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05/16/2006 07:54:48 PM · #1 |
I'm shooting this event on Saturday for the local GS Council. The girls will be 11+ and the lighting will probably be fluorescent (translation: really awful). Beyond shooting girls in the goggles and with the working dogs, got any ideas?
"Looking for a service project/hours that are fun? Work with cool college girls (also earning service hours) to earn a fun patch learning about visual impairments. Tour the Anchor Center for Blind Children, try a self-care obstacle course while wearing goggles that simulate different sight impairments, learn what to add to hot chocolate to make it glow (and then drink it), see the Paralympic sport Goal Ball and learn some basic Goal Ball skills, write your name in Braille and learn about raising seeing eye dogs. Then earn fun service hours. Create coloring pages for visually impaired children and fun occluders for visual testing. We hope you will âsee your way clearâ to earn the patch and perform these fun service projects!"
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05/16/2006 08:00:58 PM · #2 |
get a flash, seriously. Indoor without a real flash is not gonna be great at no matter the f/. Your cam can take a hot-shoe flash though, so If you can afford it, do it.
bounce it off the ceiling and you're gold. course, you'll look kinda silly with a big ole flash hanging off your diminutive camera, but hey, whatever works.
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05/16/2006 08:13:49 PM · #3 |
Originally posted by wavelength:
get a flash, seriously. Indoor without a real flash is not gonna be great at no matter the f/. Your cam can take a hot-shoe flash though, so If you can afford it, do it.
bounce it off the ceiling and you're gold. course, you'll look kinda silly with a big ole flash hanging off your diminutive camera, but hey, whatever works. |
I have no shame. I think the guys who show up to the zoo events with seven totally ridiculous cameras hanging from their necks look much sillier. ;-)
Yeah, I can't afford anything right now. Luckily, the council likes snapshots just fine. If I have access to a good lighting situation I will absolutely drag some girls over to it to pose, but it's not a HUGE deal otherwise. The goal is really to show racially diverse group doing things that are somewhat intersting, to be used as recruitment material. Maybe someday I can do something really special with it camera and lighting-wise. For Saturday I should just be able to keep the f at 7+ and set the white balance to fluorescent.
Message edited by author 2006-05-16 20:14:14.
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05/16/2006 08:42:18 PM · #4 |
If your camera supports custom white balance, you may want to use that feature. Generally this works by shooting a plain white surface (a sheet of paper works great) to set your white balance. Of course, youc an end up shooting yourself in the foot if you move to different lighting conditions and forget to change your WB. Another option is to shoot in RAW, so you can change your WB after the fact.
Also, on an unrelated note, "Seeing Eye" dog is a registered trademark of the nonprofit The Seeing Eye, Inc. in Moorestown, NJ, and should only be used to refer to service dogs trained by that organization. When referring to guide dogs in general, the more generic term "guide dog" or "service dog" should be used instead. I'm not sure if you have any connection with the people who wrote the publicity material you quoted, but if you do and could pass that information on to them, I would be grateful.
Thanks,
~Terry
Message edited by author 2006-05-16 20:45:06.
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05/17/2006 11:06:21 AM · #5 |
Fluorescent lighting is tough. Some fluorescent lights output a lot of green, some older ones have 60 cycle issues...some modern flourescents are better for photography than some incandescent lights. Take a test shot of something white with your WB set to daylight. If the picture looks green, you will have problems with mixed lighting. In any case, shoot in RAW mode so you can better adjust things in photoshop.
If there is a lot of sunlight coming in the windows and the fluorescents are greenish, you will have green color casts on part of the girls and magenta casts on the other parts (e.g. left side of the face vs right side, depending on where the light comes from.)
Your flash is probably balanced to imitate sunlight, so in this case, don't use fill flash. If you have time, get a green gell (e.g. Roscolux tough plusgreen) and tape it over your on-camera flash. B&H sells a sampler pack of Roscolux gells for $0.01, your local camera store may have something. In a pinch, use any green celophane--but test it to make sure things aren't made worse by using it. The idea here is to get the flash to more-or-less match the fluorescents.
