Almost a month ago, my band had our drummer's friend come out and do some photography for us. I was totally stoked to get some pics taken of us, since the only thing we had was three years old, and rather shitty. So she came out and took a ton of photos for us, and we're all excited about 'em!
I just got them back the other day (well, the "keepers" from the shoot), and we looked through them before practice on Thursday, overall consensus was that there were some really good ones in there. However, I'm probably the one out of us four who is the least happy with them.
Why? Because even though I've not had any formal photography training, and I don't even own my own GOOD camera at the time, I still know what works and what doesn't.
Let's say this: Low light, close to dusk, outside... Nikon D50 with only the onboard flash (with probably the kit lens)... The flash is powerful, but, well, looks like crap. Outside it's not horrid, as long as the sun's up and the flash is acting as a fill... At night, or inside, however, no matter what you do, everything comes out flat.
This is why the external flash unit was invented. Just having an external, pointable light source that you can remove from directly above the lens makes all the difference in the world! It's kinda' a bummer to see a lack of people realizing this, especially "newbie" photographers.
So what you end up with is precisely what my old boss had told me about why he really dislikes photographers. He owns two art galleries in Downtown Sacramento, specializing in california-based fine art. Not photography, but paintings. Being an art gallery owner, he gets a lot of solicitations from a lot of artists, including "photographers". People who have just bought an $800 DSLR with the kit lens and a $500 Epson printer and now believe that they're "artists". Without any true artistic value or skillsets.
Now mind you, I'm not saying that this girl has no artistic ability, because she directed us fairly well (as a photog should do). However, I noticed a lot of little newbie mistakes in the images that could've been avoided with some effort (and some lighting gear). I really don't want to talk shit about her abilities, she's a sweet girl, and has a great eye for composition. I guess I'm just too picky.
Photography is all about light. I don't care whether you have a $3000 Canon 1D, a 4mp inexpensive point-n-shoot, or a 2MP camera phone. If you have enough light, you can get good images. A lack of light creates noise, eliminating the smoothness of the shadow tones, and having extreme shadows and highlights in the same image will guarantee that at least one--if not both--will be exposed improperly.
Here's the biggest way that a photographer can improve his/her work: Flash. Buy a nifty little external hot-shoe mounting flash unit. Why are these better? Well..
1) They're way more powerful than the onboard flash, with a wider range of lightpath and further distance until light falloff comes into effect (light will exponentially diminish the further it gets away from the source).
2) Onboard flash creates harsh whites and annoyingly crisp and flat shadows because it's only a few inches above the lens. This eliminates all texture and depth of a subject. Professional (or even good amateurs) use an external flash to eliminate this. When mounted on the camera, external flashes are about six inches above the lens, and the heads (where the light comes from) can be pointed in almost any direction allowing for bouncing light off of walls. Bounce=softer light.
3) You can remove the external flash units off of the camera to make the light come from a different direction than the camera. This creates much more depth and shadows, and also eliminates most harsh highlights.
3) A lot of flashes can act as slaves--this means that when it senses another flash unit go off--like, your onboard flash--it will flash as well, giving you the ability to place multiple lights in multiple locations for different lighting angles without killing the texture and tone of the subject.
Lighting is definitely a serious key in photography here. Other things such as depth of focus, awareness of required ISO settings... These are important, but so many new photographers just don't pay attention to them. It's a bit of a bummer, especially when a band is paying you money to produce good images for them.
Anyways... I'll edit this and add examples pretty soon, so keep checking back. I just have to upload some of the aforementioned band photos. ;)
Edit: Band photos are uploaded now.
Take a look at the band photos here!
For a reference of what it looks like with an external flash to reinforce my point above, go
look at my photography folder here.
The Phoenix Rising photos were all done with a Canon Digital Rebel 300D camera, a couple different lenses, and a Canon Speedlight flash alternating between mounted on the camera being bouncing around the practice room and being attached by a tether cable (so I can hold it away from the camera and point it where I want to).
So, this Digital Rebel I was using is an older camera than the Nikon D50 that was used for our shoot, a lower resolution image, and an older sensor, however, in my opinion, the Phoenix Rising shots look MUCH more professional, all due to lighting. As I said, photography is all about lighting.
