"INTERVIEW WITH JEFF ASCOUGH" Resumes Today

[tonylarcombe]

Jeff, I'll check out the blog, cheers.

 

If you don't write a comment the photos turn up as links.

 

Tony.

[think27]

Jeff is going out of town for a shoot so I don't think we'll hear any more from him today.

 

We can take ONE OR TWO QUESTIONS ONLY AND THEN WAIT UNTIL JEFF RETURNS ON TUESDAY.

 

After he answers those - we can start up again for a day or two more.

[matt_richman]

Jeff, You are an inspiration. Regarding metering, you mentioned you have been shooting Manual and Program lately. With Manual, do you use an incident meter or meter through the camera?

[KenPapai]

Pronounced? "As-kow" "Az-cough" (as in "cough")"Az-kew" ?

 

Ken "Pappy"

[ben_rubinstein___mancheste1664880652]

Jeff, you don't do 'formals' as such, limited to 6 family groups, etc as per your website. You use the light to work the composition, can you show us how you shoot the 'must haves' of the wedding, the ceremony, the ring shots, the walking up the isle, the cutting of the cake, etc? Do you take these shots and use them to provide a documentary of the day?

 

p.s. I'm hoping that I can be included in the 2 questions, is asking for the pronounciation of Jeff's name included? :-)

[jeffascough]

Ok guys...catching up after a long weekend....

 

Hi Steven

 

All my work gets some form of vignetting in post. I have an action that does this for me.

 

Again getting the blacks without noise is the result of another action that I use. It does

things differently to the most popular actions. One of the things that I wanted was 'film

like' b/w which means a deeper shadow than digital normally gives.

[jeffascough]

H Matt

 

Everything is metered through the camera. I like to use centre-weighted metering at the

moment as it's more consistent than any other. Although I have used evaluative quite

extensively in the past without any problems.

[jeffascough]

Hi Ken

 

It's pronounced Ass- coff

 

And yeah I've heard all the jokes before....

[jeffascough]

Hi Ben

 

I don't have stock pictures that I take. I don't work to a list, and certain weddings won't

have the same things as others. For example some weddings I won't be able to shoot the

ring shots, ceremony, walking up the aisle. Other weddings I've shot haven't had cakes.

 

I tend to turn up to a gig with no pre-conceived ideas of how things will happen, or which

shots will materialise. I just shoot what happens in front of me. If I turned up with a shot

list or a list of 'must haves' my natural reaction would be to follow those shots around

trying to get them, and that would hinder me as a photographer. My clients are aware of

this when they book me.

 

Of course I always get the key moments of *their* day, but often they are different to the

key moments that a lot of photographers think they should shoot week in - week out.

 

There are plenty of examples of the images that you are after on my website.

[chr15w]

Hi Jeff

 

Roughly how many shots do you take at a "standard" wedding, and do you edit yourself or do you have help. Also how do you present your albums eg gift wrapped, in person at their home or do they come to you?

[jeffascough]

Hi Chris

 

The number of shots question was answered earlier on in the thread.

 

I do all the editing, post-processing etc.

 

Albums get sent to the clients via DHL. I don't have many clients that I could deliver the

album too. They are either too busy, or live too far away. The albums are presented in a

standard Jorgensen box.

[jacob_brown]

"It's pronounced Ass- coff And yeah I've heard all the jokes before...."

 

You need to partner with someone named Lipschitz.

[ilkka_nissila]

Just a question about rangefinder vs. DSLR ... one of the things that I don't like about currently available digital SLRs is the lack of small short lenses such as the 35/2 (equivalent) of old, or even smaller, the rangefinder lenses. I understand that the most important aspect of how people react to the photographer is the photographer and their behaviour ... but still, I sometimes feel more comfortable photographing people with a small camera instead of a DSLR+17-55/2.8+flash+diffuser.

 

Do you think it matters at all? Will people react in a different way depending on the camera size.

 

Sorry about the techie question :-)

[pete_s.]

