When I tell people I am a fine art photographer I get either more questions, or I get odd looks. The reason is that fine art photography means so many different things to different people. Sadly, some guys use the term to simply cover taking photographs of young scantily clad women. I think that is where some of the odd looks come from. A lot of people think of fashion photography. That can definitely be part of it. Especially if it is related to editorial fashion photography. Editorial work is what you often see in a magazine like Vogue where there is a cool scene that is set up to showcase fashion. Personally I think of fine art photography more like other types of art where you are developing a concept, and then bringing the concept to reality. It might include building a set. Or maybe I will make or commission costuming or special outfits. It might be Steampunk based, or getting something to look more like older classic art images. 

One of the things I have not done much yet, but really want to build on is to incorporate cosplay with fine art photography. I want to get cosplayers and then build sets and scenes that we would put the characters into so that it is almost more like a still out of a movie. I also like the idea of doing this same thing, but with cosplayers that are using body paint instead of costumes for the outfits. Or maybe even a mix of both costumes and body paint. 

I have a new project that I am starting to plan. It is going to be using the concept of cinemagraph but take it to a new level. A cinemagraph is where you take a video clip and then basically use a single frame as the photo. But then you select small areas in the video to show movement. You then save it out as an animated GIF image. Most cinemagraphs are very short time frames. They also usually only select one or two items that move throughout it. I am looking at having it run longer, and have items start and stop. Along with that I am looking at modifying some things in the photo with photoshop. So I might have a clock warp and melt, or some other special effect. So this takes digital photography to a whole new level. I suppose some would argue that it is no longer digital photography. But I would argue it is a melding of several media. So it might be better called mixed media. But the point is I want to push the envelope with what can be done. 

I also want to start playing with wet plate photography. And I am looking at even taking that to a mixed mode type of work. So I might take the plate and do some work with paints maybe in parts of the plate. Then I will selectively coat other parts of the plate for the photograph. Then each photograph becomes totally unique and cannot be duplicated on a large scale. It is more like a painting or sculpture at that point. 

So the point in this post is to say that my idea of fine art photography is to see how I can continue to push the envelope and come up with something that is unique and is my personal art. And in explaining my thoughts I am hoping to push you to think about how you can go beyond in your photography and your work. Make unique photography art that when you hang it on your wall people will be asking you where you found something so unique. Maybe it will be simply in how you stage things. Maybe you will do family portraits where you have awesome outfits and very unique staging and posing for everyone. Say if your family is really into westerns, or Harry Potter, or some other fandom. You can get everyone dressed up as those characters and then put it together in a photo. Think of the memories you create while making the portrait. Although this steampunk image is models, you could easily do the same thing for a family portrait. 

One of the great things about the Sony A6000 is that it has a live view display that changes it's brightness as you change the settings on the camera. One of the frustrating things about the Sony A6000 is that it has a live view display. The reason it can be very frustrating is if you are using external flash and the camera on manual then you cannot see any image on the screen because it will be too dark. The camera does not know how much light the flash will add to the image to get the correct exposure. So it has no idea how to adjust accordingly. So you get a very dark image on the screen (or even completely black). This makes it impossible to frame your photo. 

There is a solution to this though. It is basically to turn off the live view display. It took me a while to find this one. The main reason is that I did not know what the option was called. I kept trying to adjust the monitor brightness. But this did not help at all. It was still dark, just not quite as dark. The live view display setting is under the gear menus in menu 2. You simply select the menu option and then you have the option of having it on or off. Just turn it off and you will be set. Now the camera will display a nice bright image on the screen and in the EVF even when you crank down on the shutter speed and lower the ISO. Now you can use the external flash to your hearts content. This will be the same setting for both if you are using a manual flash on camera, or a trigger on your camera to trigger off camera flash units. Now it will work just like a DSLR. 

Decades ago I shot Canon and Pentax cameras. The Canon was my dad's camera, and the Pentax was what we had at school. There were a number of other film cameras, including a little pinhole camera I made that fitted on a 126 film cartridge with a rubber band and used a bit of masking tape as the "shutter". In recent years though when I got into digital I started with a FujiFilm bridge camera, and then moved to Nikon DSLR cameras. I was a die hard Nikon user for close to a decade. The different cameras have been tried and true friends. I had a number of lenses, and also flash units for my Nikon. 

