Author Archive: ken

Well today I decided to do something a little different. Instead of having one central topic, I’m going to write about few of smaller ideas I have rattling around in my head.

Non-Camera camera gear. I think most experienced photographers carry more than cameras and lenses in their bags. So I thought I’d share few of the stranger items I carry. I carry a small role of gaffer’s tape. It has saved my butt several times. Gaffer’s tape differs from duck tape in that leaves much less residue and it made with cotton fabric not plastic. Awesome stuff. Sticks to about anything.

I carry a multi-tool. My preference is an old Swiss Army tool. All steel, well made, and rugged. It’s heavy enough to use to lightly hammer stuff and has most of the tools you will need.

Disposable ear plugs. If you’ve ever been to a heavy metal concert and find yourself shooting from right in front of a huge speaker stack, you’d be thankful you brought earplugs. They also work well on a loud factory floor. Plus they are light and take up very little space.

Cash. It’s alway good to have little cash on location. You never know when you need to buy batteries, gas, or lunch.

OK, another thought. When you work in a creative profession, it’s easy to get burned out and can suffer from a lack of inspiration. There’s lots of tricks people use. Earlier this week my intern was helping me clean up the studio after a couple of shoots. I asked her to put away all the lights, even though I was going to be using them later. The reason for this? When I have to set the lights up from scratch I makes me rethink how I want to light a subject. As a result, the lighting scheme is custom to that individual. I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about that before.

Last thought. I’m going to try to work on a personal project next week, if the weather cooperates. It is going to be a night shoot in the woods and may be quite involved. So I testing some lighting schemes that will involve mixing strobes, incandescent lights, and gelled strobes. It may be a lighting nightmare. We’ll see. Anyway while playing with my newly assembled light fixtures I shot some test images. The one below I kinda liked.

Incandescent Light Bulbs

Well, that it for now. Thanks for reading and I’d interested in hearing from other photographer about what kinds of whacky things they carry in their bags.

For more examples of my personal projects check this out.

– Ken

A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me to post something about the basics of composition, so that’s what we are going to talk about today.

When you think about it, composition is really about putting together three basic elements. The first is the organization of the subject you are shooting, the next is your camera angle, and the third is how you frame/crop the shot. In the world of commercial photography we often have the luxury of shooting in the studio which gives us a lot of control over all the variable. How we use the elements of composition depends on how the images of the products are going to be used. For instance, if the images are for a catalog/website, then the images will just be clean product shots showing a potential buyer what they will get for their money. However if the shot is going to be used for like an advertisement or a catalog cover it needs to evoke a response and can be much more artistic in nature.

Catalog Product Shot

The image above was shot to show what the product looks like. The product is centered in the image and the composition is pretty boring.

One of the basic premises of composition is called the Rule of Thirds. It’s pretty basic and says that you should usually divide your image up into thirds and organize your subject accordingly. You can use the rule for horizontal as well as vertical images.

The Rule of Thirds

Think of your canvas as having imaginary sets of lines like the image above and compose your subject into the grid. See the image below for example.

Example of the Rule of Thirds

In the above photo for a magazine ad, the main subject is the avocado since it is the main ingredient in the product. Notice that it sits in the lower third of the image. But it is also not centered, it sits in the left two thirds of the image. This is more pleasing to the eye than if the avocado sat dead center of the image.

So now you are saying “that’s fine for product photography, how can I relate that to shooting other things?”. First of all, the rule of thirds isn’t really a rule, but a suggestion for composition and rules were made to be broken, weren’t they? (We’ll take about that in a minute).

Rule of Thirds in a Portrait

OK, above is an example of using the rule of thirds in a portrait. I placed Tasha in the left third of the frame. The empty space on the right helps balance the image. So play around with the rule of thirds, it works particularly well when shooting landscapes where the horizon is place in the top or bottom third of the image.

In portraiture, the basic rule is that if you are placing your subject off center in the photo, you them to be looking into space you are leaving open. In the photo above, Tasha’s body and head are facing into the frame. When someone is facing out of the frame it can make the viewer uncomfortable because the subject is looking at something the viewer can not see.

Breaking some of the rules.

