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Review: The Big Day, The Lovegrove Way by Lovegrove Consulting
The Big Day, The Lovegrove Way is a two-disc DVD set with one disc providing a documentary of a real-life wedding shoot and the other demonstrating the post-processing of the day’s photographs. The DVD set is aimed at photographers who are new to wedding photography and wanting some advice as well as those who are established, but wanting to gain some insight into one of the most successful wedding photography teams in the UK today.
Disc One – The Shoot
The first DVD provides fly-on-the-wall coverage as the video crew shadow husband and wife team, Damien and Julie Lovegrove, whilst they spend their day and night as wedding photographers. The footage not only shows the photographs they take during the day, but also the thought processes behind them and how they’re set-up.
What becomes apparent quite quickly is that Damien and Julie are used to working as a team as they manage to shoot the day without needlessly duplicating shots. Starting off separately, Julie with the bride and Damien with the groom, they later converge as the ceremony gets under way. This efficient team-working helps to ensure all of the important parts of the day are covered without wasting time nor missing opportunities. Working together in this manner allows them to get the shots which are likely to be missed when just one photographer is covering the day. For example, being able to shoot the bride and groom getting ready at the same time, but obviously in separate locations.
The viewing sequence for the DVD:
- The bride and groom getting ready separately including their interaction with bridesmaids and groomsmen.
- The church ceremony.
- The reception through to the evening.
- 2 weeks later – the preview and shot selection with the couple.
- 4 weeks later – when the finished photo album arrives.
As this DVD set is aimed at photographers rather than their clients or the general public, lots of useful commentary is provided throughout giving you a real behind-the-scenes view into what Damien and Julie are thinking and exactly why they’re thinking it. Understanding their thought processes means the viewer can apply similar methodologies to a variety of different wedding scenarios which is infinitely more useful than simply offering a list of shots to take.
As well as showing the practical side of the photography, i.e. the shots, the set-up, the poses, the documentary also reveals the important human element and the interaction with subjects in order to put them at ease which in turn enables the photographer to get the best out of them. They also dispel the old myth about working with animals and children as they show how they work to get some fantastic photographs of both.
What I really like most about this DVD is seeing how Damien and Julie find the best locations for shots and how they cope with the unpredictable. Working with so many individuals and changing variables on what is usually an emotional day means that anything can happen. The off-camera flash dusk set-up is something which I’ve not seen before at a wedding and done correctly can add real value to any wedding photographer’s offer.
There are so many useful gems given throughout the DVD that you really need to watch it a few times to pick up on them all and that’s what makes it such great value. Any time you feel you need a refresher, say during the days leading up to a wedding shoot, you can just relax with the DVD and let it inspire you.
In common with Damien’s other DVDs, the production quality is excellent. The video shows the photographers and subjects from a variety of angles and the sound quality is excellent making it easy to see what the situations are and hear the real-time commentary.
Running time of disc one is 79 minutes and this includes a slideshow of over 200 shots from the day at the end of the DVD. For those who like technical details, the EXIF is provided for each of them.
Disc Two – Post Processing
The second DVD from the set runs for 70 minutes and sees Damien processing a selection of photographs from the wedding day. It’s split into two parts, covering Damien’s preferred editing applications; Lightroom and Photoshop.
Topics covered include:
- Enhancing and balancing exposure.
- Cropping and rotating.
- Correcting white balance.
- Using keyboard shortcuts to speed up workflow.
- Feathering selections to blend adjustments.
- Applying localised curve adjustments.
- Understanding the value of shooting in raw.
Damien’s post-processing workflow is very ‘organic’ in its approach. It’s processing by gut feel which can mean he spends less than 60 seconds on the basic editing on each photograph in Lightroom before going into Photoshop for more detailed editing. This brevity shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of due attention, but is actually efficient and established workflow. It does what is required and prevents the processing of a typically large number of images from becoming a mammoth task.
