When doing an interview, you need to do a few things every time.

Fill the frame

When doing an interview, you must carefully choose good composition and background. Pay attention to everything inside the frame.

Get tight on the person you are interviewing.

Kill the Noise

Once you put the microphone in place and have your headphones on, you can hear all the ambient sounds. This is where everyone is quiet for a moment while you listen.

Let’s say you hear the ceiling fan or the air conditioner running. I would turn these off for the interview.

Move to a quiet location if you cannot turn off something like a water fall or water fountain.

Steady the Camera

Use a tripod or put the camera on a table. Just keep your primary camera for the interview still. If you have a second camera to use, you can maybe put that camera on a slider or fluid head that will let you move the camera during the interview.

I believe you always need one locked camera on a tripod for the interview.

Light the Subject

I suggest finding a great place with light, so you don’t have to use lights. I find the open shade on the side of a building works as well as porches, as you see in these two photos of interviews we were doing in Togo, West Africa.

Audio is King

There are times for different microphones, just as for additional lenses. You need to know the difference between a lapel, camera & shotgun microphone.

Sharpness is Queen

Sharp focus is critical. I advise against shooting ƒ/1.4 for video unless this is your second camera perspective. Have a depth-of-field that is forgiving if the person moves during the interview.

Use manual focus and not Auto-Focus.

Lock Down the lens

Don’t zoom in and out on your primary camera. You can do some of this with a second camera, but be sure at least one camera is locked down, and you have a solid framed shot that is in focus and has enough depth-of-field that the person can move a little and still be in focus.

Here is the lighting diagram for the setup for you. I was only using the one Lasolight reflector and took sides off.

I did some headshots for my daughter and other Columbus State theater students. Here are some photos and the setup I did inside my daughter’s dorm room.

They are looking toward the camera’s perspective. The model is in front of the two side strobes.

Here is the lighting diagram for the Cole Headshot.

I used the same setup for Chelle here as well.

By turning the background lights away from the background toward my daughter, I could rim light her. I put 30º grids on the lights to keep the light from hitting the lens and causing a flair.

This one shot of Cole is with just the one Beauty Dish light straight above him. It creates what we call “Butterfly” Lighting. The light casts a shadow under the nose that often looks like butterfly wings.

This helps you see why you want to have this as the main light for headshots. It helps create the shape of the face. The shadows created by the cheekbones help contour the face.

Here the beauty dish is off to the right of Chelle.

Here is that setup of Chelle with the one light

In the next few years, I will return to Columbus State University to do more headshots for theater students. Stay tuned to see more headshots.

Chick-fil-A Sunnyvale FSU is located in Sunnyvale, California. [Nikon D5, 14-24mm. ƒ/5.6, ISO 800, 1/60–(3) Godox V860IIN + Godox X1NT]The past few posts I have shown you how I use Alienbees B1600 studio strobes to light up buildings for architectural photo shoots.

When flying to San Jose, California for another shoot I decided to only take a smaller case of three Godox V860IIN hotshoe flashes + Godox X1NT transmitter.

Now when I shot these I did change the ISO to 800 to let the flashes light up the building much easier than at ISO 100.

After I shot this photo a few times seeing about the change in the light as the sun sets the wind stopped blowing and the flag was no longer waving.

Just so you can see what the flashes are doing here is the photo without the flashes.

So you can see that you can shoot at ISO 100 here you see this photo below. This was shot 30 minutes after sunset.

While I prefer the sky in this shot the waving of the flag I think made the other photo much better.

I hope this shows that it isn’t how much gear you have, but knowing how to use it that will make or break a photo.

[NIKON D5, 24.0-105.0 mm f/4.0, Mode = Aperture Priority, ISO 400, 1/6, ƒ/5.6, (35mm = 35)]

Getting a photo like this demands more than just a tripod and waiting for the right time of day.

Here is the result of doing just that in this photo below.

To help light up the building I used 4 Alienbees B1600 strobes with 11″ Long Throw Reflector. This is what I call “Writing with Light”, which is the definition of photography. Sometimes nature needs some help.

For half of the photos I shot at ƒ/8 with the Alienbees on full power. Then I cut the power in half on the Alienbees and changed the Aperture to ƒ/5.6.

