Putting a Human Touch on Healthcare. An assignment for a medical practice.

My assignment a month ago was to put a human face on the practice of radiology.  We've seen lots of ads with heroic looking radiologists reading arcane scans on bright screens but in the day to day world of radiology so much of the client contact is done by the highly trained and skilled technicians and nurses.  I was invited to make images of the people that actual patients see when they come into the clinic for a diagnostic test.  Real people.

We also wanted to show the machines.  CT and nuclear scanners and MRI machines.  

I'd done a few campaigns like this back in the days of film and flash and I can honestly say that shooting digital was great. I wouldn't have shot film on this job even if the budget was there.  When I first started shooting work like this we were using Hasselblad film cameras, ISO 100-400 speed transparency films and powerful monolights or even box and head flash systems.  We'd get to a room with a CT scanner and the first thing we'd need to do (besides figure out a basic composition) is to figure out how to overpower all of the florescent lights.  We'd usually turn them off and construct a lighting set up that was a mix of light bouncing off the ceilings in three or four places as well as a few direct facing softboxes.  It worked but it was tough to make a totally believable lighting look given the very short time we had access to the rooms or the machines.  We overpowered the light because it was always important to get the color temperature right and electronic flashes were the primary way we instituted color accuracy and consistency in a shoot back then.....

So much has changed. In the image above I used three Fotodiox 312AS LED panels in concert with the florescent room lights.  One panel, firing into a shoot through umbrella was used just to the left of the camera to light up the subject's face and fill in for the top light coming from the florescent.  Another panel was used on the far right side of the room to add light to the right side of the CT scanner.  A third light was positioned behind the machine to help light the back wall.  I had tested the lights and the rotary controls for changing color temperatures during our scouting trip the week before.  I'd marked the color control settings with tape so I could come back to them without trial and error.  We were in an out of the room in about fifteen minutes with lots of good shots and variations.

This young woman volunteered to be a patient for one of our shots and I was delighted to find that the machine faced a wall of windows that brought indirect north light into the room.  We used a couple of Fotodiox 312AS panels, set between daylight and tungsten balance, to light up the back walls.  Took about as much time to set the back walls as it did to write about it just now.  A far cry from even the days of portable strobes which needed to be tested, iteratively...

This is the same room as the one we photographed the young woman in, above.  I had my back against the window and a Sony 16-50mm f2.8 lens on the camera and I kept zooming out until I found a composition that worked for me.  Both of my LED panels were pressed into service to light up the background.  Wonderful to be able to turn a dial and watch the light get brighter or dimmer.  I knew I hit my good balance when a quick spot metering showed everything within the handling range of the camera's sensor.

The panels I've been using run off two cheap Sony camcorder batteries and each set of batteries is good for about two hours of continuous run time.  We'd switch them on for the set up and shoot and then off when finished shooting at each location.  We made it through a long day of shooting and about ten location with battery juice to spare.

Nice thing about shooting with EVF cameras like the Sony a77 is the ability to pre-chimp (tm). I can set up a light and have someone turn a light up or down and watch the effect on the entire scene in the electronic finder as it happens.  I see it the way the sensor is seeing it.  It's an amazingly efficient way to light.

This consultation scene is lit with three panels: One to the left of the doctor to provide fill (the ceiling mounted florescent fixtures are providing the "main" light.  One to the right of the patient to provide good fill to the right side of her face and then one to light up the back wall.

This kind of job takes three things to do well:  The confidence to light quickly, the ability to establish a quick rapport with your collaborating subjects and a good schedule and plan of attack. I depended on my art director to round up our subjects and get them where we needed them on time.  I depended on a Think Tank Airport Security rolling bag to carry my LED panels, two cameras and three lenses.  A tripod strapped to the side.  Light stands and umbrellas in a small tripod bag.

