If you’re really into photography, this might be the last blog entry you ever voluntarily read with my name on it.
I’ve always been into taking pictures. When I was in junior high I took classes at Westark, our local community college, about darkroom processes. I built several pinhole cameras. And I was a lab technician with T.P. Davis Studios. All that happened before I entered high school.
Since the beginning I’ve always eschewed fancy equipment. At first that was because I couldn’t afford anything but basic, used gear. My first camera was my dad’s Vietnam-era Yashika. The first SLR I bought was a Pentax K1000, a completely manual and bulletproof camera.
I haven’t progressed much past that. I still shoot in full manual. I dislike using auto-anything – auto-focus, auto-exposure. Hell, I didn’t even want auto film advance. It’s not because I don’t like technology; this stuff just gets in my way and can break in the field. It’s the same way I feel about dovetail jigs for routers. I have a saw, so I don’t need that headache.
My camera skills have always helped me get jobs as a writer. So I’ve pretty much shot hundreds (sometimes thousands) of frames a month since I was 13. But my photography skills are admittedly down-and-dirty. I’m not trying to make art. I’m trying to convey information as I see it.
With that (lengthy, sorry) preamble, here’s the point: You don’t need fancy equipment, lights or training to make book-quality photos. In fact, the expensive gear will absolutely get in the way of learning to shoot good photos.
Until recently, I shot every frame with the cheapest Canon Rebel I could get. My lights were a cheap compact fluorescent system (less than $100). When we work with authors, I still recommend a entry-level Canon Rebel and a cheap LED lighting system (still less than $100). Plus a used high-quality tripod. I have a Bogen that I bought used 20 years ago. I don’t know how old it is, but it is rock-solid. Honestly, you can get everything you need to be a book author for less than $700. Less if you buy a used camera.
Once you get the gear, stop reading about gear. Just work with what you have and don’t think about new gear. Don’t listen to podcasts about gear. If you think tool junkies are a problem in woodworking, just spend five minutes in any photography forum.
Guidelines for Good Photos
When I train people to take workshop photos, here are the principles I emphasize.
- Lighting. Color temperature is important. Don’t mix a bunch of different lighting sources – lamps, daylight, overhead lights and your shop lights. That will confuse your camera. I recommend two different kinds of lights at most. I use the daylight from the windows and my LED lights. All other lights are turned off.
- Lighting, part two. Keep it simple. I use two artificial lighting sources for workshop photos: a keylight and a backlight. Backlighting your subject (even if the subject is an electric drill) improves almost every photo (try it and you can convince yourself). The keylight is used to illuminate and isolate the subject. Move the keylight to produce highlights (like bouncing a billiard ball from the light, to the subject and into the lens). The above paragraph could be expanded to be a book. Move your lights and observe the results.
- Lighting, part three. Sometimes removing a light from the setup is the answer. The more light sources you are juggling, the more difficult it is to control the result.
- Shutter speed and f-stop. Learn the relationship between shutter speed and your aperture (the f-stop). The aperture controls how much of the frame is in focus (called the “depth of field”). Because you are shooting with a tripod, choose an aperture that shows exactly what you want with the background blurry. You can use any shutter speed – even slow ones – because the tripod holds the camera steady. I regularly use shutter speeds that are 1/2 second and slower. You just have to hold still. Use the timer on the camera (or a remote shutter release) to prevent camera shake.
- Set your camera to shoot RAW files. These are easier to manipulate in Photoshop and don’t degrade like jpegs do.
- Composition. Avoid taking photos that are like construction drawings: straight-on elevation views, for example. The eye likes diagonal lines. If you can compose objects in the frame, you can use them to guide the viewer to what is important. A chisel can guide the eye to a joint, for example. This takes some patience and relates to the next principle.
- Composition, part two. Do your cropping in the frame. Don’t assume you can “zoom in” on an image in Photoshop and get good results. That said, I crop tight and then back up just a little to give myself a little background to play with.
- Never stop with one image. After you take a photo, force yourself to move the camera, move the objects in the frame (or both) and try another setup. I almost never use my first frame. It’s usually my second or third (at least). When shooting a finished piece, I might do 10 setups.
When I shoot photos for a book, I record every process at the bench, even if I don’t think it will make it in the book. When I move images from my camera to my computer, I also delete anything that is unpublishable (to save disk space) and give my photos meaningful file names that reflect what is going on in the image.