Sunset was at 8:26 pm. Pretty much you can bet on the best photos of buildings with lights to be 20 minutes after sunset as in this photo shot at 8:47 pm.  This is when the lights on the building and inside at matching the sky brightness.

Again here is that same scene without the Alienbees adding light to the side of the building.

Just so you know exactly the light at sunset at 8:26 pm here is that photo as well for you to see.

The problem is that the lights on the building are not showing up. We need to open up the exposure for the lights on the building by changing only the shutter speed from 1/13 to 1 second.

Tips for shooting buildings at Sunset

Arrive early and find best angle to shoot building
Use Strobes or powerful flashlights to light up building
Use a tripod and cable release with the camera
Start shooting 5 minutes before sunset
Stop shooting about 30 – 40 minutes after sunset
White Balance for Sun or Flash
Shoot in RAW

Chick-fil-A West Midtown Atlanta, Georgia at Sunrise. [Fuji X-E3, 10-24mm, ISO 125, ƒ/10, 1.6 sec]

After working on the RAW file in Adobe Lightroom, this is the processed photo.

Here is the photo with just perspective not corrected on the image.

Now when I am shooting on my Fuji X-E3, there is a level built into the camera that can be turned on to show in the display.

When I shot the building photo, it was level from left to right.

You go to the develop module and the Transform tools in Adobe Lightroom.

You can click on Auto and see if it looks the way you want, and then you can undo the change if you like.

You can also select each of the individual controls and adjust it. A grid will show up so you can get the building’s edges straight. You will need to change the vertical where you correct the building falling away from you.

Be sure to check the Constrain Crop to have a full framed image.

[Fuji X-E3, 10-24mm, ISO 125, ƒ/11, 8 sec] 6:37 am

My mornings sometimes start early for photo shoots. Today I woke up at 5:00 am for a photo shoot at sunrise. Sunrise was scheduled to happen at 6:50 am.

I arrived at about 5:40 am at the location and set up two Alienbees B1600 strobes with 50º reflectors.

You can see one of the two lights on the left and the other by the flag pole. I shot with the Nikon D5 as well as my Fuji X-E3.

I put the cameras on Manual Mode. I was shooting up to 30-second exposures with an aperture of ƒ/10 to ƒ/22. ISO was 100 on D5 and 125 on the Fuji X-E3.

This photo was taken with just available light.  It was shot at 6:34 am. The sun is slowly rising but isn’t up yet. It has 16 more minutes until Sunrise. The sky behind the building looks darker, but the longer shutter speeds make it a dark blue sky.

I find that approximately 20 minutes before sunrise and 20 minutes after sunset, you get the best ratio of the lights inside the buildings and signage versus the nighttime sky is the best. Looking at the photo above, shot at 6:12 am, 38 minutes before sunrise, the sky is too dark for me.

At 6:30 am, it sounds like 20 minutes before sunrise, and the sky perfectly matches the lights in and on the restaurant.

At 6:20 am, I can make the sky look great at a 30-second shutter speed, but the lights start to lose details. Ten minutes later, I get the sky and the lights just perfect.

Here are the tips for Sunrise or Sunset if you want to do this yourself.

TIPS

• Before the shoot, arrange to have lights turned on for the photoshoot.
• Arrive 1 hour before Sunrise or Sunset
• Use Tripod & Cable Release
• If using flash, set it to match your Aperture or -1 stop.
• Start taking photos at least 35 minutes before Sunrise and 5 minutes before Sunset.
• Take photos for about 5 minutes after Sunrise and 30 minutes after Sunset.

I bought another figurine today to help teach my student’s photography. Today we took the cowboy figurine outside, looking for suitable locations for shooting portraits.

We found a bend with a tree in the background for the first one.

By moving the figurine, we looked for good light on the face and an excellent background to match.

This is much harder to do than you might think.

We started all the photos in full manual mode. We were learning to pick the proper ISO, Shutter-Speed, and Aperture and doing a custom white balance before each new location we chose.

The first hurdle was nothing more than remembering you are taking a photo. It would help if you looked around the edges of the frame. Can it be cropped out of the picture? Can I get closer?

