The Roving Photographer

Photo Op 1: The Gardeners

This is the first of my Roving Photographer photo op pages, in which I took photos for a local garden club. Follow me as I prepare, shoot, and deliver the final images.

As I described on the Roving Photographer welcome page, a woman came up to me as I was photographing some imposing summer clouds. I'll call her Linda. She asked if I would take some pictures of her and some fellow gardeners for their garden club newsletter. They worked every Sunday on the grounds of a local hospice.

Despite having no recent experience in photographing people (or, really, because I wanted the experience), I agreed.

This is the story of that small photo adventure, what went well... and what I learned. Maybe my experience as the Roving Photographer will encourage you to look for similar assignments.

The Setup

You'd think this would be as simple as showing up at the appointed time, taking a few pictures, and leaving. Not so. I wanted to be prepared, and I wanted to be sure that I'd do a good job - these were perfect strangers for whom I wanted to make a good impression. This wasn't a paid gig, but I wanted to prove that I could do work worthy of pay.

I had many worries to think about - some I could control and some I couldn't.

1. I knew nothing about the people I was photographing.


2. I didn't even know how many would show up.


3. I had scouted the site, but didn't know exactly where I would be photographing.


4. Would they hedge on signing a model release form?


5. I had no idea if the other gardeners would want a photographer hanging around.


6. And...

OK, I was getting a bit obsessive. I decided not to worry about what I couldn't control. But I did plan to remind myself to be sociable when I met up with these people - get to know them a bit before bombarding them with incessant shutter clicks and flashes. I followed this plan, which made the whole experience go well.

There were many other things that I could control and prepare for:

1. Fill flash. I wanted to take advantage of fill flash. This is not something I had worked with very often, so I wanted to get better at it. I preset my speedflash and threw it (gently) in my bag.


2. Basic equipment concerns. Although the hospice was just a mile away from my house, I figured a camera could fail near to home just as easily

   A cautious Roving Photographer packs lots of backup gear.

   as 4000 miles from home. So, I packed an extra camera.


3. Power. I packed an extra battery for the primary camera.


4. Flash backup. Instead of extra batteries, I packed an extra flash - right idea, but wrong execution. I'll explain why, later.


5. Model release forms. Part of my verbal agreement to doing this shoot was that I could use the photographs on ImproveYourDP. So, I scrounged on the Web for a basic release form.

That was all I could do. I went to bed feeling well prepared.

The Roving Photographer's Big Day - Getting Started

Sunday morning arrived bright and sunny - not a cloud in the sky. Perfect!

I found my gardeners - two of them - unloading their gear in the parking lot. I was expecting more people, but I think I was relieved to have a small group.

I grabbed my gear and introduced myself. I learned that they were both members of the city garden club and tended just one of the gardens on the hospice site; other groups tended the other gardens. Linda's co-gardener was the president of a local garden club. I'll call her Beth.

We chatted a bit more until we were comfortable with each other, but not so long that I kept them from their work.

Before I started photographing, I explained that I was hoping to get some good photographs for the Roving Photographer section of ImproveYourDP and asked them to sign the model release forms. No problem with that. I got their email addresses, as well, so that I could send links to the pictures.

With the pleasantries over, they set to work and so did I. My kit included an
18 - 200mm zoom lens. The zoom allowed me to get closeups without crowding the subjects. As it was a bright, sunny day, fill flash would help reduce the harshness of the shadows.

I mounted my flash, fired up old Nellie, and was ready to shoot... except for one thing: I couldn't see their faces!

A Few Minor Roving Photographer Challenges

This wasn't going to be as easy as I thought.

They weren't posing for me - they were doing their work. Imagine that! ... And, gardeners bend over to do their work. ... And they were wearing hats that hid their faces! ... For some reason, this all caught me off guard.

The only thing to do, then, was to start shooting. I started taking three or four frames a minute. Carefully looking for that right pose. Slowly getting familiar with their movements so that I could anticipate the good pose.

It was working pretty well and I felt like I was getting some good shots. I couldn't be absolutely sure, though, because the bright day made it hard to chimp. It was almost like shooting with film again.

I kept shooting, feeling pretty good about the work. But, that quickly changed. I happened to check my flash status and saw that the flash was set to manual mode. That gave constant fill flash regardless of distance to subject. And that left me with effectively no fill flash on distant shots, and overexposure when the subject was close.

The effect of manual flash setting   with subject at too great a distance	The effect of manual flash setting    with the subject too close

I guess my preparations were not as thorough as I would have liked. You'll recall that I had packed a second flash as a backup. What I forgot to do was set it for fill flash like I did for the other flash. When I set up in the morning, I pulled the backup flash out instead of the one I had preset.

