I came across this website with points on a wishlist I fully agree with. Right down to getting rid of the penguin in the manual (point 16). I’d love to know the reason behind the penguin in the first place. I’d also really love a built-in RF trigger so that I can place the ‘slaves’ anywhere I want. I have resorted to bouncing off the infra-red signal off a mirror to fire off a flash in the background before when there was no line of sight. With RF, I can leave the flashed in a softbox, behind the subject, heck in anywhere that makes a good image. And for goodness sake, allow me to trigger my studio strobes! Ok, maybe Canon may not sell that many other speedlites if that happens but photographers would love them for it.

So here’s the wishlist by Syl Arena.

Down with the penguin!

The place was beautiful, so I wanted to bring out the character and the intrinsic designs so thoughtfully incorporated here. We were shooting a series of portraits of four employees for an advertisement. So in this place, the employee would pose with the different chemicals that are mixed for each customer. Pretty neat stuff considering it’s open for everyone to see and admire. In this shot, I used one key light to camera right, with a softbox, and one highlight to camera right also but behind the subject. Of course it didn’t work out. In the final shot, the highlight was left outside the room shooting through the glass. The final shot really worked.

We had a few rooms to shoot the portraits and one of them was a room designed to serve the guests tea. Liz was of course the lighting model of the day and here’s the test shot. One key light in a softbox and one highlight behind shooting through and umbrella, and making sure the vertical strips of wood had enough light to differentiate it from the back while throwing a bit of light on her. The final image was from a slightly different angle but an even stronger image.

What’s that blurry thing in front? This is what it looks like under the same lighting, taken by Liz

Image taken by Liz

Will post the images after the ad is released.

The idea was to get a series of shots to superimpose them onto a life-sized panel. I don’t know how that will turn out. We’ll have to wait and see when the YOG exhibition opens.

I have this fascination with images made in the early 1900s. I can just stare at old images, trying to relive the period it was taken in, imagining myself in that scene. I just had a similar experience in the toilet of Grand Copthorne on Saturday. While peeing, I was staring at images of Singapore in early 1900s. No date was given but talk about entertainment while relieving yourself!

Back in the days of Cartier-Bresson, Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and other famed photographers, a good image was one which captured a slice of time, ‘the decisive moment’, social issues. We see these iconic images every now and then which may not pass our modern definition of a good image in terms of the basic techniques mentioned earlier. So it’s the purpose of photographing that makes a good image, what goes through your mind, what do you want to say with your images. Stopping at the basic techniques just provide a pretty image, visual satisfaction. Don’t stop there, carry on.

So back to the modern day where rules of composition, lighting, patterns, colour, contrast, etc are presented as essential, I learn to push that boundary. Who says you can’t shoot an image in this particular way or that? The images on top are all shot against the sun which breaks the ‘preferred’ rule of shooting with the sun behind the photographer or at the side of the subject. Who says I can’t shoot against the sun? I like the dramatic lighting shooting this way presents. I don’t quite care about flare…I make it a part of the image. I keep honing the skill of getting the exposure perfect such that the subject comes out the way I want it to, whether as a silhouette or well lit, with the background completely washed out.

The important thing is to shoot the image that excites you. Use the techniques (or break it) and get images that hold people’s attention longer, make them think, make them cry. I had someone cry when she saw the picture of her and her fiance. Good thing it wasn’t because it was bad..but it just evoked so much emotion from her.

Your skill is required to deliver the output, it’s a link between your mind’s eye and the viewer’s eye. Keep shooting to get it right. Learn from other photographers, study film directors’ work, look out for interesting ads when out shopping. Every photographer is constantly absorbing visual input and you should too.