We used the Sony a77 in its full 24 megapixel mode.  I will say this for the Sony cameras I've been shooting with,  they really are good at nailing very pleasing flesh tones. Best than the Canons with which I had been working.  And the detail in the files is amazing.  We shot nearly everything at 800 ISO and the noise was well controlled with just a nudge or two in Lightroom.  I can barely wait until Sony launches the new full frame camera. 

Making good use of available light.

I can't tell you how many times I've hired a new assistant, gone on location and had him or her start setting up lights willy-nilly once we get to a location. I don't always want to set up a light let alone many lights... So many scenes are just better without extra lights. I find that more and more situations just call for a judicious dose of fill in lighting, limited to very small areas. A color balanced LED panel or just a tiny squirt of flash.

In the case above I was perfectly happy to put my camera on a tripod, compose and shoot.  If you need to stretch out your day then, by all means, start grabbing the light stands and sandbags.  But if you bid your job correctly and you're getting paid by the use or by the image a quick test shot and some good location juggling might be just the key to getting what you want. Quickly and with no fuss.

Camera: Canon 5D2. Lens Zeiss 85mm 1.4. Lights? Whatever the architect spec'd.

This guy's photography is absolutely amazing. I love it.

     ©Paul Szynol

Go here:  http://www.paulszynol.com/  look at the work and then come back.  I'll wait.  Take your time and really look.

Okay. This is how great documentary and street photograph looks to me. We can argue about all kinds of minutia but in the end the guy who goes out with a sharpened vision and crazy good curiosity gets the win.

Did I mention that you should go and see this guy's site?    http://www.paulszynol.com/

Thank you to Paul for sending me this link.

Working in an Operating Room. How many pixels do I need?

Canon 5Dmk2, 24-105mm.

I spent two days at a hospital in San Antonio and shot a bunch of stuff. This is a set up shot in an operating room. I used a Canon camera and lens and shot with the lights in the room.  The biggest issue is the wide range of light from the hot spot on the "patient's" chest to the shadow areas on the anesthesiologist. The 5Dmk2 was a nice camera.  A bit clunky, but nice.  All the cameras I've played with in the last year are up to this kind of work.  Most of it will go in brochures and on the web.  Nothing will go up bigger than 9 by 12 inches.  Makes you wonder what we're chasing and why when we get into that megapixel fixation and slap the credit cards down.

I made an observation back in 2009 that more and more of our work would be going to web advertising (ignore this if you never sell your work and are making large prints for your own pleasure....).  At the time the big screens were almost 2000 pixels by something. I made the suggestion that all the cameras we were using at the time were capable of satisfying those needs, handily.

Now we've got Apple introducing Retina screens into everything and all of a sudden we're about to grapple with 2500 pixels wide by something.  But last time I checked that's still within the technical scope of a 12 megapixel camera.  Maybe our current cameras (especially the 24 megapixel ones) are relatively protected from obsolescence for while longer.  I guess we'll see.

Funny to hear all the gnashing of teeth and pounding of chests about the D800 given that all the examples we've seen so far are only a couple thousand pixels wide....

My favorite camera today?  Strange choice.  It's the Olympus EP-3 with the Panasonic 14-45mm lens on the front. VF-2 is always implied.  It's bright and sunny here.  ISO 200 is fine.  I'd use 50 if the camera had it....

The perfect summer. The perfect day.

I don't know what the "perfect day" looks like to you but to me it's never the big banner days of giant projects, wild celebrations or "once in a lifetime" events.  I've come to enjoy days that don't revolve around breathlessness and adrenaline.  I like small pleasures that have the promise of being repeatably enjoyable. I prefer the quiet and personal photograph to the big production. I prefer simple to complicated and I like my aesthetics clean and uncluttered by the make-up of the moment.

