Play and music at Gymboree

Apr 18th, 2013 by Jozef Povazan

Gymboree children photograhy

Today I am going to give you couple advices how to set your camera & take better pictures of children when they play indoor at places like Gymboree.

Those of you who know me for some time as a photographer probably heard this before but when it comes to children indoor photography expect unexpected. I consider playing kids as one of the hardest candid sessions to photograph because you never know what is going to be their next move, but once you watch them for a while you will find a certain pattern in their behavior and than you have to take an advantage of it. In my case our daughter Sofia has been quite a steady object to photograph but recently she learned how to climb and run and oh my I had to change my approach for her candid playtime portraits rapidly.

I have started with observing how she feels that particular time when I am about to photograph her. And this is very important. By learning the playing habits of your children you can then way easier predict what is going to happen, which direction are they going to move and when they had enough and your photography trying is over for the day

Find the best possible light in the room and position yourself so you can take the advantage of it. This is the biggest problem for the beginners. Where to look for the best light source at indoor locations. Well if there is a window, I bet you if you do not take advantage of that you are risking underexposed images am I right? Try to position yourself so your back is turned towards the strongest light source. This way you are reaching using it for creating your exposures and your ISO will be set according to this strongest light source.

gymboree-play-and-music-povazan-photography

Make a decision if the light is good enough for your room and if not help yourself with the fill in flash technique. That means, measure the exposure first and make sure your shutter speed is faster than 1/60 s. I would recommend for starting photographers reach shutter of 1/125s so their handshake does not cause the blurriness in their images. If your camera does not reach this shutter speed, your ISO setting is too low and you will have to push it higher as far as you can finally shoot in that light sharp looking shots. Follow the simple rule of 2x ISO = 2x faster shutter speed

Use a small F aperture on your lens to blur any distractions in the background. During this play and music Gymboree session there was at least 9 children accompanied with their parents in the same room like myself. I have used aperture F2 on my Nikon 50mm f1.8D lens most of the time. This is one of the best portrait lenses out there if you are on the budget. It costs maybe $130 but the results are worth way more. It is somehow soft at F1.8 so I like to close it down to f2 or f2.2. Amazing glass for the money. I had it mounted on my D700 which had been out for 4 years now and I still use it as one of my backups camera for the weddings due to its superb low light capabilities.

AF system. Do not use AF-C – continuos tracking system in low light like this. Instead set the Af to AF-S single servo, so every-time you press the trigger half way your camera focuses and locks on the subject. This way you can easy make a good composition and refocus or recompose if your subject moves away a bit. Oh, and btw I call kids in general fast moving objects, because they are unpredictable, they do what ever they want and stop when you do not want them to do it Love to capture them though, it is so rewarding when you get shots like these..

Another crucial part of children candid or action portraits is the ability to get their attention or opposite distract them a bit when you found a great light, view or composition but they do not want to go for it and stay somewhere else. Every kid is different but if you watch them for couple minutes you will see that everyone of them has its own interests and you can use those to get them exactly where you need to. In my case Sofia loves obstacles and balls. So as soon as I positioned myself behind these ladders she went for them, because she is still kind of insecure and likes to play very close to me. Without knowing this I could hardly have a time to frame her during that climb and minimize other children in the room so she stands out there on her own.

The on bonus of using 50mm prime lens is the sweet angle and compression this lenses offer. If you just step away couple meters you are wide enough for a wide angle shot of the room, but if you get really close like half a meter away then this lens offer superb portraits options. The bokeh was created by using a f2 aperture.

gymboree-play-and-music-vancouver-children-photography

One of the most important aspect of children portrait photography is to be fast and do not hesitate. These kids are fast compare to our cameras in low light so no hesitation when you spot a great moment, make sure you are set correctly for the exposure and compose and focus very quickly before the moment is gone forever

Using a flash is sometimes necessary but if you do not have to then stay away from it. Recharging time of your unit might be a big disadvantage and also the look in your images is going to be more fake then realistic due to some objects which might be closer to your camera then the child and they would look too bright and overexposed. I prefer ambient light to flashes whenever it is possible.