These actions have saved my butter many times in the last 24 years. Recording all the woodworking processes helps me remember construction details while I’m writing the text for an article or book. And having meaningful file names makes it easy to find the photos years later when I might need them for another book, magazine article or blog entry.
— Christopher Schwarz
Note: This is the first of several posts on photography, though they aren’t all going to run one after the other. The next post on photography (in September) will show some lighting setups and what happens in the frame.
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
Ah, yes, the Pentax K1000. I still have one, it’s more of a shrine now, since it is a film camera, but it is the gold standard of photography. Completely manual; the photographer is responsible for the picture, and can’t blame the tool!
What a drag that someone forgot to return the camera and light. It wasn’t me, fellow readers!
It was probably the author of The Lost Birdhouse Book
what is the tool in the first photo called.
It’s a centerfinder. Sometimes called a center gauge or a center square. Highland sells a modern one:
https://www.highlandwoodworking.com/igaging-premium-center-gauge.aspx
Maybe a new book soon .. “The Anarchist Photographer?” Maybe? Hopefully?
I use an old fashioned 12 megapixel nikon d50 w/ a 25 year old manual nikkor 55mm AIS lens–for almost everything- best cheap setup ever! used bodies sell for less than a hundred bucks and a good used lens (from a reputable dealer not an individual on ebay!) goes for 200 bucks –
I learned about the legendary lens at online camera forums, incidentally. It stays on the camera- while my dozen other wannabe lens collect dust in the cabinet.
I am enjoying the recent flurry of activity on your blog by the way…
Another excellent option is a mirrorless body. For reasons of optics that are outside the scope of a woodworking blog, you can adapt basically any SLR lens onto them for a very low cost. This means you can make a lens collection of your Nikkor, some Canons, a couple of Takumars, and a Zuiko (and you’d have way more lenses than you’d need, but you could). If you’re shooting manual anyway, you lose nothing in functionality and you save a boatload of money over buying new.
If you already have a couple of decent lenses, it’s a great option. I got a used 50mm macro for $80 shipped. New they seem to start at half a grand for full frame.
Thanks Chris. This is one of your most useful blog posts, ever. I look forward to more.
I second this. I want to read more about lighting set-ups in September. Sometimes I blunder into a decent one pretty quickly, other times it’s a struggle.
Great info Thanks
Thank you Chris – nearly always the voice of reason. Like the tool mongers, photography nuts convince newbies of all the tools they need especially ones we don’t have. Years ago I bought my wife a Sony point and shoot, then later a Cannon – oddly, we pick-up the point and shoot more often, because the pictures are so good. I used to feel guilty until someone like you said “Use what works, don’t listen to someone who is supposedly ‘helping’ you” – BTW – LOVE the stoop tile work at LAP!
Perfect!
What I know of photography, I learned as the son of a professional photographer who kept a family of 6 well fed long before digits entered the picture(s). If he were still around, I’m sure he too would rate your advice “Perfect!”
I am always trying to take better pictures. I know composition and lighting is high on my weak points…oh yeah, that is pretty much photography in a nutshell…I can dream about being able to take better pictures. I am very much looking forward for more advice from you in this arena.
I admire that you still shoot in fully manual mode. I started using aperture-priority when I got my first DSLR for some reason (maybe because I could never remember where the shutter speed adjustment was in manual mode, but I could always remember how to tweak the exposure correction). But yeah, you just can’t give up control of the f-stop.
Again, though, you’re dead-on with the tripod. It’s probably the most important piece of photographic equipment that I have. And never a care about obsolescence.
I laughed when I read that in the article. Just did a search on the local Craigslist, lots of photo gear, zero used Bogan tripods. I have two I use for birding scopes, took years of looking to find good used. They’ll pry them out of my cold dead hands.
I had a K1000 limited addition (brown body) for years. loved that camera and a few extra lens and filters and lets not forget the different flashes. All I use anymore is the cameras on my phone for posting my work on FB along with my go live post to show what I am working on and the steps, techniques used.
That was gold! Thank you. Next post in September? Sigh…
Thanks Chris, keep it coming. Advice specific to this subject is very rare and most appreciated
I don’t know if there is an answer to this, but when I’ve photographed every step of the process at the bench, it takes almost twice as long to complete a project. It’s super valuable, for marketing, teaching and personal documentation, but in this last year I took a break from doing it and enjoyed being in the moment, in the flow, and not taking so many. Any tips on how to keep working smoothly while photographing? Just practice?
