a night club in Manhattan on Tuesday, past midnight

Canon 1D mk3, Canon 50mm f1.2 // 1/25th @ f1.2 @ 32oo iso

Here’s a question that comes up often in emails I receive:  Do I use a diffuser of some kind outdoors or do I just use direct flash, with the flash in the straight ahead position.

The simple answer is that yes, outdoors I most often shoot with my speedlight straight-on with no diffuser or light modifier, especially if I only use my speedlight for fill-flash. 

But then again, the answer is not quite that simple - so let’s take this back a few steps:

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

This image from the recent photo-session with Amy and Nick in Manhattan received a number of comments and questions about the technique.  The basic camera settings for several sequences of images here, were 1/20th (at f8) and 1/10th @ f11.  The image above was one of a sequence at 1/20th.  But there’s more to it …

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Amy and Nick are one of my couples whose wedding I am photographing later this year.  They met up with me in Bryant Park in Manhattan this past weekend, and course we had to get photographs of them going for a ride on the carousel.  

Every time they went by me on the carousel, I would fire off a series of images. The carousel presented a lighting problem in that towards the outside, it was brightly lit by clouded sun .. and towards the inside, it would be much more shaded.  Usually I will try to control the contrast of a scene by using fill-flash of some kind.  But in this situation with the carousel, and given the the scope of this kind of shoot, getting a perfect photo in-camera would be impossible.

Simple on-camera fill-flash would not help here because there are parts of the carousel in the way.  Also, as they swung by me, Nick would be much closer to me and the fill-flash would be of no help whatsoever in getting more light onto Amy.

Therefore, because of the wide range in exposure from the outside of the carousel to the interior, the images I took here needed some additional work in Photoshop to achieve the final result I envisioned for my couple.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Even though most of the tutorial pages here deal with on-camera flash, I don’t limit myself to just using on-camera flash. When I need off-camera lighting or when I need more juice from my flashguns than a speedlight can deliver, I use the Q-flashes made by Quantum. 

For this wedding in Las Vegas, I decided to travel light and as an additional flashgun, bring along a single Quantum Q-flash in addition to the two speedlights I normally take along with me when I photograph a destination wedding.  I also wanted the flexibility of wireless TTL control over the flash, and therefore I chose a Quantum T5D-R with the Quantum Freewire Wireless TTL set-up.

In the photo above taken at Red Rock near Las Vegas, I had my assistant hold the Q-flash up high on a monopod and triggered it wirelessly.  This way I could fine-tune the flash exposure from the camera itself.  This allowed me to work faster than having either me or my assistant manually adjusting the flash the whole time.  (Anyone who is interested in my specific settings, the thought process is similar to the explanation here.)  I had the Wide-Angle Diffuser over the Q-flash, to spread the light more widely.

The Q-flash’s flexibility and power really came in handy for this next image. 

After the wedding we went to this famous landmark for a big group photo. I had to work fast to keep everyone’s attention since it had been a long day.  Also, the cops had just stopped to move the two buses out of the middle lane … so I really had to shoot fast and nail the few images I took here.

I needed a lot of light, and I needed the light as even from left-to-right as possible - so I had my assistant hold up the  Q-flash T5D-R with a Quantum wide-angle diffuser -  and had her pointing this through a white shoot-through umbrella to get the light spreading more evenly.  In the end I did have to go in to Photoshop to dodge the people on the left a little to bring them up to the same brightness as the rest of the group.  But using a powerful flashgun in this way gave me a very good headstart on this image.

So I am showing this here as an example of something simple that you can’t do with a speedlight.  When I need juice! .. and an even spread of light and a set-up that works fast, I revert to using Q-flashes.

.

.

For those who are interested in the specific gear, here are the details of the exact equipment :

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

It’s always a bit of a thrill when a friend achieves success of some kind - in this case, my friend Michelle Turner who recently had her book on wedding photography published.  Even better is that this 128 page volume is filled with lovely photographs as she covers a wide range of topics - from equipment to the flow of the wedding day … all the way to post-production and albums.

(click on the image if you’d like to order the book via Amazon)

Whether you are simply shooting a friend’s wedding, breaking into the business, or wanting to refresh your approach, this book takes you through the essential skills and provides you with the newest tools and tips of the trade.

