Aaron Riveroll | Photographer

As a portrait photographer, one of the things I would like to think I excel at is taking pictures of people. I mean, I should hope so, right? It’s not that I suck at taking pictures of other stuff, it’s just not what I enjoy. I really enjoy taking pictures of people more then stuff or things. At a recent photo shoot, I was talking with the art director, who is also a photographer. He was telling me how much he enjoys taking architectural photos, but doesn’t really like taking pictures of people. It’s funny how opposite us creatives can be sometimes.

That’s not to say that shooting stuff, buildings, and landscapes doesn’t intrigue me… It does. It just means that because I don’t do it all the time, I am not as good as other photographers. I stumbled upon this video on YouTube that has some pretty good tips on shooting landscapes. Entertaining as well. I enjoyed his analogy when talking about making things interesting and pretty. You definitely don’t want your landscape shot to be boring, because it’s definitely like, “a pizza without topping or stripper with clothes on.” :)

I also enjoy how many times he uses the “s” word.

So models these days seem to be all about the behind the scenes photos.

Whether it’s snapping a shot in the mirror, grabbing one of my infamous Blue Steel shots, or grabbing some of the posing madness.

I have to admit I love behind the scenes photos and videos of my shoots.

Here are some things to make them look better.

And here are some links:

• Zacuto Zgrip iPhone Jr.
• Some of my behind the scenes videos

As you all know, I like to rant about my pet peeves… Not just the stuff that other people do, but also the stuff that I do. And I think the fact that I do it bugs me even more, so I find ways to fix it.

Sometimes, even though it goes against all of my rules, you have to edit more than one shot from a look. Sometimes you need to edit two shots from a look. Sometimes you need to edit 20 shots from a look. Perhaps you are doing a series or a web gallery of some sort and you need several images from the same shoot, probably even the same look or pose. The thing that bugs me the most is not having a bunch of the same image… What bugs me is the inconsistency that often ensues. Even though an image is from the same shoot, either through shoot conditions or photographer error, the images just don’t look the same. And they’re from the same flippin’ shoot!

Images from a series should look like they are from a series; meaning they are exposed the same way, edited the same way, color corrected the same way. And this all starts at the beginning… When you’re shooting. You should be shooting on manual; which is to say your exposure, color temperature, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture should all be the same for every shot. You may have to make small changes as you go, but for the most part the end goal is the same.

And when you take the photos off your camera, you should be making sure that when you work with them, you are working them in a group. For instance, if you are editing in Lightroom, make sure you make all of your adjustments the same. Lightroom makes it easy to copy develop settings from image to image.

If you are bringing the images into Photoshop for retouching, you obviously are going to retouch one image at a time… But before you finish up, maybe open up the previous images for reference and look at them side-by-side, just to be sure they all look the same.

If you work with actions, make sure you write down your recipes, sequences, or the order that you run your actions in. This will help you keep the same workflow from image to image.

Consistency is so important… It lets clients know you are able to nail the shot 100% of the time. They hire you for your style and skill, but they want to make sure you can achieve the same look on demand. By making sure your end product is not only quality, but also consistent, you demonstrate that you can deliver. And creating a polished end result is the mark of a professional.

When it comes to workflow, the fact of the matter is everybody does things a little bit differently. But the one thing that we all have in common is that were always trying to shave seconds off our process. Nobody wants to be stuck at home on a Friday night editing photos for hours.

Although sometimes, we end up doing just that.

I’m not going to lie, aside from the obvious questions about lighting setups and whatnot, the one thing I get asked a lot (and the questions I love to ask other photographers) are mostly related to workflow. How can we speed things up? How can we work smarter, not harder?

Depending on your thought process and what you shoot, the debates about shooting RAW vs JPEG have been around forever. Everyone has their own opinion on this. I, personally, like to shoot RAW. I like the flexibility it gives me in post… I mean seriously, haven’t there been times where you screwed up exposure or color temperature and wish you just had a little bit of flexibility in bringing it back to reality? RAW does that for me. The problems with shooting RAW are obvious: large file sizes and processing times. Normally, even with my computers, which have fairly decent and fast processors, it would take anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes just to bust out a proofing gallery for the web from a typical photo shoot.

I feel that proofs are essential for the client to see what was generated… But not just for the client, for the makeup artist, hairstylist, wardrobe, and model… It’s important for everyone involved to be able to see the work that was generated to see what was done right, what was done wrong, things to improve on, etc. But 30 minutes just to generate a bunch of proofs is pretty ridiculous. That’s 30 minutes I could be already starting to work on images… But instead, I’m waiting for my computer to finish processing images, and that’s no bueno. Fairly recently, a no-brainer concept came to me. It’s something that our new dSLRs have been doing for quite some time, so it’s not that revolutionary.

What was this magical solution? Shooting RAW plus small JPEG.

