BARCELONA /.JOAN MIRÓ’S WOMAN AND BIRD

PRACTICAL EXERCISE WITH DIFFERENT FOCAL LENGTH LENSES

I decided to do another practical photo experiment related to Antonio Espejo’s picture and Joan Miró’s statue Dona I Ocell (Woman and Bird). It is an exercise sometimes my pupils do to understand what happens working with different lenses with different focal length. Focal length is the distance between the optical center, inside the lens, and the plane where the image appears, focal plane (where is the film or the sensor in digital cameras). The focal length and angle covered are in an inverse relationship: the longest the focal length the lesser the cover angle and vice versa.

I have photographed the Miró’s statue in several occasions, of course. The best known this 1991 image of two different captures in the same shot (There wasn’t Photoshop yet), the sculpture and the full moon. This photo ran full page in a Paris Match about Barcelona and the 1992 Olympic Games. I’ll explain better this technique in a coming post.

The practical exercise consists in taking a particular object as a reference, in this case la Dona i Ocell (Woman and Bird), and while changing the lenses focal length keeping it always in the same size. The difference with the first exercise with Espejo’s picture that consisted also in using different lenses but always from THE SAME PLACE, in this case you HAVE TO MOVE.

NIKKOR 300 mm
NIKKOR 180 mm
NIKKOR 70 mm
NIKKOR 50 mm
NIKKOR 18 mm

It is very convenient start with the longest focal length and continue forward. If we do it the opposite way we ran the risk to find and obstacle to our back and to have the experiment stopped there.
In my classes we chose simpler exercises: a reference object not too big on a clear environment. In this case the statue is 22 meters high, there were obstacles all around and the point of depart was half a kilometre away. But all this made the experiment far more interesting. The lenses I used were a 300, 180, 70, 50 and 27 mm on a digital Nikon factor 1,5 , so the real focal lengths were 450, 270, 105, 75 and 27 mm. In the second photo the sculpture is nearly hidden by the white offices of the Bullfight Arena works, very close to Joan Miró’s park. The interesting part of the exercise is to observe how the planes in front and behind the statue change with the different lenses used.

Map showing where the photos were taken.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE. GAUDÍ AND THE MOON.

DOBLE EXPOSICIÓN

SAGRADA FAMILIA Y LUNA EN EL MISMO DISPARO.

Nowadays with Photoshop it is very easy to get the same result, but I’d would like to explain you a technique for film cameras I used some time ago. You have already seen in my blog the Dona and Ocell (Woman and Bird) Joan Miró’s sculpture with the full moon behind. At the beginning of the nineties I decided to photograph some of the most emblematic Gaudi’s buildings using the same technique. So I shoot a couple of rolls of the full moon. After some trials I used a 300mm f:2,8 Tamron telelens with a 1,4 duplicator and a 300 mm f:4 Nikon telelens and Velvia 50 ASA slide film.

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IN THIS PICTURE THE MOON'S PLACE BELONGS TO THE PHOTOGRAM 36 IN THE NOTEBOOK

In one of my moleskin notebooks, where I write captions about my photographic works on the ground, I draw the 36 photograms and the place where I had placed the full moon. Once finished, I unwinded the film, put it again on the camera and I started photographing the Gaudí’s buildings on it. So I was able to have on the same photogram moon and building.

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These pictures worked out fine: one ran as a Paris Match full page and another one was the cover of a book about Barcelona published by Lunwerg.

STROBE CLASS

Photography students during the strobe class as a part of the Travel and Photojournalism curs I impart, together with Quim Roser, at IDEP School.

MAKING OFF .LIVES IN CALM

A GOOD LENS SHADE AND A GOOD ASSISTANT. FOTO:MARIE-PIERRE LAFONTAINE

JORDI NOGUERAS

KRIS UBACH

“Lives in calm”, the story I published recently In Vanguardia Magazine, began when I made a proposal to the Magazine director. Thinking about stories that could be published I remember two friends of mine. Jordi Nogueras that after many jobs was living of making radio control aeroplanes and Isabel Vilà, a journalist that left the big city to run a rural house, Cal Porrerà, in the heart of Catalonia’s wine region el Priorat. The Magazine director liked my idea and I start working on it. I add two more friends to the list: Victor Palomera and Kris Ubach. The photographer Colita, who knows everyone, connected me with Beatriz Díaz de Liaño, who runs a horse shelter, and Celtia Traviesas, the journalist who wrote the text introduced me to Hammad Alzayat and Lidia Salas.
Before shooting a story I always plan carefully the photographic angle. In this case I decided making portraits very well light with studio strobes. In the places I could dispose of an electric socket I carried with me a suitcase con two 250 WATS strobes and umbrellas to get a soft light. I photographed Jordi, Victor, Isabel, Hammad and Lidia using them. We need a strobe meter to check the light. To achieve a good result combinating strobe and available light is complicated. Before the digital era the photographers always have to shoot Polaroids before. Now it is much easier, we can see the results on our LCD camera screen.

FOTO: LUIS MIGUEL MARCO

Problems ahead! Though the laptop computer is on, due to the strong light, it is hard to see anything at all on the screen. Solution? Cut and paste the Spanish stock exchange graphic on a Photoshop postproduction.

Victor Palomera

FOTO: LUIS MIGUEL MARCO



ISABEL VILÀ IN HER CAL PORRERA'S CELLER

FOTO: GEMA DARBO

For the Hammad portrait I used 2 strobes heads; and just one head for all the others. You can see the second unit behind the microscope and the light stand legs below the table. I used this second strobe to separate Hammad from the back that was very dark and, also, to light the test- tubes with the green and pink liquids (kid paint that I bought in a Chinese one euro store).

