DeeJay CeePee

DeeJay CeePee
Originally uploaded by d double u

Whenever I can, I like to hang out with Chris Penn when he DJs. The owner and manager of Good Records, he has access to some cool music and usually plays stuff I request, which is cool.
DeeJay CeePee (as he goes by) 'spins' every Wednesday night. Tonight, I didn't really feel up to going out, but thought I should at least stop by and try to get a quick portrait of him doing his thing while I was there. I had an idea for a quick and easy setup, and it really was quick and easy - the results weren't half bad either, considering the time I spent on the setup.

Setup was a 580EXII at 1/128 power through a StoFen omnibounce between the keyboard and monitor and a 430EXII behind Chris at 1/64 power, pointed towards his head. Triggered by Radiopoppers (one can be seen just below the monitor)

Gear Porn

Pelican case
Originally uploaded by d double u

After carrying a video camera around for over 4 months, I came to love the Pelican case it came in. It made it so easy to carry the camera and all the accessories needed in a safe and easy to transport way.
I even took out the video camera and packed all my still camera gear into it for a photo shoot. After that experience, I decided to get my own Pelican case.
The case arrived while I was on the road, but today I picked and plucked the foam inserts and packed up my most-used gear. I have a feeling I'll be ditching the foam and getting the compartment inserts instead at some point in the future, but for now, it's nice to know (almost) all of my gear is safe and in one place.

from the blogroll

Just a quick note to point out some things I found on the blogroll.

First, from Robert Benson
I love the story, the subject and the photo.

Second, from Jason Janik
Some great band photos from the State Fair. I plan on asking him about his lighting setup on these - looks like a simple but effective one-light setup.

That's it for now!

Radiopoppers arrive!

As I talked about in a previous post, I had been waiting on Radiopopper to release their JrX models. Well, they finally became available last month and I couldn't wait to order them to replace the flash triggers I currently use.
I haven't had a chance to use them on a shoot yet, but that should be happening very shortly. The simple tests I've done in my home have me excited. I hope to have Pocket Wizard reliability for about a third of the cost.

More on this later.

Photos being used

I always get a kick out of seeing my photos being used online by other people. A lot of my photos show up in online profiles, some of them show up in news pieces.

Recently, Darius Holbert has had a number of interviews as his involvement with movie scoring has picked up and my portraits of him have been featured there. He has been interviewed by examiner.com in San Francisco, DC9, the blog for the Dallas Observer here in Dallas, and Manhattan Movie Magazine. Another of my photos can be found on Darius' other website.

Even one of my cell phone pics showed up on the blog of a freelance writer.

Use of my photos online is a topic for another post, but generally I'm happy with photo credit for low-res images used online.

The Smoke Photobook - still available for purchase!

Last month, I put together a photobook of photos I have taken at The Smoke over the past year. The Smoke is a 60s Mod Dance Club that has a dance once a month. It has a great turnout and an enthusiastic following. It's a fun night out and easily my favorite event to shoot.
I sold quite a few of the photobooks at the dance last month, which was their 6th anniversary dance, but still have a few of there left for sale. Click here to get a preview of the book. I'm selling them for $22 each, postage paid - message me if you're interested!

In the front of the book are portraits I took of the DJs who put this on every month. Below is a behind-the-scenes video of my setup for this shoot, music is taken from one of the mix CDs that the DJs give away at the dances.

First of many updates to come

The blog has been slow lately, but that is all about to change!
This week is my last week at the day job; I start a contract position running live sound for the Ray Johnston Band in a couple of weeks. They're touring the country to promote their new album, hitting up mostly college campuses throughout the South and along the East coast. HDNet is also filming them for a series set to air in January. This gives me some opportunities to get involved with the filming and I will also be providing photos taken along the way.
I'm very excited about this tour and the photo opportunities it brings. Once the tour ends in December, I plan on focusing on photography in a big(ger) way.

I plan on updating this blog regularly, so stay tuned for tour stories and photos from around the country!

June Wedding!