Recently though I heard the siren song of the mirrorless camera. For about a year I pondered and considered a Sony. Then the Christmas 2016 season Amazon had the Sony A6000 on sale. I decided to get myself a Christmas present and bought one with two lenses. It took no time at all to fall in love. The camera is small and lightweight. Now I can take the camera and both lenses along with extra batteries in a camera bag smaller than my girlfriends purse, and she has a fairly small purse. The camera bag weighs less too! Now I don't look like a weird photo geek when I go to a kid's band concert or sporting event. 

There are many amazing things about the camera. I will only touch on a few that I totally love. First, you can use the LCD panel or the viewfinder, and the camera will auto-switch between the two simply by holding it up to your eye. Basically being a mirrorless camera it is always operating in what Nikon and Canon would call live view mode. My Nikon would have a frustrating delay after pushing the shutter button when operating in live view. The Sony does not suffer from this. Also, as you adjust the aperture, shutter, or ISO you will see the change in exposure on the LCD panel or in the viewfinder in real time. You will see it getting brighter or darker. This is an incredible advantage for people new to photography and trying to learn manual mode. And there is an interesting zebra mode where anything that is pure white shows stripes to warn you ahead of time when composing the photo that the image might be too bright. The sensitivity of zebra mode is adjustable too. 

The back of the camera is laid out very well, and the controls make sense. One of the things that I have not played with much yet is that the manual is actually loaded on the camera. You just have to press the C2 button to access it. This is a brilliant addition to the camera. The menus are reminiscent of the menuing system on a Canon, so that took me a bit to get used to being a Nikon user. The Fn button brings up a mini menu of the most frequently needed features to set. The only control that could use a little work is the button to start and stop video. It is on the right side, is easily accidentally pushed, and difficult to find when you want to find it. The shutter button has a very nice feel, and is very responsive. One frustrating thing is that the mode dial will bring up a screen that shows you what you just set it too and what that mode does that you then need to click OK on to get rid of. For a new person this is nice, but I need to see if I can turn that off for myself. 

The camera does have a pop-up flash. But I have not really used it other than one time to see that it really did flash. One odd thing with flash is that the hot shoe is standard and yet not standard. In their infinite wisdom, and desire for sleek looks, Sony made the decision to paint the sides of the hot shoe black. Most flash units use the metal on the side of the hot shoe as an electrical connection. So you either need to scrape off the paint, use a hot shoe adapter, or get a Sony compatible flash for the hot show. I got an adapter for $15 and it works well. The adapter is able to get to the ground point at the front of the shoe that the Sony flashes use. Of course if you use Sony compatible flash units this won't be an issue at all. 

That brings up the issue of components for the camera. Mirrorless cameras are fairly new to the market, and don't have the market share of the DSLR cameras from Canon and Nikon... yet. So the third party options are not nearly as wide as for the DSLRs. But that is changing and will even more over time as mirrorless becomes a more major market player. So there are lenses and flash units for the Sony, but they are somewhat limited, and at this point still a bit pricey. IMHO though the mirrorless is the wave of the future, and Sony is the biggest player. 

So along with small and lightweight, there are two other features of the camera that are amazing. The first is the high ISO abilities of the camera. It has a top ISO of 25,600. There are cameras that will do even better than that at the top end. But that is a very heady level compared to even the recent past for a lot of cameras. More importantly you can use much higher ISO settings to be able to get natural light photos and get the shutter speeds you need to be able to hand hold the camera. And they look amazingly good. This photo of the bass drum was taken at ISO 10,000 at f/6.3 and 1/160th of a second. For pixel peepers sure you will see some digital noise. But this level of quality at even high ISO lets you get photos that in the past were impossible. Now when you are at the school event and they say no flash photography you can smile knowing you can still get fantastic shots. And besides, when you are in an auditorium or school gym the flash won't help anyway. It is only good for like 15 to 20 feet at the most, and will annoy the others sitting near you. And you can shoot video at the same incredible high ISO levels. 

That brings me to the other amazing feature, the video. Not that many years ago everyone had camcorders to shoot video. Now pretty much no one uses them. People either use their phone, a tablet, or their camera. The phone and tablet are very annoying at the kid's school play with that big screen brightly distracting the audience. If you have used a DSLR you know that the focus will be hinky, especially when people are moving or you shift from one subject to another. That is called follow focus. The Sony has amazing follow focus. I won't say it is as good as a dedicated camcorder, but it is pretty darn close. For concerts and such I would recommend a monopod or tripod to help stabilize the camera. But the video is amazing. And you are shooting in full HD video. You can even shoot at 60 frames per second to be able to later do slow motion with it. One suggestion. Shoot in shutter priority mode of video and set your shutter to 1/50th of a second for 24 frames per second and 1/125 for 60 frames per second for the best looking video. 

