Wee Men

Wee Nun Tries Dating (single shot)

I have neglected my blog for way too long and as a way back into it again, I thought I'd try to put together a post about how (and maybe why) I shoot "wee men." In Irish and Scots slang, "wee" simply means little or small. I got into the Wee Men through the fantastic work of Slinkachu; if you haven't checked out his work, you should really do so.

Gear
I shoot with my Nikon D800. I like the resolution on this beast and it seems to do pretty well with macro photography. That said, any DSLR that you can stick a macro lens on will do the job for you.
I use a Nikkor 60mm f2.8 lens, mainly because it is the only macro lens I own - macro means it will have a much closer minimum focusing distance that most lenses which lets you get in close to small subjects.
A tripod
A remote or cable release ( nothing fancy needed - my third party cable release cost £10 from amazon)
Some wee men - you can buy these from Amazon (search for model railway figures) or from sites like Priesar or Gaugemaster in the UK. I find HO gauge works best but there are other sizes/gauges available.
Agave syrup. This is invaluable for getting little figures to stand upright and washes right off afterwards. I tend to dip my wee men's feet in it when needed.

Setting Up
I do some table-top shots and some outside in various locations such as streets, parks, the garden etc.
The key to really good wee men shots is to have a narrative in the shot - a story; something that says something or means something. Not having a narrative will still produce decent shots but they will lack either the impact or interest of shots that tell a story.

How To Shoot Flag Protests (single shot)

My advice would be to have an idea for the narrative before you start to shoot.

Forensic Investigation (single shot)

Shooting
Set up your scene, focus on the central figure(s) and away you go. With macro lenses you get very shallow depth of field so take account of this, or shoot for focus stacking later in post processing.

Focus stacking is what I prefer. This means using one single focus point and taking a number of shots with the focus point set on different parts of the scene.

Choppers (6 shots, focus stacked)

Post Processing

For single shots, there's very little that I do other than cropping and boosting the colour saturation and perhaps adding a slight vignette, all done in Lightroom 5

For focus stacked shots, the process looks like this:

1. Import RAW files into LR5 and crop, adjust etc one shot as needed then sync across all shots
2. Export files as either tiff or jpeg
3. Open Photoshop (CS5, CS6 or CC)
4. Go to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack
5. Use the browse window that pops up to select all of your stacked tiff/jpegs and open them
6. Once all the files have loaded, select them all by control/clicking each one in turn
7. Go to Edit > Auto Align Layers and select "auto"
8. Wait for photoshop to align the layers then Edit > Auto Blend Layers and choose "stack images"

Vatican Makes Surprise U-Turn (12 shots, focus stacked)

Once this has finished, flatten your image
I would make any final adjustments at this stage then sharpen the image by adding a new layer, selecting the high pass filter and setting it to a value of around 10-11 and then using "overlay" as the blend mode.
Flatten the image again, and Bob is (as they say) your uncle.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!

As anyone who has checked out my blog before will know, I shoot for the Belfast Roller Derby team. Thus far I've been relying on shooting using ambient light during bouts, but have also been jealously eyeing up other derby photographers' work (mainly from the USA) and particularly those who shoot using a variety of off-camera lighting set-ups. I recently took the plunge and invested in a couple of Nikon SB-700 speedlights to compliment my existing two older and cheaper flash units and decided it was time to try out these in the derby setting.

I was thankful for the advice I have been given by a number of other more experienced shooters, which set me on roughly the right track. Last night was my first attempt.

The last shot is probably my pick of the bunch since it is the shot where it all came together. I had two slave flashguns shooting at roughly 45 degrees to the track, both of which were being triggered by another flash on the camera in master mode. The off-camera flashes were set to 1/2 power with the on-camera flash set to 1/8 power to provide some fill light. Shutter speed was set to 1/250 at f 4 and ISO sat comfortably at 400. The shots were generally pretty sharp and I was starting to get shots where the skaters are starting to "pop" from the background.

