Philip Meadows Photography

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Philip Meadows — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:39:37 +0000

Quick Camera Setup

Philip Meadows — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 15:34:28 +0000

Select the Highest Quality Setting

When it comes to file format, shooting in RAW offers a lot more flexibility than shooting in JPEG, however it requires some editing of the files after importing to your computer. I suggest setting your camera to JPEG Large for now. We offer classes on RAW shooting and workflow, should you wish to dig a little deeper.

ISO

Try to keep the ISO as low as possible, ideally between 100 and 400, as “digital noise” can be a problem at higher settings.

White Balance

Set it to Auto and as you progress you will gain confidence as to when to switch to specific setting such as cloudy or tungsten.

Choosing the Right Exposure Mode

DSLRs and advanced PS “point and shoot” cameras offer a range of exposure modes from fully automatic to full manual. In between these extreme settings are the two semi-auto modes. Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority – these offer lots of creative control.

In Aperture Priority mode, you dial in the desired aperture and the camera works out the desired shutter speed needed for a correct exposure.

While in Shutter Priority mode, you dial in the desired shutter speed and the camera figures out the aperture. Easy right?!

Setting the Right Metering Mode

There are three common Metering options:

Matrix
Center Weighted
Spot

Matrix metering takes a reading from the entire scene and sets the exposure accordingly. It is fairly accurate most of the time and suitable for a lot of situations.

Center Weighted mode takes a reading that concentrates on the central 60% or so of the frame, making it ideal for portraits and close ups.

Spot mode allows for taking a reading of a very small portion 6-8% of the scene and is much more accurate but more difficult to implement and as a beginner I would not recommend this method until you have gained experience of other the other modes.

AF (Auto Focus) and Drive Modes

Razor sharp focus is our objective and digital cameras offer numerous focusing modes to help us achieve this.

The two primary settings are “single shot” for stationary or slow moving subjects, and continuous or servo mode for fast moving subjects.

The Drive modes allow you to select whether a single shot is desired each time you release the shutter or a series of shots are captured in quick succession… as long as the shutter release is depressed.

Taking a Test Shot

Digital cameras offer up the advantage of immediate feedback. Utilizing your LCD screen one can look at a review of the image and check various elements, such as sharpness and digital noise.

You can also check the exposure by looking up the histogram,the histogram can be found by pressing your cameras info or display button once you are reviewing an image. A histogram is a tonal map used as a guide to correct exposure. If you are unhappy with the tonal map you can easily make adjustments and retake the picture.

Learning to See (updated)

Philip Meadows — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:21:17 +0000

In this walk-about photography workshop you will learn more about the craft of travel photography and the art of seeing.

Roadmap to Your Camera

Philip Meadows — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 01:19:52 +0000

Did you buy a fancy new DSLR and wonder why the pictures all look like they came from your point-and-shoot? Come learn what all those dials and buttons are for and find out how to take pictures that will leave your friends saying "Ooooo!" and "Aaaaah!"

Modular Workshop

Philip Meadows — Sat, 25 Jun 2011 01:00:05 +0000

"Calla Lilly" Hasselblad H2/ Phase1 P45 digital back

Modular workshops are made up of 4 subjects, flash, macro, low light and RAW capture workflow. Classes are held on Monday evenings between 6:30 – 9:00pm at our studio located 8061 LakeCity Way NE and are taught in weekly rotation for example: Week 1: Flash Photography, Week 2: Macrophotography, Week 3: Low Light Photography and Week 4: RAW workflow. If you wish to take all 4 modules and for some reason you can’t make week 2, simply make up that module on the next rotation. Module classes can be purchased individually or as a set of 4.

July 2nd, 9th, 16th, 23rd 2011 – Saturday Photography Modular Workshop
July 11th, 18th, 25th, 1st 2011 – Monday Photography Modular Workshop
July 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd 2011 – Friday Photography Modular Workshop

Learning to See

Philip Meadows — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 15:19:48 +0000

In this walk-about photography workshop you will learn more about the craft of travel photography and the art of seeing.

Bull Hill Ranch

Philip Meadows — Wed, 18 May 2011 16:14:49 +0000

Rainy Days

Philip Meadows — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 18:13:15 +0000

Cold wet winter days can be a real drag especially if your interest is in photographing flowers. An alternative to shooting flowers outdoors is of course to photographing in the cozy surroundings of your living room.
Most people don’t have access to a studio but this need not prevent you from taking beautiful studio type photographs on your living room table. This image was taken just that way in fact and whats even more fun is that it was lit with the light from a bare bulb table lamp using a technique called “light painting”!
You’ll need a steady tripod for this exercise as you’ll be using a fairly long shutter speed, fairly long can be anything from 1/2 sec to 3 minutes depending on the ISO and aperture and brightness of the light source you select. Set your camera to M for manual also focus the lens manually and turn off “auto focus” Try using ISO 100 and a aperture of f/4. Trial and error will help you find the right shutter speed depending on the tone of your flower but 1/2sec-1 minute might be about right - open the shutter and begin to paint the light over the flower by moving the light around the image, you can give a little to the background or more to the left or right for a different effect, try to keep your hand out of the frame but if it sneaks in just momentarily it probably won’t even appear in the photograph.If your first attempt is too light then shorten your shutter speed by half and if its too dark try doubling the amount of time you paint with the light.
I used a dark cloth for my background with the photo here. The settings were ISO 100 f/6.3 shutter speed 1/2 second. I’ve even used an I-Phone to light my pictures but the exposure is likely to be about 3 minutes so you’ll have to set your camera to “bulb” and as you open the shutter start counting 1-1000, 2-1000 etc,. or you can set your I-Phone timer and get a 2 for 1 deal! I simply converted to gray scale in Photoshop and added a curve adjustment to accentuate the contrast between the light and dark areas.

