Open Source Bridge 2012 photos posted
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Igal Koshevoy
Jul 14, 2012, 6:49:31 PM7/14/12
to Open Source Bridge mailing list
I just posted my photos from Open Source Bridge 2012:
http://goo.gl/I9eYt
If you took photos too, please tag them with "osb12", "osbridge" and
"open source bridge" so others can find them.
Feel free to add tags and people to my photos, or leave comments on my
photos if you don't have privileges to make the changes yourself.
I posted photos of about 95% of the presenters. For the few that I
missed, I'm sorry for either missing your session or failing to get a
photo of you that was worth posting.
PHOTO GEEKERY
Stop reading here if you're not interested in photography. :)
I'd like to write a bit about what goes into taking and processing
these photos in hopes that it will help others. I'm not an expert, but
do take this fairly seriously and have learned a few things over the
years. If you have other ideas, I'd like to hear them.
* Thou shalt not post crappy pictures of people onto the Internet:
People hate having bad photos of them posted to the interwebs.
Instead, you should take many photos and only post the best of those
that look good. I posted maybe 1/10th of the photos I took because I
didn't want to post the countless pictures of the speakers looking
ridiculous. Getting a single good photo of an well-caffeinated speaker
can take dozens of tries, but can be very rewarding when you succeed.
* Follow the speaker's pace: You can't just shoot a bunch of photos in
continuous mode and hope to get a nice photo. Instead, you must figure
out the pattern of the presenter's speaking style so you can predict
when they'll do something like smile and pause for a moment, which
gives you maybe a quarter of a second to press the shutter and get a
good photo. When that moment comes and your camera isn't already fully
dialed in, photo isn't focused and composed, or you're not ready,
you'll miss that fraction of a second needed to get the shot.
* Calibrate for each room: You are unlikely to get good photos in a
room you've just stepped into because your camera will typically not
be calibrated for the conditions. Instead, you should start off by
shooting a photo you don't intend to keep just to calibrate your
camera and only then begin trying to take photos you intend to keep.
* Photograph the room sign before photographing the presenter: You
won't post this reference photo of the sign, but it'll help you title
your photos with the name of the speaker and talk, and later aid you
in identifying this person outside of their talks.
* Spot Exposure and Exposure Lock: You can't expect your camera's
automatic settings to figure out how to properly expose a difficult
scene with a blinding window, black curtains, bright projector, dim
presenter, pale skin, dark shirt, etc. Instead, you need to turn on
Spot Exposure to get pinpoint exposure measurement and use Exposure
Lock to fixate it on the one point in the photo that's the midpoint
for your exposure, which is typically the presenter's face, but it can
also be the pants or shirt if these are a neutral value since these
are a bigger target. You'll then use this same locked exposure between
photos, rather than setting it anew each time. Exposure Compensation
or Manual mode can be used as well, but typically take much longer to
adjust.
* AF-C, Spot Focus and prefocus: You can't expect your camera to
figure out which part of a cluttered scene to focus on when there's a
speaker bouncing around and waving their hands, their desk is covered
with stuff and so on. You also won't get a good photo by smashing down
down on the shutter in one motion because that shakes the camera,
takes a fraction of a second too long, and is unlikely to properly
focus on the speaker's face. Instead, you should turn on AF-C (Auto
Focus Continuous) so that the focus will follow the subject that it's
locked on, e.g. a speaker's face. Next set Spot Focus to get pinpoint
focusing at the very center of your viewfinder. Next point the center
focusing mark at the speaker's face and half-depress the shutter to
lock the focus, recompose the shot, hold it there until the speaker's
presentation pattern suggests that they'll do something worth
photographing, and only then fully-depress the shutter. You'll have to
repeat this every single time, which gets tedious. If you have great
lighting, which I never have indoors, then you can use the "zone
focusing" trick from the manual focus street photography hipsters
where you set a small aperture (high f-number) to increase depth of
field and prefocus on a wide range that covers all of the speaker and
then some so you don't need to refocus, rather than trying to keep
focusing on the narrow sliver just featuring their face.
* Shoot RAW, not JPEG: This increases the chance of you getting a
usable photo in tricky lighting by 3-10x because the camera saves more
data for use during processing.
* Fast, stabilized, limited-zoom lens: I used a Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 EX
DC OS HSM. This big lens offers a f/2.8 constant aperture over its
entire zoom range, so although it has much less zoom range than a
cheaper super zoom and weighs a lot more, it has superior light
gathering powers that let me take photos in poor lighting. The image
stabilization lets me shoot at lower shutter speeds, which also helps
with poor lighting. I took most of my photos at about 1/50th of a
second to limit the ISO noise on my older DSLR's sensor, which has the
charming side-effect of capturing nice, dynamic movement blurs from
the presenter's hands. I use higher shutter speeds for hyperactive
speakers that flail as they move, at the expense of significantly more
ISO noise. If you have a newer, fancier camera, then you can use a
higher shutter speed to get crisper photos without having them drown
in ISO noise.
