The point of this cosplay shoot was to utilise fireworks in the background in an attempt to capture the proposal cutscene, as seen embedded here:

Aside from the sheer beauty of that scene, when analysing this source material, a few things come to mind:

• shifting white balances due to the CGI simulation of ISO12,800, allowing the fireworks in the distance to provide ambient lighting to the faces and surrounds
• extremely soft lighting
• ambient simulation meaning relatively darker subjects

So ideally we would be using a softbox or similar but unfortunately logistics would step in and mess things up.

Finding the fireworks

With fireworks being critical to the shoot, the first order of business was to find some. Fortunately, I already knew in advance where and when fireworks are held in Sydney, so it was a matter of choosing a place and date based on:

• the view of the location
• the possibility of interference by security or the general public (both place and date matter)
• the timing of the fireworks (many start at around 9:30pm, which is too late for me; this one started at 8:30pm)

As it happens, the fireworks we chose to use was being held by Sony for the launch of its PS Vita console.

Logistical difficulties

The elements were against us when we finally trekked to the location. Firstly, it was very windy, and Miyukiko graciously saved my flash/umbrella set up, but took a tumble in the process. Secondly, it started raining 10 minutes before the fireworks were due to go off. It got pretty heavy before the rain clouds were blown away, but as a result, most of the stuff was drenched. And immediately after the rain stopped, the fireworks commenced (at least they weren’t cancelled).

I had contemplated using a diffused LED torch setup, but even though I had a fairly bright torch, it didn’t produce enough light, so I ended up using a weak flash bounced off an umbrella, in addition to an LED torch in an undiffused octabox (the torch wasn’t strong enough to be of any use with the diffuser sheet in place).

The LED torch did provide a bit of fill light in the final results and also quite importantly, illuminated the cosplayers to a degree so the camera was better able to focus.

When the fireworks started, it was pretty much point-and-shoot mode for me, with the short refresh of the weaker flash power helping with the rapid fire. The point was to capture both the fireworks in the background and a good pose, while keeping a check on focus and composition.

After the fireworks ended, we continued the shoot, because I had brought sparklers. The idea was to emulate the scene where they entered the space where the fireworks were exploding. Of course, the wind provided difficulties in keeping the lighter lit long enough for the sparklers to light, but we managed, eventually.

Results

The fleeting nature of fireworks and sparks meant it was not possible to capture, in camera, what we really wanted. We did come really close in a number of shots, but most of the fireworks in the final pictures are composited from other shots within the shoot – that is, rejected shots were re-assessed during post-processing for the suitability of their fireworks to be used as “plates” for the successful shots.

Due to the rapid shooting I employed during the shoot, the success rate was approximately 0.4 percent. That is, 99.6 percent of the pictures I took did not make it through the vetting process. That looks like a lot but keep in mind the final number of shots after the process was 14, and we shot for less than an hour, all up. So that’s still within the expected limits of success.

I must thank Will and Miyukiko for inviting me to this shoot. It was a challenge, and I learned a lot from it. It was also my first time shooting cosplay with fireworks, so it was really quite fun.

[related gallery]

I am myself a big fan of Final Fantasy VIII, which I played on the PC in high school. It was my first Final Fantasy game, and yes I am perfectly aware that I got in on the franchise AFTER the Final Fantasy VII goodness. In any case, it’s hard to believe that this is my first shoot for Final Fantasy VIII, but then again I haven’t been shooting for all that long.

We started outdoors, due to the really nice surrounds of the place, then moved indoors to a ballroom which was already laid out with tables and chairs for a wedding reception later that evening. We had limited time, but it didn’t feel like a rush at all.

For the outdoor section, we were predominantly shooting at a courtyard of sorts, and I really loved the grid-and-astroturf pattern they had.

Because we were contending with a full on summer sun, I deployed (for the first time ever) a new light source, the Godox EX600, a China-made pack-and-head light. I was thinking about one of the Paul C Buff lights but the modifier mounting system (I use Bowens type mounts), cost and bulk of those monolights, combined with my current needs and skill level (basically brute force lighting power) meant that for the moment, the cheap option was preferable.

The light head itself is surprisingly light, but the heavy part is the power pack and battery. The battery power is rated at 200 pops, and power adjustment is pretty much non-existent (there are nine adjustment steps but they don’t do much). This is really a piece of equipment I would only pull out when I need to use a light modifier and compete with sunlight, and it’s far too powerful for my normal use indoors or at night. It is used with my neutral density filter to keep the aperture reasonably open.

Later on, when we moved into the hall, we used a combination of my flashes, with Ray’s octobox and umbrella (octobox as key, umbrella as fill). In regards to the ballroom, the part we shot in had sunlight filtering in through yellow panes of stain glass windows, which made the entire section of the place yellow. But that was actually exactly the colour the place needed to be, because everyone who has seen the Final Fantasy VIII ballroom sequence will know that the ballroom scene itself has a golden-yellow look presumably because of the ballroom lights.

