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Because of the positive comments I’ve had to the recent addition of video clips that show a glimpse of how I work, I thought I’d show the progression of an idea.  Not just how the actual image was made, but how the idea progressed.

The photo above of Sarah and Mark at Coney Island, is from the day-long photo session where we went to different locations in New York.  Where this image above started, was in a previous sequence ..

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Flashy Photo Sessions in NYC 06-19 from Neil van Niekerk on Vimeo.
[ if the video is choppy, let the clip buffer completely first, or turn off HD ]

On Friday June 19th, (along with my assistant, the-other-Neil), I met up with 3 models in New York for a photo session with each.  The intention was to try out different lighting techniques, different equipment .. and just to have fun and see what we can come up with.

First we roamed the Meat-packing District and Greenwhich with Aleona and Laura Lee, and then later on met up with Sasha in Brooklyn.  This video clip will be a glimpse of working with three gorgeous models in an ever-fascinating city.   Enjoy!  : )   I think what might be interesting with this video, is to see the wider view in relation to the resulting image. 

 Some of the images have already been posted here, and you will see more of them over time. And some will eventually appear in a book on the topic of off-camera lighting to be published next year.

The lighting ranged from just available light, to using off-camera Q-flash with a softbox, and later on with Sasha, some video lights.  A flexible approach that allows for divergent results, helping to keep the final mix of images fresh.

The equipment:
Nikon D3;  Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S;  Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S;  Nikon 200mm f2 AF-S

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The workshop dates for the rest of 2009:

The NJ / NYC workshop coming up shortly on July 13th. sold out!

The UK / Ireland workshop dates in July are also coming up fast.
Both the Brighton and Birmingham workshops are now sold out.
The workshop in Cork, Ireland on Sunday, Aug 02, is also sold out,
but there is the chance of an overflow date on Monday Aug 03 for Cork.

The dates for latter half of 2009, with the new dates in bold :

• Denver, CO  -  Aug 18 (Tue)
• Portland, OR  -  Sept 1 (Tue)
• Seattle, WA  -  Sept 3 (Thu)
• NJ / NYC  –  Sept 14 (Mon)
• Boston, MA  -  Sept 16 (Wed)
• Philadelphia, PA  -  Sept 29 (Tue)
• Annapolis, MD  -  Oct 1 (Thu) (city changed from DC, and date also changed)
• Atlanta, GA  -  Oct 13 (Tue)
• Palm Beach, FL  -  Nov 03 (Wed)   (date has been moved forward by a day)
• Austin, TX  -  Nov 17 (Tue)
• Dallas, TX  – Nov 19 (Thu)

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For anyone who attends the workshops, there are some extra goodies thrown by the kind sponsorships from Fundy, and ProDPI.  Get more details on the workshops info page.

For those who are interested in attending one of the workshops this year, the 2008 workshops were very well received.  For feedback on previous workshops, check the comments left by the attendees for each workshop..

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Register for a workshop .

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As first in an ongoing series about overpowering the sun with flash, this photograph was from a session with Sarah and her husband, Mark.  The sunlight on Coney Island was pretty harsh, and I needed to / wanted to clean up the sun’s harsh shadows with flash.

Since the Sunny 16 rule has it that broad daylight is in the order of 1/250th @ f11 @ 100 ISO … you’d either have to shoot with a bare speedlight, (which, as a small light source, will cause hard shadows) .. or use a much more powerful strobe with a softbox.

For this image I used the Profoto AcuteB 600R lighting kit with 2×3 Profoto softbox off to my right, adding flash at full power.  I placed the softbox and flash to come in from the same direction as the sunlight, adding as much light as the sun.  The intention is to clean up the shadows caused by the sunlight, and because I am then under-exposing the background by a stop ..  thereby also saturating the sky.
settings: 1/250th @ 160 ISO @ f22

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At a recent wedding the time we had for the formal photographs were compressed, and we had to come up with a variety of romantic portraits and formal photos.  This time I decided I want to do them only using video lights.  The wysiwygnature of lighting a subject with video lights was a bonus in this case, allowing me to work fast.