If you don't use flash, a tripod will help immensly.
If all else fails, use AWB on your camra and convert to B&W later :-(
Message edited by author 2006-05-17 11:09:23. |
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05/17/2006 11:12:52 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by hankk:
Fluorescent lighting is tough. Some fluorescent lights output a lot of green, some older ones have 60 cycle issues...some modern flourescents are better for photography than some incandescent lights. Take a test shot of something white with your WB set to daylight. If the picture looks green, you will have problems with mixed lighting. In any case, shoot in RAW mode so you can better adjust things in photoshop.
If there is a lot of sunlight coming in the windows and the fluorescents are greenish, you will have green color casts on part of the girls and magenta casts on the other parts (e.g. left side of the face vs right side, depending on where the light comes from.)
Your flash is probably balanced to imitate sunlight, so in this case, don't use fill flash. If you have time, get a green gell (e.g. Roscolux tough plusgreen) and tape it over your on-camera flash. B&H sells a sampler pack of Roscolux gells for $0.01, your local camera store may have something. In a pinch, use any green celophane--but test it to make sure things aren't made worse by using it. The idea here is to get the flash to more-or-less match the fluorescents.
If you don't use flash, a tripod will help immensly.
If all else fails, use AWB on your camra and convert to B&W later :-( |
My camera doesn't shoot raw, but thanks.
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05/17/2006 11:33:09 AM · #7 |
It sounds like you should just hang out and try and grab some shots of them doing the various activities. If you do get the chance to pose some of them try and do closeups or crowd them together to fill the frame that way you can eliminate the background clutter and there is just so much fun with shots of closeup children faces all laughing and smiling. If you're looking for racially diverse type shots then a mix of hands all in a circle doing the hand on top of the other hand type thing with the different skin colors. If it is for promotional material just think about stock photographs you see with kids on breakfast cereals and magazines. Colorful, fun, and happy. If you're capturing instead of posing look for expressions and close-up of activities with and without identifiable faces.
If the place has large windows you can use that to get some natural lighting on them. Otherwise you could try and drag them outside.
Message edited by author 2006-05-17 11:35:08.
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05/17/2006 12:51:01 PM · #8 |
Originally posted by karmabreeze:
The goal is really to show racially diverse group doing things that are somewhat intersting, to be used as recruitment material. |
You may want to bracket the exposure for the important shots if there's a big difference in skin tone. |
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05/17/2006 02:18:59 PM · #9 |
Girl Scout shoot - help me brainstorm some ideas?
BB gun. Not deadly, but lots of fun when they show up selling cookies. |
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05/21/2006 12:41:20 AM · #10 |
Thanks to all who commented on this thread - I was unsure of how things really went until I got home and combed through my work. No diversity to shoot at all this time out, which was kind of a relief since it took that pressure off me. I've never liked singling out the more ethnic looking girls, who are already at an age to feel self-conscious.
The indoor shots were under dim fluorescent lighting, and my solution to this was to custom white balance every time we switched rooms and use a high ISO so I could use a faster shutter, since the vast majority of my GS shoots are 99% candid, and just ran everything through NI in PP. Outdoors I just let the camera do it's own thing with the "athletics" filter, though I had to tone down tons of blown highlights by selection highlights in color range.
I don't expect any critique on these, but figured I'd share a few since I posted and all. :-)
The girls made occluders to donate to a vision testing program:
They tried their hand at braille typing:
There was a timed self-care relay, stuff like pouring water, putting on shirts, and putting toothpaste on a toothbrush:
They learned to play a paralympic ball game designed especially for the visually impaired:
 
And they watched a presentation on training guide dogs - this girl was of particular interest to the reporter and I since she was not only raising a puppy but is also a Girl Scout:
Message edited by author 2006-05-21 00:45:22.
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