Behind the scenes: top left: testing new light with Ray ; shooting the ballroom scenes.

Therefore, we gelled the flashes to match the room colour temperature, and I opted to retain most of the golden colour temperature in order to reproduce the scene faithfully. Check out the final gallery and see how it turned out.

[related gallery]

The bridge has a pretty nice view of the city behind it and it’s been somewhere we wanted to shoot at for some time. Of course, we had to contend with people walking past, even though it was a fairly quiet Wednesday night. Instead of balancing to ambient, I opted to gel the key light in order to get rid of some of the orange sodium cast of the lights in the city background, then allow the separation light and ambient fluorescents (which give a green cast, in case you didn’t already know) to run free. The results are nice and colourful with a good mix of blue and green.

The key light was bare bulb flash, so you can do Hadouken and stuff with it.

It is also possible to do other stuff with the separation light, besides lens flaring the hell out of pictures.

We would also occasionally have people walking past and you get things like this happening.

The second half of the shoot was at just some random alleyway we found, and for that the key light was normal, with the kicker at the back gelled to orange, giving the street-light kind of feel.

Check out the results [here]

The day started out kinda sunny, kinda cloudy, then as the shoot went on it got progressively darker, until it started pouring down. But we kept shooting anyway – my equipment can take a bit of water without dying (though my lens isn’t weather-sealed).

Unlimited fist works

The look we ended up getting started off bright afternoon, then progressed to harsh Korean drama-like darkness with highlighted areas – much like how the weather went. However, it suits the way the narrative played out, since basically Kaiya’s character gets beaten up.

“Why are you smiling?”

Note the raindrops in the above behind the scenes shot (or maybe you can’t see them). This was when the rain had started coming down and we were just taking photos of the crime scene. Madara was protected with a bubble umbrella; of course the cosplayers are not so lucky.

Limited uploads to six photos this time round since it’s for a photobook, no point showing all the cards before the book comes out!

[related gallery]

To a large degree, that obsession over camera bodies and lenses was halted by my jump to a Nikon D700-three-lens system. Suddenly, my camera did everything I ever needed it to do. I could concentrate on actually making pictures. The only thing missing, of course, was the constant consumerism and the lust for the next thing (body and lens-wise). So instead that urge was redirected to getting new lighting modifiers and systems.

Small steps, big money

The problem of playing at such a “high” (relatively) end in the DSLR market is that any conceivable “upgrade” is very costly. I have a job derived from an arts degree (so must consider myself lucky to even have a job) and money, while not tight, is not very expendable. And of course, both Canon and Nikon announcing new things recently.

Nikon, particularly, is announcing the D800/D800E which is meant to be a replacement for the D700 (the one I have right now, in case it wasn’t clear). You can be sure that a lot of people with D700 bodies will be looking to upgrade, since they’ve held on to it for years and it is considered “sorely in need of an upgrade”.

The issue facing me is that money-wise, the D800/D800E is not a worthy upgrade on a D700. “Upgrade” is not a term that should be used with camera hardware. Or rather, the meaning of “upgrade” as we generally apply it to things like software is not applicable to hardware in the DSLR market. It’s not like Lightroom, where the upgrade price provides savings on the full version.

DSLR bodies are not modular. Yes the lenses are detachable, but when you go from a D700 to a D800/D800E, you are buying an entirely new device, and paying the exact same price as a person who is, for example, going from null to a D800/D800E.

Making the drastic transition to the D700 showed me that in the long term, it doesn’t make sense to take small steps up the hardware chain. For owners of the D700, like myself,  going to a D800 is precisely taking such a small step, but at considerable expense. Is that $3000-$4000 worth it for the extra resolution, the (uncertain and unproved) boost in ISO performance, the (apparently) improved tracking, video and the extra SD card slot?

For some people, maybe.

The path beyond

But for me, I am subtracting the specs of a D700 from the new body and comparing that to the cost, and concluding that the only logical step upward would be to the D4, or beyond that into the digital medium format territory.

This is precisely why there is now a trend, first by Strobist David Hobby, then Zack Arias, to move up to medium format. It’s a move that makes sense when thinking about the advantages and differentiation gained by that amount of monetary investment. It’s a rat race upwards, I think, partly driven by the newly-empowered consumers (despite the economic climate) being able to get their hands on higher end DSLRs.

The plateau

But all the above is hypothesising. My current advice to myself is “hold”. Yes, that small niggling part of me might miss the whole shopping and splashing out experience, but financially and discipline-wise, it makes sense to stay in the plateau of the upgrade path. Yes, the resolution of the D700 is a bit small (especially during the rare occasions when I need to do prints) but I am 100 percent happy with it. It will continue performing for me, regardless of the availability of its bigger brothers.

