The section below was created before July 2004. For the latest photography pages, click here

The links in the first few paragraphs below take you to additional photography information.

This page concentrates on photos for business purposes, and hints for amateur photographers and PR people shooting their own pictures.. 

For more information specifically on portrait photography of individuals and families, and for portraits of business people, please click here.  

For information to help public relations professionals hire and work with pro photographers, including me, please click here.

Ctein, California fine art photographer and dye-transfer printer maker  visited Toronto in summer 2003. Click here for a collection of BAK's Report stories about his visit.

Portrait Photography

Portrait photography packages for business and personal pictures. Click here for more information.

February 2003 Tips for photographing children Why this is here? I was reading the CompuServe photography forum, where there's all kinds of complicated information on photography, and I was struck by a message from a father who just wanted to take lots of nice pictures of his kids. So I sent him some advice. I thought some BAK's Report readers might want to know, too. This is what I wrote.

1/ Shoot pictures on slightly overcast days, so that you don't have really ugly shadows. Notice how gentle the light is falling on Nick and his brother Mike. 2/ Use a reflector when it's time for a fairly formal shot of a child, (assuming the kid will stay reasonably still). The use of a reflector makes the shot look much more professional, and it's a lot easier than coping with flash fill. A sheet of white cardboard works just fine. 3/ Pre-production matters. Pay attention to what in the commercial world is called pre-production. If you want to take decent shots that you'll enjoy forever, maybe change the child's clothes before you go out to shoot. Comb the kid's hair. Clean up the yard, so the backgrounds are better, or go to a nice park. Get good props to use in the pictures. i.e. a big soccer ball works better in many pictures than does a small baseball. "Cast" the shot. i.e. bring some friends of the child, because that makes the chances of interacting better. Make sure other adults who might show up in the pictures are prepared, too. You don't need grandma in her sweat pants and stained t-shirt.

4/ Get fairly close, but don't get too close with a wide angle lens. it's nice to see what the child looks like, but it's nice to know where the child is, too. But a wide angle lens, too close, makes heads huge and feet tiny, and is just generally annoying. 5/ Fake the first few shots, to save film, and get the kid to relax. then start taking pictures for real. 6/ Kids make good photographers. If there are multiple kids, get one kid to take pictures of the other. And if there's only one child, he or she can take a few shots of you. 7/ Watch the backlighting. Too often the children have bright sky or sandy beaches behind them, and this fools the light meter, and the kids in the pictures are too dark. 8/ Relax, yourself, and don't worry about every shot. Remember, shooting one whole roll in order to get one nice shot worth enlarging to 5x7 and mailing to relatives is a successful photographic project. 9/ Remember to get some pictures of yourself with the child. Too many photo-parents, whether mom or day, take lots of pictures of the child and the other parent, but never get into the shot themselves. 10/ Share the photos. Don't forget to send some to cousins, aunts and uncles, grandparents, and even former neighbors who like the kids but have moved away.

Here are some photos used by a client in an employee recognition program.

    These are thumbnails, and 
clicking on them makes them bigger.

PART OF AN AWARD PROGRAM 
This was a fairly simple job, although it is never easy shooting crystal, glass, or some shiny metals. The client has an extensive program, where employees who do exceptional jobs can receive an award certificate granted by a manager. There's no bureaucracy involved; managers have the authority to make the decision, at approximately $50 and $150 levels. The employee visits the firm's web site, chooses from the selection, and then uses the internet to tell the program manager what to send, and where to send it. 

The biggest problem the program faces is finding great gifts at the two price points. 

For the technically minded, These were shot using a Mamiya C330 camera on Portra 160VC film, and printed using a minilab, to 5x5 inches. The client used its art department to scan them into its web site. For here, I used my low-priced Agfa scanner, scanning them at 100 percent, at 72 pixels per inch.

CHILD PHOTOGRAPHY
I like to photograph kids, but I'm not a traditional child photographer, with squeeze toys and backdrops that look like balloons.

For a long essay on tips for PR professionals managing photographic projects, go to A PR Professionals Guide to Using Photographers, here.

Our business photography and commercial photography services fall into several broad categories
* Executive, employee and environmental portraiture
* Annual report and interim report photos
* Informal architectural photography
* Editorial photography
* News release and publicity photography

We also do a limited amount of product photography, but the majority of our photographs involve people.

For the Equipment Conscious -Update, July 2004 -- most work is now done with a Nikon high resolution digital camera.
FILM -- We tend to use Kodak film, selecting the particular film type depending on the subject. Kodak Portra 160VC and NC and Portra 400 NC and VC are our current favorite negative films, and are used for the majority of color print work.

Kodak Ektachrome 200 and Ektachrome 100VS are our standard slide films, although we do not shoot much of this any more.