Now in the photo above, I broke that rule. Notice that I did honor the rule of thirds both in her placement in the photo, but also the horizon in the top third. But here Morgan is facing out of the frame. While some people don’t like this image, I think it works for me because she isn’t looking at anything, her eyes are closed. I like the tension her placement created.

You can see more of my various image by click here.

That’s it for this week. Next time we’ll talk more about composition and balancing your images.

Thanks for reading!!

-Ken

I was going to blog about my thoughts about those people that feel it’s OK to either use other people’s images/art as their own. I’m not talking about using another artist’s work as inspiration. I’m talking about those that actually claim the image as their own or who knowingly duplicate another artist’s work.

I know what people will say. I’ve heard the argument that, for the most part there is no new art. It’s the same images that are being accidentally recreated in different forms. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about people purposefully passing off another’s work as their own.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that those folks that don’t have the ethics to create their own work will not agree with me and that such a post would not change their mind. So I won’t do it. So there. 😉

So, if you want to see examples of my unoriginal personal projects, check them out here. 🙂

Thanks for reading,

-Ken.

We’ve all heard that one, either in person or on the Internet somewhere, right? Well it got me thinking about the limitations and the possibilities of different cameras. So I decided to try something a bit silly – a fashion style shoot using my Canon Powershot SD1300 (see photo below).

Canon Powershot SD1300.

I know it sounds crazy right? But I wanted to illustrate that it’s not the camera that is the major component in creating a photo. It depends more on the photographer. Now I’m not saying my $149 Canon Powershot is just as good as a $30,000 Hasselblad. My point is that a piece of equipment is only as good as the person operating it.

You can give an unskilled person an awesome camera, but their results proabably won’t be much different than if they used the Powershot. In fact, the results may be worse. For an experienced photographer, the limitations of a camera like the Powershot can be a source of frustration. The problem is that the camera doesn’t give you the amount of control that you are used to. There’s no good way to control focus, shutter speed or aperture.

The photo below is one that I shot with the Powershot. It was shot at ISO 800, 1/13, at f/4.5. It’s not one of my strongest images, but considering the circumstances, it’s not awful. In all fairness, I did do some minor adjustments and noise reduction in Photoshop. The shot was lit using the modeling lights on my studio strobes, hence the slow shutter speed needed.

Rachael - copyright Ken Rieves Photography

So at the end of the day, it’s not important if you shoot Canon or Nikon or Leica or whatever. What matters is how you use your knowledge and skills to create your photos.

Oh, one more thing. Try silly experiments like this. Step outside your comfort level and try new things. Maybe spend a day shooting with nothing but a wide angle lens or shooting at your widest aperture or shooting everything with an on-camera flash. Challenge yourself. It’s fun and you might just learn something. 🙂

Thanks again for reading and a special thanks to my friend Rachael, who was able to help me out on short notice. To see more of my portraits check them out here.

-Ken.

To help illustrate the differences in focal lengths, I shot a variety of photos from the same position of the same subject (a sign across the street from my studio). All focal lengths listed are calculated based on the camera body’s crop factor (1.6) and also the factor of a teleconverter (is used, it was 1.4).

So if I used a 300mm lens on my 7D, the 35mm equivalent would be 480mm: 300mm X 1.6 = 480mm. If I used the 300mm plus a 1.4x teleconverter you have 672mm: 300 X 1.6 = 480, 480 X 1.4 = 672mm. That make sense?

Take a look at the video below, it’s pretty amazing to see the difference between 672mm versus 16mm. Also, watch it in HD at full screen. It has a lot more impact.

Examples of different focal lengths.

Thanks for reading! Check out the blog later, the topic will be the basics of composition.

-Ken.

This week we are going to talk about the focal length of lenses. At it’s simplest, the focal length is the effective length of a lens as is measured from the front element of the lens to the film plane (the digital sensor). The focal length is measured in millimeters (mm). The longer the lens (greater focal length), there greater the number of mm’s. Make sense?

OK, so what does that mean? The longer the lens (more mms), the greater the magnification. As we briefly talked about in Part 1 of this series, more magnification comes at a price. The greater the focal length, the less light makes it to the sensor.

