I love the way the pinhole camera records the scene in a dreamy, almost ghostly manner. The longer exposure times required blur any movement and you can really see time passing by.

Pinhole photography is a refreshing balance to digital photography as it requires so much more planning, thinking how to take the photograph and of course waiting. All my pinhole cameras so far have been film based and to avoid wasting too much film the photographs must be properly planned before hand, the camera aimed carefully and exposure time calculated. All this slows you down, but I don’t believe that this is a bad thing; this makes you think before taking the photo, what you are taking it of and why. I believe this makes me a better photographer, whether using film or digital.

One of my favourite pinhole cameras is made from a matchbox and uses 35mm negative film. It’s not the simplest of cameras, but not far off either. However, I wanted one which can take more than one photo before changing the film in the dark room.

To make one all you need is a matchbox, 35mm film, an empty film container to feed the exposed film into and lots of electrical tape to make it all lightproof. There are good instructions at http://www.matchboxpinhole.com/ to help you build your own.

The pinhole itself can be done on any thin material. I made mine with the aluminium from a drinks can, but some use thin copper plate or even plain kitchen tin foil. There are plenty of instructions in the Internet on how to make the perfect pinhole, so I won’t go into details here.

I’ve also bought a pinhole camera; the Holga 120 WPC, which use 120 roll film instead of 35mm film and produces negatives up to 12 x 6cm. This is the beauty of this camera; huge negatives which scan well to big prints.

If you forget the obvious size and film format differences between these two cameras, the end result is different as well. The photos from the matchbox camera feel much more intimate than the ones from the Holga. You can see the difference, if you look through my Pinhole landscapes, cityscapes & seascapes Collection.

The ceremony was held at the St. Mary the Virgin Parish Church in Ponteland and the reception at Close House not too far away. This time, I would shoot the wedding with my new Canon EOS 5D Mark II and I was looking forward to use its brilliant high ISO quality to help me out at the church. And it didn’t disappoint. I left the camera mostly at Auto ISO mode, only at times forcing a higher ISO to allow a shorter exposure time than the camera would’ve chosen.

Throughout the wedding I used the excellent Canon 24-105 f/4 L lens, which worked well even in low light situations due to the high ISO capabilities of the camera.

As I wasn’t just a photographer, but a member of the family, I had the luxury of recording the whole day’s events from the hairdresser’s in the morning, to the last dance in the evening. A long and exhausting day, but also very rewarding. Due to the length of the “job”, I took 1500 photos on the day. Now I have edited them down to approximately 300 for the wedding couple to choose the ones they want into an album.

Bedern Hall is a small gem of a hall and used to be linked to the York Minster and was the dining hall for the College of Vicars Choral from the 14th to the 17th century. The Merchant Adventurers’ Hall is no less historic and dates back to 14th century. This medieval guildhall was at the time the most important building in York.

The transport from Bedern Hall to the reception was on a vintage open top double-decker bus which gave us a sightseeing tour around York before pulling in to the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall. The plan was to shoot the formal group photographs while the guests enjoyed the drinks and before settling down for the dinner. I had planned to use the gorgeous stone walls of the hall as a backdrop to the photographs at the front gardens, although this would provide an interesting show to the passers-by on the street above.

Luckily, the rain held out longer than forecasted and although few drops came down during the sightseeing trip we managed to get through all of the group photographs in the hall gardens before the heavens opened during the dinner.

Now, back at home, I’m taking stock of the last few days and will start the time consuming but rewarding task to wade through the 1500 photographs I took on the day.

]]> http://www.terovaananen.co.uk/blog/helen-matthew-30th-july-2010/feed/ 0 http://www.terovaananen.co.uk/blog/second-blog-post/ http://www.terovaananen.co.uk/blog/second-blog-post/#comments Wed, 28 Jul 2010 11:26:57 +0000 admin http://www.terovaananen.co.uk/?p=45 I’m having a few days off my day job to prepare for my sister-in-law’s wedding on this Friday in the beautiful and historic city of York.

But while the city will provide a gorgeous backdrop to the photographs, it doesn’t come without it’s challenges.

Being a very old city, York wasn’t built for cars and we will have very limited access to the venues by cars and there are practically no car parking spaces nearby. This means, I will have to plan very carefully what is the absolutely minimum equipment I will need to shoot the wedding, what is the absolutely minimum backup equipment I will need and then improvise with what I’ve got, no matter what situation comes up.

I’ve hired a Canon 24-70 f/2.8 L lens to be my main lens during the wedding. This will be the one that gives me the best range for portraits and bit wider shots when necessary. On top of this, I’ll be likely to take with me my Canon 17-40 f/4 L for those shots that I want to have more of the the city as a backdrop and just in case the 24mm isn’t wide enough for the big group shots. The trusty 50mm f/1.8 will definitely be in my bag. A brilliantly sharp and fast lens for those dark indoors in old buildings.