And last but not the least – try to tell a story with you series of images so when you think about your shooting timeline of that session, go with it like you were looking at it as that little one you were taking pictures of. Does not she look happy and enterntained in here. It actually seems like there was no camera in my hands during this day at Gymboree. Well, trust me I managed both, to have fun with our Sofia and plus to grab maybe 40 great shots of her within 45 minutes of the playtime.

And this is my favorite one, the very last one when she finally climbed that long ladder in order to reach her ball at the end of it

. If you never tried it with your kids well our Sofia had a blast there

Tags: children, D700, gymboree, indoor, low light, Nikon 50f1.8D, people, portrait

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Kids in motion

Mar 10th, 2013 by Jozef Povazan

First technique – panning of a moving object.

A quick How to – advices for moving children on a swing. To emphasize the motion when kids are playing on a swing is to set the camera so your shutter speed is set slower the 1/60 and depending on the amount of ambient light available around you your F stops have to be adjusted accordingly to that. For this shot of fast Jake I set the camera to ISO 200, shutter to 1/20 and the aperture was stopped at f8. This was an overcast day so I filled in the face with a built in flash. Even though these flashes are not powerful because my camera exposure was set correctly for the ambient light around Jake I did not need that much power to lighten up his face. The motion in the background was created by panning the shot. I simply followed the swing with my Nikon AF-C focusing system and anytime the boy looked my direction I fired a shot. Because the recharging time for built in flash is quite long I had only a single shot for every swing he made so be patient if you do not end up with this kind of shots right at the beginning

Second technique – zooming in-out during exposure.

Zooming photography technique is a simple as long as you have steady fingers.

How the shot above was created ? I have used a Nikon D300s with a 17-55 f2.8 AFS again but in this case instead of panning and following the moving from a side I positioned myself right in front of Sofia / my daughter / and set the camera again for a slow shutter speed of 1/20. The only difference this time was that during this long exposure I have zoomed out from 55 mm to 17 mm and created the motion effect around her. Because her head was positioned almost at the center of the frame the blurriness is not that visible there like in the rest of the frame. The fill in flash brought extra saturation to the color of her jacket

If you are planning to try either one of these techniques for moving objects make sure you have really steady hands and lots of patience before you get acceptable results. It took me about 5 minutes to get results like these but I had only 20% success and the rest of the images were either in bad focus or blurred so badly they were unusable.

Thank you for joining our workshops and tutorials and looking forward to see you at the next ones.

Tags: children, motion, people

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Wedding photographer gear.

Feb 9th, 2013 by Jozef Povazan

When it comes to weddings photographers have to make sure they are capable to cover the day without sacrificing special moments of the day. And these moments usually happened to be there almost all day long. The question is how quickly can you react to capture them. The second and probably the most important part of this – is your photo gear capable of doing that?

During my photo workshops in Downtown Vancouver I have met couple local wedding photographers and want to be wedding shooters. At the end of the workshops they usually asked me what would I recommend them to buy so their gear is ready for the tough times of this creative profession.

To keep this post as short as I can I will approach this from point of the most used camera brand name for wedding photography: Nikon and Canon

Why only these two DSLR camera makers? Well, we could go and include Sony, Olympus, Leica, Hasselblad, Pentax and others but in reality the majority of us PROs is relying on one of those two and if the trend changes in the near future I will be happy to add them here.

First of all, I am not going to be saying buy this brand because it is better than the other etc. No I just want to give you a fair information what you might need, why it is important to have this kind of cameras, lenses and flashes for a wedding assignment and why if you do not have it you might simply fail to create these kind of looking shots:

Let’s start with Nikon and what I use and carry around at my vancouver weddings.

MY CAMERAS: 3-4 DSLR bodies in my camera roller case including: Nikon D3s, Nikon D700, Nikon D300s and Nikon D800 . The last mentioned had been returned back to Nikon due to the AF issues Nikon still refuses to admit and you can read more about it in my post here.

My main DSLR camera is still D3s even though the D4 has been out for a year. Should I replace it for D4? In my case there is no need to do so. This is probably one of the best Nikon digital flagships ever made for sport and low light photography. Its dynamic range, low ISO performance and AF system that is super fast is exactly what my brides needs. I know they have no idea what I am describing right here, but it is not up to them but up to us – wedding photographers to make sure our camera equipment delivers no matter what conditions are around us. No wonder NASA uses Nikon D3s for their spaceships projects and you can see some amazing time-lapses shot from orbit with this unbelievable camera.

