Wyse Talk with Jan Doyle and Padma Inguva

[Music] hi I'm Jim Doyle welcome to wise talk we're gonna have a phenomenal show today I've been having a lot of fun talking to her before the program I'd like you to welcome Padma outstanding photographer today's show welcome to the show thank you Jim how are you I'm good and what is your whole name because I can't pronounce your last name oh my name is bug ma in Goa see I knew I couldn't pronounce it I've been working on it and I've been failing so I thought I'd let you do it no problem so now I understand you're coming to the New Haven Camera Club this year to give a talk what is your talk on my topic is about photographing flowers well that's interesting and it's also amazing we have an example of the work you do right here and I just like to comment that people anybody can come to the New Haven Camera Club at North Church because our programs are open to the public and the only reason you would want to join is if you wanted to do competing or go on our field trips and things like that but if people see this program and want to enjoy watching you live I'm encouraging them to come to the New Haven Camera Club so now let me know how did you start getting interested in shooting well that goes back even before I started shooting my love for flowers is from my childhood where my father used to water the plants along for four of our kids and that's the only time that we used to spend together like two three hours every evening well and he had like a huge garden with lots of fruiting trees and then when I grew up and had my own garden I had lots of flowering shrubs and plants and I wanted to photograph my garden to keep you know keep it more permanent so that's a very special memory to have with your father at that time and just to remember that I I know I remember my father used to grow strawberries and we used to go pick straw and it just it just resonates with you for your whole life yep so you started growing your own flowers at your own home and then what was the next step well so I had lots and lots of varieties of roses and calamities and all kinds of perennials that I had and I wanted to keep a catalogue of them so I bought a camera and I started photographing my garden and well let's look at some of your pictures sure yeah you photographed without any real instruction exactly so the first one that's going to be coming up in the monitor what is this this is Mysteria and if you see how abundant the flowers are it's growing all over my fence and the side of my my house and I was just taking a picture of it I did not know anything about aperture or shutter speed or anything at that point so I was just pointing and shooting your point shoot and you were just recording yes so the next image that we're going to see is that's a calamitous and another vine that grows on the fence outside of my house and again if you see that you know I was just trying to catalog though the flowers mm-hmm well that's how a lot of hobbies start out and I think we have one more those are the crocuses and these flowers come up every spring right after like February March and again I was shooting from the top I did not know anything about oh I have to be at eye level and all that so these three pictures will show you how I got started and then well though and that's a very traditional way of getting started my mic just fell so I'm just gonna fix that for a half a second you saw them and if they'll let me just go like this so tell me how what made you make the transition from photographing your flowers kind of logging - going into becoming more artistic well once I photographed all my flowers pretty much like garlic um you know a couple hundred of them and then I realized that okay so I'm just looking at them as they are but can I make them look better because in my my my own minds eye they look a lot better a lot prettier a lot interesting they're fascistic exact yes so then I started studying you know like what's out there like you know what are the other people doing about the photographs was that so it's got photographing flowers by Harold Davis now how did you discover him oh well internet so I came across Harold Davis and I was really impressed by his flowers than his work so I went and bought the book and read through every page at least a few times and I discovered the selective focus how to blur your backgrounds and how to post process them and because I'm also a technical person it was easy for me to pick up the post-processing part first then the artistic and compositional part of the photography but you know I started experimenting and then I bought men and bought a macro lens and then if you see my next pictures in you you can see my transition from cataloging flowers to how I made the transition into fine art okay well let's look at one of your next images that are going to be coming on the screen we're going to see now this is a split image of the wisteria connected mysterious Mysteria and tell me about this image now if you see the left-hand side you see the shrub as it is the whole thing that's what you do when you're starting out just as a snapshot but then if you go to the left then you can isolate the flower and then make the whole background blurry make the subject into focus it's called selective focus and that's how I transition from just like a snapshot photographer to moving into the artist realm I think it's interesting the split screen does because what everyone does not everyone does the left one and then slowly you start learning to do the right and I'm actor we had a pre-interview on the phone because you you live in Jersey and it was a little hard for you to come up here and do a pre-interview but I looked up Harold Davis and I had never heard of him before cuz I love photography and I thought what an interesting guy why where's he been all my life well he's been in California so I'm gonna see another image that's going to come up