It slows me down to photograph things. But I have embraced that as a plus. It makes me think and take a pause. And has saved my butt a couple of times.
That’s fair. You always have a good balance between getting things done efficiently and effectively, but also the bigger picture. You’re making furniture for commissions, but also to publish, teach and illustrate with, so it’s no “loss of time”, and as you said, is valuable in it of itself. Perhaps the bug in my ear is that I think my time documenting isn’t as valuable as chopping, and that’s something I need to perhaps adjust my attitude on.
Thanks!
If you offend any photographers with this content they are no doubt narcissistic prima-donnas and you don’t need that drama in your life.
Having worked as a photographer for a few years in the past, your list of guidelines for good photos is excellent. Taking good pictures of things on a workbench in a shop setting is probably one of the most difficult subject matter to render and you do it extremely well. That’s art.
So right about the depth of the camera gear rabbit hole.
I will add one more point on composition that I think causes many frustrations and poor photos, even when you’ve been doing it a long time. Watch for distracting garbage in the background. So many times, I’m sure I’ve gotten the shot and moved on only to be confronted by some obnoxious thing in the frame that I could have moved.
Agree. Those usually disappear in my photos in the second or third setups.
I loved the Pentax K1000. Especially about this time of year and mid-January. When all the Photo-Journalism, Journalism, and Art students would flood the camera department of JC Penney in Carbahndelay to get a fully manual SLR for their classes. The Canon A-1 / AE-1, Minolta X-700 / X-7000 and the Olympus whatever were strictly forbidden. Some of the easiest sales ever. We offered two competitors, the Minolta X-570 for slightly more $$ and some cheaper brand (Contex, or Kotex…???).
I still have my Minolta X-700, but I need to buy another one to cannibalize some parts before I can start taking more analog photos with it.
I “upgraded” to a Minolta x-700 in high school. Then someone broke into my car and stole it. So I happily went back to the K1000.
Chris, not germane to this thread but my wife pointed out a neat primitave Irish chair on a catalog site. theirishstore.com look up the aran coat for your dog.
Good advice. I am a retired photojournalist and agree fully with your “keep it simple” approach. Looking forward to your take on lighting. Your limiting the light sources-particularly the color temperatures-is excellent practice. However, shooting raw format may introduce unnecessary complications and expense for most—particularly with the recent improvements in camera firmware even in inexpensive digital cameras. If you use good lighting you eliminate much of the advantage of raw shooting.
Could you mention some cheap LED light sets? Is Neewer any good? When I looked up ARRI I was surprised by the expense.
All the low-end ones are about the same. The better ones allow you to change the color temperature.
In 2012, for Hurricane Sandy, the cover of Time had a photo taken by a professional photojournalist with an iPhone. He fully switched to it. The big issue was getting elbowed out by other press members because they didn’t think he was press because of his equipmet
Hi Tom,
I consider the device to be an iCamera with a phone as a bonus. I use my phone for a lot of photography for social media and snapshots. But when I am trying to get what is inside my head into a book, I like the control of a SLR.
I’m very curious about how you archive your photos. Before digital, slides could be made & it was easy to keep them i good condition for many decades. With digital, anything on magnetic media gets erased by the earth’s magnetic field after 10-20 years. Burned CDs & DVDs have dyes that vary in longevity. Hard drives really are not designed to keep data long term when powered off.
We use Dropbox. So they are stored on redundant cloud servers.
In fact we keep everything related to the business on Dropbox (we also have a second cloud service because we are super paranoid). That way when we replace a computer here, we can sign into Dropbox and the whole business is there.
The other advantage to Dropbox is it archives previous versions, so we can rewind a file if things get super messed up. And re can restore files that have been accidentally deleted.
Is it absolutely imperative to have a professional camera to take photos for blog articles and books or could you use your phone with good lighting and some photoshop?
Phone cameras have gotten really good, especially the ones with multiple lenses that allow you to control depth of field after the fact. And they have plenty of resolution for print publishing. So yeah, you can use a camera phone.
Does anyone have any basics-of-photography book recommendations, as someone who appreciates LAP books?