Owen reminded me of the shoot we did for ISB. It was for their Olympic photo, a show of support of somekind. Owen was commissioned to shoot 1,800 students on a football field. The target was to make a print out of the photo. Our aim, to make every face recognizable. With that in mind, we headed out to Shunyi.
We arrived in the school early to scout the area for every possible vantage point. I went up to the roof of the bleachers using a flimsy aluminum stairs. Yes, like those ones on TV where the paint falls off. I was whispering “face your fears” as I slowly make every step. Owen went for this scaffolding thing, which swings everytime the wind blows. Here’s a shot of Owen, halfway – smiling just to cover the fear evident on his face if he chooses not to =)
On the roof, I knew I wouldn’t make the shot. I was only equipped with a 70-200mm lens plus the fact that I am not on a good angle. Elevated yes, but not ideal. So I went down and went up to Owen’s scaffolding. With the height of the roof that I just conquered, making my way up to the scaffolding – I was fearless 🙂
Below is the final image. I would love to post the actual size of the photo but it’s huge.
Thought process/Technique
I mentally divided the scene in 9 equal parts. Shooting the first 3 images at the front at hyperfocal distance. Since I’m going to expose several times anyway, I stayed at f8 to avoid the possibility of cromatic abberations at higher fstops. Every shot overlaps the previous around 10-20%. Seeing there were more kids than aduts, I boosted my ISO to gain more speed. Kids can’t stay still, hehe. I also thought of the exposure problem that might arise shooting in multiple (the sun might decide to hide or a cloud might suddenly pass) I chose to shoot in RAW.
Post processing
The final image was composed of 9 RAW images. Every frame was made with the same exposure. Color corrected, stitched in Photoshop. Errors on the auto stitch was corrected at 200 percent view. The grass was cloned from a good portion of the field. Eliminated unwanted/obtrusive things like field lines and botched parts of the greens. The horizon was aligned and the banner, skewed to face the camera better and last, prepared for print.
Image exif:
Canon 40D
Tamron 28-75mm
F number: f8
Shutter speed: 1/640
Focal length: 75mm
ISO: 400
Metering: Pattern
The shoot really pushed me. Physically and mentally. It even pushed my pc to a crawl. Hands-down AWESOME.