HAMMAD ALZAYAT. KABARA


LIDIA SALAS

For the rest of the portraits in the open air, far from electric connections, I used a 400 WATS Norman strobe and a box light. Every time I shoot portraits indoor I use a tripod. After trying several brands I finally choose Gitzo, I have a couple of them and they are very reliable and light. The last trend is carbon fibber models that are extremely light, but get ready to pay the double of the amount you’d pay for an aluminium model.Between them, in weight and also in price, we have basalt tripods.

BEATRIZ DÍAZ DE LIAÑO.


PHOTOGRAPHED WITH A NORMAN STROBE

PERSPECTIVE CONTROL IN ARCHITECTURE PHOTOGRAPHY

The photography of architecture requires the control of the lines; we have to maintain the verticality and horizontality of the buildings we photograph. The way to achieve this is to get the camera perfectly levelled, but this is often impossible and we have to move it upwards to cover the building. For these cases, there are the lenses called PC (perspective control), also called shift lenses, that enables the photographer to offset the lens from its normal optical axis in relation to the sensor plane, either horizontally or vertically, or by a combination of the two movements. This rise, fall or lateral shift of the lens gives the 35 mm photographer control similar to that possible with a view camera, as the case of the second photo of this Romanic church of Andorra. These lenses are expensive, but now we have in Photoshop Cs2 and CS3 a command called correction lens that enables us to achieve similar effects.

This is another photo taken from my window with a Nikon D700 and 20 mm lens using an ISO of 1600. By using a wide angle and focus down there is an obvious distortion. The way to correct it is in Photoshop is to go to filters, open distort and choose the command lens correction (Photoshop CS2 yCS3).

In the Transform box (towards the bottom) just move the Vertical Perspective and Horizontal Perspective sliders until the lines are straight. For this image I simply slid the Vertical Perspective slider until it looked right, which was at +50.

Click OK, and now we have to cut part of the picture, what we do by using the cutting tool. Before saving the image, we have to go to layers and apply the command flatten image, which is below.

To correct the distortion and crop the picture we've lost some of the original image, but the end result is very similar to what we would have achieved through a PC lens and we have saved a lot of money.

/ NIKON D 700 TEST AT HIGH ISO SPEEDS

ISO 6400

The good photographs always are due to the person behind the camera. Although it can help, especially for highly technical subjects, is a fallacy that it is essential to have the more advanced and expensive camera to get the best pictures. I have worked side by side with great photographers that, sometimes, used amateur cameras. With the advent of the digital technology, changes are happening very fast. But in the history of Photography technological advances and improvements that have been surfacing became indispensable. In the fifties it was the telemeter incorporated into the cameras; in the sixties there was the photometers measuring the light through the lenses and the electronic flash units; in the seventies it was the automatic exposure; in the eighties the autofocus; in the nineties the zooms replaced the fixed lenses; in this century, the digital replaced the film, and one of the major developments could be the amazing quality with which new cameras like the Nikon D3 and the Nikon D 700, take photographs at high sensibilities .

These are some comparative tests to sensibilities of 200, 1,600, 3,200 and 6,400 ISO using a Nikon D 700. The lens used was a Nikkor 50mm f: 1.8.

ISO 200

ISO 200

ISO 1600

ISO 1600

ISO 3.200

ISO 3.200

ISO 6.400

ISO 6.400

The results are simply stunning.

ALON REININGER AND THE PORTABLE STROBES

I met Alon Reininger in Madrid in 1982.He was the first person who taught me how to use strobe lights. In those days all the world's attention was focused on Spain. We were to have the second democratic elections after Franco's death and for the first time since 1936, a leftist political party, the PSOE led by Felipe Gonzalez could win. A few months ago, Jordi Socías and Aurora Fierro had created the Cover agency, in the likeness of the French Gamma. Jordi had chosen me to follow Felipe González.

FELIPE GONZÁLEZ. MADRID 1982

Other photographers also used Cover as headquarter, including Alon Reininger and the French Frank Fournier, who was his assistant then; Alon and Frank worked for the Contact press agency and had a very well paid assignment to photograph the elections for Time magazine. Alon showed me his portable studio strobes (I had never seen strobes like these before). He wanted to take a very well lit Felipe Gonzalez portrait for the cover of Time.” I do not have too much practice” he explained me” but there is a fellow in the agency, David Burnett, who uses them very well and, thanks to them, is winning a lot of money with his portraits and his work for multinationals" told me Alon while he was teaching me how to use them . "I don’t want to spend a lifetime travelling all over the world "he said," I also want to be able to photograph well-paid jobs without leaving the United States” he said.

When I returned to Barcelona, once the elections were over, the first thing I did with the money I got for my work was to buy a case containing two Multiblitz strobes, Minilite model. It’s been ,by far, the best investment in equipment that I've done in my life. 25 years after the strobes still work perfectly and I've done a large number of portraits and numerous magazine covers with them. Here are a few examples.

ARTUR MAS


AAAAA

CARLES CHECA ISAAC ANTIC


JOSEP FERRER. FREIXENET

RUBERT DE VENTÓS




JOAN PUJOL "GARBO"

FERRàN ADRIÀ

MANUEL MELER

ANDONI ZUBIZARRETA

ANGEL GORDON

A few years later Alon Reining rose to fame by winning the World Press with an in-depth reportage on AIDS. And, also, Frank Fournier won another World Press with his impressive portrayal of the Colombian girl Omaira, shortly before she died trapped by the debris left after the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano. Finally, Felipe González won the elections that year. And my professional experience was invaluable because, in addition to working side by side next to Alon and Frank, I also could do the same with other world-class photographers as Jose Azel, or Magnum’s Jean Gaumy