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We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 6/4/2018

Monday, June 4th, 2018

The Buzzing of the Saw

Raised with the buzz of the table saw in the garage of my youth, construction is in my blood.  I was cutting wood with the circular saw, pounding nails, and leveling ground for the foundation of buildings, alongside my Dad, as far back as I can remember.  Eventually, along with my hammer, nails, and plumb bob, a new item appeared in my work belt.  A camera.  And my transition from carpenter to photographer began.  Today, as a professional photographer, a construction photography gene flows through my veins as naturally as rain falls from the Western Washington skies.  So when We Shoot was booked for a construction progress shoot this past month, the underlying passion for shooting construction progress coursed again through my veins with the exuberance I felt as a kid working alongside my Dad.  Jumping up and down ecstatic!

Driving into Eastern Washington for the shoot, my mind wandered to the many construction progress shoots I’ve enjoyed throughout my career.  Construction graveyard-shift shooting at Santa Ana’s John Wayne Airport.  Pre-dawn shooting of shotcrete pneumatically sprayed onto the grounds of a construction site in Southern California’s Inland Empire.  Commercial video of roads being laid at UC Irvine.  And after far too long disconnected from construction progress shooting, our still and video cameras were beckoned by this two-day assignment shooting a cold-storage facility under construction east of the Cascades.  And, the excitement for this type of shooting was back!

Forty feet upward the scissor lift transported Gary, me, and the expert pipe welding crew.  Up to the roof overlooking the beautiful hills and flatlands of Eastern Washington.  Capturing the welders at their craft.  Filming the crew in action throughout the cold-storage plant.  Shooting the freezer construction in all its engineering majesty. Watching with enraptured eyes the rising of the walls of this new refrigeration facility, soon to be housing the fruit of the nearby farms.  Listening with eager ears to the buzz of the circular saws.  Oh, it feels great to be back home.

See Gary and me and a little construction in our short video below.

-Dione Benson

We Shoot

A short video from our last industrial construction shoot. Seattle Industrial Photography and Video by We Shoot.

Tags: construction, elevated, flash, industrial, photographer, photographs, photography, scissor lift, strobe, video, videographer
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We Shoot Video Of The Day For 2/5/2018

Monday, February 5th, 2018

Click on the image to start video.  Set it to 1080p HD.

Watch at full-screen.

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Seattle Video by We Shoot

Popcorn popped by an air popper. Seattle Video by We Shoot.

Tags: air, corn, food, healthy, popcorn, popped, popper, popping, snacks, video
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We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 1/16/2018

Sunday, January 14th, 2018

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Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot

A professional fluid video tripod head. Seattle Product Photography by We Shoot.

Tags: camcorder, fluid, head, massive, movement, pan, smooth, tilt, tripod, video, video recorder
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We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 3/15/2016

Tuesday, March 15th, 2016

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Macro image of SDHC cards for still and video cameras. Seattle Commercial Photography by We Shoot.

Seattle Commercial Photography by We Shoot

Tags: camera, cameras, card, cards, flash, GB, gigabytes, high capacity, images, memory, pictures, SD, SDHC, secure digital, slot, slots, still, stills, storage, video
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We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 10/13/2015

Tuesday, October 13th, 2015

Have you ever tried to video-record the screen of your smart phone in bright sunlight with another camera?

At We Shoot, we have created a way to simulate that.

Watch our sample YouTube video above!

Want to make your own clip like this with a video you captured?

Go to the green screen video clip we created at bit.ly/1hDjsPx and read the description to see how.

Tags: android, cell, cellular, iPhone, pan, phone, smart, video
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We Shoot Photography Of The Day For 8/4/2015

Tuesday, August 4th, 2015

Videos are about movement and interest.  Editing video is not just clipping and pasting

various clips together with (or without) transitions to tell your story.

An interesting video background can help you tell your video story!  Just watch some of

the news programs on TV and see how they use motion graphics to enhance their articles.

Check out the video background at full screen by clicking the box in the lower right hand

corner of the video!  Click the ESC key to come back to the blog.

Click here to find out how you can get this one for your video!

Tags: background, map, meter, motion graphics, news, revolving, rotation, spinning, video
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Your Business Video

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015

If your website is 50% more likely to appear on the first page of search engine results if it includes video, would you say, “let’s buy a video camera?” or “let’s call a professional videographer?”  Since utilizing video for your website appears to be a sound business investment, either answer is good.  But, which one is better?

That depends upon your day-to-day priorities.  If you choose the former – buying a video camera (or using one you already have) – can you open up time in your day to create the layout, storyboard the shoot, set up lighting and camera equipment, do the shoot, conduct the interviews, edit the video (including researching music, creating graphics, transitions), and place the video on your website, YouTube, and other online sites?  If so, doing it yourself is the way to go.

