Ryan Phillips Blog

Questions from Carla:
Carla posted the following on January 22, 2010 at 5:30 pm. - Sounds awesome Ryan! Alright… you asked for it ;)

Q: Technique: Would love to hear more about shooting technique.

A: This is a tough one due to the fact that I shoot Wedding, Portrait, Commercial, and Editorial. They all require different equipment, lighting techniques, processing, etc. Since I mostly shoot weddings and portraits and they are similar I’ll stick with that one. I never approach the same shoot in the same way. My clients all have different wants and I take what I call the cinematic approach. The client is the director and I tailor my shooting style to meet their needs. Sometimes they want magazine style commercial grade images and sometimes they want strictly photojournalism. You have to listen to what your client wants.

Q: Lighting: do you use reflectors? flashes? anything to help with lighting? In what circumstances?

A: I do use reflectors sometimes and wish I was better about it. It is one of the most important tools you have and people do not use them often enough…myself included. I use flash when necessary but generally steer away from it because I prefer natural light. If you know how to use flash you can get some amazing results. The techniques would take some serious one on one time and would probably fry your brain ;-) My final word on lighting is that it is more important than anything else and you have to be as proficient in reading natural light as you do sculpting a shot with external sources. Every shoot is different and you will probably need to use some external in every situation.

Q: ISO: What’s the highest ISO you use to keep from getting grainy?

A: This will depend on your equipment. I shoot with a Canon 5D Mark II and am not afraid to shoot at 3200 to get the shot. For most pro-sumer cameras I would stay below 1600 and probably closer to 800. For those of you who do not know what ISO is, it is the cameras sensitivity to light. If your indoor shoots are coming out way to dark, bump up your ISO a bit to get more “light.” Lastly, if you know you are going to turn something B&W you can push your ISO a bit further…it will look like film grain…sort of ;-)

Q: Lenses: What lenses are you using for which shots and why, typical apertures/shutter speeds.

A: You won’t like this answer but….. I own almost every lens on the market and have the ability to shoot whatever I want. Which just isn’t the case for most photographers. I stick to prime lenses (fixed focal length) with fast apertures. They are sharper and have better Bokeh. In layman’s terms that means I shoot with a 35mm 1.4 for wide shots, an 85mm 1.2 for mid range shots and a 135mm f2.0 or 200mm for longer range shots. I shoot with two cameras – one wide and one long. All my lenses are f2.8 or below. I shoot heavily in the 1.2 – 2.0 range unless there are multiple people or background info that I need. Shutter speed is largely irrelevant as long as I don’t fall below a 60th of a second.

Q: Post: What are your typical steps once you upload your shots?

A: There is not enough space on the internet or time in my week to answer this one! ;-) I will give you the steps but can’t break it down here. I use Photo Mechanic to import from the card. It has the best import feature. Then I use iView to build a catalog so I can start tagging and editing. Photo Mechanic is the second best program out there next to iView so you can use either one. I like the way iView works better and it builds and saves a catalog so my images are available super fast when I need them. Photo Mechanic, like Adobe Bridge is a browser and has to reload every time. They are faster the first time but insanely slow every other time. Then I load the RAWS into Lightroom to develop. I use DQ Quik Keys to process the files. I do every image by hand myself. I need complete control from start to finish to make a great image and I need every image to be the best it can be. I check them for exposure, color temperature, black point, white point, brightness, and clarity. I also check all the crops. Then I export them to their jpeg folder and open them in Adobe Bridge. Yes the aforementioned and insanely slow Adobe Bridge. No other choice unfortunately.  However I do use AutoLoader which opens the image with the press of a button, lets me work on it and then closes and saves it with the same button. It is much faster. Almost every image I shoot gets some sort of final treatment from me by hand. You can’t use the same action on every image they all have different tonal ranges and require different techniques. I do some burning and dodging and any additional color work if necessary.

Q: Locations: Selecting locations..etc etc ;)

A: This is entirely subjective. It depends on what you or your client likes. I generally pick for light, texture and color. In that order. A great location with bad light is worthless. I shoot at fast apertures so the background serves as more of a color or texture anyway. It’s all about the light…

Thanks Ryan!

Lastly, I just saw that my friend Dave over at Quik Keys just launched a software based tool pallette for Photoshop. His video tutorials are always amazing. If you are new to Photoshop this is one button simplicity. You can do a ton of post with the click of a button and don’t need to know that much about photoshop. However, if you want to do it right, learn what each tool does so you know how much to apply and how to change the effect if you need to.