My second DSLR is Nikon D700. Let’s call it a smaller brother of D3s without a battery grip for vertical shooting. Boy I love this camera. Light yet powerful and when combined with a fast lens you have the winner in front of you. Same 12MP full frame FX sensor like D3 and reliable like nothing else! This is a great size of a DSLR is you are a female shooter. D3s is a lot bulkier and even for my muscles too heavy when I have a 10 hour shooting going on!

My DX format DSLR choice is simple – Nikon D300s. This camera rocks for the last 3 years and even though they are newer cameras around the durability and precision of this body has not been overcome yet. Still the best DX format from Nikon and soon there might be a replacement but till then, this is my back up if longer lenses are needed. Great for the second shooter, little bit behind in low light but at outdoor locations this piece delivers 100%.

My newest camera I was dreaming about was Nikon D800. A long waiting machine with newest 36PM sensor and huge dynamic range but it gave up on me badly and I returned it back to Nikon after couple projects! When this camera works without any issues then the image quality is amazing and you can crop so much details from that sensor that is unbelievable. My model had AF back-focusing issues, LCD calibration problem and WB issues and even though Nikon does not admit some of these till today, there are thousands of photographers who know what I am talking about. Even worse happened to the latest Nikon full frame model D600, which has an issue with oil being spilled on the sensor for the first couple thousands shots… Nikon, please learn from these mistakes, I like you equipment and these 2 models did not cut it through for me!

Another shot of mine to wake you up

So lets put the part about camera bodies together and simply explain why you need to have couple of them. You need to be fast and changing lenses all day long is sometimes impossible. When you do change them and there is a time for it, make sure you do it proper way so the dust do not get inside your camera, because the small tiny black spots on you images will be rapidly increasing its numbers there. If one of your cameras fails / like my D800 did ! / then you still have couple of them to use without loosing precious moments. And trust me there is never enough safety when it comes to a wedding day – because the chance it is going to be repeated are small !!!

MY LENSES: Nikon 14-24 f2.8 AFS, Nikon 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR, Nikon 105 f2.8 AFS VR macro, Nikon 17-55 f2.8 AFS DX, Nikon 50f1.8D, and two newest family members Nikon 24 f1.4 AFS and Nikon 85 f1.4 AFS.

If I had to choose only two lenses to carry to a destination wedding due to a baggage allowance I would 100% took my 14-24 f2.8 AFS + 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR!

These are my workhorses and every serious wedding photographer should have something similar in his bag to cover the focal length these two lenses do. Nikon 14-24 f2.8 AFS is a serious wide-angle machine which offers to capture amazing close ups of the small groups of people in areas where the distance can be a problem, it is a superb sharp wide angle choice for my bride+groom+architecture shots and amazing landscape creator! With fast f2.8 aperture this lens allows me to shoot even in the dark areas like at shot 1 where groom and bride had a Wedding at Vancouver cathedral. Using just an ambient light mixed with fill in video light I captured an atmosphere which is really priceless to even describe. Fast lenses with f number f 2.8 or smaller are a MUST for serious wedding photographers!

Nikon 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR is another great example of a fast tele photo lens. This is the most used lens during any wedding. It is one of the fastest AF lenses from Nikon and it focal length is perfect for portraits from any distance. It is heavy, but the quality which comes out of this beast is amazing. If this lens broke down during the wedding day on me than my replacement would be Nikon 85 f1.4 AFS G ED. If you know what bokeh represents in photography than here is the king of the low light portraits! This is my dream come true lens to use. Period. Most of the wedding portraits on my Vancouver commercial wedding website had been captured by using this lens!

When the wedding rings close ups are needed then Nikon 105 f2.8 AFS has it all under control. It offers a life size macro feature so even the smallest diamond on your wedding ring will be as sharp as it can gets and you can almost count those carats on it . The AF is a bit slower compare to the first 3 lenses but what do you expect from a macro lens . You can lock the focusing ring on it for certain distances so it does not hunt too much during focusing! Love it.