As such, I don’t see myself upgrading for the next 2 years at least, unless it’s to a medium format as an additional option for commercial work, but I will still retain the D700 setup. We are seeing the beginnings of the revolution with the mirrorless wars now heating up — give it two years, and my hunch is that the winners would have sorted themselves, and we’ll see a full frame mirrorless camera (maybe with an organic sensor) — that’s probably when my fingers will go looking for my wallet.

The shoot itself took place under a nice bright blue sky at a house, which, to be described in a single word, was impressive. It was more like a mansion to be honest, and even driving up to it, both I and the other photographer were confused as to whether it was in fact the right place to be at. But it was, and the principal shoot location would be an ornate gazebo by the pool.

From the art of Aki, and the lighting conditions (open shade), I decided that even though I had a lightstand set up and ready, that we should proceed with my giant reflector to just redirect some light to faces. The water-colour like and soft shading that Olimpos utilises meant really that there was no place for using flash.

The look I had in mind while I was shooting, then, was inspired by what I knew about the Olimpos manga, as well as what I visualised the Greek mythological Elysium or Mount Olympus to be like, from years of imagination (I read the Trojan War and other Greek myths when I was a child, and studied mythology for a bit too). In those heavenly realms, so the reasoning went, the sun would be closer and brighter, the plants verdant and vibrant, which was the look I aimed for and hopefully achieved.

Out-takes (feat the inimitable peppanda):

[related gallery]

At the same time that we strive to avoid being walled in, we recognise that no one can work without restraints. A world without restraints is a world without walls and a floor, where there is nothing to push against, and nothing to push us forward. To have no restrictions is to be totally free, to have no style or specialty. That’s the other end of the spectrum to be avoided, since I have for too long (in other spheres of learning) been a jack-of-all-trades.

In any case, a number of things are available to break down the comfortable creative walls that build up around me. Holidays are one, where I revert from portraiture and cosplay photography into a landscape/street shooting mode for an extended period of time. Another is to take advantage of some of the photography-related events that come up now and then, like a snail emerging from its shell to survey the wider world.

Previously, I have gone to the Seven Hundred Photos event (which is once again coming up this year) to challenge my horizons, and recently (last Sunday), I went to a “New Year Party” held by SYD PHOTOS. It was touted as a kind of audition type event for models, stylists and photographers, with the chance of being chosen to do some commercial work. Since I didn’t know much about what this agency is, I thought I’d go along, have a bit of an experience shooting, and possibly get some work out of it, if everything goes really well.

I suppose that’s the attitude I have been adopting lately – yes, it’s a bit of an effort to tramp down all the way to Green Square, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. And it’s not going to hurt any of my existing capabilities by going to something like this. If it turns out to be not so good, well it’s just the loss of half a day. Such a strictly logical way of thinking forces me to take up opportunities that I would otherwise just let go due to my natural apathy.

So anyway I rocked up and there was a bunch of people there and we took some photos against the white studio background, then later repaired to Little Bay to get more photos. I met a few photographers, including Travis.

It is always interesting, meeting other photographers, and seeing how they work and what they have done in the past. Though it was also an “interesting” experience shooting with 10 or so other photographers around you all vying for the one-pop-a-second studio light and the gaze of the models involved.

Another eye-opening part of the event was the strict usage policy the agency put on the photos, which was basically a copyright grab, preventing usage elsewhere without their watermark on said photos, which is part of the reason why I’m not putting the photos here or in my gallery site. It’s a fair enough deal, I suppose, since they had to absorb the costs of organisation and basically didn’t charge for use of their space and equipment, though personally, I value the copyright and free use of my photos quite highly.

Anyway, if you want to, you can check out my profile and the photos I took on the day at their site [here].

P.S.: I did another shoot on Sunday, but I haven’t processed them yet due to running critically low on disk space. My second archival disk system should be coming in tomorrow (fingers crossed), which would allow me to offload the photos and start processing again. As always, I am building a RAID 1 from two hard drives, and it’s a matter of waiting for stock of the dual bay enclosures to arrive. I will also take the opportunity to put a USB 3.0 card into the computer. I already have a USB 3.0 compatible card reader, so we’ll see if that accelerate things somewhat.

P.S.S.: the photog in the photo is not me.

One thing that might have caused consternation a decade or so back within the art establishment has gone on to become its own genre of art which is fairly well-received. I am of course referring to  “digital art”, where technology is used to create new forms of expression, merging various older genres and media.

To manipulate, or not to

But going back to photography, the tension between the possibilities opened up by technology, and a sense of what constitutes the “essence” of photography leads to debates like “Should HDR be used?“, “How much retouching is too much?”, and recently, the contention by David Saxe that, essentially, manipulations in post processing, far from being an optional part of the process for a photographer, should actually be de rigueur as far as the photographer’s artistic expression is concerned.