I’m not sure why I didn’t think about it earlier. Instead of writing just one file, the camera writes two files: your basic large, RAW file and a small JPEG. The benefit of this is you get your editable RAW, but you also get an already resized JPEG version that you can e-mail, post to the web, generate a proofing gallery, etc. It’s already small, so your computer doesn’t have to process it from RAW file. And it’s already a JPEG, which means your computer is not actually processing image information, only resizing it to your specifications. You could shoot RAW plus medium or large JPEG also… But I feel that a small JPEG is big enough for proofs and sharing. You don’t really need anything bigger than that… If you did, you might as well just shoot RAW and generate a JPEG from that. :)

What’s great about this is because the images are written together, when you import them into a program like Lightroom, the images are bundled together. That means that when you rename them, the RAW version is named with the same name as your small JPEG. Keeping things straight is important for me.

Now, if you don’t like shooting RAW, this probably doesn’t mean much to you. Also, if you shoot sports, events, and some weddings, where shooting fast and furious is important to you, this also may not mean much to you. I’m not going to lie, because the camera is writing two images instead of one, the processing time to get it from the buffer to the card is a little bit longer. It’s not much longer, but it’s definitely noticeable, especially when speed is important. However, if you’re shooting fashion or glamour, or even portraits, speed is not necessarily a huge factor… And if you can save some time in the end, it’s totally worth it.

If you’re looking to shave some time off of your post process and if you’re someone like me who likes to share photos quickly right after a photo shoot, shooting RAW plus small JPEG will definitely help out.

A couple of weeks ago, I was driving home from a shoot and chatting with my cousin about photography. Like me, he’s a photo geek too…and with a new baby in the house, he’s been taking lots and lots of pictures and getting more into it. It’s nice to have someone in the family that understands the nerdery.

He’s been playing around more and more with artificial light…and I remember when I first dabbled with off camera flash and strobes. I remember it being overwhelming; even though I had a pretty good grasp of lighting of the natural variety, a lot of things went over my head. What sort of lights do I use. Where do I put them? How far away do I position them from the model? How many lights do I use. How do I trigger them? What are modifiers?

The fact of the matter is a lot of these questions will never be answered definitively. There are so many different combinations and possibilities that there is no one right answer.

Anyway, my cousin started telling me he heard about this thing called “the Triangle.” He was told it was a pretty basic lighting set up and that he should learn it.

It’s true, in glamour photography, there is a staple. A go-to lighting scenario, if you will. It’s no secret: you see it everywhere in glam mags…and the best glam photographers use this set up in different variations…but it’s essentially the same. This is what I believe the Triangle is, in its basic form…

The idea is to sandwich your model between two light sources by placing your lights opposite of each other. For instance, imagine a box and your model is standing in the middle of the box. You position your lights across from each other like so…

And if you happen to be using one light and the sun, you would position your model so that the sunlight hits the back/side of the model at a 45 degree angle…and then you would position your key light diagonal from the sun.

The other day, I had a fun beach photo shoot and here’s a perfect example of the Triangle light set up…

During this location shoot, I used two lights: my key light was a strobe into a diffused white beauty dish on a boom arm, and my accent/rim lights were the sun to the left of the model and a strobe to the right of the model into a bare reflector.

I find that accent/rim lights add a little something special to an otherwise boring/ordinary photo. They key is using rim lights correctly. But, I’ll save that for another blog post when I share some of my photographic pet peeves. :)

While perving on fellow photographer Todd Mizomi’s blog, I found a link to this incredible tutorial by Atlanta photographer Zack Arias on one of the basic staples of commercial photography: the art of shooting on white seamless. Everything from gear to lighting and camera settings are covered in the tutorial…

Good stuff.

Information and education for creative professionals is becoming increasingly available…which, I have to say, is an AWESOME trend. To be able to geek out and watch behind-the-scenes videos and learn from some of the world’s best photographers and other creatives is something that is pretty amazing.

I talk about a few of the podcasts, blogs, and other sources that I routinely check out….

[audio: gettingbetter.mp3]

Or download the episode here.

The links:

• Chase Jarvis’s Blog
• Zack Arias’ Blog
• Nick Onken’s Blog (didn’t talk about it in the podcast, but has some very valuable and practical industry info
• Kelby Training
• D-Town TV
• fstoppers.com

And many more!!

We like to be friendly to everyone here at AaronRiveroll.com…so if you are viewing the blog on your iPhone, Android phone, or other mobile device…you’re probably noticing a slight difference. :)

I spent a little time this afternoon installing a mobile WordPress theme on my blog today…so if you’re on the go and out and about as much as I am and want to keep up with the nonsense or look at pictures of beautiful girls, then you can definitely do so. It’s totally easy to follow the blog, my Twitter, and to leave comments too…so I definitely think you should. All the cool kids are doing it. :)

Hope you enjoy the mobile theme…I have to admit, I think it’s pretty sweet. :)

I’m not gonna lie, these look pretty cool.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/

Funny…

The folks over at Strobist.com had a couple of very cool blog posts on lighting (I mean, aside from their usual posts on lighting. lol)

But seems they took the idea out of my head. :)

For months, I’ve been meaning to talk about lighting options in the podcast…seems the question that most people ask me is what type of lighting I use and what type of lights are the best.

There is no right or wrong answer to this. Every type of studio light out there has it’s pros and cons…and there are reasons why some are better than others.

You have to decide.

But it’s good to know what’s out there and what each one does.

Check out the articles…and stay tuned for some podcasts in the future that will probably repeat some of this information. :)

• Strobist: Choosing Big Lights: AlienBees
• Strobist: Choosing Big Lights: Profoto