No camera is perfect, and the Sony has it's little frustrations. But it is so nice to get a camera that is so much smaller and lighter weight than a DSLR. And the mirrorless gives some amazing features, only a few that I have touched on, compared to the DSLR. We did not even talk about things like focus peeking, or other cool features. And I would say this is hands down the best camera for a new user wanting to get serious about photography to use. 

So the last post was all about high ISO. With high ISO you can capture great photos in less than ideal lighting conditions. Using high ISO is especially useful with situations like sports photography or event photography where setting up external lighting is not really an option. But when you are working at a slower pace and have the option of taking the time to set up lights you can really take your photography to new levels. The word photography literally means drawing with light (photo = light and graphy = making or drawing an image). So the master photographer will learn to master light. This does not always mean using external flashes (a future post will talk about natural light photography), but flashes are a powerhouse tool for a photographer. 

There are two basic types of strobe flash that the beginner can purchase rather inexpensively and use. One is the speedlight style flash. These are always battery powered, small, and very portable. They typically are the less expensive option too. They have two parts, the actual strobe head (which usually can tilt and swivel) and the control and power portion below. There will be a hot shoe on the bottom that will allow the flash to be attached directly to the top of the camera. You can also use the speedlight off camera. Not all speedlights are the same. We will touch on some of the differences here, but it will not be an exhaustive list. The speedlight is very effective, but they are the lower power option in strobe lighting. The speedlights will fall into two basic groups for max power levels. There are smaller lower power units that are pretty close to each other, and then upper end power that are all pretty close to each other. Obviously the more powerful lights will be a bit more expensive. Prices range from well under a hundred dollars to around five hundred dollars top end. 

The biggest difference in speedlights is if they are fully manual, or if they support TTL. Using a fully manual speedlight means that you will need to determine and set the power of the speedlight. You can do this either with a light meter, or by taking a sample photo, then chimp the image on the back of the camera looking at the histogram to adjust the power accordingly. Obviously if you are shooting film then you have to use a light meter. The TTL light can shoot manual. It can also shoot in a more automated way called TTL. TTL means through the lens and is for through the lens metering. With TTL the camera instructs the flash to send out a pre-flash, then the camera calculates what the optimal flash power will be and tells the flash what to use. The nice thing with TTL is it takes most of the guess work out of flash photography. You still have to chimp some because sometimes the camera gets it a little off. Or you might want to adjust the balance between ambient light and flash light some. That is where flash exposure compensation comes into play. But it works well. You can also use TTL with shutter priority and let the camera set the aperture for you too. 

The other main style of strobe lighting is the monolight. These are typically AC powered instead of battery powered, however you can get battery packs with an AC inverter to be able to use them where there is no AC power. The flash units are more expensive than the speedlight style. They also are more powerful too though. A monolight can go from a few hundred dollars to well over a thousand dollars each for lights. The biggest benefit with a monolight is the AC power and not needing to worry about batteries. But they have some other huge advantages though. They typically have a faster recycle time between flashes. This means from the time the flash fires till the time the strobe is recharged and ready to trigger again is much shorter. They also have a modeling light. The modeling light lets you see what the light is going to look like on the subject before you take a picture. It is a low-ish wattage bulb, usually between 60 and 100 watts. So it is easier to visualize the look you will get. 

Another advantage of the monolight is they are more powerful. Even at the low end you often are looking at one to two stops of light more than a speedlight. This can be remedied by using multiple speedlights at each spot, and there are special light mounts that will hold more than one speedlight. ​Typically these will handle anywhere from 2 to 4 lights. Consider this. Each time we get one more stop of light we are doubling the amount of light. So if we go from one to two speedlights we get one stop more of light. But to get two full stops of light more we need to double from one to two, and then double again from two to four lights. So a four light bracket will give us two stops more light, or about the same as a monolight. This still might be worth it even though you are using multiple lights. If your monolight costs $400 and each speedlight is $70 then you are still spending less on the speedlights, and you are getting portability and the ability to be away from an AC power source. But you will be significantly restricted on what light modifiers you can use with the multiple light setup. 

