Brad Snyder | Blog

Black and White to Me

2009-11-19T18:23:00.000-08:00

Have you ever looked at recently shot black and white photo and wondered, “why wasn’t that in color?” After all, it’s not 1900 anymore. Doesn’t color give something more? Does a black and white photo shortchange the viewer? There’s actually quite a few reasons that you might want a photo in black and white than in color. In no particular order, here’s three of them:

Photos with strong graphic qualities tend to lend themselves well to black and white. When I say ‘graphic,’ I’m referring to the lines and shapes in a photo. For instance, take a look at the photo above. It’s the entry to the Sofitel Hotel in downtown Chicago. The abstract shapes catch my eye as strongly if not more strongly than the literal objects in the photo. Black and white helps to disconnect the literal and abstract qualities of a photo, emphasizing the abstract shapes and lines within the frame.

In addition to highlighting the abstract qualities of a photo, black and white can also focus the eye on textures within the photo. The photo of this tree illustrates a little of both concepts to me. I was interested in both the shape of the tree (weird huh?) and also the texture of the bark. In color, the textures just didn’t have the same impact. The difference between the light and shadow areas of the bark would have blended a bit more since the color gradations would have hidden some of the contrast. But in black and white, I can almost imagine what it would have felt like to run my hand over the deep wrinkles across the bard of this old tree.

Sometimes black and white is best because the natural color in a photo is awful. For instance, I took this photo on a bright sunny day in Florida over the summer. The dolphins worked it out right alongside the boat for a solid five minutes. The downside? The water was a sickly shade of green. While this photo isn't truly black and white (it's dual toned - that's another post down the road), it illustrates the concept. There are a variety of ways to deal with weird colors in a photo (adjust the white balance or use off-camera flash to control the ambient lighting, among others), and black and white is just one tool in your toolkit. In this case, it happened to be the best tool.

If you haven’t noticed by now, I’ve referred to black and white as a tool quite a few times. Take note, however, that I have not said anything about rules or even guidelines. For me, photography is about playing and learning, not so much about rules. But here’s one guideline: Even if you know that a photo is going to be in black and white, shoot it in color. When you have a photo in color, you can do much more to manipulate the final black and white image. For instance, changing the white balance of a photo can significantly change the feel of the photo in black and white. Also, make sure to play around with the contrast, increasing and decreasing contrast makes a big difference in a black and white image. I use Adobe Lightroom for post processing, but Photoshop Elements is an excellent and less expensive alternative, and Google’s Picasa is free, although it has less features.

Don't Lose Focus

2009-11-06T20:38:00.001-08:00

Exposure: 1/1250 at f/5.6, ISO 200 (-2/3 EV) Lens: Nikon 18-55 at 20mm

Law school has a way of eating up my time. But I have a new goal. I'm going to write one post each week as a bit of an escape from legal writing.

Before you read on, take a good look at this photo. I think it has some good things going for it. Nothing amazing, but not bad. Take a look at the lines in the picture. They converge inwards, leading the eye into the frame. That's a good thing. If elements of the photo draw your eyes out of the frame, you won't spend as much time exploring the image. In this photo the road serves as a border on the left, bringing the eye back towards the center and leading your eye into the clouds, which have some good texture (although they've lost some from being overexposed a bit). Once up in the clouds, your eye might wander down into the tree line on the right, then into the wheat growing through the middle of the picture. Then where's that lead you eye? Hopefully back into the center of the frame to explore some more. However, this isn't a post about composition. There's some sound compositional elements going on, but there's one thing that really eats at me.

Take a moment and look again. What's bugging me? Is it bugging you? Look at the grass at the bottom left of the image. It's sharply in focus. Now follow the grass up into the photo. It starts to lose focus. The eye is generally drawn to areas of focus. But remember where the lines were leading? Up into the frame. So here we have lines leading the eye one way and the focus leading another. That's not good. Your eye is drawn to each, robbing strength from the leading lines in the photo.