Doug Fairbairn asked me about this image from a recent post on my wedding photography blog, where I showed some images from a Las Vegas destination wedding:

Great photos. I’m wondering about the lighting for the second photo - B&G and wedding party walking to camera with sun in background. How did you get so much light on their faces? Was it just reflected from the walkway or what? Too far away to use flash it would seem.

Doug .. thank you for the compliments!

About the look of that image and the way their faces are lit - this has less to do with the use of flash than it has with starting off with an image that is correctly exposed, and then tweaking it in post-production.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

I have substantially rewritten my original page on the use of flash brackets.  Digital photography technology is steadily improving to the point where we now have cameras with fairly clean 1600 ISO settings, and very usable 3200 ISO. It is now ever more easy to get great results with bounce flash, and have all the light from the flash be indirect.  With this, the need for me to use a flash bracket, has been greatly reduced.

Rotating flash brackets are cumbersome attachments between the camera and flash, which enables the flash to always be over the camera. Since the flash is always overhead of the camera with a flash bracket, regardless of whether you’re shooting horizontally or vertically, there is no sideways shadow … if you use direct flash to some extent, or a flash modifier on your camera.

It is now possible for me to get vertical images like these, using on-camera flash, with no trace of sideways shadows … because there is no light thrown directly forward from the flash itself.  The light is all indirect. This means there will be no noticeable shadow regardless of how my flash is positioned on top of my camera.

.
These two recent posts are also relevant to this:

• choosing your direction
• my choice of flash modifiers

.
So these days I get by without a flash bracket, and I thought it pertinent to update the webpage to reflect this.

An interesting question I received in an email recently had me thinking about, and considering my style in photographing weddings:

Do you sometimes feel as if you can’t be inconspicuous in order to get a certain shot during a wedding? There have been times I feel like I’m not blending into the background enough. How do you handle this?    (Regina Coble)

In trying to verbalise my answer, I came upon some interesting insights for myself.

Firstly, although I believe there is a strong sense of story-telling in my photography, I’m not particularly purist about ‘photojournalism’ in wedding photography.  I do interact with people  and during the portrait session, I do direct the bride and groom -  all in an effort to give my couples the best wedding photographs I can.  Even when I interact with my couples and direct them, I still aim for spontaneity and genuine expressions.  

But then how do I blend in and remain inconspicious?  For me this has more to do with being accepted within the group of family and friends - and in that way less obviously stand out - than the ‘ninja’ mindset that many wedding photographers try to hold up, trying to become invisible.

A comment on my blog by a groom’s mom gave me a key insight into something I hadn’t thought of before or tried to verbalise before receiving Regina’s email. The groom’s mom wrote:

It was like a friend of the family taking loving pictures.
You made the photo shoots actually fun and it shows in your work.

As I already mentioned, I’m not a ‘photojournalistic’ photographer, although I do photograph largely in an unposed, unplanned style through most of the day …

… but during the course of the portrait session, I begin by directing the couple (and the bridal party), and interacting with them - and eventually they “take over” naturally and become themselves. At that point, they become spontaneous and act like themselves and in a sense I have become less of a distraction, and less noticed.

Once you’ve build that rapport with them, you become less noticeable. It does take confidence in working with people, and it does take time to build up that confidence.

.
During the portrait sessions, and engagement sessions, I try for a natural approach.  I do want my couples to appear relaxed and look like themselves.  To this end, I “take myself out of the picture”, by using a longer lens and having talk to each other and just cuddle and walk, and just be together. This will definitely help with any nervousness in front of the camera - and give portraits which appear casual and relaxed.  

The Nikon D300 (which superceded the highly-regarded D200), is such a great alternative to the top-rated Nikon D3 - offering many of the same features at a more affordable price - that it will make the D300 a camera that many professional photographers will chose as their main camera.  

Many of the custom settings of the D300 are the same as for the D200, but there are a few differences.  (eg, Auto ISO is now set in the Shooting Menu.)

Here are my preferences for the Custom Settings .. and why.

(And here’s the link if you’d like to order the D300 from B&H.)

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)