CharleyL
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 p.4 #9 · How Many Members Still Print Their Own Photography? | |
Dan and others interested,
Just a correction- I don't use black Velvet. I use black felt. It has no shiny surfaces and blocks light better. Velvet tends to be too shiny for me, and tends to twinkle in bright light. I do like the Kate Backgrounds though, which have a very short hair velvet material on their facing sides and no twinkles.
I am relatively new at "Still Life". I had tried it 40+ years ago with film and it didn't work all that well for me. Just too much time between taking the shots and then several days before I could develop and print the shots to see what mistakes I made was too difficult to manage, and as I didn't have a studio back then, anything set up in the middle of my living room needed to be put away in a closet and the furniture put back in it's place for the family to use again. Four kids wanting to watch TV made this a requirement. I've always wanted my own studio, but again, raising 4 kids made it impossible financially as well as space to dedicate for it. Now, they are all grown and out of the house, except for one, and I realized that the relatively empty 2nd master bedroom suite upstairs in my home would make a small, but adequate studio that I could keep whatever I was shooting set up for days if necessary, until I was ready to do something else. So about 5 1/2 years ago I began converting this 19 X 26' former bedroom into a photo/video studio. There is a bathroom and a walk-in closet off the back end of the shooting room, and the large space in the hallway at the top of the stairs has been made into a Hair/Makeup and Break area where I have a small fridge, microwave and snacks with coffee, tea, cold water, and cold sodas available, and I try to have some fresh fruit out there too, when shooting live people, but the actual breaks have usually been taking place in the shooting room where there are several office chairs to sit in. About the time that I had it all fully set up and ready to use COVID arrived, and it didn't get much use for about 2 years.
I'm 83 and I have survived 9 heart surgeries, many broken bones, cancer twice, knee replacements and now I have a pacemaker too. I'm kind-of Bionic now, with a clock to keep my heart beating, and at the right speed. Trust me, no replacement parts are as good as the originals, so be careful and do your best to avoid the need for any replacement parts, but they are better than living out the rest of your life with the broken parts. I'm not very stable when walking now, so I'm doing less and less outdoor and away from the studio work and tripping hazards have become highly important, so I try to eliminate as many as possible now. This isn't a business anymore either. I do it now mostly just for me, my friends and close relatives. It's an out-of-control hobby, to keep me busy doing something that I still love doing. I mostly experiment with light now. Getting the lighting just right for each shot is a challenge and one that I've been learning since early high school. The Inverse Square Law has become more important to what I do now and learning to use a good camera is easy, when compared to learning good lighting, but it is the key to getting great shots, instead of just good snap shots, be it for indoor shots or outdoor shots.
When outdoors, learn to make use of the Sun and reflectors instead of lugging big lights and heavy equipment around. Your wallet and your body will thank me too. "Over Powering the Sun" is a weak minded approach to outdoor photography. The Sun doesn't require carrying, it's there to use almost every day, and reflectors are lighter than speedlites. They even work better, if used correctly. Light gray hazy days give you a soft box as large as the whole sky, so make use of it. Learning which kind of light to use and how to use it for best benefit is a never ending learning curve, but very necessary if you want to get better at this. Pushing the shutter button can be done by anyone. Knowing how to get the best possible interesting shot that tells a good story takes a lifetime to learn. Positioning your subject, or finding the best position to take a shot of something that you can't move will be necessary. You don't need the latest, greatest camera either. One with all of the adjustments for manual use, plus a good lens, will get you great shots. If you only have a 50 mm lens, learn to zoom with your feet, until you can afford a zoom lens. You don't need megapixels either. I have a photo of a steam train that was taken by me 25 years ago with a 2.1 megapixel Sony camera that I printed 8 X 10 and with an amazing amount of detail in it that I take out to show those that think they need 50 or 100 megapixels for good shots. About the only benefit of these cameras is that they gain the ability to crop severely and still print 8 X 10 with good resolution of the remaining photo. Get it right in the camera and you don't need high megapixels.
As I only had the space for one studio, but wanted to be capable of doing Portrait, Product/Still Life, and video, I spent considerable time figuring out how to be able to convert quickly and easily from one kind of shoot to another with a minimum of work and conversion time. This was a bit of a challenge, but I had once been a stage manager for an off Broadway Theater, and quickly changing the stage for another act usually required heavy use of raising things up and out of sight, while at the same time lowering other things down for this next act. So, not having a high ceiling in this space, I began figuring out how to hang things where they wouldn't interfere with the other uses, but still have them ready for use quickly when needed, with a very minimum of conversion time, and all with an 8' high ceiling limit. My studio is a large Dormer and going up would require an extensive remodel that would significantly change the appearance of the house. If/when I ever move I only have nail and screw holes to patch and then repaint in order to turn my shooting room back into a master bedroom again.