I may be having the best Summer of my life.  And today is an example of one of the best days of my life. I would have shaken my head in disbelief if I'd found myself saying something like this a few years back. I was caught in the relentlessness of being relentless.  Always busy. Always scheduled. Always moving. This Summer is a slow one for my business. I don't have a publisher's deadline to goad me. I'm not booked on lots of small, busy jobs. I'm just coasting in commerce and savoring the downtime.

My June days have been spent in the relative luxury of laziness.  Not a "do nothing" laziness but a "do fun stuff" kind of laziness.

Yesterday was my idea of my ideal.  I got Ben (my teenage son..) up at 6:30 am, we both drank big glasses of water and had a spoonful of local honey.  I drove him to Barton Springs Pool where he met up with the other members of his cross country team for a nice two hour run.  I turned the car around and headed to the Rollingwood Pool, just a mile away, and was in the water with my swim friends--coach on deck--by 7:00 am.  We pounded out about 3000 yards and in between sets we watched the most beautiful clouds swirl in three directions, three layers deep across the blue sky.

After workout I put individual envelopes containing 147 portraits of the Rollingwood Waves Kid's swim team (and team pictures)  into their folders at the pool so their moms and dads could pick them up when the kids came to practice.

Then I headed back to Barton Springs Pool to pick up Ben.  It was a warm day and we had nothing pressing on the schedule so Ben's crew all jumped into the pool to cool down the road miles.  I sat in the shade of a giant cottonwood tree and read a chapter from a book I'm reading on Creativity.  After the swim we headed to P. Terry's, an Austin style, drive through organicky burger joint to get breakfast sandwiches of scrambled eggs, cheese and sausage, chased down with Ruta Maya coffee.  Ben and I sat at one of the robin's egg blue picnic tables enjoying the breakfast and watching the amazing swirl of cloud ballet against the blue of the sky.

I dropped Ben at Jack's house.  They're working on some sort of project.... and I headed in to the studio to check on e-mail and phone messages. Nothing life or death.  I made few phone calls, addressed a few post cards, sent out some gratuitous e-mail and called it a day.  In the early afternoon I picked up Ben and we met my photographer friend, Paul, at the Whole Foods flagship store for lunch.  We had an odd mix of sushi and barbeque.

In the afternoon Ben slogged through another novel and I went horizontal on the couch to finish reading about creativity.  The dog curled up on my feet and snored softly.  I did a load of laundry.

Later in the day Ben's friends came over to play video games and horse around.  I retreated into the studio to read all the crazy stuff on the web.  Then Belinda came home.  We opened a bottle of Stag's Leap Artemis wine and made dinner.  We sat down to Sopa de Lima and quesadillas just as the last magenta slash of sunset kissed the sky.

I could worry about business but I've come to realize that there will always be an ebb and a flow and I can always make myself busy with a book or a project if I want to. But I only have two years left before Ben goes off to college and spending the Summer with him makes me feel like a billionaire on my own private island.  I'll get back to the business of photography just a little later...

The photo above sums up the pleasure of photography for me. A small group of us were lazily taking images along the banks of the Pedernales River.  We were all wading in and out of the running water.  I asked my model to close her eyes and feel the laziness of a hot Summer day and then I photographed here with an film SLR and a 180mm lens. No schedule, only a hazy agenda and all the time in the world.  If you chase it too hard you might never catch it...

Have we hit the point where photographs don't have to be sharp?

This image started life as a kind of accident. That was part of the beauty of film, sometimes you made mistakes and discovered that you liked the look of the mistake more than the initial intention.

When photography started to be practiced in earnest it allowed painters to stop trying to accurately reproduce subjects.  The need for verisimilitude vanished, taken over by the new medium. Now that stock photography can provide for straightforward documentation of just about any subject under the sun does that free photographic artists to transmute their reality to correspond to a new aesthetic? A new mindset of creation?

There's so much I love about the photo above. The obscuring of the right side of her face, the bold, graphic, black shadows that run at diagonal through the frame. The look of surprise and disbelief on the subject's face.  The belt buckle echoing here lone visible eye.  The way one side of the subject's blouse is lighter than the tone of the background while the other side is much darker.  And finally, the undulation of tones across the otherwise flat background.

