A professional approach to print quality

Someone I know who, would regard himself as a professional, actually used to get his “professional” prints by standing in line at the local supermarket. He argued over and over that there was nothing wrong with what he was doing and he wasn’t ashamed of it.

We can all take our snapshots to the supermarket and come away with good results. But it’s not what a client hiring a professional is paying for. Uncle Bob can take pictures at a wedding and take them to the chemist or supermarket or knock them out on an ink-jet.

When someone pays for a professional to shoot their wedding they’re expecting something more than what uncle Bob can offer. They want their money’s worth.

There has to be something that differentiates a “pro” from what everyone else can do. There some added value and an attitude towards the job and the client that justifies the term professional.

Getting back to the guy in the supermarket I mentioned earlier. He said that he wasn’t ashamed of what he was doing – but, what he didn’t mention was that he carefully placed his own sticker over the supermarket’s branding on the back of every print!

Starting with something good

I’ve had a number of conversations with photographers and designers recently which have often revolved around the cropping and use of images.

Maybe it’s because of the flexibility of the digital image that makes some photographers so lazy. We can all manipulate our images to an unprecedented degree but just because you can play with an image doesn’t mean that you should.

When you’re looking through the viewfinder, you’ve got a pretty good cropping tool. I’d rather walk away from a shoot confident there’s a reasonable probability that I have some shots that worked rather than waiting until I’m back at the studio looking through a bunch of poorly composed, substandard, images hoping I can salvage something from what I’ve shot.

When you’re framing an image and getting ready to release the shutter you’re making a judgement and committing yourself to that moment. Pointing the camera in the general direction of a subject and putting it right later doesn’t seem to be the right way to go about it. There must have been something in what you saw that made you fire the shutter. Maybe it was the expression, the emotion, the way the light fell – if there wasn’t, why take it?

“There’s not much in the budget for the photography….”

I’m sure the anger expressed by science fiction writer Harlan Ellison in this clip is something we all feel from time to time. The skill of a photographer seems to hold less and less value in the eyes of some clients – to the extent that some don’t want to actually pay anything for photography. I can’t help thinking that all clients should be made to see this before commissioning a shoot – especially the ones who say “There’s not much in the budget for photography but….”

Flash Duration

A client needed a water vortex shot last week. The shoot was a lot of fun but it also demonstrated the dramatic effect that flash duration can have on an image.

We used a glass cylinder about 10in diameter by 14in high, bought from a local furniture store, which was filled with water. A wooden spoon was used to get the water moving then a battery powered drill with a paddle contraption fine-tuned the vortex.

Behind the cylinder was a sheet of perspex which was back-lit with an Elinchrom Digital 2400 RX pack and head. The resulting test shots proved the set-up was going to work but the resulting images showed noticeable blurring of the swirling bubbles which was a big problem as the client was demanding sharp images with the water showing no movement. This was not what we were getting from our test shots.

I swapped out the Elinchrom pack for a Profoto Acute B and shot a few more test frames. When viewed on screen the result were dramatic. The Acute B produced noticeably sharper images – the bubbles sharp – frozen by the shorter flash duration.

There was also a noticeable difference to the colour of the image. The Elinchrom image had a slight sepia feel to it when compared to the Profoto which produce a very neutral image.

Hold it Steady!!

During a conversation yesterday I was surprised at how much blame a fellow photographer placed on the equipment he using rather than his technique. He’s been having trouble with blurred images and is losing too many shots. He’s using Canon gear and he’s putting the problem it down to the maximum sync speed oft the 5D, the Speedlights and Elinchrom studio stobes he uses. No matter what he does he gets a very large number of unsharp images. 

He’s looking at the equipment as being the problem rather than his technique. What he’s getting is camera-shake – he simply can’t hold a camera steady. When pushed he’ll admit this but he still thinks a different model camera or brand of flash will fix it.

It’s amazing how photography engenders this mentality. Digital has meant that a lot of people have to have a camera that gives the biggest file size. Maybe it’s insecurity – maybe having the latest camera is reassuring. 

The equipment you use is important and good equipment often costs more but it doesn’t make you a better photographer. In the end it comes down to what you do with it. I use Profoto, rather than the Elinchom gear everyone I assisted, because I find it more reliable and it just works, not because I think it’ll make me a better photographer.

The friend is making the mistake of blaming the equipment rather than looking at what part he plays in it. It’s technique – if he learns how to hold his camera steady and be more gentle with the shutter button he’ll get sharper results. As Joe McNally says in his excellent book “The Moment it Clicks” 

“No matter how many megapixels you’ve got inside that fancy machine you hold in your hands, they aren’t worth beans if you don’t hold your camera steady”.

You can buy Joe’s book here.