There are two things I should have done: 1) I should have set my camera to AF-S (once the camera focuses, it locks until you let go of the shutter) and focused about midway into the scene. I think grabbing focus somewhere on the left portion of the wheat grass would have been perfect. It would have kept the green grass mostly in focus, though not as sharp, and it would have made sure that the photo was in focus where the lines converge. Secondly, I should have set my aperture to a smaller aperture (about f/11) for more depth of field. Remember, a smaller aperture (which has a higher number) gives you a greater depth of field than a larger aperture (which has a smaller number... crazy huh?).

So in sum, two quick lessons for the day:

1. If you want to keep more of a scene in focus, set your camera to Aperture priority mode and use a small aperture (larger number), then focus on something about midway in between the nearest and farthest objects you want in focus.

2. The other lesson might not be obvious, but it's just as important. Don't immediately toss aside photos you don't like. Deconstruct them. Figure out what worked, what didn't work, and what you would do next time. That's how you learn to take better photos.

Meg and Kail Wedding

2009-09-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

Meg and Kail married in a BEAUTIFUL ceremony this past Saturday. They asked me several months ago to photograph their wedding, and I was as honored as I was petrified. I had never photographed a wedding, and at the time I'd only owned an SLR for about 7 months. Before accepting, I reaaaally stressed the importance of having a photographer they trusted, and I sent them to see the work of my favorite wedding photographer: Bobbi and Mike (seriously, Bobbi and Mike are amazing). Despite my cautioning, Meg picked me, and I'm really happy she did. In addition, they asked Jessie Ackley to photograph the wedding. Jessie was awesome to work with, and you can see more of her work here.

It was an amazing experience, and it also gave me a whole new world of appreciation for professional wedding photographers. It's a crazy week of law school for me, but I wanted to at least post a teaser

of more to come :)

From Brad Snyder | Blog

Engagement | Meg and Kail

2009-06-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

Two engagement sessions in two weeks! Woo!

Meg and Kail (pronounced Kai-ee) are going to be getting married in September, and they're bringing in this great up and coming guy to shoot their wedding. Well, he's definitely at least up and coming. And by up and coming, I mean to say just bought an SLR less than a year ago. That'd be me, if that wasn't immediately obvious. I have to be honest, shooting a wedding makes me a bit nervous (as it should), but I am REALLY looking forward to it.

We've been going back and forth working around wacky schedules (and broken down cars) trying to get together for an engagement shoot, but it all worked out perfectly in the end. Beautiful Sunday morning weather. Downtown Baltimore. And the parking lot to the Baltimore Museum of Industry was open. Sweetness.

This is also my first batch of photos that I worked through with Lightroom 2. It's soooo nice. Here we go:

The Museum of Industry has some wild steel sculptures in its parking lot. I think it's more fun to pretend they were once machines. What would this one have made?

Note to self: remember my dark blanket next time. The sun was reflecting bright red up onto their faces from the brick walkway. Balancing out for the red brought in a bit more of a green hue than I'd like. I'm quite certain there's better ways to compensate in the digital dark room, but a plain old fashioned blanket for them to sit on would have done wonders.

There's a big old crane in the parking lot. It's a dreary red, but it looks awesome. I pictured it black and white from the first. Looking back, I wish I'd composed with a bit of separation between the crane and the two of them in the second photo, using the crane to frame them a bit. Live and learn.

Kail and Meg happened to meet at my VERY FAVORITE bar in Baltimore: Max's. If you like beer, it is the mecca (as far as Baltimore is concerned).

Warning proceed at great risk to your monitor. It might burn up with this hotness.

We finished at the docks near Du Claw brewery. There's a fun grassy area that reaches out into the harbor. I wish it had smelled as nice as it looked. A recent algae bloom had killed off a bunch of fish, and it was pretty rank. You know they're in love when they can still look so happy with such stank all about them.

Stephanie and Joe Engagement

2009-05-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

Stephanie, Joe and I headed up to York, PA for their engagement photo shoot last Friday. There's a great old rail-trail that runs through York, so we headed there first. It was a bit of a walk, but very much work it!

The trail has one of the oldest continuously active rail tunnels in the US. Lucky for us: no trains came through while we were inside it!

After our evening stroll, we headed over to York College, where Stephanie and Joe met as undergrads. Rear curtain flash + water fountain = Sweet!

And just in case you hadn't figured it out... they were totally working the camera. Gorgeous!