If you’ve already grasped the basics of Lightroom functionality, but not sure how to incorporate it into your workflow then this DVD will show you one way. Likewise, the same applies to Photoshop, but don’t expect the full functionality of either application to be covered by this disc. To do that, you’d need much more than this one DVD. Instead, Damien demonstrates how he works with only a subset of tools and shows just how powerful they can be.
In summary, this is another high quality, informative product from Lovegrove Consulting which is very easy for its target audience to consume. If you’re a budding wedding photographer and you want to know what’s involved in professional wedding photography then this DVD set is a valuable addition for your reference library.
Read my review of Lovegrove Consulting’s DVD, Using Natural Light on Location.
Also posted in Blog
Tagged Damien Lovegrove, documentary, DVD, Julie Lovegrove, Lovegrove Consulting, review, The Big Day, The Lovegrove Way, tutorial, wedding photography
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Time Lapse Photography – A Whole New World
Like most people, I find it difficult to detect gradual changes. For example, when you don’t notice the change in people you see everyday, but you notice the changes in those you don’t see often. The same can be said for things such as the movement of the sun, clouds, tide, flowers which open and close with the sun and other such phenomenon.
One way to make these gradual changes more visible is to record snapshots over a longer period of time and then review them over a shorter period. Like drawing a line on a wall to record a child’s height over a period of years. Viewing the snapshots together in a sequence makes the change easier to see.
Photographs are one such means to record snapshots in time and I’ve been experimenting with creating videos made up of photographs of the same scene over a period of time aka time lapse photography. This is where individual photographs are played back in a sequence – as frames of a video clip – effectively compressing time and allow the viewer to more easily see gradual changes in a scene.
Here’s one of my first attempts at time lapse photography from my recent trip to the Lake District (Cumbria, UK)
To make this, I shot 999 exposures using the intervalometer function on the D700 over a period of 2.8 hours, from 06:50 to 09:36 12/09/2009. Then, I batch process the images in Lightroom and used them to create an image sequence in Quicktime. From Quicktime, I exported the sequence as a video file and imported it into iMovie where I added the titles and carried out the final export.
I feel like I’ve discovered a new room at home, since I started doing these time lapse videos. I’m only just starting to touch on the possibilities and I’ve a few more ideas to try yet. I just hope the shutter on my cameras last for the duration!
Quick tip: having a second body to use whilst your first is tied up shooting time lapse is immensely useful and helps to ensure you don’t miss other stuff that’s going on.
Also posted in Blog, Mac, Nikon, Showcasing
Tagged Catbells, intervalometer, Lake District, sunrise, time lapse
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Whiteboard Portraits – Exhibition Style
Watched this?
Pete saw this and was insistent we have a whiteboard installed during our exhibition. So, we did!
Whilst Clay Enos found his subjects on the streets, we engaged the people who came to visit the exhibition. This might seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but it really wasn’t. Getting your portrait taken is probably one of the things you’d least expect to happen at a photo exhibition. After all, the idea is to go and look at photos. Right? So, the process still involved approaching a stranger and asking them to stand in front of a plain white board so you can take their portrait.
Those people who hated being photographed still hated being photographed. Them being within the walls of St. Luke’s didn’t stop them from saying, “No, thanks”, but a little encouragement was often all that was needed to get a willing subject.
Now, you might wonder where the fun and creativity is at. “Where’s the stunning vista or bikinis? All you’re doing is getting people to stand in front of a white board!” On the face of it, that might be all it seems, but when you’re forced to work in such restrictive conditions it really does take a lot of creativity to pull off something a bit different.
Putting creativity to one side, the interaction with people and the actual taking of portraits provided fun on both sides of the camera. Some clearly relished the opportunity to be a part of the exhibition whilst others just enjoyed having their portrait taken. There were probably a few who were less keen, but agreed anyway.
It was a great way to get to know just who was visiting and why they were in Liverpool. Some were locals, lots were from different countries from around the world. Some had come specifically to see the exhibition, others had just been walking past and decided to see what was going on.