The core of his argument is that those manipulations allow the photographers to communicate their passion and feelings in regards to the shot to the viewers.

It’s tempting for me to think that Saxe is only referring to art photography, but I think he is actually making a spectrum-wide argument for the whole of the photography genre. That includes, of course, photojournalism. And that opens up a whole other can of worms pertaining to questions like “To what degree can journalists insert their own subjective emotions into their work?”, “What service does it offer to a consumer of news in terms of representing reality if the documenting photo is manipulated?”, “How much of reality can be translated through the medium of photography anyway, give the technological restrictions and the restricted view of a single frame?”, etc.

Expression in-camera

There are those (like myself) who would argue that really, the very act taking a photo is the photographer’s way of communicating his or her subjectivity. There is no objectivity when as a human with my own aesthetic judgement, I compose a photo in a frame (cropping out elements, leaving elements in, emphasising elements with leading lines and positioning, etc), the decision to fire the shutter at that split second, the decision to blur or not blur the background with the aperture settings and lens choice, the use of shutter speed to blur multiple moments into one or freeze a man mid-jump. And when we start using our own lights, we are constructing a reality that only exists in that 1/160th of a second. And lighting, of course, can have a massive effect on “reality” as it is perceived in a photo.

To a degree, the journalistic tradition has had to deal with such issues for a long time. We may try to be objective about “reality”, but the fact that journalists need to observe and write about events already sees that “reality” translated through the subjective lens of his/her consciousness. So journalists attempt to be objective, even while knowing that true objectivity is not a possibility. The best they can do is to not consciously introduce bias.

Binary argument

Given the possibility of such a wide range of expression available to the photographer during the capture of a photograph, the question that this poses for Saxe’s argument is whether in-camera expression is enough. My main issue with Saxe’s contention is the rather simplistic “either-or” argument he is making: a photographer is either “observing something, photographing it, and printing the image exactly as he or she saw it”, or they are taking “something ordinary” and making something “special” from it, through manipulation.

Saxe is trying to argue for photographers to take “ordinary photos” that reflect a reality which “everybody else sees”, and transform it by bestowing subjectivity upon it in digital manipulation. His argument against capturing a “quirky” part of reality is that seeking such shots confines photographers to “a formal, preordained plan or statement and the resulting images are no more than a checked-off list to suit that plan.”

That sounds to me like just an excuse to put less effort into getting your composition, timing, etc right in camera. It’s an attempt at shifting the personal expression of a photographer entirely into digital manipulation. Congratulations, you are now a digital artist, and that’s a distinctly different animal from a photographer.

Of course, I am not a traditionalist myself — I do believe in post-processing tweaks and digital development as a way to “finish” a photograph. I am also not disagreeing with the fact that digital manipulation can heighten the feel of a photo.

But at the same time, I take issue with the over emphasis on digital manipulation. I am a firm believer in getting the picture right in the camera. -Composition, lighting, background, etc are the foundations of a photograph. You can manipulate all you want, but if your foundation is crap, all you’ll end up with is some HDR’d, colour-isolated, overly vignetted eyesore.

Here’s the thing — digital manipulation is not the only way for a photographer to express their passion and feeling. Everything I mentioned above (and I keep mentioning them) are the tools and language for our expression. For me, light is the biggest tool. Some people can make the subject stand out from a murky background through the use of dodge and burn. I can express the same through judicious use of flashes, pre-visualised and set up during a shot.

While I may not count myself within their ranks, photographers who choose adhere to minimalistic use of digital manipulations are not restricted to just showing “this is what I saw”. They see a scene, they see the possibilities, and they transform that reality in their frame to express themselves. The tools at their disposal may not be Dodge, Burn, Solarisation, Saturation, or Vignetting, but they are equally, if not more powerful.

Check out the results here:

[related gallery]

The idea from the get go was for the over-exposed pastel type colours that many cosplay photos use. Of course, I’m a bit of a technically-paranoid freak as well so I shot relatively normal exposures then pushed it up in post. Most of the light was bounced, but I also had a flash behind the sheer curtains of the window for that sunny day effect (typical setup for me by now, I suppose).

We also did a fashion type shoot for clothes she brought back from Japan after this but work has been quite busy lately so those are not totally done yet.

During the shoot I managed to isolate the cause of the flash reliability problem which had been dogging me the past few weeks. As before, one of the flashes wasn’t firing, even if I put it into optical slave mode. I tried different triggers and new batteries and the problem persisted, so my conclusion was the flash was the problem. Since I don’t have room in my bag for any piece of equipment that isn’t 100 percent reliable, that flash will be put away. I’ve got enough flash units lying around in my reserves to be able to replace it with a similar-powered unit without having to buy something new.

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