The Nikon 17-55 f2.8 DX AFS is being used when I shoot with my DX format cameras such as Nikon D300s. These DX format cameras has a crop factor of 1.5 times of the focal length used so 17 – 55 represents 25-80 focal length in FX full frame format. Where I find the strongest point for using DX format cameras is the focal length. As soon as you need to reach and subject in your composition which is too far for your FX body simply change the lens from it and put it on a DX format camera and you can reach 1.5 times further! So my Nikon 70-200 2.8 AFS is basically 105-300 mm lens on DX format Nikon camera! Which is a great advantage for sport and wildlife photographers as well!

When it comes to the prices of the photography equipment you can start to either pray or dream. Most of my lenses cost average from 1500- 2500 $$$ each !!! The camera bodies from $1500 – 6000 each !!! It means I carry around a small fortune to every wedding shoot. Yet is is expensive to be a wedding photographer but it all comes to the priceless results at the end. Th biggest contrast are probably my last two lenses. The Nikon 50 f1.8D is my cheapest lens and you can get it for around $140 from photo shops like this one.

On the other hand the the Nikon 24 f.1.4 AFS is going to cost you extra $2000 for just 1 EV stop of light but the unusual angle and the perfect creamy soft background is the answer for every demanding bride or groom. So yes it all depends how creative your vision is but without the best wedding photography gear you will have a hard time to beat your competition. But do not forget it is not about the gear only! What would be the best camera of fastest lens without a person behind the viewfinder. An expensive but useless tool! The camera does not deliver you your dream come true wedding pictures. We do ! Think about it and the answer is as simple as it gets. We are the souls behind those reckless cool shots which are unique-edgy-fun to create when you know HOW !!!

Thank you for reading part 1. In the part 2 I will discuss with you which Canon cameras and lenses I would consider to have as a wedding photographer even thou I do not shoot Canon, I admire their quality.

Tags: 14-24 f2.8 AFS, 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR, D3s, D700, D800, Nikon, portrait, weddings, workshops

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2013 Canucks-Retro Shoot

Jan 21st, 2013 by Jozef Povazan

Well if you watched the first Vancouver Canucks NHL hockey game of 2013 season than this boy expressions are not surprising at all. Being only 7 months old Henry still could feel after a hope from the first period the freezing silence of the last whistle. Well but lets leave a hockey and lets talk photography. Here is couple shots from my last baby photo shoot. My set up? Nothing more than a white backdrop, two soft boxes on the boy from each side and one back light for the background.

Henry’s parents wanted to capture retro photos of him playing on the floor. Being 7 months old means you can not walk yet. And that was the key to this session. The boy was simply positioned where we wanted him and then we just waited for his goofy behavior. No he was really good poser and cute 19th century romantic. We used 2 camera sets – Nikon D3s+70-200AFS VR and Nikon D700+50AFD 1.8, both with pocket wizards transmitters firing to our soft-boxes fitted with Nikon SB 900 series. No gels were used.

For the basket shots we moved the soft-boxes slightly higher and asked Henry’s parents to hide next to the one of them so he could keep the eye-contact with them and not staring on the camera. The key to this 3 hour session were milk breaks and Henry loved them a lot . We sticked with fruit tea and some ice cream instead. The final shots were done a la no diaper and this time he managed to hold the peeing until we finished Great job Henry – you are a pro in modeling and hopefully Vancouver Canucks will get betterl for the rest of this season.

Tags: children, D3s, retro, studio, vancouver

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Merry Christmas

Dec 22nd, 2012 by Jozef Povazan

Tags: children, Merry Christmas, people, portrait

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First steps photos

Nov 14th, 2012 by Jozef Povazan

Do you remember your first steps? I do not. So when you ask me where does my inspiration comes from there is no better answer that – life around me. And because for the last year the biggest change to our life was our daughter Sofia she seems to have her days covered pretty good so far. Povazan Photography photo workshops and tutorials are here for you to help you understand the basics of photography and allow you to capture better pictures. And because I want you to be able to do so without breaking your bank account for this tutorial I have used one of the most affordable lenses out there – Nikkor 50 f1.8D. The results = priceless

I have written a tutorial about children indoor photography in August this year and Sofia was a model for me back there as well. Where are those times? Gone. She has turned one year last month and now she is learning how to walk. And that is not an easy task so I have my camera ready and whenever she pulls some stunt I am close to her to capture it . A sad part of this learning process for her are the panful landings from time to time so after this long weekend her head is covered with couple bruises but luckily her teeth were not affected by these hip hop moves she does before she lands it on the floor.