A Roving Photographer Moral: Check ALL of your settings before you begin shooting.

The Upside

Things went smoothly from here on out.

By now, you must be thinking that this shoot was a major, half-day production. In truth, I was at the garden for just under an hour and only shot about 150 pictures. Despite all the details of preparation and the few technical challenges, I found Linda and Beth weren't intimidated (at least not too much) by my work, so the time was relaxing and passed quickly.

When they stood up to stretch their backs, we'd chat a bit, sometimes I would take pictures as we talked. When they went back to work, I moved around a bit to try different angles.

One of the neat things about being forced to sit down for most of the shoot was that when the gardeners stood up, I could explore shooting upward from low angles. With the deep blue sky, and the towering effect created by being below the subject, I was able to grab a few dramatic shots.

I tried shots zoomed in close to capture the character of gardeners focused on their work. I tried zooming out to bring the garden into play. Or, shooting the gardeners through a filter of plants. When I was lucky, I found the balance between the two, even bringing in some strong diagonal composition in the foreground and background to match the angle of a gardener's back.

Diversions

Nothing helps a photo shoot like the unexpected. Consider...

The Frog

As I'm photographing Beth, she jumps up to watch a frog and calls Linda over. They are both really excited - they get me so excited I forget that this is a great picture opportunity.

By the time I regain my composure, the moment is almost past. I get one shot with both of them engaged - barely. Only 4 seconds later, Linda is moving back to work and out of the frame.

This isn't race car photography, but you still have to be quick to capture the right moment.

Ducks

Only three minutes into the photo shoot, I was ready for a break. Not really! But, I did stand up to look for alternative shooting angles. As I walked around a corner, I spied a young duck meandering in the bushes. I took a quick, not so great grab shot, thinking that I might not get another chance. But, when I turned around, I found a whole family of ducks parading on the grass.

This, and a handful of other duck pictures, are the subject of the Roving Photographer's photo op 2.

Lotus

As I wrapped up my picture taking, one of the gardeners invited me to take a tour of endangered American Lotus in Monroe, Michigan. This led to a challenging Roving Photographer quest for a decent picture of this unusual flower reminiscent of the days of Pharaoh in Egypt.

Lotus are the subject of several of my Roving Photographer photo ops, yet to be written.

Aftermath

While not a cash engagement, this photo shoot came with a commitment for me to provide digital photographs in exchange for my use of the images for the Roving Photographer. That meant my work was only half done.

In the following week, I had to sort through some 150 pictures, process them, and arrive at a suitable subset to post for my "customer's" review. The gory details of this work are subject for another discussion. For now, I will outline the multiple steps that I went through.

1. Uploading to computer. I copied the files from my camera to a folder named "080706 Hospice Gardeners"


2. Culling. I deleted the obviously worthless images, going from about 150 images to about 105.


3. Duplicating. I copied the remaining files to a duplicate folder where I could make modifications without touching the originals.


4. Categorization. I tagged the photographs with category names (e.g. "Hospice Gardeners", "Frogs") that would make them easier to find in the future.


5. Rating. Perhaps the most difficult task, rating separates the pictures that will be best to show your client from those of marginal quality. This is where your critical eye really comes into play. I rate on a scale of 1 to 3, plus "unrated". The pictures on this page come from all four of the categories, depending upon what I am trying to demonstrate.


6. Exposure adjustments. Overall, I was pleased with the exposure out of the camera, so I made few significant exposure corrections.
   
   The one exception to this was the picture of both gardeners in a wide-angle view of the garden. I could not get enough light on their faces in the original image - in fact, this was one area where I needed to use either a manual flash setting or flash exposure compensation - the TTL flash metering wasn't picking their faces up because they were too small in the field of view. Even image editing software was not much help in effectively resolving this problem.




7. Cropping. I only cropped a handful of images - mainly to remove background and bring the image closer.


8. Resizing. Since these photos were for a newsletter, full 12 megapixel images were overkill. I reduced them all to 1200x800 pixels, offering to provide the higher resolution images if my gardeners were interested in any large reprints.


9. Backup. I automatically backup the original and modified files to an external hard drive (I am a cautious roving photographer).


10. Uploading to Web site. When all was done, I uploaded the resized versions of the photos rated #1 to a private section of Picasa Web for my clients to pick up. One of the gardeners did not have a decent computer, so I burned her a CD that she picked up from my mailbox.

And that was it!

All-in-all, I was pretty pleased with the results and the lessons I learned to improve my digital photography.

As you look through some of my Roving Photographer's shots, good and bad, see what you think. Consider what works well for you and what you would improve to be a better roving photographer, yourself.