On Location Photography

Lesson 1: What Is In The Bag?
Published: July 2008 with Rick Sammon

Duration: 58 minutes

About Course

In this video series photographer Rick Sammon goes through some location shoots around the Tampa Bay area.

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One of the cool things about Kelby training is that you learn the secrets of the pros, you get to go behind the scenes, so right now I'm going to show you one of my secrets, I'm going to show you the gear that I use when I go on location, you ready check this out, well of course I'm only kidding but in seriousness, I do take one of this cameras with me, because I want to take the fun shots, never leave home without one of this, okay, let's get serious wow, pretty cool don't you think? But first of all I don't drive around with my gear spread around like this, I just on this so that we can get to the next to the next location, so I could show you this stuff so we can get to the location and start shooting, so as far as gear goes you see me wearing this vest, I'm never leave home without a vest, with a lot of pockets in it, because I can put my batteries in there, I can put my memory cards in there, I can put my memory cards in there, I can put my filters in there, also the vest becomes your third carrier very important, never leave home without a vest. You also see I have this like Safari type clothes on, well this clothes will also have big pockets for extra accessories and if you're looking for pants like this and shirts like this, make sure they have zippers or velcro straps here so that you can lock in your passports and your wallet. Ok let's get going with the gear. Over here I have my tripod. Now I see a lot of people on location walking around with the camera and the tripod. How can you possibly shoot? Well what I've done is, I've taken an old camera strap. Check this out. So it can drape the this over my shoulder, hold my camera, and shoot. Very simple, but it's a totally cool technique. Also you want to wear a good hat, not only to save your skin from the sun. You want to wear suntan lotion also, but by doing that you can see more clearly into the viewfinder a simple tip but I think a good one. Alright, let's talk about cameras. I travel with two digital SLR cameras on one I have a 17- 40 mm lens and that's my wide angle zoom so I have that on one camera body and on my other one I have a telephoto zoom here actually is a short telephoto to a medium telephoto a 100 actually it's a 70- 200 mm zoom, so the two cameras bodies I can just pop up in the bag and I'm ready to shoot in most situations except for wildlife photography. So for wildlife photography what I do, is I have a 100-400 mm image stabilization lens and this helps to me get really close to the subject over here actually where is it? Moved over here some how rather I have an 1.4 X [xx] converter traditionally 1.4 X teleconverters are sharper than two X teleconverters so the teleconverters goes on actually fits between the camera and the lens and it extends the range of the zoom so I use the 1.4 X teleconverter so it extends the range of the zoom and actually gets me a lot closer to the subject one of my favorite lenses if I'm just going to take one body, one zoom it's this lens it's a 24 mm to 105 mm image stabilization lens from Canon. With that lens on my full frame image censor camera, the Canon 1DS Mark III. By the way, I can do people shots, I could do the environmental portrait, I could do the head and shoulder portrait, I could do landscapes with that, I could do city scapes, I could do a lot of different types of pictures. So, let me put that in here. Never leave home without a flash. You want to use a flash for what's called daylight fill-in flash photography, and I talk a lot more about that in my class Exploring Digital Photography here on Kelby Training. Let me put this back, and by the way, I hardly ever, hardly ever, mount the place directly on the camera. I use what's called a wireless transmitter. So, this fits in the two like this and the you can turn this on to set the right channel and hold my flash like this and by the way this reminded me you want to get a flash with a swivel head so you can bounce off the light of the sealing for a softer light or bounce it off a wall I can definitely do one hand shooting like this remember take the darn flash off the camera one of my favorite tips put this back, got to be well organized, as you can see here. Here's another cool accessory, this is called the Storm Jacket, I told you about this Jacket actually it's a vest/ jacket. It has zip off sleeves so when I'm working in cool like conditions, I can use it. But what the storm jacket does, it protects the camera from guess what, storms. And these come in different sizes this fits beautifully over my camera, and my 24 to 105 millimeter image stablelisation lens but they come in bigger sizes when you want to use a telephoto lens, over here I have my polarizing filter and a polarizing filter is really only effective when the sun is off to your right, or off to your left. When you're shooting into the sun, guess what? It's not effective at all, so, I never really leave home without a polarizing filter which, by the way, can darken the blue sky, can whiten white clouds, can reduce reflections on water, and an atmospheric case. So, your pictures can actually look sharper, when you use a polarizing filter. I'm