At the end of last month, I shot the Wester/Vargas wedding. I had shot their engagement photos in Fort Worth last year and their wedding was also in Fort Worth. It was a low-key wedding and it was a blast. The couple drove away in a fully restored 1929 Ford, which was really cool!
I used a second shooter for this one - Kendrick Arnett. He was great to work with and helped out tremendously. His website can be found here.

Thanks to Kat and Nicolas for making me part of their special day!

Picasso, 1949

In yet another case of 'it's all been done before', I give you photos of Picasso drawing with light in 1949.

Olympus E-P1

The biggest photo news this week was the release of the Olympus E-P1. However, because photos and specs of this cameras had been leaked so long ago, the release is somewhat anti-climactic. In fact, I'm still waiting for a hands-on review of a production model, rather than a preview of a pre-production model.

With it's large sensor and tiny size, it could be the perfect blend of image quality and portability.

I was kept busy this weekend with a number of headshot sessions. I was happy with the way everything turned out!

I'm toying with the idea of offering another week of free headshots. It was challenging and fun trying to get decent lighting set up in different locations. In fact, the only downside was that I chose the wrong weather for lugging gear around!

Headshots!

The Strobist website has been a great source of inspiration and learning for me.
They had a section called 'Boot Camp' which was a great way to shoot assignments within set guidelines. This week, Boot Camp II has started. The first assignment is to shoot headshots, and to have the subject turn the camera on you as well.
I'm excited about this and I plan on jumping in with both feet.
I'll be hitting up friends on Facebook and putting ads on Craig's List to find some willing subjects this week.

I have all sorts of ideas so I hope to be able to try them out and also hand over some nice shots. For Free!

Tip: How to speed up your point-and-shoot camera.

How to speed up your point-and-shoot camera.

Point-and-Shoot cameras are handy because they're small and easy to use. One thing they're not, however, is fast. Just try taking a picture of something that's moving quickly – like a 3-year-old. The time from when you press the shutter button to when the picture actually gets taken can be several seconds.
This tip will explain why that happens, and in so doing will hopefully show how to shorten this time considerably.

So why does it take so long for the camera to take the picture? Well, when the camera is set to work on full auto, which is how most people use point-and-shoot cameras, it's left to make all the decisions, and there are quite a few decisions to be made. How do you speed up this process? You make some of the decisions for the camera.

Here's a list of the decisions that the camera has to make in order to take a photo, in somewhat chronological order:


Focus: Once the shutter is half-pressed, the camera has to decide which focus point(s) to use, then it has to focus.

White Balance: The camera has to determine what color white is. The light from sunlight and the light from light bulbs look very different to cameras, so the camera has to figure out what it should use to reference what white should look like.

ISO: The camera has to look at how much light there is and determine if it's sufficient for use with a shutter speed that won't give a blurry photo when the camera is handlheld. The amount of light determines the ISO setting.

Metering: This determines which part of the scene the camera is looking at to determine how much light there is. Most modern cameras have a facial recognition setting that is used by default. This searched for faces and uses them to determine focus and exposure.

Flash: In low light conditions, the camera will decide whether or not to use flash. Also, if red-eye reduction is to be used, which sends out a number of brief flashes before the flash that's used to light the actual photo.

Shutter speed and aperture: Based on the ISO, flash and Metering settings, the camera determines the shutter speed and aperture settings.


In order to determine all of these settings, the camera has to first turn off the electronic viewfinder and redirect the light to the sensors inside the camera. While all of these decisions are being made in the camera, you can't see what the camera is pointing at, unless you look through an optical viewfinder, if your camera has one.

In order to speed up the camera, you would have to make some of the decisions for the camera. The easiest way to do this is to switch from full-auto mode to P (program) mode. This unlocks all (or most) of the settings above.

So how do we know what settings to use?


Focus: Switching to just the center focus point usually simplifies focusing. This way, whatever the camera is pointed directly at will be the point of focus. The most important thing, though, is to pause when you half-press the shutter button so the camera can actually obtain focus. There is usually a light that goes on when focus has been achieved. This can take up about half of the time the camera needs to take a photo, so this tip alone can greatly speed up camera response.

