Being in a couples shoot
While this one might not really count as modelling per se, it was a valuable learning experience. Therefore, I want to write a few words about it.
When visiting Austria this summer, my husbands family had made an appointment to get a family portrait done at a photo studio in their vicinity. If you happen to be in Upper Austria, I can only recommend Fotostudio Fischerlehner.
I was quite excited to see an experienced photographer, who has been taking pictures of individuals, couples, and families for decades at work. Especially, with such a large group of people. I am not posting any of the family portraits here, since we also have some young nieces and nephews, but Mrs. Fischerlehner was so kind to take a few pictures of just my husband and I that I can show here.
To loosen people up, Mrs. Fischerlehner likes to make her subjects spin around until she gives a signal to get together, and then presses the shutter. While it is a lot of fun, and really gets everyone to smile and be natural, it also has a few downsides. One I would say is, that while people look natural and happy, they don’t always look their best. At least not in their own eyes. I noticed that in myself, but also in my family members, that often the pictures where they smile the most, are the ones where they think they look a bit stupid. Especially with multiple people, that makes it hard to find a shot where everyone thinks they look good.
But the more interesting thing for me, was the risk of getting blurry pictures, because people are moving.
So I studied the meta data of the digital shots we got, and found that the aperture was always very closed - f.8 or even f.10 at the least. And the shutter speed was around 1/100s!
So why does that surprise me?
In studio, I rarely have my models move that fast. But usually when I shoot events like concerts, where I have moving subjects, I, at least, set my shutter speed to 1/500s. Of course this also limits how far I can close my aperture and/or raises my ISO quite a bit. Still I might get some blurry picture. And, since we got to look through the unedited originals of the whole shoot, I know Mrs Fischerlehner got hardly any shots that were blurry or out of focus. You know why? - She uses flash. And not just a small on camera one, but two big studio flashes with enormous soft boxes, that I would have trouble fitting into my small space here in Tokyo.
To be honest, I have never been a huge fan of using flash. They are harder to set up right, since you cannot see the light out of camera. They make it a pain in the butt if you want to collaborate with other photographers. And you need a trigger mounted to your camera, that makes it bit heavier and often a little unbalanced.
But, seeing those results, I am intrigued. I think I want to get at least one flash for a start, that I can add to my set-up. Having more light available will be an advantage when shooting with multiple people. And in the future I would really like to work on some projects where I need to freeze motion. With dancers for example.
Currently I am looking into flashes that I can also use on camera. While not for concerts and shows, where I don’t want to disrupted the performance with any flashing, there are some company events and group pictures that I will be taking, where it will come in very handy.
So I guess I will keep you posted on that.
To end this slightly longer ramble about technique with at least one more picture, here is my favourite photo of this shoot with photographer Mrs Fischerlehner:
Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
