Rangefinder Magazine
March 2007

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Preserving Traditional Excellence by Michael O’Neill
 

The bride was posed on the floor by a fireplace. Off-camera main light was a radio-fired Vivitar 285 HV. Fill light was provided by a cameramounted Nikon SB-800 set in automatic mode at –2EV. My camera was set in manual exposure mode and the image was converted to sepia and selectively colored in Photoshop.

In my 28 years as a wedding photographer, I have witnessed the heralded arrivals and the lifeless departures of more fads than I care to remember. I look back at my own wedding album and can’t help but laugh at the baby-blue ruffled tuxedo shirts, the thick hardwood album cover and that image of the happy couple crudely superimposed (in the darkroom) into a candlelit wine glass. It makes me wonder how the wedding photography of today will be perceived a decade or two from now.

Let’s face it: Our industry is being invaded by a new breed of wedding photographer who is diluting the more traditional values of our craft. In some cases, the timeless elegance of classic portraiture is being downright eliminated from photographers’ routines. In other cases, those photographers never had the training, the inclination or the discipline to study and emulate the legendary masters of our craft in the first place. The true measure of our efforts as artists will only be borne out by the test of time. How will our work be viewed, not only today, but 20 years down the line? Will our work simply be a visual conglomeration of the latest photographic fad? Or will our work be a timeless keepsake, representative of the contemporary era in which it was created, yet still embodying all of the classic beauty and elegance that our clients desire and deserve? My bet is, if you’re reading this magazine, and this article in particular, that your work will stand the test of time.

I spotted the bride having last-minute hair styling touches through this narrow cutout between two rooms of her home. I guessed at a good manual exposure for the light falling on her in the next room and bounced a camera-mounted SB-800 off the ceiling in my room at –1EV to keep the wall from going too dark. Black-and-white conversion and filmgrain effects were added in Photoshop.

Is It Really the Digital Advantage?

I am a geek. I’ve been working with Apple Macintosh computers since 1987. I’ve been scanning transparencies and working with digital files for more than 15 years. I started test-driving digital cameras in the dark ages of digital capture (around 2000 AD) and waited impatiently for the first camera that I thought could rival film for my photographic work. The early offerings from Kodak and Fuji disappointed me. In November of 2001, I bought one of the first Nikon D1X cameras to hit our shores. I took the camera back to my studio and made a few test shots. I returned to the camera store the next day and traded in all my film cameras for a second D1X. I knew I’d never shoot film again, and I haven’t looked back since.

Digital photography is not a fad. It is with us forever. Ten years from now, most of the young guns graduating college with photographic degrees won’t even know what an RB-67 was. They will never have smelled the sweet aroma of an acid stop bath. Digital photography is not the way of the future—it is the here-and-now, and it’s the best thing that has ever happened in my professional lifetime.

I’ve always hated clichés. I cringe every time I hear someone use phrases like “24/7,” or, “It is what it is.” I especially hate those “reinvent yourself” and “renaissance” clichés, but digital photography truly enabled me to reinvent myself as an artist. I underwent a renaissance when I went digital. Digital photography put new life back into my work. I could shoot unlimited images without worrying about the cost of film and processing. I could shoot with highspeed zoom lenses. I could change ISO ratings and light sources without changing film. I had autofocus—a feature I have come to appreciate more and more. Most importantly, I had all these great new tools and still had all the knowledge and artistry that I’d been developing all my life. I was free—free to explore, free to experiment, free to be creative and daring without the fear of spending too much money on film and processing. I could take my well-honed skills, my knowledge, my training, my discipline and my creativity to new heights. I did, and I’ve been producing the best work of my career.

Available-window-light shot of bride on majestic stairway at catering venue. Streaming- light effect added in Photoshop with AutoFX Mystical Lighting software.

That’s where a lot of the new breed of photographers fall short these days. You know the type—they go out and purchase a digital camera, mount the manufacturer’s flash unit on the camera’s hot shoe, set it on TTL and maybe even mount an inverted Clorox bottle on top to “eliminate shadows.” They set their cameras to ISO 800 and set the exposure mode to “P” for professional. Then they go out to a wedding, haphazardly accumulate a couple thousand images, cull them down to a few hundred “keepers” to present to their clients, and maybe even come up with one or two great spontaneous candid images. Well, you know what? Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Those two great images don’t make you a great wedding photographer.

I believe that we are charged with a higher level of responsibility when a client retains us to capture their wedding memories. I think we owe it to our client to tell their love story with the highest level of professionalism we can. I’ve yet to meet a bride who doesn’t want to look absolutely captivating and elegant on her wedding day. That requires the same great lighting, flattering posing, and the thoughtful, sensitive, professional interaction that we’ve always used. A digital camera doesn’t make you a good wedding photographer. It can, however, make a good wedding photographer into a great one. It did for me.

