The Driftwood Portraits

posted October 20, 2009 in Portraits

This time of year many photographers are feeling the burnout of an action-packed season of weddings, along with the upcoming demands of the holiday season. There’s plenty of fuel left in our creative conscious and we’re giddy about a few upcoming shoots.

I’ve been a big fan of mini-personal projects, the kind that don’t take years to create, but perhaps only an hour. Personal projects allow the photographer to explore a particular idea, whether it be the approach to the subject, lighting, or techniques in either capturing or post-processing a complete image. Last spring I completed a small series of work published for the first time here.

A few thoughts to ponder:

As photographers, the visual scrapbook offers the courage to create. Often, I’ll sketch out ideas or a new lighting technique, then practice them several almost a dozen times over before putting them to use in front of paying clients on their wedding day. And even at that, things STILL go wrong. It is apart of being a creative using technology, I guess.
The wedding day isn’t the time to learn how to become a wedding photographer… it’s the months and months in preparation needed for the execution of a particular idea or technique that allows the photograph to be created to match your vision. Most advanced lighting techniques I’ve employed and shown on my blogsite, I’ve practiced at least three times on things like stuffed animals, saguaro cactus and that sort of thing. Still objects don’t complain about the amount of time it takes to execute and idea, or the number of times it takes to perfect it.
ANYTHING can serve as a subject of interest. In my case, straight-up dead driftwood did the trick for practicing some advanced light-painting.

The secret recipe: Most exposures were about 20 seconds and used a pair of video lights as the main light(s). The real trick? I gave myself limited time (60 minutes), limited tools (one lens), and limited light (simple video lights). The actual shoot lasted about 45 minutes and there was zero planning that went into the shoot until I arrived at my location in Klamath, Oregon.

This image was shot straight out of camera with zero post processing. I backlit myself so you can see the technique in use, but also to gauge scale. If you look carefully, you can see my flip flop and hand in the center of the image, which was an accidental mistake.

A few geek tech notes:

All images were created using a Nikon D-300, a 12-24mm lens, with an average exposure of either 15 or 20 seconds and underexposing the ambient by about 2-3 stops for drama (starting a f/16 ISO 100 for the earliest images and opening up to f/6.7 ISO 400 once it started to get really dark). You’ll notice the crashing of waves of the Pacific Ocean in the background is soften by the longer time exposure, which created a desired mood given my stiff, dead subject.
I took one or two images before finding another piece of drift wood and sticking it in the sand. It took much longer to find and drag the wood than it took to take the photograph, but it was a mini-workout in disguise as I sprinted to photograph each piece in my self-imposed timeframe.
When your subject moves, even just a 1/4 inch, the whole technique falls apart and you get a face with two noses and four ears. Brides don’t like that. To shorten the time needed to get your subject to sit still: boost your ISO, and increase your shutter time to keep it under about 10 seconds. Hopefully, adults can sit still for that long. I’m not sure I can fit into that category, however.
Much like the wedding day, diamonds form under pressure. Harnessing the ability to create something out of nothing in such a short period of time is something professional photographers experience every day.