Just walking closer to the subject, getting as close as you could, and still being focused was an excellent place to start with our figurine.

Taking a photo in the studio on a white background is simple compared to walking outside and looking for good light and a good background.

Go to the store and buy a figurine. It is a great way to explore the light looking for a good location for a portrait.

Keeping yourself fresh is vital if you do this professionally. I do this by taking a small camera with me everywhere. I take a few photos here and there and, in the process, keep myself fresh for my professional jobs where I am getting paid by a client.

I have been teaching one-on-one with a person wanting to pursue photography. We started by shooting in full manual mode. The camera is set where the student must pick for each shot the following:

• ISO
• Shutter Speed
• Aperture

As we reviewed some of the photos shot since the last time we met, the images had significantly improved, but these photos of ducks didn’t work.

What had happened was the excitement of getting photos had them shooting before they had thought through all the settings.

When shooting the ducks, the person hadn’t thought about what of those three settings took priority and why. I explained how birds like shooting sports. It would help if you froze them, or they would be blurred using the settings the camera was set on before seeing the birds.

This is when I stopped and talked to the student about how you must slow down your camera settings just before taking photos. If you don’t do this, none of the images will be usable. “I was trying to get the birds before they flew away.” was the excuse. So not one of the photos was functional, but this became a teachable moment.

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There was a teachable moment with my mentor. A few of my friends would also tell me later how this helped them.

In the days of film, you shot 36 shots, and then you had to change your roll of film. So most photographers would reach into their bags and change their roll of the film pretty quickly.

The problem is when you change a roll of the film, you can make a mistake and not get the leader of the film to catch it. If this happened, you would close the back of the camera, and because you are in a hurry, you take more photos, but none of them are recorded on the film because every time you advanced the film, the film wasn’t moving.

I learned what to do from watching Don, not because he told me what he did. Don would turn his back to whatever he was photographing and change the roll of film. He would always turn the rewind lever to tighten the roll before advancing the film to be sure it caught.

Once the film was changed, Don then turned around towards the action.

When shooting, I often evaluate the scene and realize I need a flash. Taking the time to set that up for the photo here takes time. The image is better because I slowed down long enough to get my moment, put it on a light stand, and then set the flash to work with the scene.

#1 Tip: Shoot More

Don Rutledge taught me a great deal. One tip was to shoot stories for yourself. Often these are stories you can return to work on in your hometown. Unfortunately, due to the schedule, you work slower than when traveling and must rush to get photos.

My tip that no one taught me is to ask yourself before taking photos, “Why do I want to take this photo?” What is it you are trying to say with the picture? I am also trying to get in touch with my feelings and not just feel what is happening, but what words describe this feeling?

Then I pause long enough to decide which Aperture captures the scene best. For example, do I need a shallow depth of field where you cannot tell where the person is, but I want you to see the expression, or do I need more context and a greater depth of field?

I am also evaluating what shutter speed will freeze the photo enough to be sharp, or do I need to add motion with a slower shutter speed?

A somewhat fast shutter speed with some subjects will still blur like this bird.

You must know your camera and subject to know the proper shutter speed. Over the years, I have learned that faster shutter speeds improve the photo’s sharpness due to camera shake.

The most significant difference in having lots of experience is that when I am in most situations, it is becoming rare that I haven’t shot something like this before.

Don taught me that I need to shoot as much as possible to grow and get the shot.

While I think I have done an excellent job editing my photos, when I submit them to stock agencies, they sometimes catch things I miss.

When I first submitted this photo of the Island Breeze dancer with Poi ball in Hawaii. I had missed some dust that had gotten onto the sensor in the top right-hand corner.

This is a 100% enlargement of the right top corner of the photo. Are you frustrated with seeing small dark spots in your images that appear in every picture? If you see them consistently in the exact location (the size and darkness of the spots can vary depending on aperture), you are most likely dealing with dust particles on your camera’s sensor.

I have noticed they show up more at smaller apertures like ƒ/22 or ƒ/16, and there is a light area of the photo where the dust is located.

The first thing I do when I notice dust on the sensor is to pick up the phone and call Berrie Smith, who lives near me and has worked for Nikon as a camera technician for many years.