Going Incognito: The Invisible Camera Bag

2009-04-28T20:46:00.000-07:00

Exposure: 1/100, f/4 at ISO 400 Lens: Nikon 18-55mm VR at 18mm

Recently, I’ve really been trying to get into the habit of keeping a camera on me wherever I go. There’s an almost limitless variety of photo opportunities that we walk by every day (such as today's image... a great sunset that I would have missed without a camera at hand), but unless you have a camera on you, you’ll always be left saying “well that’d make a great image… too bad I don’t have a camera with me.”

I have a Canon G9 and a Nikon D90 SLR, neither of which is particularly pocket friendly. Big camera bags and backpacks that scream “hey lots of expensive equipment in here!” just don't work for me. If you're carrying a lot of gear over long distances, going hiking, or taking gear out in inclement weather, by all means, get a big rugged camera bag, but for street photography in the city or just keeping a camera on you in day to day wanderings, you don't need the big bags. Here's what I use:

Aldo makes an inexpensive and small vertical messenger bag that is perfect for carrying a larger point and shoot camera like a Canon G9. The bag (here) looks good and is just big enough to hold a camera and a couple small items. The bag doesn’t really offer any padding for your camera, so I always make sure to keep my G9 in a small case. It’s hard to find camera cases that fit the Canon G series, but Waterfield Bags makes a very high quality series of cases, aptly named "Camera Case," that are low key and provide great padding for your camera. Best of all, the cases come in very specific sizes and a variety of finishes (I have the black leather and am very happy with it). You can find those here.

I have two different bags for my SLR and use both of them regularly depending on the situation. When I want maximum discreetness and small size, I take my Domke F-5XA bag with me, availabe here at BH Photo. It is a small, cotton canvas bag (I have it in olive) that is the perfect fit for a small to medium sized SLR body and a kit zoom lens attached. I enjoy the small size, the padding, and discreetness the bag offers.

When I want a bag with a bit more space, I carry a vertical messenger bag made by Ellington Leather, available here. It’s a great looking bag, and I can pack a surprising amount of gear into it. In the past, I’ve carried my D90 with an 18-55mm attached, an SB600 flash unit, a 50mm f/1.8, and an 85mm f/1.8 in the bag. There was still room for a bit more. It’s important to note that the bag doesn’t have much in the way of padding, and I certainly wouldn’t take it out if rain showers looked likely, but for wandering the city without drawing attention, it does a great job. If you wanted, you could pick up a roll of foam at your local hardware store and line the bottom of the bag with it (I plan on doing that soon).

I don’t intend on buying any more camera bags, but if I had to, I’d probably pick up a LowePro Classified. Unlike two of the three bags I’ve already mentioned, the Classified bags are made specifically for photography gear but are designed to be fairly incognito. This means they have a ton of padding, lots of dividers and pockets for gear and accessories, and they can even take an SLR body with a pro grade 70-200mm lens attached. The Classified series bags also have a built-in cover for protection in the rain.

If all else fails, or you just don’t want to spend more than about $20, you could also check this do-it-yourself tutorial over at Wired about how to make your own stealth camera bag.

What else is out there? How do you carry your camera around?

Narrow your Focus

2009-04-23T19:09:00.000-07:00

Exposure: 1/2500 at f/2.8, ISO 200 Lens: Nikon 85mm f/1.8

My mom came into town last weekend and we headed down into DC on Saturday to see the Holocaust Museum and monuments (note to all: get your free ticket for the permanent exhibit at the Holocaust Museum first thing in the morning – they limit to 1,500 passes per day and if you don’t get one, too bad). Later in the evening, while passing a small shop near the Washington Monument, a bed of colorful tulips caught my eye.

The tulips stood out in a way that yelled “take a picture!!” for two reasons. First, the lighting was great. Ever hear of the ‘magic hour?’ It’s also sometimes referred to as the ‘golden hour.’ Anyways, this hour spans about a half an hour before and after sunrise and sunset, and photographers generally love it. During this time, the light provides softer shadows than the hard shadows thrown by sunlight during midday. It tends to be a very flattering light, though watch your white balance. It is a much warmer light in tone than at midday. This can be great, but it can be prone to causing orange skin tones, especially around sunset.

