Workshop Wednesdays (ahem…Thursday… sorry!) vol. XV

We are inspired by Father’s Day this week and want to share our favourite Dad moments plus tips for sports photography and freezing motion, even with your phone cameras! Make sure you also check out our very special gift voucher offer if you need a last minute gift for your Dad or partner! 

Tip 1

“Shutter speed exists because of something known as your camera shutter – which, simply put, is a curtain in front of the camera sensor that stays closed until the camera fires. When the camera fires, the shutter opens and fully exposes the camera sensor to the light that has passed through your lens. After the sensor is done collecting the light, the shutter closes immediately, stopping the light from hitting the sensor. The button that fires the camera is also called “shutter” or “shutter button,” because it triggers the shutter to open and close. A fast shutter speed is typically whatever it takes to freeze action. If you are photographing birds, that may be 1/1000th second or faster. However, for general photography of slower-moving subjects, you might be able to take pictures at 1/200th second, 1/100th second, or even longer without introducing motion blur.”
SOURCE

Photo Credit: instagram.com/skipology – see more below in Tip 2!

Random Fact

“The chemicals used in photograph developments included the likes of:

• Mercury,
• Lye,
• Silver nitrate, and more.

These were extremely dangerous chemicals. Many photographers had to take time off between their work as a result of illness due to exposure. Prolonged exposure to these chemicals resulted in madness and even deaths in certain extreme circumstances.”

… Might explain why I’m a bit mad after so much time in the darkroom at uni!

SOURCE

In The News

“As more than 80 countries prepare to mark Father’s Day, children’s charity Unicef has released a series of heartwarming photos showing men bonding with their newborn babies.

In a bid to encourage fathers across the world to play a more active role in their children’s early years, world-renowned photographer Adriana Zehbrauskas travelled with Unicef to five diverse countries – Guinea-Bissau, Mexico, Thailand, Turkmenistan and the UK.
Capturing the fathers’ earliest moments with their newborns in delivery rooms across the globe, Zehbrauskas’s poignant images showcased the range of emotions experienced by men in the hours following the birth of their children.”
Photo: Paul Barnes with son Archie, who was born prematurely in Exeter (Adriana Zehbrauskas/Unicef)
SOURCE

Photo For Thought

D-Day, Robert Capa, 1944

“It was the invasion to save civilization, and LIFE’s Robert Capa was there, the only still photographer to wade with the 34,250 troops onto Omaha Beach during the D-Day landing. His photographs—infused with jarring movement from the center of that brutal assault—gave the public an American soldier’s view of the dangers of war. The soldier in this case was Private First Class Huston Riley, who after the Nazis shelled his landing craft jumped into water so deep that he had to walk along the bottom until he could hold his breath no more. When he activated his Navy M-26 belt life preservers and floated to the surface, Riley became a target for the guns and artillery shells mowing down his comrades. Struck several times, the 22-year-old soldier took about half an hour to reach the Normandy shore. Capa took this photo of him in the surf and then with the assistance of a sergeant helped Riley, who later recalled thinking, “What the hell is this guy doing here? I can’t believe it. Here’s a cameraman on the shore.” Capa spent an hour and a half under fire as men around him died. A courier then transported his four rolls of film to LIFE’s London offices, and the magazine’s general manager stopped the presses to get them into the June 19 issue. Most of the film, though, showed no images after processing, and only some frames survived. The remaining images have a grainy, blurry look that gives them the frenetic feel of action, a quality that has come to define our collective memory of that epic clash.”
READ MORE

Iconic Photographers

Ansel Adams

“Ansel Adams, photographer and environmentalist, was born in San Francisco, California. Adams was an unremitting activist for the cause of wilderness and the environment. Over the years he attended innumerable meetings and wrote thousands of letters in support of his conservation philosophy to newspaper editors, Sierra Club and Wilderness Society colleagues, government bureaucrats, and politicians. However, his great influence came from his photography. His images became the symbols, the veritable icons, of wild America. When people thought about the national parks of the Sierra Club or nature of the environment itself, the often envisioned them in terms of an Ansel Adams photograph. His black-and-white images were not “realistic” documents of nature. Instead, they sought an intensification and purification of the psychological experience of natural beauty. He created a sense of the sublime magnificence of nature that infused the viewer with the emotional equivalent of wilderness, often more powerful than the actual thing.”

READ MORE: SOURCE

Tip 2

MOBILE PHOTOGRAPHY AND MOTION BLUR – OPTIONS LIMITED ONLY BY IMAGINATION – IMAGINE MORE!

“In my first mobile phone photography article I looked at the idea of making the subject of an image stand out by using a shallow depth of field. This week, in my final article, I wanted to look at another really great method to make the subject of an image stand out, motion blur. I also wanted to get a little bit artistic with it, but more on that later.

The beauty of motion blur is that not only does it blur the background and make the subject stand out but it also adds that dynamic sense of speed and movement that freezing an entire scene with a fast shutter can lack. As with traditional photography equipment and software, motion blur can be achieved straight out of mobile phone camera or, if we wish to simulate it in post processing we can do.

Motion blur straight out of mobile phone camera:

In my depth of field article, I touched on the fact that mobile phone cameras have a fixed aperture impacting both the exposure triangle (other constituents being ISO and shutter speed) and control over depth of field.

However as mobile phone technology has advanced, developers have given us the ability to take manual control of those other two exposure triangle elements. As a result we have some control over shutter speed and therefore some control over whether we want to freeze a moving subject or include an element of motion blur. 

PLEASE READ MORE HERE – THIS PHOTOGRAPHER IS AMAZING AND ALL OF THESE PHOTOS WERE CAPTURED WITH AN iPHONE!!!

Known as Skip to friends, Paul is an exhibited, commissioned and prize winning iPhone photographer from Lincoln, England. He runs his own successful blog at skipology.com outlining the apps and processes involved in creating his images. His style ranges from low edit street shots to highly textured / painterly composites all created using only the iPhone and iPad. Socially, connect with Skip on Facebook at www.facebook.com/skipology Instagram at instagram.com/skipology or Twitter at twitter.com/skipology

SOURCE

Our Story of the Week

Our story this week must remain anonymous… That’s because it is a special surprise gift from a Dad to his wife. He arranged a secret photo shoot with his children… has come in to secretly view and choose the photos. And we are in the process of printing them before delivering them as a surprise to his wife on her birthday while he is serving an overseas deployment with the Army. What an amazing Dad/husband!!!

Below is a little tribute to all the Dad’s out there who are amazing role models for their little humans and showing by example how to treat one another with love and respect. Respect to you! X 

Thank you for getting this far! We hope it’s been a worthwhile read for you and we’ll look forward to checking in next week.

Please call or email anytime if we can help.

Best Wishes, 
The Hannah Photography Team:
Hannah, Olivia, Nic (and Charlie the Cat)