Lenses can be divided into two basic groups. The first are lenses that have a fixed focal length (called prime lenses). For instance a 300mm prime lens will always be a 300mm lens. If you want to get more magnification, you have to move closer to your subject. The second type of lens is a variable focal length lens or zoom lens. For instance, I frequently use a 24-70mm lens in the studio. This is a lens that adjusts between 24mm and 70mm. So if I have it set at 50mm and want to tighten up a shot, I don’t have to walk any closer. I can just zoom in to 70mm.

So all this begs the questions, why doesn’t everyone just use zoom lenses to save the effort of walking back and forth? There’s a couple of reasons why prime lenses are popular. First of all, a good prime is almost always sharper than a zoom lens. The reason is that there are fewer elements inside the lens barrel. When you introduce more elements for the light to pass through it can hurt image quality. The other advantage is that prime lenses transmit more light to the sensor make them faster than zoom lenses.

Some zoom lenses have a constant maximum aperture, while others have a maximum aperture that is determined by it’s focal length. For instance my 24-70mm lens has a constant max aperture of 2.8 throughout it’s focal length. However my 10-22mm lens has a max aperture that changes from f/3.5 to f/4.5 as I zoom from 10mm to 22mm.

So is the focal length all about magnification? Well sorta, but not always. It’s also about perspective. For example, consider the two photos below. The one on the left was shot with a 200mm lens from about 20 feet. The one on the right was shot with a 10mm lens from less than 2 feet away. The size of the figurine in each is the same, but because of the different proximity the perspective changes. At 10mm much more of the background is visible.

This next photo shows how proximity can cause a distorted view of reality. In the photo below both markers are in the same position however they appear very different due to the camera’s distance to the subject. The photo on the left was shot with at 200mm, whereas the photo on the right was shot at 10mm. Notice that at 10mm the red marker appears to be twice the size of the blue one, even though they are the same size. At 200mm the markers appear to be next to each other even though there is a about a foot between them.

This distortion is particularly important when photographing people. When you are too close, body parts can extremely disproportionate, which can be very unflattering. For portrait work a focal length of about 100mm is ideal because it provides enough distance between the camera and the subject so that everything is proportional.

To see more of my portrait work click here.

Well that’s it for this time. Thanks for reading and if you have any questions let me know.

-Ken

Yesterday was a long but fun day. I was in Michigan shooting photos of machinery that is used in a production line. The machines were going to be outlined for use in printed materials as well as for a website. Since most of the machines had windows so you could see things that move down the line, in many places you could see thru the machines. To make things easier on the graphic designers who would extract these machines from the background, I shot everything against white and laid white paper on the floor.

To make the white background I used a series of 15×18 ft. steel rolling panels that the company used as partitions. I used a scissor lift to clamp rolls of 9ft wide paper to the panels (see the photo below. Also note, no lighting was setup at this point). Fork lifts and the overhead 10 ton crane was used to move the machines into place in front of the background.

Background panels.

We shot for almost 10 hours and got great photos. The clients were very pleased so it was a very successful shoot! I crashed in my hotel room a little after 1am, then drove back to my studio in the morning. It was a lot of work and long hours, but the payoff was a set of images that myself and the clients loved. So worth it. 🙂

For more examples of the my commercial work click here.

Thanks for reading!!

-Ken

Last week we talked about the 2 main properties of lenses, aperture and focal length. This week we’ll talk about other properties and characteristics of lenses. Since this post is about basics and I am not an engineer or physicist, I won’t get into the science behind all this. Partly because I don’t want to lose my reader, but also because I don’t understand all the deep science behind optics. 🙂

Last time, we talked about how the lens’s aperture controlled how much light hits the camera’s sensor. It achieves this much like the human eye. When you look into bright light, your pupil contracts and limits the amount that enters the eye. When you are in dark room, your pupil dilates and lets in more light. Your lens does the same thing. There is diaphragm inside the lens that opens and contracts in increments called f/stops.

While the aperture controls the amount of light that hits the sensor, it does more than that. It also controls depth of field (DOF). So what is depth of field? It is the area in a photo that is in focus. For example, look at the two photos below. The first photo was shot at f/1.2 with a 50mm lens. Notice that the pot is mostly in focus, but as you move away from it, things quickly go out of focus. (Now, shooting at f/1.2 is pretty extreme, most lenses don’t open that wide but it helps illustrate the point). Now look at the photo below it. It was shot with the same lens, but was shot at f/8. You’ll notice that you can now see the background and also that the handle is now in focus. The depth of field is much wider at f/8 than it was at f/1.2.

