Having had the privilege to work in a studio setting before (not really a professional studio, but close) as well as having semi-professional lighting available at home in a portable format, I have become accustomed to getting certain types of shots. It’s the typical shot that everyone strives towards. Perfect lighting, perfect pose, perfect everything. Even when I’m shooting the children (that just sounds wrong), I strive to get a specific look to my photos. You know the look, blurred out background, child is the focus. It’s called depth-of-field and it can really make or break a photo. If the background is cluttered, you want to be able to make the subject pop from the photo.
It even extends to when I’m doing sports photography. I want the subject to come away from the background as much as possible. Many times this means having to find a decent angle so that the stands are not in the frame. Many times that is not possible so I look to get tight on the player and often times you miss the “shot” that you want.
There is a solution to the depth-of-field scenario. Get a faster lens (look for the f-stop number on the lens. The smaller the number, the better to blur the backgrounds). Smaller is not always better in some cases though. I have a prime 50-mm f1.8 lens. I can’t shoot it comfortably at f1.8. Why? I have to manually focus this lens with my camera and with such a small DOF, it’s hard to get a good crisp focus.
Why did I just tell you all of this? For a very critical piece of information that I have learned and will gladly pass on.
Last month I had the honour of shooting a charity event for Options Bytown. It was in a bar, in the basement. I had my flash, I had my tripod and I had various lenses with me. What I didn’t have was a realistic expectation when I got there. I wanted all the shots to be “soft”, to have that great DOF, to be…perfect.
I ended up with mostly “snapshot” type photos. The flash is pretty harsh (even when I was bouncing it where I could) and made the photos look very rigid. I wanted soft. So I shot more wide open, higher ISO, and no flash. They were somewhat blurry and discoloured (I forgot to change my white balance. Thank you RAW for saving some of that for me). I tried with my f1.8 lens, but as stated above, focussing was an issue. If a photo is blurry, it’s garbage…unless the intent was to have a blurry photo that is.
I researched some other event photographers and browsed through their galleries. Other than fully posed shots with lighting gear, they all look very “snapshot” like. Some of these people have been in this business a long time, have a large client list, and guess what, most of the “action” shots are still “snapshots”.
It turns out, I was too hard on myself and pushed myself into frustration at the lack of “professionalism” that my photos exuded. The client was happy, so why was I unhappy? These are things I have to think about clearly. Event photography maybe isn’t something I want to pursue. At least not events like that. Sports photography is what really interests me, so I’m going to continue to think that route and see where it takes me!