Although wedding shots are mostly portraits, whether posed or candid, I like to bring in another dimension to them from my landscape photography. In a beautiful location like York, shooting wide with the 17-40mm is a great way to show the location for the couple to remember later on. However, this is where a busy location like York will bring up its challenges again; on a beautiful day, the city will be packed with tourists and any wider than normal shots may not be possible. During my scouting trips I’ve kept my eyes open for any nice corners and walls to use as a back drop to provide the atmosphere of the ancient York, without the unwanted crowds.

So, I’ll be recharging batteries, preparing memory cards to make sure they all work on the day and keeping an eye on the weather forecast and hoping it’ll keep it nice and dry. Cloudy is fine for me, but it’d be shame if we’d be restricted indoors for all the shots due to rain.

The plan was to get to the lighthouse early in the morning to catch it in the sunrise. I arrived at the lighthouse the night before to scout the scene and to take some evening light shots while I was there. Although it was January and the sunrise wouldn’t be very early, I had planned to get there around 6am to be on the safe side. You really need to allow yourself enough time to setup before the sun actually rises since the best light can be gone in minutes. It’s also surprisingly difficult to find the best viewpoints in the dark, so it’s best to visit the site in daylight.

I was equipped with my trusty old Canon AE-1 with 100 ISO slide film and my Canon EOS 500N with a 200 ISO colour negative film and a pinhole bodycap. I had chosen to use the older AE-1 as my main camera, because it is just so brilliant to use and its prime lenses are sharp as anything. Of course, the mandatory equipment included a tripod and warm clothes for the morning which would be cold.

It was freezing cold in the morning. I got there well before the sunrise and had time to setup the camera on the tripod, make sure it was the darkness that prevent me to see through the viewfinder and not the lenscap, and compose a nice landscape view with the lighthouse in one of the thirds and the path leading into the photo from the bottom corner.

Then it was only the question of waiting for the sunrise. I didn’t want to miss any of the possible photo opportunities in the ever changing morning light, so I kept shooting. This was not the time to start saving on film. However, the light was so low I couldn’t measure the exposure time with the camera, so I had to estimate the exposure required and start bracketing the exposures. The exposure of approximately 30 seconds turned out to be the best and is my favourite shot of the morning with its beautiful purple and blue light which really gives an eerie feeling to the photo.

While taking the first few shots and looking at the changing morning light, an alarm went off at the house next to the lighthouse and the lights inside were turned on. This added a nice touch of warmth to the otherwise cold atmosphere and although it’s a very small detail the photo would be missing something without it.

I cropped the final photograph to a panoramic format to remove the unnecessary top and bottom halves to create more interesting composition. This concentrates the eye to the white lighthouse and extends the sense of space and solitude in the photo.

I took some pinhole photographs of the lighthouse in the evening while scouting the scene. Because the pinhole camera I had with me at the time was not very wide angle (focal length of 50mm) I had to climb on the bank to get a good view of the lighthouse and to get some grass in the foreground to create more depth in the photograph. The exposure time was in the region of 1-3 seconds, so the grass would get a nice motion blur but not so much that they would disappear completely.

The warm coloured evening sun, the long exposure time and the soft characteristic of the pinhole itself produced wonderful colours, but to really bring the photograph to life and to enhance the mood and feel I purposefully scratched the negatives before scanning them into the computer.

I think this really worked well and this is now one of my favourite photographs.

Clouds have always fascinated me, but when it comes to photography it’s not the fluffy white ones against a blue sky that are my favourites, but the dark dramatic stormy ones just before or just after the storm.

As with all photographs the light is very important. With cloudscapes it’s probably even more so, as it is the element that really makes the photograph and brings it to life. It’s tricky, though; As I discussed in my earlier post “Take the first shot as soon as possible” the light can change within seconds and the view is gone.

If you’re lucky there’s more to come, but unfortunately what usually happens is that the light changes from dramatic light which bursts through the clouds or beautifully highlights the edge of the clouds, to a boring cloudy day or to full sunshine in a few seconds.

When photographing cloudscapes, whether they are storm clouds, sunrise or sunset, always try and include some foreground elements into the picture. This can be the treeline, buildings or the horizon of the sea. It doesn’t have to be much, but they will create a useful baseline for the cloudscape and give a sense of scale.

As the photographs on this article shows as well, more often than not, I take the cloudscape photographs in portrait mode rather than landscape. This makes sense compositionally as the clouds are the one I want to be the main part of the photograph and it accentuates the size of the clouds and really adds to the drama.

In the same way they can disappear within seconds, beautiful and dramatic clouds can appear seemingly out of nowhere and it’s worth always keep your eyes open and a camera at hand.

The photo on the left is taken from a train while I was travelling through the rainy South Yorkshire towards Leeds. Only armed with my mobile phone, I took the shot as quickly as I could while avoiding any glare from the window and the ever so frequent power cables.

The two photographs below are other examples of just those fleeting moments; I was enjoying a nice summer evening and a cold pint in London Southbank when the storm gathered above, clouds covered the sky and light dimmed to almost nothing. Just before the rain started to pour down and I ran for the cover, I took the photograph of Tate Modern and storm clouds with my mobile phone.

I took the other Southbank photographs with my mobile phone just when the rain had stopped and as quickly as it had started the first rays of sun cut through the storm clouds.

