vehicle bring it. If you have an even larger vehicle we need a change room!!!

See you tomorrow.