SHOW NOTES

Video Title: Shawn Duffy Photography

Video length: 6:24

Video format/size: m4v/57.3MB

Guest: Shawn Duffy

Director, Editor, Main Cinematographer: Dawn Casey

Additional on-site footage provided by: Shawn Duffy

All photos copyright Shawn Duffy

Edited using: Final Cut

Body Music: "HeartBreaking" and "Atlantean Twilight"- Kevin MacLeod Licensed under Creative Commons

URLS mentioned in the video:

www.shawnduffy.com

www.facebook.com/shawnduffyphotography

www.twitter.com/shawnduffy

Ahmad Al-Nimer and the Al-Nimer family
Jehad Fadda
Qossay Abu-Zaytoun
Beesan Ramadan
Sultan Ibdah and the people of New Askar Refugee Camp
The Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron

The people of Palestine for continuing to welcome me and for always making me feel at home

In preparation for shooting "Cat in a Hat" I probably should have given my cat magic sleepy potion, since she jumped and hopped around like a maniac. (You can read about the shoot here.) However, I immediately saw the speed potential, and by that, I realized how comical it would look in fast motion.

For the shoot, I really had two things going on: I was acting as photographer (of the cat) and videographer (filming it). My problem: how do I document that?

Well, I own a second smaller video camera, and I used it to film myself filming myself.

The screenshot to the left is the smaller camera's view. I am talking into my main camera and standing in front of a painting in my living room. (You can see any screenshot in full size by right/control clicking it.) The screenshot on the right is the same view as seen via the main camera.

My goal in this shoot and video is to show how to set up a basic photoshoot for a cat, dog, or even a person using things you can pretty much find in your house. To that end, I kept the video running the entire time I set the shoot up to show how I did it.

Since I was running around the entire time, I did not use a handheld microphone and instead opted to have my shotgun mic pick up all the sound in the room. Later when editing the video, I used all the sound from my main camera and muted all the sound in the secondary camera.

Because I knew I'd be syncing up the sound on a second camera, it was imperative to keep both cameras running the entire time. That way, I could sync up one spot (I clapped my hands before I started) and know with certianty that my lips would be moving in time with my voice regardless of which angle I was showing at the time.

Although I had mapped out where the cameras were going to be before the shoot began, I discovered that the room wasn't quite as wide as I thought and so I wouldn't be able to get the view I wanted unless I moved it somewhere else.

I actually propped the main camera halfway up on my coffee table and put it behind me while I took some shots. The perspective is actually great: you can see me behind my still camera snapping away while my assistant, Jenny, played with the (annoyed) cat.

Because I decided to go "funny", I listened to quite a lot of Kevin MacLeod's music before deciding on one of his Silent Movie Scores, Plucky Daisy. It fit perfectly with my cat's antics.

Speed can be used effectively in movies, usually for the dramatic effect: the hero dives for the girl (slow motion); the bad guy gets blown up (sped up); the main character sees his dog about to eat his slippers (slow motion with added slow sound as he says "noooooo!"); special effects science fiction movies (slow motion as the hero dodges bullets).

Most of the time, you really shouldn't notice how the speed of the film is changing. The effect should be subtle yet compelling for whatever reason it is being used.

However, there is always an exception. In my case, I sped it up so much we're flapping around like clowns... which, of course, was what I had in mind.

When adjusting speed you can either chop your video into pieces and then adjust it one piece at a time (the speed will just suddenly JUMP) or you can keyframe a section to have it slowly decelerate/accelerate.

Since I was going for comedy, I used the first option.

In the sections where Jenny and I are setting up the table and the cats are jumping all over the sheet we were trying to hang, I put it at 400%.

You read that correctly: four hundred percent. The result is an obvious zipping, bouncing, and ridiculous looking section.  You can see this done quite a bit in video where you can see, say, houses being built or flowers growing. (They'd be sped up way more, actually!)

The remaining sections of video are only at 200%, which is obviously "fast" but in a choppy dumb looking way that fits the music and makes the cat look even funnier. I used one regular speed section to match the music for about four seconds, and then ZIP! off it goes again.

Since this was essentially documenting a photoshoot, I also included some of the pictures I took (all of which can be seen on my Flickr stream here). The problem with going from moving video to stills is that it's.... still. It's jarring if you leave it like that.

Therefore, I used an obvious transition (the turning cube) and then actually moved across the image itself á la the Ken Burns Effect. In iMovie, there is a nifty built in feature where you just click and tell it where to zoom in and out, but in Final Cut it's not quite so easy. I keyframed each image to adjust the scale and center position, and ta-dah! same thing in about the same amount of time. Keyframing individual parameters on video is something that really makes me wish I had a screen the size of Texas to play with.