I built a ceiling lighting support grid, consisting of five 10' long steel angles 1 X 1 X 1/4" with 1/2 X 4" steel pipe nipples added to each end at 90 deg. To these I attached 1/2" Floor Flanges so they could be attached to the ceiling with screws. These are spaced about 4' apart and parallel with my backdrops with the first about 5" away from the front backdrop roller. Then the rest spaced roughly 4' apart with the last behind the camera and about 1' from the rear wall. I use 5' long lengths of this same angle to bridge between any two of the 10' angles, allowing me to hang a light or something else about anywhere on my studio ceiling that I wish. Attaching these 5' angles to the 10' angles for safety was done with two Electricians Beam Clamps, a sort-of C-Clamp with a bolt to close the C and tighten it securely. Each of these has two 1/4-20 or 3/8-16 threaded holes
at 90 degrees that allow attaching lights, spigots (the round piece like on the top of light stands), etc. wherever I wish to hang something.
I have 8 (soon to be 10) GVM LED light panels arranged in a wide leg "U" attached to this lighting support grid and I hung them so that they are as close to the ceiling as possible. I use these to allow Newsroom kind of shadow free lighting for making videos, usually an 8' long banquet table with 1 or two people sitting/standing around it showing products and how to use them. This light positioning leaves me room below to use my soft boxes and other lights on stands for Product/Still Life type shoots as well as Portrait shoots. I have 6 ten ft wide backdrops on motor driven rollers, black, White, Gray, Chroma Green, Chroma Blue, and a light blue pleated backdrop that looks like a theater curtain, and I can raise or lower each of these via a remote at the camera location. Another wireless remote allows me to turn On and Off each kind of lighting, those on the ceiling, as well as those on light stands, also from the camera location. The LED ceiling light, located in the center of the room is my "Work Light" and was the original room light in it's former bedroom use with a switch at the entrance door. Not wanting to move around in the dark to turn this light On and Off when necessary for shoots requiring a minimum of light, I made this light controllable wirelessly from each camera stand, my laptop location, as well as from the original light location too. So each kind of light can be controlled separately via the buttons on these wireless remotes at each camera location and I don't need a ladder to turn their power on and off separately. I also have two 500 Watt focusable theater spot lights located on the ceiling grid and one is located to the left and the right of the usually camera shooting location. With that pleated blue backdrop and these two spotlights, I can simulate spotlights shining on a stage act, etc. I also have 4 LED light panels on the ceiling grid that produce ultra-Violet light, originally bought for Halloween photo shoots along with iridescent paints and make-up, but these haven't been put to use yet. Maybe that special day near the end of this month will make use of them. These are also powered On and Off from that wireless control at each camera location.
I have two 6' tall camera stands, one for video and one for still shooting, that I have found are more stable and don't have the tripod leg trip hazards of a camera tripod. Getting the light stands off the studio floor as much as possible has also helped. Power for the grid attached lights, as well as for those on C-Stands comes from Wiremold Outlet strips that I have also attached to the ceiling. These run along each end of the 10' long ceiling angles to provide power to any light within 5' of them on the ceiling grid and also below the grid on light stands. So there are now power cords and almost no light stands on the floor to trip over. Even my tether cable rund from my computer, up to and across to the camera location then drops down to the camera, with enough slack to be free to move the camera around that half of the studio. It almost never touches the floor, so that isn't much of a safety hazard either.
When doing a portrait or still life type of shoot I can set up lights on C-stands with soft boxes wherever needed and power them from the above power strips, or I can hang lights from above on inverted tripod stands. I modified all of my light stands, adding a 2" long piece of dowel rod and epoxy in the bottom of the center column of each stand with a center hole and a "Hanger Bolt", which is a bolt with no head and one end is threaded for wood and the other end is 1/4-20 threaded, to fit the Electricians Beam Clamps. This allows me to hang a light stand with a beam clamp from the ceiling grid to have the ability to raise and lower the attached light to any height needed. I have short light stands too, also modified. I can also extend the legs of the stand up against the ceiling to give the light some more stability, and there is nothing on the studio floor below the light at all to trip over.
Charley
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