Welding

Philip Meadows — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:02:45 +0000

As I move on through the Engineering project it was time for Dennis to do his thing with the welder. The idea for the image was to compliment the grinding shot with sparks flying in all directions but also to create an impressionistic look with strong coloured lighting using gelled strobes balanced with the ambient light for a dramatic effect. The shot had to be built step by step and so the first thing to do was the framing of the image, I wanted to get very close and wide, as I was shooting again with the Phase One 645DF I selected a Phase One 45mm lens which is around 28mm in terms of 35mm focal length. I don’t have the Phase 28mm but If I did I would have definitely used it and got it much closer thereby creating an even greater sense of drama (next time then!). Here’s a shot framing up. Next came the fine tuning task of positioning the camera so that the metal object

Dennis was about to hit with the torch was slightly between him and the lens, this was because I didn’t want the bright portion of the welding torch to flare across Dennis’s visor. It took several attempts to get it just right but we finally found the right spot. Now for calculating the exposure:- I had to use a shutter speed which was long enough to record the sparks and long streaks spraying across the frame without causing over exposure of the brightest highlight which was to be the point of contact between the welding torch

and metal object to be welded. The Phase One P65 digital back has an astonishing dynamic range of 13 stops and I like to use all them whenever possible, It’s a bit of a game I play with myself to creatively push the envelope- I just want to see if I can do it! In order to get what I wanted we had to turn out all the overhead lights in the room so it was pretty dark to begin with and here’s a shot made by my colleague Paula Salewsky showing the sparks and ambient light thrown off by the welding torch, I’m tripping the shutter on the Phase One using my Macbook Pro (I didn’t want to get my eyeballs burned).

I settle on an exposure of 1/3 sec f/16 ISO 200 I’m pretty sure the white balance was on auto but I wasn’t concerned with that at all at this point as I’d set that to taste in post. All that was need now was a splash of blue light against the background and a bit of fill from the front left with red to hit the side of Dennis’s protective head gear because the back wall was very light in colour I would use that to cause the blue light to bounce back and frame Dennis’s body and head gear to the right. Once gelled up I simply adjusted the strobes individual power output to give me the fill that I needed, I should mention that I did this one strobe at a time so the settings were a different as the blue strobe light

had to travel twice the distance as the red one. The whole process took about an hour including set up and tear down and I went away happy. Of course when you are tethered to a laptop one can review progress one shot at a time and with finessing the exposures I found that the Phase had managed to hold detail at a value of 253 in the very brightest point of the image and a value of 3 in the deepest shadow, that is extraordinary by any standards and I continue to be astonished at what the Phase One backs are capable of.

Here’s the final image.

Sparks flying

Philip Meadows — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:07:10 +0000

I’m currently working on the Facilities and Engineering project in which I’m recording a typical “day in the life” of the the department here at Fred Hutchinson Cancer research Center. The plan was to capture a spray of sparks from a grinding wheel but I also wanted to create a rich hot glow and a sense of heat in the shot. To make the shot I needed 2 strobes which in my case were Vivitar 285′s, one mounted on a gorilla pod to the right and slightly behind my subject and another to the left and behind so effectively cross lighting the subject.

The workshop had a reasonable amount of window light but there was a large overhead fluorescent strip above the work bench which I knew was going to require me to gel the strobes as I would white balance for the strong fluorescent light. So with both both strobes gelled and in roughly the right spot I carefully sight align them both so as to just illuminate the right side of the shirt and the bench and the forearm on the left to create a little separation. My plan was to use a relatively slow shutter speed to create as much blur in the sparks and the wheel as possible, I metered my ambient at 1/20th and f/8 @ 400 ISO, of course there’s a lot of potential movement going on but the light from the short flash duration is going to counteract a lot of that but in the end It was just about spot on with no blurring. Using a light meter with flash exposure capability (yes I could’ve winged but I had time so I chose to use the tools at hand) and carefully metered the flash output manually setting the power of the strobes. I was able to do this with the left hand strobe by increasing the distance to subject but unfortunately the right hand strobe was clamped to a frame with a gorrilla pod and therefore I couldn’t move it any further back, my solution was to throw a handy green rag over it which did the trick (sort of!), you can see it in one of the setup shots.

After a couple of test shots I could see that I needed a little light pushed back into the frame to illuminate the bench and the grinder so I solved this problem using a gold reflector propped up with a garbage can. This did the trick, we were all set and on with the shoot where I ended up with my favorite spark pattern.I shot the image using a Phase One camera with P65 back and a 120mm f/4 macro lens. The camera was tethered to a Mac Book Pro using Capture One 5 software. I’d like to thank my colleague Paula Salewsky who assisted and shoots these “behind the scenes” images which were taken with a Canon 5D MKll and 24-70 f/2.8 all ambient light.