White Balance: Most cameras have a number of white balance presets that are pretty straight-forward. Some of these include: Sunlight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash and Custom, as well as AWB (Auto White Balance). Simply choose whichever is the closest to the lighting conditions. Custom lets you either point at or take a photo of something white and use that setting. Custom is by far the most powerful setting, but may take some practice to get it down.

ISO: Put simply, you want to use the lowest setting possible. In bright sunlight, the lowest setting there is should be fine. Indoor or night shots, however, will mean having to turn this up. Too high of a setting will intoduce digital noise that can ruin a picture. For most cameras, this means staying below ISO 200.

Metering: Most of the time, the default setting is just fine, especially if that includes face recognition. For more control, using the Spot or Partial setting can be very handy, especially when used with a center focus point.

Flash: The Auto setting is fine, but turning the flash on or off manually will speed things up. This can also be handy for forcing the flash to fire to be used to fill-in shadows in bright sunlight, for example.

Shutter Speed and Aperture: In P mode, this is automatically determined by the camera. The more adventurous can explore other options if the camera has them.


The more of these settings that can be set manually, the more responsive the camera will be.

1 part ridiculous, 1 part cool

Just in case you have 50 SLRs lying around and were wondering about what you could do with them...

Nikon set up 50 D700s in a circle at the MTV Music Awards. They fired tham all at once and then played back each image in succession.
The result is here.

More info on the setup is here.

I've often toyed with shooting multiple cameras simultaneously with different lenses, but using 50 of them in a circle is cool, too.

Quick Photo Tip: Metering

Here's a quick tip that can help get better photos more often when using a digital camera, especially a point-and-shoot.
To use this tip, you will need to switch to a mode other than the green square. The green square is the full auto mode and it locks out most, if not all of the settings. The easiest mode to switch to is P (Program). This will unlock a lot of settings while still letting you shoot with settings made automatically.
The setting you'll want to change is the Metering setting. There will be another blog entry that explains what metering is (or you can Google/Bing it). We want to change the Metering setting to 'Spot' (or 'Partial' if your camera doesn't have Spot Metering).
Once you've switched this, point the camera at what you want to take a picture of, keeping the main focus of the shot in the middle of the frame. For example, if you were taking a photo of a friend, put their face in the middle of the frame. There may even be a square that shows up in the viewfinder to show you where the camera is metering. Then, half-press the shutter button to get focus. Keeping the button half-pressed, you can recompose the shot and fully press the button to take the shot.
This works even better when you change the focus point to just the center focus point. With both Spot/Partial Metering and center focus on, you're essentially telling the camera what you want to take a photo of, rather than hoping it figures it out itself. Truly point-and-shoot rather than point-and-pray.

Happy Clicking!


* One exercise you can try with this is simply focusing on different parts of a scene you want to take a photo of and see how it changes the picture you get as a result.

Photography in NYC

I came across this scan of an operations order created by the NYPD that deals with photography in NYC.
Would definitely be handy to carry with you when in New York and I'd be curious to see if other cities have a document like this....

On-Camera Flash Tip

One of the techniques used in off-camera lighting is what can be referred to as 'selective lighting' or 'painting with light'. Quite simply, it's lighting some parts of the frame and not others. I frequently use flags, snoots or grids to accomplish this.
However, a lot of on-camera flashes have a zoom feature that allows them to do basically the same thing. The setup for this is easy, you pop the flash on the camera and set the zoom to a longer setting than the lens you are using. What you end up with is the flash lighting a centered portion of the frame. This is a lot easier to show than explain. In the image to the left, I set the zoom on the flash to 80mm, but the lens was set to 21mm. I under-exposed the frame by 1 1/2 stops so the area covered by the flash would stand out.
This has one advantage over off-camera flash as the flash area will always be centered in the frame.

Try it for a break from the same-old on-camera flash photos!

Note: Depending on the shooting mode (and brand!) of the camera, you may need to adjust the flash exposure to compensate for under-exposing the overall shot.