Berrie Smith, the professional camera repairman, is one of the guys Nikon sends out to significant sporting events to provide live repair and sensor cleaning service to the NPS pros covering the event.

Without proper camera cleaning and digital camera sensor cleaning, most photographers have experienced their photographs ruined by unsightly dust spots in their images. These dust spots are characteristically gray/black areas and are usually visible when photographing continuous tone scenes. Cleaning your camera equipment is a great way to ensure it continues working correctly and is also a necessity in today’s digital world. Digital sensors are electrically charged devices that attract dust particles because of their static electric charge. If not cleaned properly, the digital camera sensor will result in images with black spots scattered throughout your photographs.

You can buy off-the-shelf sensor cleaning kits and attempt to clean your image sensor, but if you are not careful, you can quickly do a lot of expensive damage. The cost to replace a scratched low pass filter/image sensor assembly ranges from $600 to $1,600 (parts and labor), depending on the camera.

Berrie does repairs for photographers all over the world.

When I travel, I don’t have the luxury of calling Berrie and sending him my cameras to clean. No one wants to touch up every single photo on a shoot in the same spots over and over.

What is crucial in the kit is the loupe to examine the sensor up close.

You often need to point the sensor down and use the Air Blower to force air onto the sensor, which often dislodges the dust.

I recommend at least owning an Air Blower just safely to remove dust. If that doesn’t work, then give it to the expert Berrie.

This is Berrie at my kitchen table cleaning my cameras. So how do you reach Berrie? Here you go:

Berrie Smith | [email protected] | (770) 312-0719

Jeffery Salter speaks to ASMP Atlanta/SE. Jeffery an editorial and advertising photographer from Miami. Jeffery has created insightful portraits of celebrities, athletes, and CEOs for publications worldwide, and his work has been exhibited widely. [Fuji X-E3, 18-55mm, ISO 25600, Ä/4, 1/35]

How do some photographers get so successful? I think this is one of the reasons many came to see Jeffery Salter.

Capture Integration sponsored the event. Jeffery is one of their clients using their Phase One backs.

It didn’t take long, and someone in the audience asked, “How did you get hired to be on staff with Sports Illustrated?”

Jeffery said while working on newspaper staffs like The Miami Herald; he would look for opportunities to shoot medium format. While most staff photographers would continue to hit all assignments on 35mm SLR film cameras, he was shooting on a Hasselblad or Mamiya 6×7.

He shared how he was shooting for where he wanted to work, not for where he was shooting. He worked hard to have a style that stood out. His photos are surreal and often need much more space to be appreciated than in a newspaper.

He got an assignment to shoot some athletes in their homes from Sports Illustrated. They liked his style and work and, after so many tasks, brought him on staff not to shoot sports action but to shoot the behind-the-scenes of the lives of famous athletes.

A little while into the presentation, Jeffery showed his work in Haiti. He shot it all in medium format with Phase One back. “Why are you shooting with medium format? Who is your client?” was asked.

The person asking the question knew that the magazines cannot show a difference between today’s DSLR and Medium format. Jeffery then said he often doesn’t pick the camera for the client but himself. He wants to be able to have his photos later displayed in the Museum of Modern Art as large as they can be displayed.

He is shooting for the next venue and client.

A couple of tips which are not new but Jeffery also subscribes:

• Do self assignments
• Learn how light works in nature [he shoots a lot of nature]
• Build a photo one morning at a time [use strobes to enhance natural light]
• Shoot on the very best camera for the situation
• Use the histogram to be sure you have it in the camera.

Now one last thing Jeffery shared that I do, but it was good to hear as he often shoots tethered and can open images in PhotoShop or Lightroom and put the curser on highlights and shadows to see the numbers that the computer sees.

Now on the grayscale, you go from 0% to 100% with the amount of light in a scene. The computer records this as 0 to 255.

Jeffery likes his blacks to be around 35 and his highlights around 235. He gets the photo in the camera as he always has from his film days shooting transparencies.

Jeffery also answered some business questions as well. To have experiences like this, I recommend joining ASMP and coming to our meetings. You will be inspired and hopefully become a more successful photographer from what you learn.