Michael O’Neill’s Digital Toolkit: Cameras: Nikon D2X and D1X Lenses: Nikkor 12–24mm f/4, Nikkor 17–55mm f/2.8, Nikkor 28–70mm f/2.8, Nikkor 80–200mm f/2.8 Lighting: Nikon SB-800 and SB 28DX Speedlights, Nikon SK-6 Power Brackets, Vivitar 285HV flash units, Norman 400 W/S Monolights Computers: Apple Power Mac G5, Power Mac G4 and PowerBook G4. (All running Mac OS X Tiger). Apple 22-inch and 17-inch Cinema Displays, Medea RAID for offline archiving. Software: Adobe Photoshop CS, Auto FX Mystical Lighting, Auto FX Photographic Edges, Nik Sharpener, Nik Color Efex Pro, Nikon View, Nikon Capture, Kodak Digital Gem Airbrush Filter Printing: Epson 2200 Inkjet Printer with Colorbyte Software’s ImagePrint V6 software RIP Misc: Minolta Flashmeter III, Quantum Radio Slaves, Bogen Tripod, Lowepro Equipment Cases, Larson softBox, reflectors and umbrellas, Photoflex LiteDisc Reflector

“No Fear.” Ugh—another one of those awful clichés. But it’s true: Fear can cripple you. Fear can keep you from reaching whatever level of success you wish to attain. Digital photography did, in fact, eliminate one of my most dreaded film fears: money. Digital photography gave me the ability to experiment to my heart’s content. No longer did I have to worry about the cost of film and processing. I could take that extra shot if I wasn’t sure I had gotten the perfect expression. I could try alternative camera angles, different fields of view and maybe, God forbid, actually tilt the camera a little bit for dramatic effect. When I first started photographing weddings (in the last millennium), the owner of the studio I worked for would have your head if you shot more than 120 exposures on even the most extravagant wedding. Today, I routinely shoot 10 times that amount. Experiment. Go ahead, don’t be scared. You’ll be amazed at what you can create by just trying different camera angles, different focal lengths, tighter compositions, rear-curtain flash-sync effects, etc.

Shoot more “stuff.” We can take a lesson from the good wedding photojournalists and videographers here. Today’s bride and groom expect to see all of their wedding day. Shoot details. Shoot close-ups. Flowers, rings, dress details, jewelry, shoes, architecture, landscapes, table settings, menus, champagne glasses, cake decorations, etc. I’ve been creating editorial-style coffee-table books for almost five years now. The phantom images and detail shots are almost as important to today’s client as the portraits. I find myself thinking more and more like a graphic designer as well as a photographer these days, envisioning how a page layout may ultimately look and being sure to shoot the necessary background images. Shoot candid shots all day long. Candids are not just reserved for the reception anymore. Take shots of the bridesmaids helping the bride get dressed or the flower girl’s antics during the ceremony. Don’t limit yourself to action shots. Get reaction shots. When the couple exchanges vows, whirl around and capture the look on their parent’s faces. Great storytelling includes both actions and reactions.

Get wired and stay wired. This digital era we are in is truly a revolution. New products and new techniques are born every day. Stay in tune. I probably devote eight to 10 hours every week online researching the latest gear, new Photoshop techniques, software releases and upgrades to improve my digital workflow, and archiving problems and solutions. Yes, it’s a whole new world now, and you’ve got to stay informed. Don’t complain if the young guns have more computer savvy than you do. The information you need to stay on top of is out there. Everywhere. There are countless resources to look to for any problem or issue you need to address. Bookmark your favorite resource locations and revisit them often. Things happen fast in this digital world. It’s up to you to make sure you’re not left behind.

I also spend a lot of time looking at other photographer’s websites. I love the relaxed, casual posing that today’s masters (young and old) are exhibiting. I may be committed to old-school values when it comes to proper lighting and technical proficiency, but I’m taking some of my posing and composition cues from younger photographers these days. After all, they know what their generation likes better than I do. I can’t force my preferences on any client, but I can use my well honed talents and abilities to produce the kind of images they want in the best way possible.

The Digital Basics

Lighting is everything. In my sales presentations, I used to tell my prospective clients, “Photography, as a medium, is nothing more than recording, on film, the reflection of light off a subject. The better you light a photograph, the better it is.” Aside from the fact that the word “film” has been replaced by “electronic sensor,” nothing in that statement has changed. Owning a digital camera does not make you a wedding photographer. Learning a few Photoshop techniques does not make you one either. Mastering light, understanding posing and using your knowledge to capture your subjects in the most attractive, flattering way possible makes you a great wedding photographer. Today’s bride may want a more casual style in her images, but she still wants to look as beautiful and elegant on her wedding day as she has imagined all her life.