I had my assistant crouch down behind them, rim lighting them with the video lights.  The actual light falling on the couple is the ambient light in the room.  The image above was shot at 1/80th @ f2.8 @1600 iso, using the Nikon D3 and Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens.  The other images here which are directly lit by video lights, are at different settings with lower ISOs and higher shutter speeds.  But since this image was rim lit by the video lights, and the video lights didn’t contribute much to the actual exposure values, I had to go higher on the ISO, and a little lower on the shutter speed than I normally prefer.

I purposely let the video light flare here, by changing my position until I could see the edge of the video light.

The image above had some post-processing done to it, by running one of the Totally Rad Actions on it, giving a slightly retro feel which I think suited it.   Here is what the image looked like with only the WB touched up a bit …

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In reply to some questions on using video light for portraits, here are some images of Sasha, a model who brought an entirely appropriate sense of the dramatic to the photo session.  With vintage clothing and hats, the video lights appeared a good choice for lighting. 

For this session, I had an assistant who held up two Lowel ID-lights, each with barn-doors to flag the light and stop light spill .. and in this way get a lot of control over the direction and placing of the light.   The one light was used to light up our model, and the other light was to light up the background.  We were standing out on the dark street in Brooklyn, and we needed the second light to create some interesting background.  In this case the background was a brightly painted brick wall. 

In explaining here how I use the video light, I also thought it pertinent to show some of my less successful images as examples of the progression in getting to images that have impact ..

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I never paid much attention to the physics and shape of the pulse of flash, or how the pulse of light is shaped, but after reading up on how the new PocketWizards work, I was curious .. and played around with the Q-flash. And to my surprise, I found I was able to shoot at much-higher-than-sync speed with the Q-flash when I am using it at full power.  So I had to delve further into  this.

Now, the usual short-hand description of the way the flash pulse is dissipated, is as a near-instantaneous burst of light.  But the reality of it is that there is a specific rise time to the pulse, and also a specific way the light decays from the moment the flash is fired.  This decay in the light pulse becomes slower for certain flashguns (mostly non-studio flashguns), as the flash is fired at higher power settings.

This becomes essential knowledge once you delve into the realm of action-stopping flash, but for most of us as wedding and portrait photographers, it is immaterial.

Going back to the image I posted a few days ago ..

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Aleona - lit with an off-camera Q-flash T5D-R, using Quantum’s wireless system, and a 24×32 softbox on a lightstand.  1/1000th @ f4 @ 200 ISO.

More details and possibly a short video clip to follow ..

NYC photo shoot – Linda & Gary 06-14 from Neil van Niekerk on Vimeo.
[ if the video is choppy, let the clip buffer completely first, or turn off HD ]

As a glimpse of how I work with couples during a photo shoot, here is a video clip of a recent session.  Linda and Gary’s wedding is coming up later this year.  I met up with them this weekend in Manhattan and we roamed the Meat-packing District and Times Square for some vibrant portraits.

Another photograph from the recent NYC photo shootout.  We were a group of photographers working with Lea during this part of the afternoon.  There are several parts in what makes an image successful – the subject, the setting, lighting and then the post-processing. 

There are limitations in working as a group with a model.  So where I would’ve preferred shooting with a longer lens to compress the perspective more, you sometimes have to accept the situation.  In this case, the setting wasn’t ideal, and there was a fair amount of background clutter.  Therefore this might be a good time to to show some of what I might do with post-processing of an image.  Especially since with this image there was, for me at least, a fair amount of post-processing involved.

Before we get there, just a note about the lighting.  It was the same light as I used in this previously posted photograph of the NYC photo shoot-out.  The lighting set-up was similar to the one mentioned here, where I explained some of the metering involved in using manual flash with a softbox.

In this instance I wanted to expose for the sky, and then use flash to lift the model to the same exposure level.  Starting point was 200 ISO and max flash sync speed. (1/250th for the Nikon D3).   Metering for the sky with my camera’s meter, and taking a few test shots, checking the preview image on my camera’s LCD, I was happy with f6.3

I then had to move the softbox close enough, and set my flash power high enough, to give me f6.3 at that distance for that ISO.  For this, I used a handheld flashmeter.

This then is the photograph as I took it, and this is also then my starting point in editing the image afterwards …

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