Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Haiti disaster relief shelter
This is a bit of a throw back. During my senior year we did a two week mini-project where we had to design disaster relief housing for the Haiti earthquake that could be applied to future situations. This was my final board which was well received by our guest critiquers who were long-term volunteers in Haiti.
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Friday, January 16, 2015
Simple, small scale shooting techniques
It has been a while since I have posted anything so I decided to get back into things by posting something I wrote for a publication recently.
(Update: this article was featured in the March 2015 issue of Fine Scale Modeler magazine)
A lot of good models can be poorly represented by bad photographs. The wonderful thing is, models are actually rather easy to photograph with only a few simple steps. First off is setting. Stand alone models need an uncluttered back ground so that here will be no distractions for the viewer. In this example I ironed a pillow case (to remove creases) and draped it in a chair for a continuous floor-wall back drop. Second is lighting. Direct light flattens a subject so avoid built in flash. Natural sunlight is a great, free source of light but direct sunlight casts severe shadows. Shooting under solid shade or on a slightly overcast day gives great results. For shooting inside, overhead ceiling light are almost always insufficient. Try using a desk lamp for direct light. In the example photographs I used white cardboard to bounce the lamp light onto the opposite side of the model to soften shadows and evenly light the car. The third step is camera settings, this is where most amateur photographers get tripped up. First off, make sure the picture quality is set to the highest possible setting for best results. Next check the white balance, using the wrong setting here will completely change the color of your model. Auto white balance will usually work but manually setting the camera ensures success. Finally, we come to the trifecta of digital photography: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Simply put, ISO should always be set as low as possible (100 is best), a high ISO number will result in grainy photographs as the camera tries to compensate for low light conditions. Aperture and shutter speed are a balancing act, as one goes up the other should go down to maintain a perfect exposure, these you can play with to alter your results. Aperture determines how wide the hole is that lets light into the camera. A small f-stop (like F4.5) will let in a lot of light but result in a shallow depth of field (like in photograph A, part is in focus, part is blurry). This is great to highlight a particular detail of a model or diorama but does not represent the whole composition; for that a large f-stop (like F29) is used (like in photograph B, where the whole car is in focus). The problem with that is a large f-stop lets in very little light, so you need to make a long exposure to get a bright enough photograph. To make picture B I used an f-stop of F29 and a shutter speed of 10 seconds. That is far to long to hold the camera by hand so I used a tri-pod. When shooting with settings like these it is best to use the self timer to avoid shaking the camera when you press the shutter button. The best news,though, is you don't have to have a DSLR to get great results; I often use a Nikon point-and-click camera to photograph my models. As long as you set up your scene and camera properly you can make stunning photographs of your models to share however you like.
(Update: this article was featured in the March 2015 issue of Fine Scale Modeler magazine)
A lot of good models can be poorly represented by bad photographs. The wonderful thing is, models are actually rather easy to photograph with only a few simple steps. First off is setting. Stand alone models need an uncluttered back ground so that here will be no distractions for the viewer. In this example I ironed a pillow case (to remove creases) and draped it in a chair for a continuous floor-wall back drop. Second is lighting. Direct light flattens a subject so avoid built in flash. Natural sunlight is a great, free source of light but direct sunlight casts severe shadows. Shooting under solid shade or on a slightly overcast day gives great results. For shooting inside, overhead ceiling light are almost always insufficient. Try using a desk lamp for direct light. In the example photographs I used white cardboard to bounce the lamp light onto the opposite side of the model to soften shadows and evenly light the car. The third step is camera settings, this is where most amateur photographers get tripped up. First off, make sure the picture quality is set to the highest possible setting for best results. Next check the white balance, using the wrong setting here will completely change the color of your model. Auto white balance will usually work but manually setting the camera ensures success. Finally, we come to the trifecta of digital photography: ISO, aperture, and shutter speed. Simply put, ISO should always be set as low as possible (100 is best), a high ISO number will result in grainy photographs as the camera tries to compensate for low light conditions. Aperture and shutter speed are a balancing act, as one goes up the other should go down to maintain a perfect exposure, these you can play with to alter your results. Aperture determines how wide the hole is that lets light into the camera. A small f-stop (like F4.5) will let in a lot of light but result in a shallow depth of field (like in photograph A, part is in focus, part is blurry). This is great to highlight a particular detail of a model or diorama but does not represent the whole composition; for that a large f-stop (like F29) is used (like in photograph B, where the whole car is in focus). The problem with that is a large f-stop lets in very little light, so you need to make a long exposure to get a bright enough photograph. To make picture B I used an f-stop of F29 and a shutter speed of 10 seconds. That is far to long to hold the camera by hand so I used a tri-pod. When shooting with settings like these it is best to use the self timer to avoid shaking the camera when you press the shutter button. The best news,though, is you don't have to have a DSLR to get great results; I often use a Nikon point-and-click camera to photograph my models. As long as you set up your scene and camera properly you can make stunning photographs of your models to share however you like.
Photograph A settings: ISO 100, f/ 4.5,
shutter 1/4s
Photograph B settings: ISO 100, f/ 29,
shutter 10.0s
A professional setup is not required, I shot the above images with the lighting studio you see here. Just a lamp, a pillow case and a white cardboard reflector. So get out there and start shooting!
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