Montreal
Personal Work
Montreal
One of the enjoyable, but important, tasks as a photographer is personal work. For an enthusiast, this may be your primary photographic activity. As a professional, this is the often-overlooked task, of self-assignment. It’s critical for developing skills and for stepping away from the grind and pressures in a professional shoot. Professional photographers are both business people and creatives. Personal work allows the creative side to express itself and recharge.
Personal work is an opportunity to explore and experiment without the constraints of a client’s shot list, theme ideas, and production schedules. It is an opportunity to shoot the subjects you want to cover, shoot something that is unfamiliar to you, or simply to learn a new technique. Personal work is the key to your growth as a photographer. Sometimes its importance is simply its reminder of the reasons you got into photography in the first place. We sometimes (often) forget to feed our creative side while dealing with the tasks, priorities, and demands required to run a business and make a living. That will eventually take its toll and negatively impact your abilities as a photographer.
For enthusiasts, defining and developing personal work is the key to developing as a photographer. It helps you develop your ability to express yourself photographically. It helps you develop both your vision and your photographic vision – and photography is not about the gear – it’s about the vision.
I used a recent trip to Montreal to experiment with my photography and capture some photographs of my nieces and grand-niece (Yep, grand-niece…hard to believe, but true.).
My niece, Alexandria, was having her 11th birthday, and we decided to make a party of it. This meant a simple afternoon of skating and a small party at a local restaurant. I decided the skating event would be a great opportunity for photos and some experimenting on my part. Since I am a complete disaster on skates and, at 6’4” and 240lbs a real threat by falling on someone, I decided not to skate, but to shoot from the sidelines. Not to mention, someone had to watch the coats.
This created some interesting challenges for me:First, I was unable to move around the area to shoot. I was surprised how much I used my personal position to compose and create shots. It pointed out something I took for granted when I was working, which is the ability to move around while composing my work.
Second, the area was in indoor rink with low lights. This meant a bright white background of ice with poorly lit subjects. This was bad light in any one of a number of ways. The only really good thing about bad light is it forces you to take control of it or risk not getting any usable photos.
Third, the rink was crowded, which meant that many shots were impossible or interrupted by other skaters. This made it pretty well impossible for me to take any long shots.
I shot primarily in one area, as I was also guarding all the coats, bags and etc everyone had to leave while skating. Besides the movement issue mentioned earilier, I was also shooting downward for many shots, as my area was a platform about 4 feet above the ice level.
As with any shoot, I brought several lens with me to handle different situations. Its hard to explain why you do this non-photographers, but I have found describing my camera bag as a toolbox and the lens as some of the tools seems to get the point across. On some shoots you only use a couple of them and on others you use everything. This became a try-everything shoot very quickly.
First my 70-200mm f2.8 lens, but this really didn’t work well, as the shadows were terrible and most of them turned into dark subjects on white background. The crowd of other skaters meant that any shot at a distance usually had someone skating in front of it. Since skaters are pretty fast, it was impossible to judge when I would be able to shoot without someone in the way. I soon gave up on my 70-20
Next i used my 50mm f1.2, as it is a phenomenal low-light lens and very sharp. I could deal with the light levels, but the light was basically flat and boring. I also found my inability to move a challenge for dealing with using a prime. Not being able to use my two-legged zoom was a real problem. My raised position also prevented me from shooting form low angles to reduce the amount of white ice in the background. the added bonus of my subjects moving both close and far away from me, quickly convinced me to return this lens to the bag.
I normally use my 24-105mm f4 lens for outdoor work, as it excels there and my 24-70mm f2.8 for interior work where I will be using flash. Unfortunately, my 24-70mm was not with me. The 24-105mm is my workhorse lens and, once more, it proved itself when I needed it. The shadows, lighting, and contract meant I was going to have to take come control over the light myself, so the f4 limitation of the 24-105mm could be overcome. The extra f-stop of the 24-70mm can really come in handy at times, but not an option here.
I broke out my Canon st-e2 wireless controller and set my flash to slave. This allows me to control the light level with the flash and the lighting position by moving the flash around. Luckily, I have pretty big hands, so I can handle a Canon 1DS Mark III with one hand for extended periods. I work the zoom by using the back of my flash hand on the dial. Large hands come in handy here as well. You can see an example of all of the above in the photo at the top of this article – that would be my grand-niece tolerating some photography while she is trying to learn how to skate.
Once I had the off-camera flash going with the 20-105mm lens I was good to go. Light levels were no longer an issue, I could control the light direction at will, and my inability to move and the rapid movement of my subject could be handled by the zoom.
The results are in my gallery below, but this little personal project re-affirmed my belief in carrying a flexible amount of gear with you to deal with unexpected challenges while shooting.
p.s. Least anyone think that I have too many photos of Meagan, she was simply a slower target .