Another big difference between monolights and speedlights is that there are almost no monolights that do TTL. So you are limited to manual power setting only with the monolights. There are a couple of exceptions, but as a rule this is the case. It is not overly difficult to learn to shoot manual, and many photographers prefer to shoot manual lights instead of TTL. But it is something to consider. 

One final thing to consider in this intro to off camera lighting is how to get the lights to fire. There are basically three ways to do this. The first is to use optical triggering. This is where you have one light on the camera, obviously a speedlight. And that light will trigger the other lights when they see it flash. This will work to trigger both speedlights and monolights off camera. But there are some significant limitations to this. The second is to use a sync cord, also known as a PC cord (not to be confused with a computer cable). This works but is cumbersome, and if you have more than one off camera flash then the others are typically triggered optically from the first. 

By far the best option is to use a wireless trigger. What you have with this is you have a radio transmitter, or transceiver, that goes into the hot shoe of the camera. Then you have radio receiver on one or more of the flashes. Again, you can optically trigger some if you want. Then when the camera shutter is pressed the wireless transmitter will send a signal to the receivers and tell the flashes to go off. The wireless triggers are much more reliable than optically triggering, and will work for great distances. You also don't have to have the line of sight between flash units you need with optically triggering the flashes. 

If you are using manual flash units, either speedlights or monolights, then you can get a very basic wireless trigger set up. These are very inexpensive. Typically to connect to a monolight you use a PC  cable from the trigger to the sync port on the light. With the speedlight the wireless receiver will have a hot shoe that the speedlight can slide into. 

If you are using TTL lights then you will need to make sure you get a wireless triggering system that understands the TTL conversation. At this point you need to be careful that you get one that matches your camera type. So you will need to get one that works with Canon, or Nikon, or Sony. The reason is that each of these camera manufacturers use a different protocol for the conversation between the flash and the camera. Also, if your flash supports high speed sync and you want to use that feature then make sure your wireless trigger supports the feature also. This is where picking equipment will get a little complicated. Make sure to ask questions while you are making your purchase. A good camera store or retailer will be able to give you good solid advice on this though. 

There is a lot more to talk about with off camera flash. But this will get you started with understanding the basic equipment. It seems scary, and it is a huge step forward in your photography. One suggestion is to start with a single off camera flash. Don't try to get crazy and start with a multiple light set up. Learn and master a single light. Then add more to the mix. You can do amazing things with just one light. 

I am on a number of different photography forums and regularly answer questions. A lot of people's questions surround a common theme that they get blurry photos and don't know how to fix that. After gathering more information it is usually because their shutter speed is too low and they are getting blur from either camera movement or the subject moved. This is very common when shooting indoors. Or maybe they are trying to shoot a Friday night football game. The common answer I hear a lot from others posting is to immediately go with a very fast lens and shoot down at f/1.8 to f/2 aperture. This is one possible solution. However, this also means that the depth of field is going to get more shallow. That can be a real problem at times. Several years ago that was just about the only solid solution. However in the last few years camera manufacturers have been able to really push the boundaries of the higher end of image sensor sensitivity, or more commonly named high ISO. When I first started with digital SLR cameras I had a Nikon D80. It looked really good at ISO 100 through about ISO 400. At ISO 800 it was starting to get pretty noisy. And beyond that it was basically unusable. If memory serves me right it actually topped out at ISO 1600. Compared to film it was pretty good though since most film was ISO 100 to 400. There are a few faster film stocks out there, but they have quite a bit of grain though.

My next camera was a D5100. This camera topped out at ISO 25600. I found that it looked really good even at ISO 6400. Now I am sure some people reading this are feeling their blood pressure rise and heart beating faster. There are some that pixel peep who cannot handle even a couple spots of digital noise when they look really close at the image. Or they will read DXOMarks and quote statistics. I am much more pragmatic about photography though. I know that I cannot get perfect in all situations. And often it is better to get the shot even with a bit of noise than walk away with nothing.  This is especially true when shooting things like sports. When you are trying to shoot that Friday night football game then you need the shutter speed to get the shot. To fully stop action with people running you need to be at least 1/500th of a second or faster. I will shoot at roughly 1/320th of a second because I like the organic feel of a slight bit of motion blur to bring the image alive. 