that is also you started learning about these are your pansies and what techniques is this show again the selective focus I just wanted to highlight that you can take one flower that's in the foreground and I sort of think the bad girl flowers is like background dancers you know you know in a dance like if you see there is one protagonist and then you have all the other supporting so what a wonderful way of looking at that I also see this the lead singer and all the backup courts coarsely now how do you achieve selective focus so I should mostly with my macro lens ninety percent of my pictures are done with that so you have to isolate the subject that means there are two ways to do that first you can go with the wide open aperture and and also select a flower that is a little bit away from the crowd so that you can isolate and there's a distance between the subject and the four on the background and shoot away except you have to keep a keep in mind out the direction of the light and see if there are any hotspots and all that now also I want to just say you don't shoot an automatic them no I came long ways from being are you know in automatic mode mostly I should an aperture priority mode our manual mode okay and so the next image that we have coming up is also going to be showing selective focus now this is a beautiful script split screen explain this place so my style of photography I like to say that I do more flower portraits than the wide angle scenes like god if you give me a big garden I never generally go for the entire garden wide angle away I always tried to isolate some interesting flowers buds please anything that catches my eye and I try to portray them in you know like a portrait portrait I have to tell you I love that expression flower portraits I have never heard it before and I really think that's a phenomenal expression and do you think your you coined that no I have I follow a few for other photographers that have done better work than me I think one of them is Kathleen Clemens my inspiration she is from New England area and she does programs and flower portraits and whatever I do I think that that's been done before except I do it in my own way I try to give it my own style but flowers have been around first everything in this world has been done before yes and so but I think the twist is how you do it exactly and then how much and I enjoy doing it yes yes yes well I felt that on our phone conversation I I could feel that so I just want that when you do a split screen how do you do that is that in the in the photo shop or is that so I Lisa said meet the direction so I make a canvas of sixteen by nine in Photoshop and then I take these two images separately and drop them and then as layers in Photoshop and then I adjust the size of the layers so they sit on top of the cat the black handle oh that's interesting then I do know how you did that I still don't know how to do the canvas but that's okay so now we're going to do image the next set of images is you're going to be showing the parts of a flower and how you how you do that so we're going to go into the next image and how do you choose the part of the flower or maybe I maybe I've jumped ahead that's also a flower portrait it's a water lily and I was shooting down it's very hard because water lilies are a general in water so you have to literally hangover without falling into the water and then take the pictures so I really like the vibrant colors and the combination yo ass good waterlilies is the New York Botanical Gardens oh yeah Longwood Gardens has yes yes but this pictures taken in actually I met Longwood Gardens Kenilworth aquatic gardens in Washington DC is one of the best places to go to to shoot water lilies and lotuses now you work in Washington I was surprised to hear that yes and you're you're basically um down the street from the White House yes that's I found that's so interesting so we we had wise talk get people from all over the country just saying yeah okay so what what is this a picture of is this a portrait these are gerbera daisies so here is a tip that I would give to the viewers make friends with nurseries in the neighborhood and especially the nursery owners and approach them ask them permission to shoot in their nursery and then try to give them a few prints so that they appreciate so that's what I did with one of neighborhood nurseries in my town and so now I have a free pass I can go at any time and I just make a little working area and the greenhouse in the corner so I'm not in anybody's way and I take these pots and then put them in there I put a black screen and then I shoot away and then I put them back when I'm done and that's how I most of my images were shot in the nurseries in the corners where you know there is love and you bring in lights I don't bring a license most of them are natural light in the black screen how do you setup the blend so I have a black velvet cloth and that I and then I have some pushpins so I found a little pole or something that I find where I can I can put my black glass as the background and then in generally there are shopping carts and benches or something in there in the nursery area that I can use for the putting the plant the planter I just met a nursery owner two days ago okay I didn't know he was the owner until I started chatting with him because I he had some beautiful flowers and he said I can come down and shoot time I might go after the show yes so let's keep our black velvet or black felt would be good also and you don't need us big you probably need something like a 1-yard and then push pins and some spray water spray bottle that's it you know a hundred years ago I used to be a wedding photographer and we used to carry with us black polyester for the backdrop and put it on the on the poles and stuff and so but they loved it or felt would be wonderful too yes so this is beautiful I absolutely love this thank you and actually I love