Heidi Peters Photography

In college, I was a photographer for the university’s award-winning daily newspaper. We were a small photo department. The department, if you could even call it that…, was led mostly by 3 guys about to graduate. They were Lloyd, Joe & Steve. They had come up through the ranks and they knew what they were doing. We all shot Tri-X film and we processed it using some startling techniques, believe you me. Prints were made as quickly as possible on wobbly enlargers and handed still damp to the production department. There were no computers. There was no digital. There was no photoshop.

There were three main types of assignments: News, Feech and Sports.

• News assignments varied constantly and there were quite a few assignments at night. A night might go like this. “Heidi, please go shoot this important civil rights speaker. He will be in a dark auditorium with spotlights on him. Get as many expressions as you can in five minutes, then get back here pronto. We’ll hold page 3 for you. See ya.” Steve gave assignments, was the motivator, and he offered excellent technical advice in very plain language.
• Feech encompassed any non-news assignments. “Heidi, we have a hole in the paper on page 7 today. Go shoot feech.” Feech is a picture that is good enough to stand on it’s own with a caption, but no article. It could be a car crash, a balloon launch, something happening on campus or in town. Feech is suprisingly hard to get. Joe was a master of Feech. To do feech well, you have to have more than technical skill. You have to be creative.
• Finally, there were sports. We lugged our gear onto the court, the football field, the diamond, soccer field… everywhere. I used a Nikon F2 and a range of manually focusing lenses. Maybe some day I will write a blog post about focusing tricks that I learned while shooting sports. Sports were competitive for the players on the field and also for the photographers. Although I dislike college sports, I knew it was a privilege to be at a big-ten game. Two or three of us might shoot the same basketball game, race back to process our film, then see who got the best shot for tomorrow’s back page. Lloyd usually did. Sports photography gave me the most practical experience for shooting toddlers.

So why am I writing all this? Well, I bumped into Steve this last spring and it got me thinking about how much I learned from those three guys, and how much I use what they taught me. Every. Single. Day. More was learned in two years with them than anywhere else, including fine art photography courses at college, my Master’s degree, assisting professional shooters, or attending seminars. Thank you Steve, Joe & Lloyd.

I’d like to share what these guys taught me about the process of shooting. We all know about the rule of thirds and exposure compensation and all that good stuff you find in books. But here’s what I use on a daily basis in my portrait work :

1. Crop in the camera
   Are you seeing the finished picture when you snap the shutter? What information are you including in the image and why is it important? We’ve become lazy with digital. Crop in the viewfinder and you will save yourself a world of pain.
2. Do not shoot at standing eye level
   It’s just about the most boring angle to capture another human being. I vaguely remember Steve standing on a mailbox once to get good overhead shot. I almost always lay on my stomach at some point during a family portrait session.
3. Shoot first, ask questions later
   Pictures don’t take themselves. Pictures don’t happen when the camera is hanging around your neck so you can chat to someone. Don’t be a spectator. When shooting children candidly, if you aren’t sure what’s happening with your subject, try to shoot it anyway and then get a handle on the situation. If the pictures don’t work on a technical or emotional level then you have lost nothing in trying.
4. Adjust your camera settings en route
   On assignment, I would adjust my camera while walking up to start shooting because that was the only time available. It’s the same with kids. I don’t ask them to wait around so that I can fiddle with the camera. I do it on the fly.
5. Eyes = tack
   The eyes of a human being are (almost always) the most important feature to capture when shooting portraits. If the eyes in a portrait are not
   TACK SHARP then I don’t try to sharpen them digitally. I discard the picture. I check sharpness by eyelash clarity. If the front of the eyeball is clear and every eyelash is visible, it’s a keeper.
6. Get one good shot
   The paper did not print 20 mediocre pictures on Page 1. It printed a single excellent picture. Now, during each set-up, each pose, each child, each grouping, each family, I aim to get one good shot. The edited collection of good shots from throughout the shoot adds up to what the client eventually sees. They don’t see the mediocre stuff.

Hope this gives you some insight into my shooting technique and helps other photographers out there. Happy shooting!
— Heidi