How to Take Photos Via A Computer Screen
If you follow me on Instagram then you'll know that this week, I set myself a challenge to take photos of models through my computer screen. I was very much inspired by my friend Nadia Meli for this project, so I feel a need to mention her! Anyway, I wanted to share a few things that I learnt about shooting through a screen, in case you'd also like to try something like this.
The quality of the internet is quite important. If your model, or yourself, don't have a strong internet connection, you're going to really struggle to get sharp images. You'll also get more "lag" in the movements of your model on the screen, which can be frustrating.
Your images will look different on the back of your camera to your computer screen. I don't understand the science of it all, but when I first looked at the images on my digital camera's screen, I was a bit worried about all the banding, and how pixelated the images were looking. I didn't think they would turn out at all! But once I uploaded them, and viewed them on my desktop screen, they looked way better.
The bigger the screen you're shooting on, the better. I ended up using my desktop screen, which meant that I could capture more detail, and have a larger image to work from. However, this isn't essential, it just helps!
I preferred getting right up close with my macro lens. The first few shoots I did, I experimented with different focal lengths. I started off shooting with my 85mm lens, and was including more of the backdrop in my shots, but when I came to edit, I found that my favourites were the images where I'd cropped right into the models' face. For the rest of the shoots I did, I made sure to focus on this kind of crop the whole time.
Window light is KEY. Or some kind of light. I had most of my models sit directly in front of a window, as close to it as possible so that they had as much light on their faces as possible. Two of them also happened to own ring lights, which turned out to be really useful! The webcams on our laptops don't have anywhere near the dynamic range of our DSLR camera's, so getting as much light on their faces to soften out any shadows was really important for me, and lead to the best shots.
Have fun with it! If you'd like to try something like this, the whole point is to have fun and experiment. It's a totally bizarre thing to do, but it kept me occupied this week! And I learnt a few new things - one of the main things being that I ALWAYS love imperfect images more than really perfect ones. This has been a big push for me to continue to explore other mediums, and continue to experiment with how I can add "imperfection" to my work going forward.