all your work so go moving on to the next picture we're going to be putting on the monitor is going to be considered are these going into again parts of the flower that and out okay this is parts of the flower so when I'm outside shooting I sometimes a particular petal or a stem or a leaf or something catches my eye and I also learned that you don't have to show the entire flower to show its beauty and sometimes the beauty is in showing half of it or partial flower and leave the imagination to the viewer so in this case the tulip that's what I did only use the half of it and then you know in the background there are other tulips that are providing a little blurry background to it and color yes and the colors being picked up is being emphasized by the foreground tulip that's right oh it's beautiful it really is beautiful I love the green absolutely gorgeous now if you go into the next picture you will see so the direct good the next picture so if you see now in this case is a hibiscus and it has a stamen that that really you know caught my eye because the color combination if you look at the pinks and though on the yellows so instead of going for the whole flower I went very I put my extension tubes on my macro lens oh you do have extension too yes yes and because I'm like probably an inch away from this to have a rail I have a reel and I also do focus stacking when it is needed sometimes this is very one of the very few times when I did the focus stacking because the depth of field is so shallow that I had to use at least three points to get this what I also like about this is the composition beginning photographers think your center of interest has to be dead center yeah and I'm noticing that this is following the rule of thirds where it's off to the left and and you have and you have space on the right I likes space the negative space actually is what gives the picture a little bit of life in my opinion yes a little bit of dynamic dynamic nature and also the composition like you said and when I was starting out everything was in that Center for me and now it's it became a second nature for me you know to just I don't even have to think twice it automatically is off center for me it's generally not exactly in one thirds but you know yes a little bit but it's off center yes it is officer dispute I love the peach eNOS picture I love this image but it almost looks like watermelon actually yes alright the next image that we're going to be seeing this is just gorgeous this is a begonia flower and now if you see though how the ruffled felt the petals that caught my attention and so in this case what I did was I shot the entire flower at 2.8 and then I also shot another frame at F 5.6 and then I combined them in Photoshop to have a little bit of sharpness in the petal but the background still stayed the same from the 2.8 so I call that aperture blending I coined I like that I'm gonna let I actually I love that I'm gonna let the audience know that you're in I T so you a little in into this you know yes yes I am actually I am proud of my photoshop skills one of the lectures that Kathleen Clemens gave very early on back in 2012 when I picked up my camera is that I am giving you the freedom to be to express yourself in Photoshop or in camera or anywhere I really liked it at that point I was only like three months or four months into photography and I was thinking that if you don't get right in camera then you're not a good photographer then once I heard that I literally took it to my heart and then I said okay I'll have my freedom artistic freedom that's what she calls it so and then I improved my photoshop skills and I think that I'm actually a better photographer because of that my advantageously that's very that's a wonderful salute to your former teacher - yes you know and sometimes it's just one phrase that just sets you on your way yes that's wonderful now we're going to be coming up to light box photos now first of all what is a light box so again this is another mentor of mine even though it was I mean I didn't take any courses from him directly but by his book Harold Davis he is a pioneer in lightbox photography a light box is nothing but an x-ray box you know where you read the slides so it's something similar to it except the old x-ray boxes they have like kind of a yellow cast to it so now nowadays because of the LED lights we can you know by the light pads they nowadays they call it light pad a real drying part that yes yes yes yes so that is also like pad or light box or synonymous I'm old and I'm dating myself I didn't know the difference so yeah so basically you arranging flowers on a light box and you put it general I put it on the floor because I needed the height right so that makes sense and then I go parallel with my camera and and basically take three shots overexposed plus one plus two plus three the reason why you want to overexpose is because you're because you're shooting on the white background and also you want the translucency of the petals to come through so that's what I do and then I pick one of the best of the three and then generally I work with that in Lightroom if I want a simple processing but if I have the time and if I'm motivated then I take all those three images into Photoshop and then I play with that you know hand painting areas from one frame areas from another frame so I generally try to create like a lab rate arrangements so if you you can buy like pad on online Amazon or any place but generally they are like small so I you know cut one two feet by three feet or one of my friends actually built it for me so and that's that's my life so you don't have to buy these you can build them from scratch you can build them from scratch if you go into YouTube and then look for DIY lightbox how to build it and there are directions all right if you contact me I can hook you up with my friend what is your contact information I can give it to you later okay