The photograph seems to pose a question with no answers.  It works not as an information conduit but as an freestanding object where the graphic patterns and contrasts are at least as important as an inventory of the content.

Harder to define.  More fun to look at.  All this image needs is a manifesto....

Hot lights. Fun lights.

Hot Lights.  Fun Lights.
by Kirk Tuck

Written and then lost before posting nearly two years ago.  Finally resurrected for your consideration.....

A few days ago Michael Johnston, the writer/owner of a website called www.theonlinephotographer.com,  proposed a “new” learning exercise to master photography.  He suggested that the best way to learn is to buy a Leica rangefinder camera (film version) with one lens.  He suggested a 28mm, 35mm or a 50mm lens.  My choice would always be the 50mm but then I see everything in that focal length.  He further suggested using only a 400 ISO speed black and white negative film like Kodak’s Tri-X or Fuji’s Neopan 400.  His theory is that the finder is unexciting so the photographer must previsualize what he wants to shoot.  The film is a standardization so that one doesn’t spend time spinning wheels with too many choices.  The limited focal length choice teaches exactly what one will get in the frame every time.

Michael estimates that one should do the exercise with only the one camera, lens and film type for one year and that a photographer will learn an incredible amount about photography.  Since that’s basically the way I learned (out of student budget necessity) I’m inclined to agree that it’s a wonderful way to learn the craft.  And I would go further and say that if you are unsure about your skills in using a flash or doing lighting in general you might consider my lighting exercise.

I’m suggesting that you bag the flash altogether and get your hands on a basic hot light.  Believe me, you won’t be breaking the bank.  I’ve used Lowell DP lights and a bunch of other 650 watt to 1,000 watt hot lights from a number of makers and find that as long as you satisfy a few parameters just about anything will work.

Get a light like the Lowell DP, the Lowell Omni, a Smith Victor or any other fixture that has a way of focusing the beam of light it throws out and also has the ability to easily use a four way barn door attachment.  Make sure it uses quartz halogen lights and NOT photofloods (which have a very short life and quick color temperature decay).  If you really feel broke just head down to the discount hardware store and get a cheap set of work lights.  They won’t focus and you’ll have to make your barndoors out of Black Wrap (heavy duty black aluminum foil) but you’ll likely be able to press them into service for what I have in mind.  If you have money to burn you might want to look at getting a Mole Richardson 650 watt fresnel spot or an Altman or Arriflex 650 watt fresnel spot.  The glass lens on the front helps to focus the beam of light without adding any sharp edges.

Once you’ve got the light start over from scratch and learn to light again with the continous hot light.  The overwhelming reason is that you will see what you are going to get.  The light is the light.  If you’ve worked with flash, even with units that have great modeling lights, you know there is always a big difference between what you see before you click the shutter and what you actually see after the blast of flash freezes time.  The balance between ambient light and flash is always a mystery no matter how many times you’ve set up flashes and lit things.  You’d be lost without an LCD screen or a Polaroid.  Admit it.

But the beauty of the hot lights is that you really do get what you see.  If it’s beautifully lit it’s beautifully lit.  If you’ve got a mix of ambient light and hot light you can instantly see the relationship.
I think it’s best to start over and go through the steps to see how light really bounces around and reflects off stuff.  How little changes in angles and placement can make a big difference and how the continuous light allows you to instantly see all these relationships without even having to fire up your camera.
First things first.  Put a person in a chair and bounce your hot light off a high white ceiling.  Then really look at how the light cascades down that person’s face.  Next, take that light and bounce is off a white side wall and see how the shadows change.  Use a king size white bed sheet as a giant diffuser and see exactly how that light affects your subject.  And keep going until you’ve experimented with this one hot light in every possible permutation.