I still have some issues with this type of set-up. It's too static for my liking and seems to only give a fairly narrow coverage in terms of the track - maybe about 20ft. In the past and using my 70-200 f2.8 lens I could cover the whole of one of the straights on the track and part of two corners. I can't move around as much as I'm used to, although there is the possibility of using my second camera body to take candid/portrait shots in between jams. Being more static and relying on flash also meant I couldn't use continuous shooting mode - timing is more of an issue and I shot fewer frames than I would normally do. My lights were almost wiped out on at least one occasion by a wayward skater flying off the track. Don't think this is covered by my household insurance. I also found that my non-nikon flash was less than reliable and didn't fire in around 25% of shots - this would be a concern for me, although I haven't tried using my wireless triggers with it. All in all, I'm pretty happy with what I got

Last Derby Bout of the Year

Sadly, Saturday was the last roller derby bout of the year here in Belfast. It's been almost exactly one year since I first approached the team and asked to come along to take some shots at a bout, purely out of interest. One year on and I've now covered six bouts, done the photography for a video shoot, taken two sets of head shots, taken special effects shots for bout programmes, got pictures published in the local newspapers, came second in the roller derby pub quiz with my kids and generally had absolute shit-loads of fun.

Roller derby has taught me a lot in terms of photography and given me the chance to swap ideas and pick the brains of similarly inclined photographers from all over the world through Flickr and Facebook groups. I've also had the chance to meet and work with a great bunch of ladies who seem to like what I've done and are always very complimentary and kind, even when I mess things up.

Saturday was notable to a couple of reasons. Five minutes into the bout my 32Gb CF card died on me. Just died with no warning and demanded to be formatted in the camera. Thankfully I had spare cards (as always) and was able to shoot the bout, with a loss of about 40-50 shots out of a total of 450. The second remarkable thing was that the team presented me with a thank you/birthday present at the end of the bout - a lens mug (Canon, but it didn't stop me drinking out of it) a cracker bottle of Green Spot Irish Whiskey from the Middleton distillery and my own BRD t-shirt with 2nd Shooter printed on the back. I've been after one of those for ages and am secretly very pleased to have been given one.

I'm looking forward to next year. More bouts at which to improve my skills at shooting and processing action shots. Some ideas for more arty stuff using slow sync/rear curtain flash and lighting. I also want to pitch some ideas for a calendar for this time next year - roller derby meets boudoir style. Bring it on.

My Bag

Photographers seem a wee bit obsessed with the contents of their camera bags. Being stuck in bed with the 'flu today I thought I'd take a rattle through the contents of my own bag of tricks.

Camera
I've just upgraded from the Nikon D90 to the Nikon D800. I loved my D90 having had both the D40 and D80 before it. It was like an old friend and I knew it inside out. The D800 is a beast of a camera, high resolution and full frame. It is amazing in controlled light situations (still life, portraiture, studio work) but also copes admirable with the other things I like to shoot (street photography, sports, night shots/light painting). Big file sizes but amazing performance when shooting in raw. I'm getting to grips with some of the many built-in features such as an intervaluometer, time lapse, HDR and so on. It's going to take years to get to the same level of comfort as I had with the D90.
My back up camera remains a little old reliable D60. Unfortunately it doesn't autofocus with most of the lenses listed below, but I can live with that.

Lenses
My go-to lens is the Nikon 24-70 f2.8. Sharp as a tack, fast and versatile. If I had only one lens, this would be the one.
For sports and street stuff, I often use the Tamron 70-200 f2.8 which is not quite as sharp or fast as the Nikon equivalent but does a pretty good job.
I use a Tamron 10-24 f3.5 for my wide angle stuff such as landscapes
I use two primes, the Nikon 50mm f1.8 and the Nikon 60mm f2.8. Both are lovely lenses for portraits and the Nikon 60mm is a superb little macro lens.
I also use the Lensbaby composer, and have tele/wide lenses for it as well as a set of macro filters.

Tripod
A Vanguard Alto Pro with a Vanguard ball head. Solid, stable and easy to use.

Other Stuff
Two cheap and nasty flashguns, a Nikon SB-28 which is older than me and a Nissin 644i. Both can be set on manual which is why I got them.
YungNuo wireless flash triggers. One of the cheapest wireless trigger sets around but they are simple to use and reliable 99.9% of the time with only the odd mis-fire.
Microfibre towel for wiping camera/lenses in the damp
Lenspen and wet/dry cleaning wipes
Torch for night shooting and light painting
Cards. I have had to invest in bigger and faster cards since getting the D800. Mostly 32Gb/16Gb cards in both CF and SD formats for the dual slots in the D800. Depending on what I'm shooting I have my camera set to use the second card as overflow or as a JPG backup to the RAW files on the primary card slot.
Spare battery. Never leave home without making sure I have a fully charged battery in my bag just in case.