I'll send it to you okay great so now we're going to go look at your lightbox creations now that is really incredible do you use a tripod yes I do photography yes I do the reason why I use like light bar I mean tripod over the light box is because first of all it gives me the time to compose and also suppose if I have some issue with one of the flowers then I can leave my camera there and then I can adjust the flower and then take the same shot again then you know I have Central PO how do you get the camera over the lightbox so there are a couple of tripod brands that I would recommend one is the Vanguard carbon fiber I don't remember the model number but I can give it to you so you can put it in the links and also Manfrotto does the center column which goes horizontal with Vanguard you can actually go horizontal or 80 any angle with the Manfrotto you can only go horizontal so either one of them would do and that's also good for other kinds of photography like macro shots or anything so and then I leave the tripod over the lightbox and then I hope my camera to it and and then I start working on my arrangements because once you start arranging the flowers on the lightbox they have a tendency because they're out of water and also you're handling them and you're trying to pry them open or you know so basically you're miss handling them so then the lifespan is very very short so I put all my set up ready to go and then I arrange my flowers and take the shots well that makes a lot of sense to do it that way and I think we have one more image coming up a couple more images from the lightbox photo I'm not a hundred percent sure yes you know again you have a split screen explain this please so now you see there is on the left-hand side so there is that other tip that I would give probably I shouldn't admit on the TV here but so I go around the neighborhood and then I see if anybody has flowers growing out of their garden I knock on the door and I ask them permission to shoot if I can and sometimes I ask them permission to pick the flowers if they're ok with it but if I see them growing outside somewhere nobody's yard I would just go pick them I have Clippers in my car all the time just for that so I take them put them on the light box minute the minute I saw I have to run back home and then start working on the light box that's the left hand but the right hand was Gladio like I just bought them in shop right for like 10 dollars yes yeah and you know it's it's a lot of fun I agree and it's fun for me talking to you because you make me excited about going and shooting yeah I wish you didn't look so far away you lived three hours away from me have you considered moving to Connecticut well I work in DC remember ok every week I have to go to DC I don't care about your troubles so ok so now we're going to talk about dramatic lighting we have some images about dramatic lighting that is dramatic so this actually is not done in the studio like people assume I did so yeah this is in Longwood Gardens and it's in the greenhouse in the conservatory and whenever I go anywhere I especially for flowers I try to go with the tears of friend or my son used to accompany me for most of the most last 44 years now he thinks he's too grown up and he doesn't go anywhere with me anymore but so basically they are there to serve me holding my black cloth I have to tell you we only have about five minutes left and so we're going to have to go into shelters show one of your images on textures and so you can tell me oh my god thank you oh my God look at all my god so if I can stop talking tell me about the this image okay so the one on the left hand side is an iris that I created of my own texture by picking colors from the iris and there is a whole different discussion on how to create your own texture but you can do it and on the right hand side so whenever I buy flowers are from my garden I try to put them in vases and and just try to enjoy them and and then I have a white piano right next to a window so I have like white on white background built in so I just put everything and try to take pictures of it and and then later I go into Photoshop and then play with the textures very nice I want to just make sure we get to your post processing one you have one on multiple explosions I think it's around number 19 or so the image so this is one technique that I'm really proud of because a lot of people who are doing for multiple exposures in camera and I try to do that and it works ok but I have a friend who has a kind of vertical issue that she said that makes me dizzy straight out of camera so she asked me if I can make one point in the picture that is you know more stable according to her and so that she don't she doesn't throw up so what I did was so I use my Canon camera which can do multiple exposures and and then also take a straight shot again take them into Photoshop and take the part that I would like to have tack sharp into a layer mask and then overlay on top of my multiple exposure picture we only have a minute or two left and so I just want to first of all thank you so much for coming I want to encourage everybody to go to the New Haven Camera Club and see you speak free because I know I'm going to be there and I also want to tell people if you have any questions that you'd like to direct to me you can contact me at JM DT Chicks excuse me RJ MD teacher comcast.net or you can always contact the studio and they can get in touch with me thank you so so much this was an absolutely wonderful program you're welcome and I'll see you soon at the New Haven camera close Sharon thank you for having me [Music]

Channel: Jan Doyle

Views: 304

Keywords: Padma Inguva, flower portraits, selective focus, dramatic lighting, light boxes, parts of a flower, light painting., Jan Doyle, Wyse Talk, Photography, Flower Photography, Macro Photography

Id: R5FMey20R9A

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 27 2018