Book review: Making Light 1 & 2

Posted on 22.01.2012 by ramin

As one of my goals for this year I decided to read at least one photo book per month. I started out light since a significant portion of my reading time this month has been taken up by the Fire & Ice series. And in fact in this review I’m cheating just a bit ;). My first selection was Making Light 2 by Piet Van den Eynde but I’ll be covering Making Light 1 as well which I read in December.

My page turning assistant while reading Making Light 2 this morning in bed

Both books cover the use of small flashes – mainly speedlights – off-camera to assist or fully light the photograph you are making. I’ll admit to not being a stranger to the Strobist movement since I’ve been following it from sometime during the early ages of the blog and the initial Lighting 101. Admittedly though, although I’ve dabbled here and there and tried to understand what has been written I’ve spent too little time actually practicing my strobist skills.

I’ve liked the Craft & Vision books I’ve read so far so I grabbed both as they came out and finally started reading them now. Admittedly since I’ve been following a lot of the gear discussions on the Internet for so long, the general parts of the books didn’t really offer me anything new. But they were written extremely well and concisely enough to not bore a reader. What I liked most about both books were the case studies of individual photographs and how they were lit. The text and final image were also – in places – supported by photographs taken without the addition of light giving the reader an even better picture on what the effect of the lighting was.

As a bonus the second book has interviews of several Belgian photographers who use strobes in their work. The interviews offer an even deeper insight on how strobes can be utilized in personal and commercial work. And of course the pictures shown are absolutely beautiful and wonderfully simple gear-wise in their execution. It is so refreshing to see so many photographs that have only been lit with a few lights instead of the often convoluted lighting setups seen in many commercial situations.

After reading both books I feel like I have an even better understanding of what and how to achieve what I want. Now I just have to start really practicing my skills before submitting some poor souls to sit in front of my camera. If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend picking both e-books up. The total price of $10 most likely won’t break your bank.

Smoke, heat, and some flames – pictures from inside a burning house

Posted on 02.11.2011 by ramin

You all know how in the movies structural fires have these nice flames and no smoke at all, right? Well, the truth is quite far from it – at least in the beginning. A few weeks ago our station had a live fire exercise in a house that would have otherwise been torn down.

For us to stay current with our training, we have to have at least one exercise per year in full gear and in hot conditions. That is, we have to train with live fire either in a simulator or by setting fire to a structure and putting it out repeatedly. Alas, most years we have to satisfy ourselves with simulators since finding suitable structures that are going to be torn down is difficult.

As with real fires, gearing up properly is extremely important and we check each others gear before going into the smoky and hot building. In most cases, at least if the structure can still be saved, the rooms are filled with smoke and heat. Moving around in an unfamiliar structure where visibility is minimal is done by crawling and touching everything.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get really big fires going between the pairs that went in so in most cases I didn’t get any suitable pictures since without any flames it was extremely dark.

However, once the ceiling caved in over one of the rooms, we got a movie-like fire going on that I could photograph a bit. By this time being in the building was already quite hazardous since the house had been burning for some time and shooting time was very limited.

Of course, once we can’t practice inside, we complete the teardown by burning the house in a controlled fashion while protecting the surrounding areas.

All in all, all of us got to go in at least once – I think most managed to go in twice. I went in once without a camera and then six or seven times with the camera. As you can imagine, I was feeling quite toasty after the last time. Shooting while completely covered in turnout gear and the breathing mask is challenging – especially when shooting with an older camera without live view. I used our backup, the 30D for this shoot since I’ll never risk our primary inside a burning building.

More pictures in our gallery. You might also be interested in the pictures from our previous live fire exercise in 2008.

Raskasta Joulua @ Vaakuna, Mikkeli 11.12.2009

Posted on 18.03.2010 by ramin

We saw the Raskasta Joulua (Heavy Christmas) tour in Mikkeli on our way to the Winner and Nordic Winner dog shows in Helsinki. I’m just now getting around to publishing the pictures since I originally promised the promoter to wait for band approval to publishing the shots. Since I haven’t heard anything from the band in over two months, I’m going ahead and publishing them.

Continue reading →

Brother Firetribe @ Kellari 9.1.2009

Posted on 01.06.2009 by ramin

Even though the pictures from Amorphis’ gig had been up in our gallery for ages, I finally got around to selecting and editing the best shots of Brother Firetribe’s last gig.

They are a side project for many of the members – just a way to have fun – that play good old 80s style hard rock. I know many die-hard metalheads who tried to hate them, but failed. But then again, what do you expect when the musicians are skilled and the music is mostly upbeat hard rock. It does make you smile.

Musically the gig was very much what you’d expect. Good, fast moving music and an enthusiastic crowd. When compared to the other metal acts we’ve seen in Kellari the audience was much more colorful (the black uniform of metalheads were more to the back). The band seemed to enjoy themselves and really worked up a sweat (as can be seen in some of the pictures).

The gig was the first one we went to see in Kellari (which celebrated it’s first anniversary at the time), so the venue was unknown. What little I could tell from their website was that they don’t have all that much lighting on the house but at least they don’t prevent photography in any way.

The bang lighting didn’t make things any easier. The light was mostly from the back and generally quite red. Liberal use of the smoke machine meant that I didn’t get any decent shots of the drummer.

The venue doesn’t have a separate area between the stage and audience for photographers so getting a good spot for photography means getting there early and staying where you are. Luckily I’m not small, so keeping my spot and staying steady in the pit isn’t an impossible task.

Every time I’ve seen Nighwish play live I’ve enjoyed how Emppu Vuorinen interacts with the audience – even from the larger stages that Nightwish play on in Finland. Brother Firetribe’s vocalist Pekka Heino is also great with the audience and I got several good shots of him interacting with them (us).

The full set of pictures can be found in our photo gallery.

Amorphis @ Joensuu Areena 15.3.2008

Posted on 28.05.2009 by ramin

Hmm… A bit late to blog about shooting the show over a year ago. But then again, I am eagerly waiting for the release of their new album tomorrow.

Last year Amorphis played live in Joensuu at a small pre-festival gig (Kohti Rokkia 08) of three bands. Of the three Amorphis was definitely the one we wanted to see, the other two not so much. Although I feel that because of hometown loyalty I should like Stam1na and Mokoma as well…

As a venue the Joensuu Areena is large, so we had to start navigating through the crowd as soon as the previous act quit to get far enough to the front for some decent images. Since the venue is large there were enough lights and the smoke didn’t linger too long around the stage.

The shots are almost all vertical due to our position in the pit and not a separate area for photographers. Trying to catch the less prominent members is always hard – even more so from the pit. The shots were all taken with a Canon 30D and 70-200 f/4 L (non-IS).

Sometimes a rare momemt makes the shot, even if it isn’t technically all that good. Esa isn’t famous for going up to the mike and I almost missed this shot.