What you’ll find is that every tool limits it’s user.  It’s hard to drive a nail with a screwdriver and it’s hard to screw in a Phillips head screw with a hammer.  The little flashes you might be used to using seem to call for a harder, more concentrated approach to lighting.  The lust for portability drives most of us to use very lightweight and easily transported equipment.  This drives us to use smaller umbrellas, use smaller stands and less accessories.  The limited power of battery operated flashes pushes us to make decisions about placement and much more.

Studio flashes bring another set of potential restrictions:  We use them near power outlets.  We still don’t get “What you see is what you get lighting”  and even at low power we don’t always get to use the exact apertures we might want to use.  And here’s something else to think about....with flash you set up the lights and camera then you make an exposure and then check the exposure on your screen.  If you don’t like what you see you have to change something and then go throught the whole process again.  Certainly, pros who’ve done this stuff for decades will be able to do it faster than newbies but the disconnect between what you are seeing and what you want to see remains.  Lighting with flash is this amazingly iterative process that proceeds by fits and starts.

Hot lights make the whole process more elegant.  You can watch the light on your subject AS you move the hot lights and you’ll see every change of shadow and reflection.  If you decide to bring in a reflector to fill in a face on the opposite side of your subject you’ll be able to actually SEE those light ratios change.  And while it’s a learning process to interpret what the camera will finally render you’ll be more integrated into the flow of the process with hot lights.

Understand that I’m not advocating dumping your flashes and going back to the 1950’s with big movie lights dotting your studio.  I’m advocating using a hot light as an exercise or workshop because, if you are like me, and you’ve been doing this for a number of years you’ve learned to make accommodations and short cuts with flash and you’ve stopped really looking at the light.  You know how to get an effect because you’ve done it over and over again.  But the hot lights let you see it fresh each time because it’s not filtered through the process of “shoot, look, change, shoot.….”   And we haven’t even touched on how easy it is to incorporate a sense of motion into your images with the long exposures that hot lights encourage.

If you are new to lighting this little exercise can be an amazingly revealing shortcut that’s as cogent to learning as the LCD screen on the back of your camera.  And you can add additional lights by pulling the high intensity lamp off your desk or adding a regular lamp into a background.

If most of your lighting is outdoors in the high sun this is not an exercise for you.
The attached photo(s) were done with two hot lights.  One is positioned to the left of the shooting camera.  It’s a 1,000 watt Profoto ProTungsten light aimed thru a 78 by 78 inch white scrim.  The second light is a little 300 watt spot light aimed on a background about 25 feet behind the subject.  There are several things we haven’t touched on that I love about doing these portraits with continuous light.  First,  with ISO 800 in a D700 I can have my cake and eat it too.  I get smooth, grain free files with shutter speeds in the range of 1/125th of a second to 1/180th of a second at f4 or f5.6.  This means that when a great expression comes along I can lean on the shutter button and grab some great frames at 6 or 7 frames per second.  Second, working with hot lights means I can go anywhere I want on the aperture scale with impunity.  All I need to do is change my shutter speed so that the overall exposure stays the same. This makes shooting wide open at f2 or even f1.4 a snap.  Getting to the same spot with studio flash is a whole can of worms (and in many cases woefully ugly mixed lighting.…)

The photographs are of actors at Zachary Scott Theater.  Over the course of four days in May we photographed nearly sixty people for a season brochure.  The images included theater patrons, board members, community supporters and even staff.  My lighting design changed with each category of sitters.  Some were done on white backgrounds.  Some on canvas.  My intention in using hot lights for this project was to make the images softer and to have very shallow depth of field within the frame.  The continuous source works so well with sitters as there are no blinks from anticipating the flash.
I have another project in mind where I’d like to use all florescent fixtures ( or LEDs)  but that’s something I’ll talk about in a future column.

If you have the opportunity be sure to give the hot light exercise a shot.  Everyone learns something new with the lights on.….