For black & white we most frequently shoot color negative originals, and then make prints on Kodak black and white Panalure paper, a photo paper designed to make excellent black & white prints from orange-toned color negatives. This gives us the ability to match expressions, set-ups, angles, and "decisive moments" on both black & white and color prints, since we use the same negative. For the majority of our current work that will run in black and white in print or web publications, we work from color prints, converting to black & white in the computer, or allowing the end users to make this conversion or not, depending on where and how they are using the photograph.

When we do want to shoot black & white originals, we like Kodak's new B&W films that are processed using color chemicals, meaning we can get the benefits of one-hour and minilab processing, speeding up service and cutting the costs of proofs. The portrait of my daughter, an opera singer, is a sample. This photograph was shot on Kodak B&W film for C-41 (normal color negative) processing, and printed at a one-hour lab where the operator set the lab's filtration to create a sepia effect. The 4x6 print was then scanned on an Agfa mid-quality scanner at 72 dpi, and saved as a JPEG file. 

CAMERAS -- The majority of our photographs are now shot using medium format cameras. We use a Fuji 670 rangefinder camera and a Mamiya C330 camera, with 65mm and 105mm lenses. A Mamiya RB67 single lens reflex is sometimes used, too.

These produce 6x7 and 6x6 cm negatives and transparencies. 

 Occasionally, we use 35mm single lens reflex cameras, and for some shooting sessions, a Leica M4-P, a classic rangefinder camera, is used, with 28mm, 35mm, 50, and 90mm lenses. While improvements in film and reproduction technology mean 35mm negatives and slides provide excellent quality for the majority of the applications using our photographs, especially for the web, or for up to full page magazine reproduction, we still  like the additional quality of the larger format for many shots.

LIGHTS -- Lighting is provided by the Nikon speedlight system, by Lowell quartz lights, and by Dyna-Lite 500 and Dyna-Lite 1000 studio flash units, with four heads, umbrellas, softboxes and other sophisticated light control equipment.

Brian A. Kilgore
Business Photography
Suite 510
263 Adelaide Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5H 1Y2

BrianKilgore@BrianKilgore.com
416 - 879 - 5771

Suzanne Kilgore
This is ones of the publicity pictures of Suzanne Kilgore, mezzo-soprano. It was used in Lucca, Italy, two summer's ago, for her professional European debut, and has been published in newspapers and performance programs in Canada. 

It was photographed on Kodak's new B&W film for color processing, Kodak TCN-400, printed as a 4x6 print at a one-hour lab where a sepia tone was added, and scanned on a mid-range Agfa scanner, saved as a JPEG file, and placed in this page using Microsoft FrontPage.

The camera was the Nikon F4s, with the 105 lens, and lighting from a two-headed Dyna-Lite set-up, using the 500 power pack, with a softbox at camera left, lighting the bright side of the face, and an umbrella on camera right, facing away from Suzanne and bouncing the light off a wall, to provide the soft lighting while working in a small space.

Brian Harrison Smith
Brian Harrison Smith is an associate of Soaring Eagle Group, and is a business teacher at York University's Schulich business school, a business coach and management consultant. You can visit his web site, which has this portrait, at www.BrianHarrisonSmith.com

This is a more recent photo of Brian Smith, in use on a web site for The Lavin Agency, one of North America's largest speakers bureaus.

Gary Ross
Gary Ross is a Canadian author, editor, and the Ross in the Macfarlane Walter and Ross publishing company. This picture was Gary's choice for the flap photo on his own book, At Large: The Fugitive Odyssey of Murray Hill and His Elephants. Toronto: Stoddart, 1992.
 It's a studio shot, with several Dyna-Lite heads, umbrellas and softboxes, but what 
gives the shot it's verve is Gary's own personality.

Editing Canadian English   This is one of the publicity photos for Editing Canadian English, a Macfarlane Walter and Ross book published in the spring of 2000. The real book cover is red; the problem facing me as a photographer was to shoot a black and white picture for newspapers where the black type on the cover would stand out from the red background, when B&W film turns everything to tones of grey. We asked the book's designer for a black and white version of the cover, and instead ended up the black type on grey background you (almost) see here. On the actual blowup, the grey is even darker, making the type harder to read, but the use of Kodak Portra film (usually a wedding film) which has lowered contrast, let the grey pull away from the black. It's knowing tricks like this that let me get the shot the first time.

THE LAST AMIGO
The next blockbuster Canadian non-fiction book about business is The Last Amigo, written by Stevie Cameron and Harvey Cashore, above. It's published by Macfarlane Walter and Ross, and this is one of the publicity pictures I shot of the authors. (The "Ross" of MW&R is the same Ross up a couple of shots in this column.) The picture of Stevie and Harvey was shot on Kodak Portra 160NC film, using a Fuji 670 camera and a single Dyna-Lite studio flash unit with an umbrella.

This photograph of a business executive was taken for his company's web site, and the pose, the white background, and side-lighting were selected to fit within a pre-determined format designed by an art director. 

Done on location, I was able to set up my equipment in a meeting room without disturbing anyone, and when everything was ready, Frank came in just for a few minutes. There was little disturbance to his day, yet the shot met the company's needs perfectly.