* Crop later: Don't zoom in all the way because otherwise the
slightest error in tilt or framing will ruin the image, e.g. a perfect
photo of a speaker can be ruined if their hand is cut off the edge of
the frame. Instead, zoom out a bit and crop later using your photo
processing software.
* White balance from name badges: Sometimes the auto white balance of
the camera and photo processing software fails, but the neat thing is
you can set white balance based on the white name badges which are
included in most photos and adjust from there.
* Adobe Lightroom: I love open source, but this photo processing
application is magnitudes more awesome than any open source app
available. The automatic mode does about 90% of the work on a photo
for you. Exposure/Highlights/Shadows features rescue badly exposed
photos, which are very common in tricky lighting. Clarity/Sharpness
features pop details out of an image, which is helpful in making
blurry photos taken at slow shutter speeds in dim rooms clearer. Noise
Reduction reduces blotches from high ISO noise without destroying
detail. Pick/Reject and Compare/Survey help compare a bunch of similar
photos and find the best version. Spot Editing lets you tweak things
like the Exposure and Clarity on just a face, or quickly obliterate a
distracting clump of lint on the speaker's shirt. Etc.
* Adobe Photoshop: I love open source, but this photo editing and
digital painting application is decades beyond GIMP. I had to do major
surgery on about a dozen photos, like editing out a person, pasting
heads from various photos together so that an entire group of people
looks good, remove vast amounts of cat hair on a person's shirt
because it made their close-up look silly, etc. Yes, I realize that
this makes the purist "Camera Verité" crowd of "photojournalists"
upset, but that's not what I'm striving for here. Some Photoshop
features that make fixing photos easier include... Smart Objects
provide non-destructive scaling and rotation of layered elements.
Vector Mask allow crisp cutouts that you stack on top of each other,
while classic Masks let you feather cutouts delicately. Filter Layers
provide non-destructive color and exposure matching of elements from
different photos that you can keep fussing with. Distort and Liquify
fix perspective errors due to differences in the camera position
between photos. Groups combine complex layer together to ease editing.
Layer Comps let you compare various combinations of tweaks quickly.
Patch Tool and Clone Stamp eliminate unwanted elements by replacing
them with other bits from the image. Comprehensive Wacom tablet
support provides precise control of opacity and position while fixing.
Etc.
-igal
http://goo.gl/I9eYt
If you took photos too, please tag them with "osb12", "osbridge" and
"open source bridge" so others can find them.
Feel free to add tags and people to my photos, or leave comments on my
photos if you don't have privileges to make the changes yourself.
I posted photos of about 95% of the presenters. For the few that I
missed, I'm sorry for either missing your session or failing to get a
photo of you that was worth posting.
PHOTO GEEKERY
Stop reading here if you're not interested in photography. :)
I'd like to write a bit about what goes into taking and processing
these photos in hopes that it will help others. I'm not an expert, but
do take this fairly seriously and have learned a few things over the
years. If you have other ideas, I'd like to hear them.
* Thou shalt not post crappy pictures of people onto the Internet:
People hate having bad photos of them posted to the interwebs.
Instead, you should take many photos and only post the best of those
that look good. I posted maybe 1/10th of the photos I took because I
didn't want to post the countless pictures of the speakers looking
ridiculous. Getting a single good photo of an well-caffeinated speaker
can take dozens of tries, but can be very rewarding when you succeed.
* Follow the speaker's pace: You can't just shoot a bunch of photos in
continuous mode and hope to get a nice photo. Instead, you must figure
out the pattern of the presenter's speaking style so you can predict
when they'll do something like smile and pause for a moment, which
gives you maybe a quarter of a second to press the shutter and get a
good photo. When that moment comes and your camera isn't already fully
dialed in, photo isn't focused and composed, or you're not ready,
you'll miss that fraction of a second needed to get the shot.
* Calibrate for each room: You are unlikely to get good photos in a
room you've just stepped into because your camera will typically not
be calibrated for the conditions. Instead, you should start off by
shooting a photo you don't intend to keep just to calibrate your
camera and only then begin trying to take photos you intend to keep.
* Photograph the room sign before photographing the presenter: You
won't post this reference photo of the sign, but it'll help you title
your photos with the name of the speaker and talk, and later aid you
in identifying this person outside of their talks.
* Spot Exposure and Exposure Lock: You can't expect your camera's
automatic settings to figure out how to properly expose a difficult
scene with a blinding window, black curtains, bright projector, dim
presenter, pale skin, dark shirt, etc. Instead, you need to turn on
Spot Exposure to get pinpoint exposure measurement and use Exposure
Lock to fixate it on the one point in the photo that's the midpoint
for your exposure, which is typically the presenter's face, but it can
also be the pants or shirt if these are a neutral value since these
are a bigger target. You'll then use this same locked exposure between
photos, rather than setting it anew each time. Exposure Compensation
or Manual mode can be used as well, but typically take much longer to
adjust.