As for the second reason the flowers caught my eye, the tulips were dense enough to provide a lush frame full of tulips from almost any angle. I pulled out my camera and switched out my 18-55mm lens for my 85mm f/1.8 lens. You might have wondered why I would pull out a lens with a much narrower field of view when there were so many tulips to take in. Well, here was my thinking: My 18-55mm has a relatively deep depth of field because of its smaller maximum aperture and wider angle of view. Longer lenses with larger maximum apertures offer the ability to create a relatively more narrow depth of field. I wanted to take in the color of the flowers, but still provide the viewer’s eye something to focus on.

Here’s a term you might come across when reading about composition: “selective focus.” It’s just what it sounds like. You use a narrow depth of field to put your object of interest into focus and throw everything else out of focus. Put your camera into aperture priority mode and set your aperture at its widest (larger apertures are smaller in number, f/1.8 being a wider aperture than f/2.8… I’ve seen the equation explaining it, but I’d be doing you a disservice by trying to explain it).

If you have an SLR (point and shoot cameras tend to have an enormously deep depth of field), look for each company’s respective 50mm f/1.8 lens. Whether Canon, Nikon, or another brand, almost all of the camera companies make this lens and price it right around $100. If you’re a Nikon owner, note that the 50mm f/1.8 won’t autofocus on the D40 or D60 (though Nikon did just release a $200 35mm f/1.8 that will autofocus on a D40 or D60). The 50mm f/1.8 is a great lens because it gives a very narrow depth of field, is very inexpensive, and provides image sharpness that rivals pro lenses ten times its price.

Now that's Dynamic

2009-04-13T18:08:00.000-07:00

Exposure: 1/200th at f/1.8, ISO 400 Lens: Nikkor 85mm f/1.8

Ever take a picture of a building with a beautiful sky behind it and then check out the picture on your camera (I'm assuming digital... if you're still shooting film, more power to you) to see a nicely exposed building and a bright white sky? You look back up from your camera LCD and still see a beautiful sky and striking building, but your camera just isn't cooperating. This is a factor of your camera's dynamic range.

Dynamic range describes the difference between the darkest and brightest part of an image for which the camera still retains data. Outside of this range, your camera sees either nothing (black) or is overwhelmed and simply captures bright nothingness. Your camera sensor (and film as well) has an enormously more narrow dynamic range than the human eye. Thus, even though you can see the architectural detail in the building and the beautiful sunlit clouds at the same time, the range between the shadow of the building and brightness of the clouds is too much for your camera sensor to retain.

A limited dynamic range might be frustrating in some instances, but it can also be a useful tool. Take this recent photo for instance. I was taking baby pictures and had a window with a cluttered view of some trees and a parking lot. That doesn't make for a very pleasing background. What to do? Turn off the lights and take an exposure reading for mother and son, knowing that a proper exposure (even under-exposed as in this image), will result in the brightness of the window being beyond the dynamic range of the camera. This is easiest to do if you have a spot meter or center-weighted average metering option for your camera; just point your camera at mother and son, partially depress the shutter button (or press the exposure lock button... depends on your camera), recompose and take the picture. If you can't switch up light metering in your camera, even with a simple point and shoot you can usually adjust with exposure compensation (just crank it up a bunch).

Add Motion to Achieve Stillness

2009-04-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

1/4th at f/32, ISO 125. 48mm w/ an 18-55mm lens. Adjusted white balance in Adobe Camera Raw.

This year I returned to New Orleans for a third time, and it gets better with each visit. Seriously; hand me a camera, drop me off in the French Quarters (back to that in a moment), and you can pick me up in about a week. For sheer variety of photo opportunities and interestingness, I can't think of many other places.

During my first full day in New Orleans this year, I went on a walking tour led by the Friends of the Cabildo (http://www.friendsofthecabildo.org/). It was probably the best $15 I spent that week. Now the guide was just about the coolest guy ever, and we were out for at least 3 hours. This wasn't any 'touristy' tour. It was more like your favorite professor giving a lecture about the history of New Orleans while wandering the city. Yeah, awesome. Anyhow, the original area of settlement and the location of many French houses (or, 'quarters') was what is today known as 'The French Quarter.' Now our guide insisted, as his father and his grandfather had, that there was clearly more than one french home, so clearly the proper term would be plural, i.e. French Quarters. Unfortunately, years of slang and inattention to articulation resulted in the area becoming known as 'The French Quarter.' Who's right? Your choice.