So, before you do all of the above – and you definitely have the time – be sure you are confident the video will be just what you want from this personal endeavor.  Study the process fully, create the exact story you want to tell, and pick up that camera and shoot!  Or should I say, “experiment.”

Otherwise, consider the latter – calling a professional videographer.  Placing the process into the hands of a professional may well be the very best use of your time – and your budget.  Personal experimentation may be just that, an experiment.

###

Dione Benson

6.1.2015

Tags: advice, amateur, camcorder, edit, editing, editor, equipment, experiment, lighting, professional, storyboard, video, video camera, video production, videographer
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The Memory Card Reader From Hell!

Thursday, May 29th, 2014

Professional photographers and amateurs alike have many things in common in this digital age:  our cameras put the images we take on digital media, such as Compact Flash cards, SD cards, or similar devices.  Some of the different methods for extracting the information from these cards are to run a cable (usually USB) to the camera from the computer and we instruct the computer to copy, transfer, or import the images to the computer’s hard drive(s), or we take the digital media card out of the camera and place it in a reader that serves the same function.  Some of us have built-in slots in our desktop computers that will accommodate various kinds of cards.  My last two computers have had the slots built in.

I’m a professional photographer and videographer.  For many shoots, I go on location and have several Compact Flash cards that fit in my still cameras, and the images I shoot are stored on the CF cards awaiting transfer to my computer’s multiple hard drives.  Since I usually can’t reshoot the images, and there is much more security in the redundancy of having the files on different drives, I store my images on several external drives simultaneously.  Hard drives do fail.  There is no excuse for losing a client’s images.

The critical point, however, is that much can happen to the information on the cards during the transfer process.  Pulling a card out of a camera that is turned on can corrupt the card, as can pulling a card out of a reader during a copy phase.  So, I breathe easier once the images have been copied or imported to my first hard drive without a hitch.  Until I have the images on more than one hard drive, however, I keep the images on the card, as well, for backup in case something bad happens.

I recently got a wakeup call, and it was just by chance.  I had been using the CF card slot in my PC to copy files from the card to the computer.  I didn’t have a job for a little while and I had left the images from the last shoot on the card in the camera after first copying them to several drives on my computer.  I put the card back in my camera after copying it.  I usually copy to my main drive first, add keywords, my copyright, etc. to the meta data, and then copy all that to a couple more external drives for security.

About a week after I had copied the images on the card I had put back into the camera, I went to reset the camera’s settings for the most likely settings for my next shoot.  It showed I still had images on the card, so I hit the view button to see which images were on the card before deleting them, AND, HORRORS,  THEY LOOKED BADLY PIXELATED!  I looked at several of the images in the camera and most had this problem.  I hit the magnify button, and they looked sharp again, but when going back to the “fit on screen” image they again looked pixelated.  All I had done was to copy them to the hard drive on my computer.  The images that had been copied to the hard drive were in no way affected, but the card seemed to be corrupted.  That never happened before.

Luckily, I had already uploaded the finished job to the client the day before, so I knew that the images in the computer were not corrupted.

As a pro, I can’t leave anything to chance, so I had to find out whether the card was bad, the camera had a problem, or what had screwed up the images while the card was in the computer.

My first test was to shoot test images to see what was happening.  Once shot, I looked at each at the back of the camera.  They looked normal.  I turned off the camera, popped the card, and put it in the built-in PC reader.  I copied the files to a folder on my desktop, and made sure it was finished copying.  I removed the card from the PC.  I made a second folder on my desktop.  I then used Photoshop to view the images in the first folder on my desktop.  They looked OK.  I put the card back in the camera and turned the viewer on, and they were corrupted!  I took the card out of the camera again, and put it back in the PC and copied the same files to the second folder on my desktop.  I clicked on the first image in Photoshop and a dialog box popped up saying that Photoshop could not read the image format.  The card was corrupted.  Period.

I had an old external USB 2.0 card reader I used to use before having built-in slots, so I dusted it off and plugged it into an open USB slot on my computer.  I put the card in the camera again and formatted the card.  Again I took some test images.  I took the card out of the camera and put it in the external reader.  It took longer than the built-in reader, but there weren’t that many images.  They copied perfectly.  I took the card from the reader and put it back in the camera.  I turned on the viewer, and the pictures looked normal, not corrupted.  I shut off the camera and again removed the card.  I again copied the files to another folder on my desktop – they could be opened in Photoshop and looked normal.

I determined that the built-in reader in the PC was corrupting the images while copying.  I don’t know why: was it software, or hardware?  I determined that the best way around the problem was to not use the built-in slots again on this computer, but to bypass them.  I had lost faith in them.  However, the USB 2.0 external reader is incredibly slow.  I also use my readers for HD video on SDHC cards, and it takes forever to import video files.  So, I decided to buy a new USB 3.0 external reader.  I found one on B&H’s website for $14.95 (with no shipping) at http://bhpho.to/SVr845 .  I ordered it and tried it out with all my different media from different cameras.  It seems to work well, and it is blazing fast compared with USB 2.0.