Here’s a huge bridal party romping on the beach. In creating this playful image, I relied upon my Nikon D2X’s 3D matrix metering coupled with the Nikon SB-800’s high-speed flash sync capabilities to properly expose this scene while I concentrated on directing this big, rowdy group.

My digital camera is set in the manual exposure mode about 90% of the time. My camera does not know it is a digital camera with awesome 3D color matrix metering capabilities (more on that later). It does, however, know how to record a properly lit and exposed scene the same way my film cameras did. My trusty Minolta Flashmeter still occupies a readily accessible spot in my camera bag and gets pulled out for ambient light or manual electronic flash readings many times throughout the wedding day. I usually start my day metering the light falling through an appropriate window at the bride’s home for intimate available-light portraits of the bride, her parents and her bridesmaids. All of my ceremony shots are done in manual exposure mode, and most are prefocused with the camera’s autofocus capabilities turned off. The same is true for the candid shots at the reception. Depth of field is a wonderful thing when you understand it. It’s even better when your digital camera gives you the depth of field of an 18mm lens when you’re shooting at an effective focal length of 27mm. If you don’t understand that last sentence, you need to brush up on your basic photographic theory before heaping praise on the magic of the digital domain. The real magic of digital capture can only be exploited by those who understand and perfect the basic laws of photographic theory.

I have come to rely, also, on the incredible metering precision of my D2X. In difficult lighting conditions, when I’m pressed for time, it makes better exposure decisions on the fly than my three decades of experience can muster. Difficult scenes—group shots with lots of black tuxedos and pastel-colored gowns, heavily backlit and filled only with the illumination of a single camera- mounted Speedlight—are no match for my D2X setup. I’d be hard-pressed to calculate manually and expose on film what the aforementioned Nikon system does for me automatically.

Now I can spend my time working with my subjects, getting the emotion I want to capture and leaving the technical end of things to my Nikon gear. Again, I stress, that simply buying this camera/Speedlight package doesn’t make you a magician. You must understand its capabilities, its features and its limitations, and understand basic photographic theory. Know when and why to rely on your gear—then you’ll see magic.

Flower girl looking at her bouquet. A true candid shot made on the spur of the moment under natural lighting in the bride’s backyard. I was photographing the bride under controlled lighting conditions when I spotted this shot. I switched my Nikon to Program mode, spun around and grabbed this image. Photoshop was used to convert to black-and-white, add color back into the flowers and blur distracting elements in the background.

Digital is Not the Advantage—You Are

The tools are out there. Digital photography and manipulation is available to all of us. How you use it, like any other tool, is what will set you apart from the crowd. We don’t get paid for what we know, we get paid for what we do with what we know. It’s not about the camera, it’s about the craft.

Digital cameras have already reached a level of performance that has exceeded my expectations. In both my wedding and fine art work, I routinely produce 20x30- inch prints of awesome quality. I hope that the next advances in digital photography will revolve more around software than hardware. Nikon’s foray into the software market and their partnership with Nik Software excited me. After all, how many megapixels do we really need? How many are enough? Bigger file sizes means bigger workflows. I don’t want to have to buy new computers and add more data storage capacity every time the camera manufacturers come out with a bigger, better, faster offering. It is my hope that the megapixel war ends soon enough and that workflow issues, software solutions and archiving methods will produce the next major advances in our industry.

Adobe’s Photoshop is the most incredible tool that has ever been laid in the professional photographer’s hands. In my opinion, Thomas Knoll deserves a Nobel prize. However, Photoshop should not be viewed as a band-aid for bad photographic technique. It is a tool that allows accomplished photographic professionals to enhance their images in ways that would heretofore have been too costly. Photoshop gives each and every one of us the ability to deliver portraits that are retouched to levels that were previously available only to clients with unlimited budgets. Learn it. Use it. Your competitors are. Bear in mind the old adage, though: “Garbage in, garbage out.” Photoshop is an enhancement tool. It makes the good stuff better. It doesn’t make up for inadequate photographic capture. Concentrate on making your capture all that it can be. Then use Photoshop to enhance your images to another level.

Above all, never abandon the basics. Digital or film, an image still needs to be lit properly, composed well and aesthetically pleasing in order to have immediate and lasting value. Follow the trends, avoid the fads, change with the times, but always adhere to the timeless, traditional qualities that differentiate good images from great ones. The best digital equipment in the world doesn’t make you a great photographer. Only knowledge, education, passion, professionalism, dedication to your craft and devotion to your clients will secure your position at the front of the photographic pack.

Michael O’Neill has been a working professional photographer for more than 28 years, owning and operating his own studio for over 22 years. In addition to his award-winning wedding photography, Michael produces limited-edition fine art prints, which are offered through prestigious art galleries in the New York metropolitan area. His fine art works are held in private collections worldwide. Visit www. michaeloneillfineart.com for more information on this featured artist.