A high school gym would be another example of sports photography where you would need the higher ISO to get the shot. Gyms seem really bright until you actually try to do some photography of a basketball game. I know some people will put on their flash. But there are a couple problems with this. First, the effective range of the flash will be roughly 15 feet to 20 feet. Second, you have the whole inverse square law thing going on of how fast the power of light falls off. Third, you can actually freak out the players and affect the game if you are popping flash on the sidelines. But if you can shoot a higher ISO then you are golden. 

In recent years cameras have started to include a feature called auto ISO. When I first saw it I felt it was one of the dumbest features on a camera. On a lot of cameras I am still not a fan of the feature. However, some have put in a really good implementation. Nikon is one of those. On the Nikon you can set the auto ISO so that it will start with the ISO you initially set (say 100), and you set the slowest shutter speed you want to use if possible and the maximum ISO you are comfortable with. Then say your shooting in aperture priority and set your aperture to f/3.5, your maximum aperture is 6400, and the lowest shutter speed is 1/100th of a second. The camera will set the shutter speed to what it needs for a good exposure. If it gets down the 1/100th of a second at f/3.5 and ISO 100 then it will start to increase the ISO until it hits ISO 6400. At that point it will lower the shutter speed more. So you are giving the camera information on your desired minimum shutter speed and maximum ISO. It will absolutely live by the highest ISO when it gets there and then lower shutter speed only after it hits that ceiling. 

I have made some 16 by 20 prints of the high ISO images like what is in this article and they look even more stunning in print than they do on the computer screen. If you have never gotten a large sized print of any of your work I highly encourage you to do so. There is something so amazing about how it will look in print!

This is a really good feature when you are shooting in a fast moving environment with quickly changing lighting. The football field in our town is notoriously unevenly lit. It changes by as much as three full stops from center field and the end zone. So if you have a fast breaking play you can easily be off on exposure if you are trying to set it manually. So as much as I like the control of shooting in manual, there are times that the camera is just much faster and more capable. And with auto ISO it can work even better for me. 

Obviously there is nothing better than hands on use of the camera. However, it is nice to do a bit of research at the beginning on line to see what is out there. One of the best tools I have found on line is the Studio Shot Comparison on DPReview to take an initial look. With this tool you can pick up to 4 different camera models and they will show side by side close ups from a larger test image. You can set the ISO and also select what part of the larger image is being zoomed in on. Keep in mind that you are doing some serious pixel peeping and you will see noise. But you can look to see how much difference there is between a Nikon D7100, a Canon Rebel T5, a Sony A6300, and a Nikon D610 for example. And you can work your way up through the different ISO levels too. 

Once you have it narrowed down to two or three cameras then go to a camera store with a memory card in hand and shoot some photos. Or if you have friends that have the cameras you are considering get together with them and get some sample shots. Shoot at ISO 100 and 200 and 400 right up to the top of what the camera will do. Another option is go rent each of the cameras for a week. Run them through the paces. Shoot at all different ISOs and in all the different situations you regularly shoot in. 

Don't forget to consider other features of the cameras too. For example, if you are doing a lot of sports photography and want fast frame rate along with the high ISO then you would very well maybe lean to the Nikon D500 with 10 fps, a buffer of 200 raw images, and max ISO of 1,640,000 (yes I typed that in right). If you don't need fast frame rate maybe the Nikon D7200 will do just fine. Also, if you are going to use auto ISO how does the camera implement the feature? Is it going to work how you will like? So consider all your needs. 

So one of the things I always teach my students in my classes is they need to take their camera, put it on a tripod, and shoot a scene through the ISO range. Go in full stop increments. So ISO 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, etc. Notice you just double the number each time for a full stop change. Use a tripod so you get the exact same image each time. This is a good one to do on aperture priority mode and set to say f/8 so you get good depth of field and a really clear image. Typically somewhere around f/8 to f/11 is the sweet spot in most lenses for the most crystal clear image with the least amount of distortion. By the way I tell students to do the same thing walking through aperture settings to watch the depth of field using different focal lengths, and to use different focal lengths on the same image moving the camera back so you can see the effects of the changes in angle of view. 

The other thing to remember is that there is some really good noise reduction software to help in post processing. The noise reduction feature native to Lightroom is actually pretty darn good. But there are some other third party products you could consider too. But one of the things that will happen when you apply noise reduction is the image will always become at least a little less sharp in the process. That is not a bad thing per se. And I have even used noise reduction as a skin smoothing technique in the past.