* AF-C, Spot Focus and prefocus: You can't expect your camera to
figure out which part of a cluttered scene to focus on when there's a
speaker bouncing around and waving their hands, their desk is covered
with stuff and so on. You also won't get a good photo by smashing down
down on the shutter in one motion because that shakes the camera,
takes a fraction of a second too long, and is unlikely to properly
focus on the speaker's face. Instead, you should turn on AF-C (Auto
Focus Continuous) so that the focus will follow the subject that it's
locked on, e.g. a speaker's face. Next set Spot Focus to get pinpoint
focusing at the very center of your viewfinder. Next point the center
focusing mark at the speaker's face and half-depress the shutter to
lock the focus, recompose the shot, hold it there until the speaker's
presentation pattern suggests that they'll do something worth
photographing, and only then fully-depress the shutter. You'll have to
repeat this every single time, which gets tedious. If you have great
lighting, which I never have indoors, then you can use the "zone
focusing" trick from the manual focus street photography hipsters
where you set a small aperture (high f-number) to increase depth of
field and prefocus on a wide range that covers all of the speaker and
then some so you don't need to refocus, rather than trying to keep
focusing on the narrow sliver just featuring their face.
* Shoot RAW, not JPEG: This increases the chance of you getting a
usable photo in tricky lighting by 3-10x because the camera saves more
data for use during processing.
* Fast, stabilized, limited-zoom lens: I used a Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8 EX
DC OS HSM. This big lens offers a f/2.8 constant aperture over its
entire zoom range, so although it has much less zoom range than a
cheaper super zoom and weighs a lot more, it has superior light
gathering powers that let me take photos in poor lighting. The image
stabilization lets me shoot at lower shutter speeds, which also helps
with poor lighting. I took most of my photos at about 1/50th of a
second to limit the ISO noise on my older DSLR's sensor, which has the
charming side-effect of capturing nice, dynamic movement blurs from
the presenter's hands. I use higher shutter speeds for hyperactive
speakers that flail as they move, at the expense of significantly more
ISO noise. If you have a newer, fancier camera, then you can use a
higher shutter speed to get crisper photos without having them drown
in ISO noise.
* Crop later: Don't zoom in all the way because otherwise the
slightest error in tilt or framing will ruin the image, e.g. a perfect
photo of a speaker can be ruined if their hand is cut off the edge of
the frame. Instead, zoom out a bit and crop later using your photo
processing software.
* White balance from name badges: Sometimes the auto white balance of
the camera and photo processing software fails, but the neat thing is
you can set white balance based on the white name badges which are
included in most photos and adjust from there.
* Adobe Lightroom: I love open source, but this photo processing
application is magnitudes more awesome than any open source app
available. The automatic mode does about 90% of the work on a photo
for you. Exposure/Highlights/Shadows features rescue badly exposed
photos, which are very common in tricky lighting. Clarity/Sharpness
features pop details out of an image, which is helpful in making
blurry photos taken at slow shutter speeds in dim rooms clearer. Noise
Reduction reduces blotches from high ISO noise without destroying
detail. Pick/Reject and Compare/Survey help compare a bunch of similar
photos and find the best version. Spot Editing lets you tweak things
like the Exposure and Clarity on just a face, or quickly obliterate a
distracting clump of lint on the speaker's shirt. Etc.
* Adobe Photoshop: I love open source, but this photo editing and
digital painting application is decades beyond GIMP. I had to do major
surgery on about a dozen photos, like editing out a person, pasting
heads from various photos together so that an entire group of people
looks good, remove vast amounts of cat hair on a person's shirt
because it made their close-up look silly, etc. Yes, I realize that
this makes the purist "Camera Verité" crowd of "photojournalists"
upset, but that's not what I'm striving for here. Some Photoshop
features that make fixing photos easier include... Smart Objects
provide non-destructive scaling and rotation of layered elements.
Vector Mask allow crisp cutouts that you stack on top of each other,
while classic Masks let you feather cutouts delicately. Filter Layers
provide non-destructive color and exposure matching of elements from
different photos that you can keep fussing with. Distort and Liquify
fix perspective errors due to differences in the camera position
between photos. Groups combine complex layer together to ease editing.
Layer Comps let you compare various combinations of tweaks quickly.
Patch Tool and Clone Stamp eliminate unwanted elements by replacing
them with other bits from the image. Comprehensive Wacom tablet
support provides precise control of opacity and position while fixing.
Etc.
-igal
Igal Koshevoy
Jul 30, 2012, 2:56:21 PM7/30/12
to Open Source Bridge mailing list
Reid Beels just posted a bunch of photos from the event as well: http://goo.gl/hwzdu
These are very good and capture a totally different perspective of the event. Whereas my photos were mostly of speakers, sessions and formalities, Reid's photos captured the casual, quirky, colorful, lively and social aspects of the event.
I'm glad he took these photos because I've been kicking myself for neglecting to photograph that sort of content, and am grateful that he did such a nice job documenting what I'd missed and adding his artistic flair to it.
You should go look at his photos.
-igal
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