Also very interesting was to see just how different the portraits were as they varied from photographer to photographer. Some went for straight portraits, some asked their subjects to do anything but smile, some asked their subjects to pose, some just left it all to their subjects to choose how they wanted to have their portrait taken.
What might seem like a very simple and even boring way to take portraits is actually great fun and very involving. Even if you don’t want to go as far as setting up a board on the street, why not do what one of the collective did and set one up in your back garden and ask family & friends to pose?
Just a warning though, it can get a bit addictive!
Also posted in Blog, Equipment, Showcasing
Tagged exhibition, Fab Collective, portrait, St. Luke's, Up to Something, whiteboard
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HDR Photography: Photo Workshop
Get your copy of HDR Photography: Photo Workshop at Amazon UK.
Taking a Photograph is Like Filling a Bucket
How we expose a photograph for a given scene can make the difference between it heading for the trash and being mounted on a wall. Modern day cameras can automate the process with a degree of success, but understanding the basic principles behind exposure can provide you with the knowledge required when it comes to trickier lighting conditions that built-in camera metering systems often can’t cope with.
When taking a photograph, there are three primary factors determining how it is exposed; aperture, shutter speed and ISO. Aperture refers to the size of the opening through which light is transmitted through a lens, shutter speed is a misnomer referring to the length of time the digital imaging sensor in your camera is exposed to an image and ISO refers to amount of amplification applied to the light information received by the sensor.
In typical, well lit circumstances, a photograph is deemed well exposed when there’s a distribution of tones without any unintentional clipping of shadows or highlights which result in lost image detail. This isn’t always possible to achieve especially when a scene contains a greater dynamic range than what an imaging sensor can record.
As with any rule in photography, there are exceptions as well as the bending of rules in order to achieve the final desired result, but in many cases the best exposure is one where all of the determining factors are balanced to achieve a spread of tones without any clipping. It’s important to reiterate that this isn’t necessarily the exposure you would want for the image you wish to create, but is more of an average for averagely lit scenes.
There are three main factors under a photographer’s control which determine how a photograph is exposed; aperture, shutter speed and ISO.
An analogy for the concept of exposure is to think of taking photographs as filling a bucket. Instead of light, our medium is water. To substitute the lens, we have a hosepipe. The size of the diameter of the hosepipe is our aperture and in place of the shutter, we have a tap. Our bucket is therefore the ISO.
Rather than dealing with absolute values of litres and gallons, let’s suppose the non-clipped exposure for a given ISO is a bucket which is filled exactly to the brim without any spillage. This is useful in that it immediately tells us that for a given size of bucket (ISO value) we require a specific amount of water (light) in order to fill it (achieve an average exposure).
One slight twist of logic is with our sizing of buckets. The larger the bucket number, the smaller the bucket actually is. Just as the larger the ISO value, the less light we require to achieve an average exposure.
So, exactly how much water is required to fill any particular bucket? What diameter hosepipe do we require? How long should we keep the tap open? As with filling a real-life bucket, we can vary the diameter of the hosepipe as long as we vary the length of time we keep the tap open proportionally. Likewise, we can fill a bucket by leaving the tap open for longer when we’re using a smaller diameter hosepipe or for a shorter period if we’re using a larger diameter hosepipe.
By balancing the diameter of the hosepipe with the length of time the tap remains open, we control the total volume of water that travels through it. As long as that volume is enough to fill the bucket and no more then we will achieve our goal.
Going back to the world of photography, for a given ISO setting, the digital imaging sensor inside your camera requires a certain volume of light in order to achieve a non-clipped exposure. In terms of exposure, it doesn’t matter whether you use a larger or smaller aperture as long as the length of time the shutter is kept open is long enough for the required volume of light to reach the sensor. Too little light results in an underexposed image, just as too little water results in an under-filled bucket. Too much water results in over filling, just as too much light results in overexposure.
There are considerations and consequences of using different apertures and shutter speeds, but it’s the balancing of these factors which determine exposure. That’s why taking a photograph is just like filling a bucket.
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