I came across this photo opportunity while in the French Quarters; a mime freezing himself for several minutes at a time into the pose of a man briskly walking his dog across the street. Had you come across this scene, you might have thought 'whoa! cool photo opportunity!,' snapped a picture, and then walked on. But. What would you have just captured? The mime was frozen in your photo, but it was daylight, so your camera would have had a fairly high shutter speed and frozen everyone else as well.

When trying to capture movement (or in this case, distinguish lack of movement) in a photo, one useful tool is 'motion blur.' It's just what it sounds like. If a subject is moving quickly enough that it is moving across your frame while the shutter is still open, it will become blurred in the direction of travel. To get this motion blur, you can do something called 'dragging the shutter.' That is, intentionally using a slow shutter speed to add motion blur into your photo.

To drag the shutter, you'll need to be able to use shutter or aperture priority mode on your camera. Unfortunately, many small point and shoots do not have this option. However, you might be able to experiment with different scene modes to see if any work. I stayed in aperture priority mode and closed down my aperture all the way to f/32, as small as it would get (remember, the aperture is kind of like the iris of your eye, as the opening becomes more narrow, less light gets in). I also lowered my ISO as low as possible. Because less light was getting to the sensor AND it was less sensitive to light (low ISO), the camera adjusted by greatly lengthening the shutter speed.

When using long shutter speeds, it might take several tries to get just the right mixture motion blur while still keeping still areas of the photo fairly sharp. It's much easier if you are using a stabilized lens or resting your camera up against something such as a lamp post or low wall. It took me about 5-8 frames before I landed on this image. Looking back, I wish I had tried just a few more; I would have liked to see a bit more movement from the people on the right. Ah well, still a fun picture.

Clear Lines

2009-04-08T18:02:00.000-07:00

1/200th at f/4.5, ISO 800. 18mm w/ an 18-55 zoom. Minor saturation and black level adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw.

I wish I could give a bit more information about today's photo. It's an interesting office building in downtown D.C. That's about the extent of the background. Still, I was fascinated by the shapes and lines. It's easy to want to zoom out and shoot a bunch of skyline shots when in a big city like D.C., but it's also fun looking for interesting details like this building. To recreate the shot: take your time framing the composition. When taking pictures with lots of straight lines in the image, a small tilt in the camera becomes very noticable. Also, this picture works because it was taken at dusk. Had it been full daylight, the outside light reflecting off the glass would have overpowered the light from inside the building.

Tall Words

2009-04-07T21:09:00.001-07:00

1/80th at f/4, ISO 800. 18mm with an 18-55 zoom. Photoshop work to correct white balance issues (natural light on the right was much bluer than the tungsten lighting hitting the left side of the image).

Kristin and I visited D.C. on Thursday to enjoy the cherry blossoms in full bloom. If you ever get the chance, go. They’re gorgeous. We toured every monument on the mall from the Washington Monument all the way around to the Jefferson Monument. I make a point of reading the Gettysburg Address every time I visit the Lincoln Monument, and I couldn’t help but notice two boys diligently studying it. To recreate the shot, use a wide angle lens at its widest zoom. It would be unsightly to sprawl out on the ground in the Lincoln Monument to look through the viewfinder, so I set the camera on the ground, took an educated guess, and shot 5-6 frames to make sure one was a keeper. I lowered the exposure compensation a bit to take into account the relative darkness of the inside of the monument.

Wandering Campus

2009-04-06T17:33:00.000-07:00

1/250th at f/8. 55mm w/ an 18-55mm zoom. Upped the black levels and desaturated slightly in Camera Raw.

The trees around campus are coming into bloom, offering up a rich variety of color. Since the sky was relatively bland, I metered for the buds and let the sky blow out. To recreate the shot: go into your exposure compensation (usually it's available from the directional controller on the back of your camera, the little +/-, and crank it up a bunch, otherwise the camera will try and find a medium between the sky and the buds. You don't want that; you'll end up with flowers that are too dark and a sky that is too bright.