Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom
on AdoramaTV
I'm Ruth Medjber and today
I'm joined again
by photographer Beta Bajgartova.
Beta thank you so much
for sticking with us
and in this episode
I'd love to know
more about the technical side
of your work and particularly
on the post-production that you do
on your images and about how you capture them.
So you've brought your camera with us,
with you today,
would you talk about the camera
and what is your go to lenses that you use?
I have Canon Mark III
that's what I shoot on at the moment
and I have fast lenses.
I have standard lens 24-70mm
and then I have, and its here,
this lovely 16-35mm wide-angle lens
I love and a couple of other lenses
that I would use, depending
on what I shoot, location,
if I need to get closer or not.
It really depends.
So you take your shots after then
when the director yells cut
and so do you, is that
when your 16-35mm comes in?
No it would be a 24-70mm. Okay
24-70mm but like,
the really important thing that
is that they are fast lenses,
because you're shooting
in very dark light conditions.
Really so the sets are quite dark?
Yeah because they have to match,
they have to match the natural
light and their natural light
in the studios outside the window
is actually the studio light,
so it's not as, it's not as strong
as the natural light,
if you know what I mean?
Yeah.
So basically everything,
all other lights around has to be,
has to be dimmed because your natural light,
which is the artificial light out of the window
is the strongest one,
so everything has to be brought down.
That's really difficult.
Yeah.
For you then to capture all of that,
so you are shooting at a rather high ISO
then I imagine?
I would be using 1600 ISO minimum.
Really?
Yeah...
Okay that's quite low,
you know it's hard word then?
...and very very slow shutter speed,
like I would be on 30 ISO
Awe really?
Most of the time, yeah.
I suppose because you've got the people
in front of you and they're professional actors
So you're like stay still.
Yes well you need to get the drama
so you need to get the lines
as well so it has to yeah,
you have to judge and see
and it's a lot of practice
to get it right
but it's usually 1/30 of shutter speed
is good enough for to get the lines
and the drama as well,
but of course you have to shoot
you have to do few pictures
and get the one,
which is like really super sharp.
Yeah that's quite difficult.
But also I have to open the aperture
so I wouldn't,
I very rarely would be
on f-stop like f4 very rarely
I have to open it more. Yeah so f3.2
f3.5 is where I would be,
but that also means
that if it's a shot that's deeper
You've a lot of people staggered.
I would have to do two
and then combine them
because I don't want to have,
sometimes I want to have
the shallow depth of field
but most of the times
no not in this case,
not in case of pictures for drama,
so I want deep, that depth of field
but because I'm only on f3.2
f-stop I would have to take picture
of one person and then the other
re-focus, re-focus.
So you're on a tripod doing this?
No I, it's handheld
practice, practice
You anchor yourself in?
Yeah, yeah yeah absolutely.
You shoot the scene,
get them to stay perfectly still
Yes you don't breathe,
you just you know, phew.
Focus for the foreground,
focus for the middle, focus for the back
and then combine?
Yes yeah that
That is gas that is so much hard work.
See if I was there, like in my mind,
I would be like just get them to turn the lights up
but its fine. No okay
No there's no time for that
they just need to move on
because they have so much work to do
in a space of the day
they have like lots and lots of scenes
and again you have to be
very fast and very invisible,
so you have to really,
you have to think forward
what you need to do
and that's, that's the way.
You're super professional,
that's experience,
you learn that from experience.
No one's teaching you that,
you learn that on the job
I love it then in the
book in a woman's work
where you've gone and you've met 50 plus
women and you photographed them
in situ, in their workspaces,
that obviously poses a lot of
challenges then because you're arriving
to you know, a blacksmith or the cockpit
of an airplane
and you don't again have any control
over the lighting there so
how do you, but all the portraits
that are in the book are quite uniformly lit
they just, they look so,
you know they match
if you see them on a wall together
they all match.
You know they're the same series
I either use ambient light
available light.
Remember I can shoot in the dark so.
Love this!
You're like a ninja
"I can shoot in the dark" it doesnt matter
but of course like
I would have one lamp
and it's like continuous lamp
it doesn't even produce the most amazing
amount of light
but it lights the face
the way I want
and then I would also I
would use a higher ISO,
slower shutter speed
to get the picture.
Yeah.
The way I want
and I wanted them to be all the same
and for many of those portraits
I used wide-angle lens
as well because the workspaces
can be really tiny and I
wanted to see around.
Yeah and you've kept them
quite clear presumably you're
like f5.6 or higher with that?
Yes for that sort of thing yeah.
For you it was key to see
the detail in their surrounding
Yeah.
Because that is what we want to see
if you want to see their spaces.
Yeah.
With your series the Dream series
that you have on your website
which is fabulous
I want to know how much post-production
is in that
or you mentioned long exposures?
So now that you've mentioned long exposure,
I'm like okay maybe it's done in camera?
So tell me, tell me your secrets.
Yeah well yeah
it was done on camera
because I was trying
as I said, I was trying to,
I was trying to capture the story
in the frame
and we all know photographers
we all know if you open the shutter speed
for a long time
you get certain part of the frame
if you move it,
within the middle of when the shutter speed
is open, if you get ghost effect.
We all know that
but we don't use this technique right?
Why would we?
But I wanted to explore more
and I wanted to explore how I can
capture a story within one frame
using this long exposure.
I wanted to take a picture of a person who is dreaming
of having a baby but she doesn't have the baby.
So I wanted, so the baby is the ghost
in the picture or I wanted to
create a photograph
about a girl who is
a kind of housewife but she's dreaming
of being far, far away from here
so she has the suitcases
and the suitcases
are the ghosts,
so you just set it up.
You give her the suitcases
and then you click the button
the shutter button
and you open the camera
for maybe 30 seconds,
so that means that she has to be
very, very, very still
and somewhere in between
those 30 seconds
those suitcases have to go
and you need to work out
because obviously well for example
with the suitcases, if you take suitcases
from somebody's hand,
naturally the person shakes
and moves.
Yeah.
You don't want that so we
had to work out the way
how is she going to be holding the suitcases
so that if we take them
she doesn't move as much
so this was like the technical aspect
or you had to work it out
and it was great fun
because I was just behind the camera.
I clicked the button
and I was just kind of okay I might be counting to 10.
Right let's count to 10
and then I just say okay you
guys take it yeah
and they just took the suitcases
and then we got the,
we got the effect.
Amazing.
And all post-production there was, was again
just the coloring,
just to match it,
make it all one series
I love the complexity
and I love the fact
that I know what I want
and I would like to achieve it or get close to it.
Yes.
At least as close as possible in camera.
Beta thank you so much,
I can't wait to see what else you've got
for the A Woman's Work series
I'm going to follow it and everything.
You have an Instagram
and you have your website
and they're both amazing
so anyone that's watching that wants to follow up
with you I presume they go there
and thank you, thank you so much
for joining me today
Thank you for inviting me Ruth.
You're welcome.
Thanks.
Well that's all we have time for
in this episode,
I do hope you enjoyed
the show. If you'd like to brush up
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Thanks and I'll see you again real soon.