Hi Jeff,

 

Thanks for the great opportunity - I have another two questions for you.

 

1) Looking at your images it looks like you prefer to use midrange lenses like 35mm, 50mm etc, and not go really wide or telephoto. What is your thinking behind this? Is it a result of "the look" you want or prefered working distance or maybe equipment considerations like weight/size?

 

2) Obviously everybody has different taste and objectives but when you look at others, often less experienced photographers work, do you see any common areas or weaknesses that could be improved upon?

 

Best Regards,

 

Peter

[bailie photography]

Hi Jeff,

 

Thank you for taking the time to answer all the questions. A lot of the answers are actually in your blog and you are kind enough to repeat them here.

 

My question relates more to actual execution of your journalism style - specifically how you physically position yourself.

 

What I found is that if you are too close to your subject (bride, guests, whoever they might be) they will became very self conscious and will stop everything that they were doing and give you a blank face. If on the other hand, you try to stay away from your subject and use a telezoom lens (so that they don't know you are around), I found that 90% of the time, I'm shooting someone's back because there's more chances of someone moving in your way to where the action is.

 

What is your key to getting those expressions without people realising you are there?

[andreas_hross]

Do you shoot to crop in PP or do you frame & shoot. I found cropping to be one of the more time-consuming tasks in post processing but I am still too dastardly to risk bad clipping.

 

thank you.

[jeffascough]

Hi Ilka

 

I agree that a RF is great for people photography. It's not at all provocative. However, I do

think that these days everyone at a wedding has a camera, whether it's in a phone or an all

singing all dancing DSLR. So the camera shyness doesn't seem to exist anymore.

 

I tend to remove my lens hoods when shooting to reduce the size of the lens down a bit. It

makes the lenses less intimidating.

[jeffascough]

Hi Peter

 

I like my images to look 'normal' in perspective, so I don't go too much for extremes of

focal length.

 

I do use telephoto and wide lenses. But I always try and keep a certain 'look' to my images.

The sense of space and the composition is pretty much the same whether I shoot with a

24mm or a 200mm..

 

My comfort zone is the 35-70 range though. I can pretty much shoot an entire wedding in

this range.

 

Most new photographers go for the moment, and very rarely see the picture. I often see a

good moment captured but it's lost in the rest of the image which is usually quite poor.

The other major thing is the over use of the telephoto. A lot of PJ images just tend to be

head and shoulders of people shot from distance on a 200mm. The photographer doesn't

add anything of the environment or story into the image.

[jeffascough]

Hi b b

 

If I'm honest, I have no idea. I just position myself for the picture I want to achieve and go for

it. I don't move around too much, and I don't blast away with the camera as this is distracting

to the subject. I'm also very quick. As soon as I have the shot I move.

[jeffascough]

Hi Andreas

 

I crop in PP very rarely. Over the past four weddings I think I've only cropped three pictures in

total. I try to get the crop right in camera.

[arnell_umali]

Hi Jeff,

 

As many have said earlier, thanks for your time responding for to these questions.

 

As you deliver predominantly black and white images, my question is how do you ensure that

there are no color cast to the monochrome prints? Do you have a particular workflow that you

follow that removes this or special instructions that you give the printer? Are the files

prepared in a special way?

[jeffascough]

Hi Arnell

 

I have a good lab!! Seriously, we are fully colour managed here. We use the lab's

recommended colour space, and we assign their printing profile to the images. My actions

also ensure that there is no colour cast in the images before we send them to the lab.

 

The prints we get are perfectly neutral and consistent over the whole wedding.

[zofia]

Hi Jeff,

 

This is great, thanks!

 

I've read that you don't shoot with assistants or second shooters, correct? How big is your

office production team?

 

-Zofia

[jeffascough]

Hi Zofia

 

No I don't shoot with second shooters. I sometimes have an assistant depending on the

logistics of the wedding. I find second shooters far to intrusive on the day.

 

My office production team consists of me and my wife.

[jonj]

Jeff at that focal length 35-70mm how are you staying unobtrusive?