When it was all done I had a four minute, twenty-nine second video. I exported it from the program into .m4v, which is a small file type that looks really good. Since standard definition video can look really terrible when compressed (the interlacing and scaling is the culprit) I am quite pleased with this format in general.

Because I made this video for my own person project, I did NOT include production credits at the end, as I do most of my pieces. Since I was acting as producer, director, cinematographer, editor, and host, I figured eyes might cross trying to read it all :)

However, I would like to extend my thanks and appreciation to Jenny Arcenas, for all her hard work trying to get my cat to be even more cute.

ENJOY!

While out with a friend at the Amish Market in Maryland, I bought some decadent looking chocolate-dipped strawberries. They were so pretty I didn't really want to have them eaten until I could take pictures of them!

I don't carry my "big camera" around with me all the time, and so I was preparing to take my smaller camera out of my purse when my friend offered to let me borrow her camera.

She owns a Canon Rebel XTi, and so I said "sure!" I've never shot with a Rebel and it's a camera I've been considering as my secondary camera for a while (although I want to buy the Rebel T1i- click to see).

Her camera was sporting the stock 18-55mm stock lens, and since I didn't want to mess with any of her personal settings, I just put the camera on the little green square, aka "point and shoot" mode.

I moved a stool to the middle of her kitchen, opposite the window so that I could get the best light. The camera (since it was in PaS mode) decided I really, really should use the flash- and that would subsequently overblow any photos I would take.

Personally I have eternally wondered about the flash. Whenever they go off, the people in the photos look like they've been nuked! So, I puckered my head up for a moment, since my friend didn't have any sort of diffuser. But, she DID have paper towels! I took a white paper towel and held it in front of the flash and voila! Instant diffusion. I had enough light, and all the pictures didn't look all shadowed and unnaturally lit.

My friend obligingly grabbed a bottle of wine off the top of the refrigerator and set it next to the strawberries, which I'd plopped into a bowl.

I'd like you to notice that all these pictures were done completely spontaneously, without studio lighting, and they were propped up on top of a stool in the middle of the kitchen... and they look great! It's not difficult to take nice photos like these, even with a point-and-shoot (which I was simulating with the mode the camera was in).

All the strawberries were shot with the Rebel XTi, on PaS mode, with a paper towel in front of the flash. Nice, huh? I didn't remove the background or add extra blur or anything crazy like that- that's how they looked when I took them.

I was then inspired. Once I got home, I decided I'd take more pictures of food I had in the kitchen.

When an artist is first beginning to draw, the first thing they do is the still life, since fruit and things will sit politely for hours while you sketch it. I've never actually taken pictures of random fruits and vegetables before, and so I pulled out my lightbox and put it on my dining room table.

This particular lightbox is a small 24"x24" cube with two lamps. You can get this same very inexpensive set up from Amazon (click here!). It comes with a white background, a blue background, a black background, and a green background (for chroma keying).

I took a houselamp and pointed it down at the top so that the box would be nice and lit up for this picture. The house light is yellow... the side lamps are blue. If you don't understand what I mean, all visible light has color. Click here to read about it. Essentially, for a setup like this, you wouldn't want to use both sets of lights while you were actually taking the photo because you've got two different shades of "white" going on (bad!).

Quite a lot of people use a light box like this one (or a smaller one) to get those nifty photos you see on Ebay or Etsy. I have stuffed my cat into the box before (he fit) but this was the first time I'd decided to take photos of fruit. (You can see any of the photos in a larger size by clicking on the photo itself.)

I posed the pears in a variety of ways. I did one, three, and then all six in a wire frame basket.

I realized that fruit is pretty dinked up and not-as-pristine as you normally see it in photos, and decided I liked all the imperfections.

As you can see, the lightbox created the neat "seamless" background you frequently see in photos like this.

I elected to use my longer zoom lens, the 70-255mm because my intention was to zoom tightly into some things.

This required me to stand back about twelve feet, however, because any closer and I couldn't focus. You can't exactly use macro mode with a lens like that :)

This interesting thing isn't quite your normal apple. You may have heard of a Grapple (pronounced "Gray-pple") which is essentially an apple that's been infused with grape juice. It's like a crunchy grape. Pretty interesting!!

Since I was back about ten feet, zooming in to the stem, the background completely disappears and creates that awesome glowy look that everyone tries to photoshop in later.

I didn't in fact photoshop anything. The only adjustments to these photos I did in Aperture 2, and mostly I was cropping things or adjusting the luminance- that was it.

Lastly I decided I wanted to zoom into things that most people never take a good look at. I took close ups of quinoa, oats, coffee beans, coffee grounds, nuts, and pretzels.