going to pack this back a lot neater don't worry, we are not going to drive around again with this stuff. On my flash, I have this little thing here. It's called the Micro Apollo Light, try to say that three time fast when you're on camera. Micro Apollo Light Modifier, and this fits over the flash, and it spreads the light, it diffuses the light as you'll hear me talk about in my other classes here, my number one goal when I'm taking a flash picture is not to have the picture look like a flash picture, part of that is balancing the available light to the flashlight, another part is diffusing the light. So, this is really important pack in extra batteries especially when you go to places like Kenya and Tanzania, all these places I go. You want to have extra batteries, if you're going to be shooting at night, you want to take a flashlight and as you hear me talk about a lot of times in a lot of my seminars got to have back ups, take a back up flashlight, take one with a little beam on it, and take one like this that will illuminate a larger area, and you could stand it up like this. Speaking of flashlights, I'll give you another tip, have a lot of fun with doing what's called painting with light, when you paint with light what you do is you put your camera on a tripod, leave the shutter open for maybe 30 seconds, 60 seconds, turn the light on and paint the subject with light at night, you get some really fun photographs. OK. Got a few more things to show you here, this is not the most expensive, the most sophisticated lens on the planet. It's a Canon 28-105 mm zoom lens, I think it sells for about 220 bucks. The thing is, it's a back up lens, you have to take back up. So if something happens to one of my proffessional lenses I have a back up. OK, let me put this over here couple of more accessories I never leave home without, a diffuser. A diffuser softens the light, if you're into people photography you really need to diffuse it. You hold the diffuser between the sun and the subject, you get a nice soft quality of light and another cool thing about the diffuser that they don't advertise, if at the end of the day when you're really tired, you could use some white freebies[sp?]. Same thing with the reflector, a reflector can balance light into the subject, now if the subject is here, the sunlight there you want to hold this into the opposite direction of the sun. bounces the light onto the subject. You could use this indoors too to fill in some of the shadows. Traditionally they come with a silver side, a gold side and in different sizes and of course have some fun playing Frisbee. Back here I have some of my specialty lenses, if I'm doing close up photograph like when I was doing the close up photography for my book flying flowers, hey Jason how is that for a blat-en plug for one of my books. Ooh he is laughing he likes this one I have a 100mm macro lens, and a 50mm macro lens. With the 100mm macro lenses does, it lets me shoot at a greater subject to camera distance, but for most of the pictures in that book by the way, I use the 50mm macro lenses are less expensive, then long longer macro lenses going to put this over here, when I'm using a macro lense, what I do is is a ring light. And what happens with the ring light, is the ring light fits over the lens and this fits in the hot shoe. So what's going on here is that, when you fire the shutter, these lights of rings, lights of rings, rings of light. Who knows these two flash tubes, which is what they're technically called fire so you can get beautiful shadowless lighting. Also you can turn off one of the tubes, so you can get side lighting or top laden. If you're into micro photography you definitely want to use one of these, and my list lenses, list couple of the things I want to show you, I have a 40 mm full frame fish-eye and I have a 50 mm fish-eye. When you use a 50 mm fish-eye lens, on a full frame image sensor camera and tilt it down, you're going to get that curvature of the horizon line. I used that in Antarctica, you'll see the shot in one of my presentations here on Kelby. On Kelby training. What the 40mm lens is, this is called a rectilinear lens. As you can see it's a little bigger, it's a little more expensive. What this lens do is they let you work in really tight areas, but what the 14mm lens does, it doesn't give you that distortion. Well listen, I'm going to pack up. I think I showed just about everything? Yap that's it. I'll catch it at the location.

Rick Sammon

Canon Explorer of Light and award-winning photographer Rick Sammon loves his day job. A tireless, prolific and inspirational image-maker, Rick, called by some “The Godfather of Photography,” is one of the most active photographers on the planet – dividing his time between creating images, giving seminars, developing on-line classes for KelbyOne, leading photo workshops, and making personal appearances. Rick’s enthusiasm for digital imaging is contagious. He is a man on a mission – a mission to make digital photography fun, creative, exciting and rewarding for others. Rick’s latest (and 36th) book is Creative Visualization for Photographers. With nearly 40 years of experience, this self-taught photographer has many accomplishments – and many more anticipated for the road ahead. As Rick suggests, “When you are through changing, you are through.” See www.ricksammon.com for more information. Rick can be contacted at mailto:ricksammon@me.com