Shot info: Canon 5D with 17-40mmL 1/200sec f11 Canon 580EXII flash

A Travel Tip - Free Hotel Wireless

I've found an easy and legit way to get wireless in a hotel room without having to pay for it.
Most hotels charge for internet connectivity in their rooms, but offer free connectivity in the lobby. Some hotels give you an hour for free in the lobby, some give you 24 hours, like the one I'm in right now. The paid option in the room is nearly always for 24 hours.
When you connect to the internet, either in the lobby or in the room, a timer is set counting down how much time you have left. The timer is the same for either scenario; the mechanism for setting the timer is the only difference, with the room connection requiring payment.
Working around this is simple.
Bring your laptop to the lobby, connect and sign in for free service, then, with the laptop still on and connected, head back to the room. The connection may need to be reset, but the timer will still show time remaining and will remain connected. Sometimes the hour given at the lobby becomes 24 hours in the room.
I've done this in a couple of hotels now, and have only paid for connectivity when I needed the bandwidth of a wired connection.

More to Come!

Things have been a little slow here at David Wilson Photography.
I've been working on other projects and not shooting a whole lot, but that changes starting this weekend!

I will be heading to Chicago for the St. Patrick's Day festivities as I did last year.
This year, it looks like I get to march in the parade, so I hope to get lots of behind-the-scenes shots.
After that, The Smoke have another dance and I plan on taking lots of photos there.

So stay tuned!

A Night with the Canon G9

I've mentioned this before, but I picked up a Canon Powershot G9 a while back so I would be able to have a camera with me at all times. So far, that has worked out really well, as the camera is with me everywhere I go. I find I am taking pictures all the time, not really worried how they turn out. Turns out that isn't working out too well for me - I'm just getting adjusted to not having a wide-angle view of the world!
What I have been doing, however, is taking time-lapse videos every day. I've managed to make at least two a day every day since a couple of weeks ago, documenting my drive to and from work.
Those videos can be found here on Youtube and here on Vimeo.


My most popular sets on Flickr are the shots I take at The Smoke. It's a local monthly 60s dance party that is really popular and usually means that I'll have thousands of visits on the day that I put up the photos.
Here's a link to the party they held at New Year's Eve this year.
I get asked about the lighting in these shots a lot, so I'll be writing about it in a Blog post shortly.

Last night, I decided to switch it up a little, and instead of pulling out the big guns (DSLRs and studio flashes), I decided to try using just the G9. It was a cool experiment, and it makes me even more impressed with what this little camera can do.
Below is a video I put together of everything I shot on the G9, photos and videos. I added music by The Damn Well Please Organ Trio.

Canon G9

I recently picked up a Canon G9 so I'd have a more portable camera to have with me when an SLR is just too much camera. So far, I've been very happy with it.
It's a big switch for me - letting the camera choose all the settings and *gulp* shooting in JPG may take some more time (I shoot JPG + RAW), but so far the results have been really great. I'm looking forward to taking it out and about like I do with the SLR and seeing how it turns out.

So far, the only issue I've had is with using a gelled flash in the hotshoe. When shooting indoors, a CTS filter lives on my 580 EXII, but the camera likes to keep the white balance to 'Flash'. The workaround is to set a custom white balance, which is quick and easy and might even give better results. Need to check this out some more.

The reason I went for the G9 and not the newer G10 is because Canon removed the time-lapse video feature on the G10. I've already made some videos with this feature and have more uses in mind.
Will post some examples here at a later date.

Remote Trigger round-up

This morning, Pocket Wizard announced new models that really push the technology of wirelessly triggering flashes and cameras.
David Hobby and Chase Jarvis have talked about them in detail on their blogs.

When I bought my remote flash triggers, I bought the cheapest ones possible because at the time, I didn't need a huge range - I just wanted to be free of cables. They have served me well, and have more than made up for their ridiculously low cost. They're not completely reliable, but for most shoots they're fine. If they fail, I just take another shot. Unfortunately, that dosen't work out quite so well with shooting film.
I will say that I've found that they work much better with studio strobes - I use them with 1/8" to PC cables and I hang the triggers from the metal mount of the strobes. I wonder if that combination gives better reception - and if the higher synch voltage somehow helps.
Regardless, I've shot film from 20 - 30 feet away with 3 flashes and had a very good hit rate - about 1 or 2 flash failure in 2 rolls of 120 film.