The pretzel and other tiny things were a challenge. I finally ended up inverting a small white bowl and putting a clear glass tea plate on top of that. Then I put the pretzel or bean in the center and snapped away. When I was done, I did have to crop the photos, but the effect was of "floating pretzel," which I thought was cool.

It was a bit frustrating at times (the light reflecting off the dimpling in an avocado prevented me from getting a good shot of it close up) but overall I was quite satisfied with my first attempt at "A Still Life".... particularly the part where I got to eat what I was shooting.

If you'd like to have a look at a thumbnail group of all the shots I took during the session (and all the chocolate-dipped strawberry shots), please have a look at my Flickr results here. Clicking on any of the thumbnails will take you to a larger view. Or, feel free to examine them in the viewer below!

Feel free to add to the conversation or ask questions in the comments section by clicking on "add new comment" below!

In preparation for the videocasts I will be doing this year, I worked on my first one just this week.

Although I have set up eight other videocasts (featuring other photographers and what they do) I went to work on one I could do immediately, which is myself doing a shoot.

As I didn't want to film myself doing a shoot of a person, I decided it would be rather fun to photograph my cats and video the process.

Normally, I use the word "shoot" when referring to taking pictures, but saying "shoot my cats" just tends to come out wrong. This particular post will only focus on the photoshoot itself. Another post in upcoming weeks will focus on the video process.

I decided to shoot in my living room. I chose this because this particular room has a large set of patio doors that I could open up and use for diffused sunlight. Since the day was overcast, that worked perfectly. I put up my portable 6' table directly across from it. A dining room table would work equally well.

Since my goal in this shoot was to work without "studio stuff" I used two bowl-style lamps for light. You can pick these type of lights up at any home improvement store. I criss-crossed them to dispel shadows, and I used the Gary Fong puffer over my camera's built in flash. That way, I would have the fill light I needed, but I wouldn't blow my picture out.

The infamous "seamless background" isn't as hard as you might think. In my case, I used heavy white fabric that I basically pinned up to the wall! You can get the same effect using a white sheet, as long as it's thick enough. I pinned it to the wall and then placed it on the table, making certain that there wasn't a crease- it curved from the wall to the table. (For shots with people on it, you'd obviously have it draping to the floor.)

Immediately, I discovered the fabric had been folded up in its bag for too long, and it had huge creases in it. I put my assistant Jenny to work ironing, and she fixed that problem. The background doesn't need to be perfect, but not having huge crinkles and wrinkles in your background is pretty important in this case.

Initially I used my portrait lens, the 28-70mm f/2.8L but decided to go with my longer lens later- the 55-250mm f/4. I regretted that decision and I will explain why!

Since I was trying to go sans flash as much as possible, the longer lens didn't have a wide enough aperture to stop motion. To say that even simpler, it was like suddenly my camera wasn't fast enough. Have you ever taken a picture and it came out blurry because the person was moving? It was like that. When I changed lenses, my camera couldn't keep up with a moving subject (because I didn't have enough light).

And that cat moved. She was fine mostly- sniffing the background, climbing into the basket, inspecting the roses- but as soon as the clothing props were out, all bets were off!

The victim subject of the dress up was my eight month old kitten, Kitiara. Her nickname is Weasel-Cat, because she has a long face and super lithe body like a ferret. Weasel was fine until Jenny put the hat on her head. Immediately the cat was flopping around, twisting and kicking. She wasn't afraid of it, but was more so annoyed that something just got put on her head.

With my shorter portrait lens, I managed to capture a great photo, seen at the top of this post. When I had my long lens on, every shot was out of focus and blurry. If you're taking pictures of your own pets, use a shorter lens! If you don't have a camera with interchangeable lenses and you've got your flash off (which I recommend) your solution is going to have to be using every light in your house to get it bright enough for your camera.

Weasel also was very unhappy with the sunglasses. Both the hat and the sunglasses were purchased from a craft store, and were actually doll clothes for eighteen inch bears. Poor Jenny patiently tried putting the sunglasses on Weasel... and Weasel bit her in the finger. The one shot I did get with the sunglasses has the kitten moving forward and aiming for Jenny's finger.

Last but not least, I wanted to have my cat in a red feather boa. Why? I have no idea. I thought it would be cute, which it was, for about five seconds. A word of advice to people photographing their cats: cats think feathered things are dead animals and will go primal.

So, after the cat hunched up, growled, hissed repeatedly, and then ran down the hallway with her "kill", I decided that the photoshoot was successful! All the photos from that shoot are on my Flickr page, or you can browse them in the player below.

If you have any comments about this shoot, or have a question about it, please feel free to ask it in the comments section and I will reply there as well.