The top image at f/1.2. The bottom image at f/8.

Depth of field is not only a function of aperture, but also a function of focal length. For example, if you shoot a photo with a 200mm lens at f/2.8, then you shoot that same photo with a 50mm lens at f/2.8, the photo shot with the 200mm lens will have a shallower DOF than the photo shot with 50mm lens.

The final component of DOF is the distance between the lens and the subject. The closer you are to the subject the shallower the depth of field. The greater the distance, the wider the depth of field. Simple, right?

OK, now that we have this information, how do we use it? Let’s discuss this scenario, you are shooting a photo of a person in an alley. The alley is really cool looking, but when you get just the right angle there is a garbage dumpster that is just visible in the background. So what do you do? You select an exposure that uses a wider aperture that allows the background to go out of focus. The dumpster no longer becomes an issue.

Here’s another scenario. You are shooting snapshots at a family function and must shoot at f/2.8 to get a good photo. If you want to have a wider DOF, select a wider angle lens. Your DOF will increase.

There is a particular characteristic of lenses called bokeh. This term describes the quality of the out of focus area and it varies between lenses. There are lots of factors that goes into creating the bokeh, including the number petals on the diaphragm, the types of glass, and the lens construction. Generally a smoother, creamier bokeh is more favorable. If you look at the photo above at f/1.2, you notice how the background is very smooth and the colors blend together in a pleasing way. Some lens’s bokeh as less pleasing that the out of focus area can be blocky or you’ll have unpleasing artifacts.

Now that you understand depth of field, go out and take some photos and play with the depth of field. It’s a great tool and can be used to create powerful images.

Thanks for reading!!!

-Ken.

OK, today I had a photo shoot at a tool making company in Michigan. My shot list included product photos of some cutting tools and also some shots of tool making equipment. While these shoots went great, one of the real treats was the facility itself. As it turns out, the owner of the company was a collector of Americana. He collects all kinds of cool stuff from antique bronze church bells (one weighing over 2400 pounds) to vintage oil cans. Everywhere I went on the production floor was all kinds of cool, collectable stuff including gas stations signs, fast food signs, antique police call stations, all kinds of stuff. It was a museum as much as it was a manufacturing facility. So it was a good day. 🙂

Here are a few photos of a small portion of building. Everywhere I went I discovered a sign here, or a bell there, it was an adventure of discovery. 🙂

It was a shame that I found out that many of these signs lit up after I shot these snapshots before I left the plant.

Anyway it was a fun day in an unanticipated way. To see more of my commercial photographer click here.

Thanks for reading!

-Ken

Well this past Christmas must have been the year of DSLR because I’ve heard from a lot folks that got them as gifts. One of the main questions I’ve been asked is about what lenses to get. (I also have been asked how to use the darn thing. 🙂 ) The simple answer is “buy the best lens you can afford”. But that’s not really the best answer. It mostly depends on what you are going to be shooting and the environment in which you are going to be shooting

The 2 most basic qualities of a lens are the focal length and the maximum aperture. The focal length determines the field of view and is expressed in terms of millimeters. The more millimeters the less field of view. For instance a 300mm lens will have a narrow field of view (more magnification) compared to a 35mm lens.

The other quality is the maximum aperture. This is expressed as an F/stop and determines how much light the lens lets in. The lower the number the more light passes thru the lens. So an F/2.8 lens lets in more light than a F/4.5 lens.

The problem we run into is that these qualities are at odds. When you make a lens with lots of magnification, you have to use a longer lens tube and/or more elements. This reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor. In order to compensate, lens makers make the front element of the lens larger in diameter. This lets more light it but increases the price and weight.

Two common terms to describe these qualities are speed and length. For instance a 300mm lens is longer than a 50mm. Although the physical length may not hugely different between 2 lenses, because one has more magnification than the other, it is considered “longer”. The other term speed refers to the maximum aperture. In this case a faster lens has a wider maximum aperture than a slower lens.

A “longer” 70-200mm f/2.8 lens versus a “shorter, slower” 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 lens.

So, in order to determine what lenses to buy you need to decide what you are shooting and your lighting situation. Next week we’ll discuss other lens attributes in more detail.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

-Ken