How to take a portrait photograph - the simple version

This is a video I was involved with a while ago for a Friend to help promote their

business of prints on canvas( www.my canvas.co.nz) It was shot by Duncan Mcadams ( www.mcadams.co.nz ) . It gets the message across with simple instructions, and if you are looking at it , you might actually find some useful hints in there. Duncan did a great job of making me sound good with his editing skills.

If you still need a professional to do the work - I'm still there at www.seanshadbolt.co.nz

To video or not to video? Video with stills work.

Shooting video while doing stills is a great idea, but as in this instance it nearly went wrong. Anticipating a bit of action when the pudding was set on fire I took a video at the clients request , not a big deal , maybe for web use, but a video needs a beginning and an end, a photograph captures the moment.

As it turned out , the flames weren't that strong and the brandy refused to ignite unless thoroughly heated. While distracted by the video process , I almost missed the moment! Everything was well prepared so it was just a matter of pushing the button and getting a sequence with the Medium format camera , but next time video will be better catered for with perhaps the assistant in charge.

Thats David Sherlock from AUT handling the uncooperative flames.

Aerial photography

Aerial photography in Auckland is something I produce on a regular basis, Mostly for the bigger property companies around the Auckland area and shooting industrial property and commercial office buildings to give a sense of the location in regard to the rest of the city for prospective investors.

Shooting from the air is never entirely predictable and an apparently suitable fine day can be spoiled by a thin layer of cloud covering the area that is only visible when flying overhead. Wind can be a factor and it can be a lot different 1000 feet up to to on the ground , not to mention cold, even in summer.

Weather in Auckland can be extremely changeable and a fine day can change quite quickly . Even worse there maybe no suitable fine weather and when there is it is at the wrong time for the light to be on the property you are trying to get the shots of.

Using filters both on the camera and in post processing can help , but it takes experience to handle these .

I must admit I have never been an enthusiastic flyer, but I do prefer buzzing a round the city in a helicopter with the door off to being stuffed in to a commercial airliner like a battery chicken.

Creative photography

After raving on about large format and quality in the last post . I should point out that sometimes its better to be there and to shoot with what you have. I took this shot of my nephew last summer clambering over rocks in a stream. Its not sharp , but it has something, the colour and the movement are interesting and its a great picture of him in the environment. This time the camera was a Canon G10 . I bought it as its one of the very few smaller cameras that shoots RAW digital files, and unlike the other cameras,while they aren't a huge step up from the jpegs out of the camera, they give just that little bit more in terms of quality and richness.

All about me

I am a photographer based in Auckland , New Zealand. You can see some of my work at www.seanshadbolt.co.nz

I have been in business for about twenty years now , through the most intense time of change the industry ( and many industries ) have seen in the past one hundred years or more . When I started in the industry , my employer still used a half plate ( 6x8 inches ) view camera to take passport photographs, 35mm film wasn't generally used in the commercial world as scanning technology was still quite primitive and the bigger the original transparency or negative the better. Photographers didn't need to know much about the technology at all , just how to make a good image on piece of film .

These days it seems like a digital madness . while it is great to have all this technology at our fingertips to be able to control the quality of out put to clients , at the same time the amount of new software needed to be learned for both photo production and delivery is extraordinary. And just as you think you have it all sorted out it changes again. Life with a roll of film seems so simple by comparison.

In the past I used multiple formats of film for the production of images . Everything from 4x5 large format film to 35mm and medium format roll film in multiple formats from 6x4.5 to 6 x 17mm sizes. I sill like to shoot a roll of transparency film once in a while to see what a

" real " photograph should look like , but almost all my work is now done on digital equipment for the sake of convenience for both me and my clients , although if the need arises , I still use film . Now the question has changed form " what format do you prefer to use " to - how many megapixels do you use. In my opinion , once megapixels moved past the 16 mp range , the question almost is academic .

Originally in digital land I used a 6mp Kodak 760 camera and the files from that camera were used from thumbnail to billboard size and were all satisfactory.

Nowadays I use 21mp Canon cameras and 22 and 39 mp medium format Hasselblad cameras and apart from the smoothness in the files , the main reason is the " look " the larger cameras give - richer and deeper colour and incredible detail.