The moral of the story is:  Don’t be complacent about your digital photography equipment.  Don’t assume all is well without checking it out occasionally.  I could have gotten a bad surprise if I hadn’t looked at my camera, and taken action.  Being a pro, you’ve got to be on your toes!

– Gary Silverstein

Tags: 2.0, 3.0, camera, card, CF, CF card, commercial photography, Compact Flash, corrupt, corrupting, corruption, drive, file, files, hard drive, image, memory card, PC, pixel, pixelated, professional, reader, SD, SDHC, still, stills, USB, video
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The Difference A Background Can Make . . .

Monday, October 1st, 2012

In the days of film, a professional commercial photographer had to be very careful of the backgrounds that would be used in his/her images.  Retouching was expensive.  Shooting an item for use against another background from the one it was taken with could be a labor-intensive multi-step process.  A spot on a high-key (pure white) background  could be touched out on the negative, and a nightmare undertaking on a transparency.   Today, of course, images are taken digitally and manipulated by editing programs, like Photoshop.  One of our most recent shoots involved large, heavy industrial products.   In film-days past, we would have probably used a seamless white background to shoot the product and spent a lot of time with product placement.  The items to be photographed were round, between two and three feet in diameter, and each weighed 500 or more pounds.  Five views were to be taken of each.  That means that either the item would have to be moved on the background, or very carefully lifted by a hoist onto the background.  We would have to be careful of marks left by the items where they rested on the paper, and some method of keeping such round items from rolling off the surface would have to be employed and kept out of sight.

So, pre-planning for the shoot is still important, even in this digital world.  We opted to not use any type of manufactured background per se, but to only use white reflectors in strategic places to reflect light or add a highlight where we desired.  Not using a background simplified the lighting somewhat in that a roll of paper or fabric didn’t block out the light from behind each item.  We were going to photograph the items in the factory environment with the idea that we would isolate the image in Photoshop, and put it on another, more desirable background.

Lighting was done with our powerful studio strobes, and the modeling lights on the strobes gave us an idea of how the lighting would look in the finished image.  We shot with soft-boxes to give a square look to our lighting in the highlights, as umbrellas just wouldn’t cut it here as these products were light-reflective.  We planned to keep the camera stationary, move the lights as necessary, and rotate the product for the five different angles the customer required.  Since the objects were circular,  and we wanted to keep all the images the same size, we had to plan how to keep that proportionality.  Think of a coin stood on edge.  The widest the image would have to be is a little more than the diameter when one of the faces of the coin is toward you.  When the edge of the coin is nearer to you, the size of the image could change, but we wanted to make them all the same size for the client’s ease of putting together several views of their product.  Also, we had to be far enough away to assure depth of field when we were shooting the views that showed part of the object furthest away.  Editing programs have great sharpening utilities, but a severely out-of-focus image cannot be brought back.  You can easily blur parts of a sharp image and make it look good if needed for the effect, but the reverse isn’t the case.  So all this had to be figured out in advance.

Now, let’s go on to the backgrounds for the images.  Since the area or table on which the items were shot was in a fixed location, the background for each image (as produced by the camera) would have been a toolbox and other parts of the assembly plant.  So we made it so that we and our client could “lift” the item off the background and put it on any other background or even a video.  This is done by means of a “clipping path.”  This is a very labor-intensive process.  It means that I use a Photoshop tool to painstakingly trace out every edge of the product at anywhere from a 100% to a 300% enlargement.  Once I have outlined every hole, edge, and cranny, I “select” the item alone and make a layer of it to put on other backgrounds.  I include this clipping path with the image, so the client is able to do the same.  Now, you may ask why I do so much work, as some of the editing programs have become pretty sophisticated and make an easier selection with other, faster tools.  Well, the answer is this:  I have used these editing tools, and sometimes there are errors in the program choosing what is part of the item and what is not.  It may not be noticeable on a small jpeg on a website, but it will stick out like a sore thumb on a 30X40 enlargement at a trade show.  That is what separates a pro from an amateur.  Below are an original view of one of the products, and a few different backgrounds that I feel work well.  Each background below was created in Photoshop, but other backgrounds could be used, as well.  Remember that whichever one a client chooses, I include the clipping path so they can put it against another background if that is their need.

As you can see, the product image looks at home with any of the backgrounds.  Keep this in mind as you plan your next shoot.

– Gary Silverstein

Tags: camera, commercial photographer, commercial photography, http://weshoot.com, Marketing, photographer, photography, Photoshop, professional, reflections, video
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