Hi this is Joe McNally for Adorama TV and in this segment we're going to talk about
scale and how to show how big or how small
something is. Adorama TV presents
Photo on The Go with Joe McNally where you’ll go behind the scenes to see how great
photos are made.
So scale is harder to indicate that you might
think about. I had an assignment for Sports Illustrated many years ago
to show the biggest guys in the NFL. The offensive line men.
I was really kinda stumped for a while, like how do you do that? How do you show
how big someone is? Reference them against something or
if you just show, especially with a wide angle lens.
You know how can you really sort out the exact size of something, cause a wide
angle lens get the whole world
in focus you know. It encompasses a wide field of frame and it throws things
away and it distorts things.
So behind me is that kind of an average tourist picture of Mesa
arch. Which is a place that visited by millions of people and millions of
people have
this photograph. It's nice you know, it's a nice enough
early morning shot of Mesa Arch but from that picture can you tell how big
Mesa Arch is? Probably not.
You look at and say wow this could be an enormous rock structure. It's not it could
kinda sorta fit in this room really. It's not
that overly big. Now the picture of Mesa Arch that was
over my shoulder a minute ago I shot with a 14-24mm
okay. Really wonderful zoom lens you know 14-24mm f/2.8,
I shot it at 14 millimetres, which is the widest possible throw on this lens,
and you know it makes for a nice photograph no two ways about it
but it doesn't provide a tremendous amount of information as to the scale of
the events that i'm looking at.
However the picture that over my shoulder now is shot with basically the
same type of lens, it's an extremely wide lens
but what's the reference point? How can you tell that this
is a big satellite dish? Well I got a person in there, people have a
relationship with people. People like to see pictures of other people
and it's a wonderful way of showing someone, who's not there with you
exactly how massive this structure is. In this instance what I did was
I shot from the edge of the satellite dish.
You know let's look kind of overhead view here okay.
You know and my camera position is right on the edge okay. This was not a fun job.
Ok lot’s of tarantulas, Gila monsters and all sorts of stuff out there in the
desert, and I'm
pursed on the edge of this satellite dish. I don't recall if I had a safety
belt. I don't think I did, that was probably a bad move on my part.
There's the structure
okay and there's a another structure kind of on top of it some equipment,
and what I did was I hid a 2400 watt second pack
behind that structure so you can't see it and it beamed straight down
okay, and the hatch that opened here and my
assistant okay are right there and it creates a pool light that defines the
interior
of the entire satellite dish.
in the distance, I also lit other satellite dishes
that are out there okay the heading this way okay
off the frame because I wanted to send some distance to the photograph.
This is the province of big lights. For this I use things like
2400 watt second pack, this a pro photo Acute. Incredibly dependable unit
big pop of light. It’s the type of thing that if you need that one
explosion of light and big coverage and big f/stop
this is the type of pack that you need to go with.
Its plugged into electricity and it has
just you know an enormous power to control shapes and do whatever kinda
lighting conditions
your confronting. Joe McNally here for Adorama
be sure to check out Adorama's latest contest to win prizes.
So a couple things covered in this particular segment very quickly,
sense of scale, put someone in the picture and also if you need
on occasion and you do need this every once in a while, is like you're
confronted with this
large item or large structure
a big pop of light is the way to go and for those I rely on Pro Photo Acute's
2400 watt second units. One pop of light defines that entire
area that i'm looking at and of course placing a person in the middle of it
does give the sense of scale that is good information for your viewer.
This is Joe McNally for Adorama TV
and this segment has been about showing scale photographically
with a wide angle lens.
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