This brings me to the point of this blog entry - I need to upgrade.
So let's review (what I consider to be) the options...


1 - Pocket Wizards

Pocket Wizards are the gold standard of wireless triggers. You buy them. They work. Period.
Because of their design, there is such a small transmission delay that they can be used to trigger both remote cameras and flashes in the same shot. At up to 1600 feet away.
There aren't many professional photographers not using these, and I don't know of anything else used by magazine sports shooters that use multiple cameras.
Some strobes and meters even come with Pocket Wizard receivers/transmitters built-in.
They used to be just triggers, though - just telling a flash/camera when to fire. With today's announcement, now they can relay information from the camera, enabling wireless TTL.
They are expensive, though - even with the current $25-off coupon, the cheapest transceivers are $165 each - and you need at least 2, plus the necessary cables to connect them.
The cost of the new models may offset the cost of cables as they connect via hotshoe to both camera and flash.


2 - CyberSync by Paul C. Buff

Made by the same company that makes AlienBees strobes, these triggers have received great reviews. Working at up to 400 feet, they cost $60 for the transmitter, $70 for the receiver.
There's also a CyberSync Commander which is due to be released shortly and looks to be amazing if you shoot with AlienBees.
Since I don't use AlienBees, I don't really have a need for the Commander, but the CyberSyncs look really good.


3 - Elinchrom EL Skyport

There are numerous comparisons made between the Skyports and the CyberSync. The Skyports are slightly more expensive at $99 for both trigger and receiver, but they use a rechargeable batter instead of AA or AAA batteries.
Because of this, they are a little smaller and I think look better.
Personally, I prefer the idea of the proprietary battery in the Skyport. I would be using rechargeables anyway, and plugging everything in to charge is part of my normal routine.


4 - Radiopopper JrX

This is the product I plan on buying once it's released. Put simply, it's the best of all of the other triggers in one.
It has a range of over 1600 feet, allows for manual adjustment of remote lights - but the best part is the cost.
At $99 for a transmitter and receiver set, it's a steal compared to other triggers.
Plus, with the $249 transmitter, the bottom-of-the-line JrX will sync at speeds up to 1/8000 with any strobe.
Upgrading to the $249 receiver gets you wireless TTL as well, but it looks like the new Pocket Wizard may have an impact on sales for Radiopopper.


For a simple wireless trigger, the JrX can't be beat for my money.

I have read other reviews where people downplay the importance of a long range with these triggers. Not many people shoot 1600 feet away from their flashes, but if the signal is strong enough to travel that far in the open, it will probably be able to pass through 3 or 4 walls indoors. So the distance isn't of significance, except that it hints at the signal strength, which is what we're going for - a completed circuit every time.

Stay tuned for updates as I make a purchase and actually use them!

Art Con 4 Check Presentation

Art Con 4 Check
Originally uploaded by d double u

Last night, Art Conspiracy 4 presented a check for $20,000 to Preservation LINK, a non-profit that teaches students in South Dallas and Fair Park media literacy and self-esteem through photography and videography programs.
It was at Jack's Backyard, which seems to be the latest hot venue in town.

It was great to be a part of Art Con this year, my first year to be involved, and I'm really looking forward to this year's event.

New Look to the website!

So the new website is up and running and I'm really excited about it.
I have some how-to posts planned for the blog and also some personal projects in the works, so there should be more content to both the site and the Blog.

White House Shooter

Watching this video really shows how you have to be ready to shoot at a moment's notice.

Hope they're not paid by the hour!

Coming Soon!

davidwilsonphoto.com is only days away from being launched!
This will be the spot where I talk about some of the photos shown on the site, I will attempt to share some pearls of wisdom and basically talk shop.

Stay tuned!