While working on some filing tasks for Mortel Studios, I found my mind constantly wandering towards the idea of pictures. Nothing in particular comes to mind except that I'd rather be shooting than filing. Not being the greatest at filing, accounting, or alphabetizing, the business side of running a company quickly looses interest with me. What better way to motivate me into doing the more mundane tasks, than to take a little photo shoot break.

Having a camera close at hand at all times is what separates avid photographers to photo junkies like me. Quickly, I set up my trusty Nikon D100, pop on my never fail me, 85mm prime lens, and I'm ready to go. Sure, my 20 year old 85mm prime lens doesn't talk properly with my D100, everything has to be set up manually. Manual control is the name of the game when you're looking to satisfy a creative fix.

Taking a look around the house, nothing catches my eye. After taking about thirty shots, some of which include a star shaped sun catcher with blue and green glass balls, nothing is sending the needed dopamine to my brain. Downloading the pictures to my laptop reveals blah picture after blah picture, I delete them all.

Going back to the sun catcher, that was the only thing that really piqued my interest in the first shoot. Holding the camera up to the sun catcher as it hangs in the kitchen window, I'm confused. The sun catcher looks cool, but the stuff in the background like the window shade and the stuff in the back yard, all make the shot, just too cluttered.

I need to simplify this shot, break it down to the bare essence of what I want to say. Otherwise, this creative fix left unchecked will cause me to go mad, and I'll never get my filing work done. I need to crop out all the other bullshit around the sun catcher that's distracting to the image. Image? I don't even have an image in mind, but I do know the pictures I took in photo shoot number one amounted to crap.

One could make an argument to take the sun catcher, shoot it in the studio without any distracting minutia. That would entail actually taking the sun catcher down, driving to the studio, setting up the lights, metering the shot, etc. etc, and possibly coming up with something printable. I just wanted a small photo fix for the day, not a grand day long product shoot.

Looking again at the sun catcher through the camera, I begain photo shoot number two. I notice the dangling glass spheres. With their translucence, they really caught the sunlight in a euphoric, mystical way. Bringing the camera really close to the sun catcher, cropping a lot from my original compositions, I begin to see the image. The image that will be my salvation for this photo fix I desperately need.

Being so close to the subject, with an 85mm lens, focusing is impossible. After popping on an extension tube behind the lens, I can focus within a 12 to 24 inches of the sun catcher. Metering this subject is trickier than I thought. It's close to the ceiling and hangs inches away from the window. When I orientate the light meter towards the ceiling, the exposures are way too bright. When I orientate the light meter towards the window, the exposures are a tad too dark.

Looks like I'll have to rely on my old trusty friend, bracketing. Bracketing is where you take darker and lighter exposures of your composition, hoping that one of those shots ends up being the correct exposure setting. Setting the camera exposure to what I know is just a little to light, I start taking pictures, adjust the camera 1/3 of a stop darker after each shot. I end the session when the exposure settings look to be just a bit too dark, and the shadow details get muddy.

Downloading the pictures to my laptop reveals wonderful composition and I find the proper exposure settings within the bracketed pictures. There's just a couple things that are not quite singing in the composition. Initially using an f stop of f22, some background detail from the backyard can be seen behind the glass spheres, making it just a tad distracting. Off to photo shoot number three.

This time, I've opened the f stop to f2.8, severely cutting the depth of field, in hopes of blurring out any ambient background clutter in the composition. Doing a smaller bracketing series, (I'm a bit anal) I download the pictures to the laptop. The composition is great, there is no background clutter, the exposure setting is wonderful, why am I still not happy with this shot. Because of the drastic cut in the depth of field, the string of glass spheres in the background of the picture have lost detail in their chain. Not only have I blown out the backyard background clutter, I've also lost some of the detail in the sun catcher.

Determined to get this shot even more, I 'm off to photo shoot number four. I've armed my camera with an f stop of f8. I shoot the picture, you guessed it, including the bracketing, and download them to my laptop. This final shoot probably took all of two minutes. At this point the sun catcher is practically mocking me. I look at the pictures on the screen. The composition is great, the background is clean, the detail in the sun catcher has been restored, and the exposure is right on.

Well, is anything really right on. After some sharpening in Photoshop, and a slight adjustment layer to really make the shadows go to black, I love contrast by the way, now the picture is right on. After about two hours of a frenetic photo shoot that definitely has satisfied my creative fix, I plop down on a chair admire the picture, and proceed to schedule the filing for another day, I'm drained.

Charles Mortel