So why is this not allowed in photography? Why is the first question always “have you photoshopped that?” and asked in a way as if that would be bad, somehow not allowed. In creating art in any form, why does it matter how you’ve created it as long as you like the end result.

But of course the process is important. To you, the photographer and artist it’s everything; you need to figure out which media, tools and methods to use to get to the end result.

I often look paintings for inspiration to my photography. The classic examples are of course “Rembrandt lighting” used in portrait photography to mimic the beautiful soft light used by Rembrandt in his paintings. Jan Vermeer had also a very distinctive way to use light and can be easily adapted to photography.

The recent portrait of David Cameron by Jonathan Yeo struck me as a brilliant example of the use of textures. I like the way he emerges from the textured background, yet is still very much part of it. The composition, Mr. Cameron’s pose, the light and the texture all create a mood in the painting which I really like. The more I look at it, the more things I find from it; subtle changes in backround texture, the striking eyes looking straight back at you, the way his left arm almost fades into the background, the way the subject itself is built from diferent textures, even the way the legs and feet look a bit funny. To keep the audience captivated for subsequent visits is really admirable; it means the art makes one think, look for more in the picture.

The portrait Jonathan Yeo has painted has also created some controversy; David Cameron, a high profile British politician, possibly the next Prime Minister, is standing hands in his pockets, looking straight at us. It’s a very strong pose, some call it “rebellious sixth former”, but the combination of the pose and the almost seemless separation from the dark moody background really makes the picture.

This is something I believe is very important in photography as well. As an artist, I want to create something that makes the viewers think, to look at the photograph deeper and make them feel something. For this, it doesn’t matter what the process is, it’s the end result that counts.

However, when the main subject of the photograph is out of focus, there’s only one thing to do; bin it and try again.

I’ve noticed that often these focusing problems are not caused by the photographer, but the camera. The latest digital cameras try to be very helpful and provide multipoint focusing systems which are designed to automatically choose the correct subject in the photograph to be in focus. Unfortunately, the camera has often very different ideas of what is the main subject in the photograph and you either spends ages trying to refocus and hope the camera picks up the correct focusing point or pressing the shutter and taking the photo which then turns out to be out of focus.

The latest cameras have numerous of these auto focus points. My digital-SLR has nine, newer models have even more. I guess, the more auto focus points you have the better chance you have that the camera happens to choose the correct one and I’m sure there are situations in which these turn out to be a very useful aid.

But I’ve got a better idea; turn the multipoint autofocus off completely and set the camera to only use the centre one. This way you will always know which of the focus points the camera will use and after a while you’ll be using it quicker than your automatic guessing game.

This is how it works: Most digital cameras allow you to focus by pressing the shutter button halfway down and then will take the photo when the button is fully pressed. So, aim the centre focus point to the person (always get the eyes in focus) or flower or whatever you want to be in focus, half press the shutter until you’ll hear a beep, then re-compose the photo while still holding the button half pressed. Once the photo looks like what you want, fully press the shutter and take the photo.

This way your intended points in the photos will always be in focus and your photos will improve dramatically.

I love taking another point of view to other photographers and ceilings can be just that. They can provide a unique yet interesting view to the building that others may have overlooked completely.

Ceilings can also tell a story. Looking closely to the very colourful and detailed ceiling of Rotunda of Mosta in Malta, you can see where a German bomb fell through during a ceremony on 9th April 1942. Luckily it didn’t explode.

To photograph the ceilings, I put my camera to ISO 100, f/22 to give me the widest depth of field and plenty of light. I don’t typically carry a tripod with me, so I hold the camera against a pilar which gives nice leading verticals into the picture and towards the ceiling.

I also use pinhole cameras to photograph the ceilings. Churches are typically fairly dark inside and therefore long exposures are required and it’s not possible to just hold the camera by hand against a pillar or a wall.

For the pinhole photograph of the ceiling in Norwich Cathedral, I placed the camera flat on the floor. I knew the camera’s angle of view was wide, so I had to get well away from the camera for the 30-40 second exposure. To be on the safe side, I was also constantly moving so I wouldn’t register on the film if I wasn’t far enough away after all.

It must have looked weird; a black box in the middle of the cathedral floor and a guy circling around it looking at his watch. Luckily, it was a quiet day and I got my photographs without causing a panic.

Below are the ceilings of Hexham Abbey in Northumberland and the beautiful ceiling of the St. John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, Malta.

This technique does of course work in other buildings as well and as I’ll continue this project I will definitely explore this further; all it needs is an interesting view when looking up.

The weather held up and we didn’t get the feared rain, but enjoyed a beautiful sunny day. This suited me fine, as it allowed me to take the group shots outside in the beautiful gardens of Judges Hotel.

Unlike a normal wedding photographer I was also a guest and instead of leaving when the party was just about to start I joined in and took photographs to capture the events throughout the day and long into the following morning. What a great day it was!

While the couple are enjoying their honeymoon, I tackled the photographs to sort them out and process for a viewing by the wedding couple on their return. Here are couple for a sneak preview.