The only problem for her was our coffee table in the living room, so after 2 nasty looking bumps we decided to move it out for now until she gets used to her running feet

What is the biggest thrill for her right now is the air balloon she got from a friend of ours. She runs with it, kicks it sit on it – you name it. Love that thing.

Here to create a motion effect I kept the shutter at 1/60 and f2.2 allowed me to create moody looking shot of action where there is nothing in focus but you still get an perfect idea what she was trying to do.

Well do your children come to you every time you hold the camera in your hands. Sofia is kind of used to it I guess so she does not want to hold but instead she is a poser in front of it. Am I the luckiest dad?

Well this kiss she is sending is probably for some car driver and not me, because she loves to peak outside the windows. And that is great for me because our windows are north facing so the soft light coming through them is perfect for people’s photography and specially for fast moving children . It is all about the light here.

The key to get interesting looking shots of children who starts to walk is to be ready for priceless moments like these, entertain the little one so she is in game for as long as she has energy to walk and let them rest when they can not even crawl anymore because they are so tired.

And when they get tired that is great as well, because they will sit and stay still which is great for portraits. And have you noticed how even without a backdrop behind Sofia I was able to eliminate the living room and create this nice soft bokeh with smooth blurred background?

Well did not I tell you these little ones do not rest too long? From my experience with newborns, toddlers and children photography you are always after them because unless they sleep, they do not stop moving one way or another.

Luckily once upon a time even a princess can get so tired that she slows down more and more and a refill is required to boost her energy levels back to normal. Hm, I guess I got her tired too much, because this is how she handled the lunch break after all this running around

And if you think the day was over for us today… no after sleeping for 40 minutes we decided to go to a Lynn valley Karen Magnussen pool to do some swimming running . Hm I forgot the camera at home so more next time guys. Thank you for reading and remember keep your camera outside of the bag close to you for these kind of moments . See you at my photo workshops in Vancouver downtown.

And one more thing, I keep saying to my friends that one day when Sofia is going to get married I will put together a slideshow for her wedding day with these kind of cool moments from her life. It is funny to be a wedding photographer and realize that one day our daughter is going to be a bride looking for a wedding photographer like our brides do. Well maybe I will shoot her wedding if she stops moving that fast and she will become my photo bride like these girls

Tags: children, people, portrait

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Playing with water drops.

Oct 15th, 2012 by Jozef Povazan

How to photograph water drops in a kitchen sink? If you are asking me how I came across this idea, well I did not plan it at all. I have certain rituals before any photo session and one of them is testing the flashes and batteries before the wedding. Well, my last wedding preparation was not any different. All the cameras, memory cards, lenses, and batteries were ready just the flashes / 3 of them / and Radio transmitters did not have chance to fire yet. And because Maria and Sofia were in Europe what could be a better testing object than our kitchen sink ? It was not moving so focusing was better then with Sofia being there. This is how it looked with all my gear for this tests.

The idea was pretty simple, test how my flashes and TT1 pocket wizards for Nikon work so I have no issues at the wedding venue. I have used a Nikon D90+105 macro lens, 2 Nikon flashes SB 900 and SB 800 series, 2 TT1 Nikon Pocket Wizards and 12 AA batteries. I use lots of batteries at the wedding venue – usually carry around 24 AA bats. So to make sure they fire and recharge fast enough is really important for my line of work. And to test it on a kitchen sink is awesome, it does not move like my daughter does

Our kitchen sink is nothing spectacular to photograph but as soon as the dripping water hits it, these kind of cool looking close ups you can achieve in your kitchen in less than 10 minutes. All the editing was done in CS5.

Short description of the flash position is in the image caption for you guys to get idea how it was done. Looking forward to see you at our next photo workshops at Vancouver Downtown.

This last image version is my favorite but no oil was used to actually do it . Do not believe anything what you see on the front cover of the magazines, the photoshop rules media and fake is hard to recognize these days. Drops are real though Thank for reading and see you at my Vancouver photo workshops.

Tags: flash, how to, Tutorial, workshops

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