January 26, 2009
As most of you already know, I work as a wedding photographer in New Jersey. This slideshow displays some of my favourite images from weddings I photographed in 2008. A number of the images where chosen because they I think they are beautiful to look at; others might evoke a fond memory of a cute moment; but they are all images that I am proud to have taken. I decided to limit it to 3 images per wedding, and with only a handful of photographs from engagement sessions.
Click on the image for the slideshow to start, and click on the header to return.
(There is music accompanying the slideshow, so adjust your volume accordingly.)
Comments (17)
January 22, 2009
Further explorations with the beauty dish, and also with some bounce-flash technique.
This time, Seregon was my model.
(more…)
Comments (12)
[ all images: Nikon D3; Nikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S VR; Profoto beauty dish ]
During these icy winter months it’s just too much to go outside for portrait photography, so it’s a good time to play around indoors with some lighting gear – in this case, a recently acquired Profoto AcuteB 600R lighting kit and the Profoto beauty dish.
(more…)
Comments (5)
January 20, 2009
Someone suggested to me that I should consider expanding the discussion of flash photography techniques to a Flickr group. And it made sense to offer a wider audience the chance to chat, ask questions and show their images related to flash photography. Flickr groups are perfect for this, especially since most web-savvy photographers are familiar with Flickr already.
Since the Tangents blog isn’t limited to only flash photography and lighting, but also other topics related to photography, the Flickr group won’t be limited to just that either. So if you have images to show, and questions to ask, join me over here ..
Flickr group – flash photography techniques.
Comments (9)
January 17, 2009
I was invited to be one of the speakers at this year’s convention of the Digital Wedding Forum, which was held in Carefree, AZ. It was great to get to hang out for a few days with old friends, and also to make new friends. (A big thank you and hi-there! to everyone who came up to me to introduce themselves.)
My presentation was called: Just give me the f-stop.
There were 150+ people attending, and going by the feedback I received, it went over very well.
Apparently, I also summoned UFOs during my presentation!
(more…)
Comments (3)
January 15, 2009
As a wedding photographer I obviously shoot all the time in ares lit by tungsten / incandescent light sources. With modern D-SLRs and fast lenses it is no problem to actually use tungsten light as my main light source.
The photo above from a recent wedding, is a typical image where I used an existing incandescent / tungsten light source for a beautiful but simple portrait. Here I photographed the bride by the light of a lamp in the living room. No flash was used – just the lamp and whatever other ambient light existed in the room at the time.
The blue colour in the background is the draped window behind her which is lit with light from outside. With the huge difference in colour temperature between the tungsten light and the light from outside – should I correct for the tungsten light (ie, regard that as my neutral light source), then the outside light will be much more blue in appearance. With this image, I set my WB on my camera to tungsten / incandescent as would be typical here, but still touching up the WB as part of my regular RAW post-production workflow.
When I need more light though in a situation where tungsten already dominates, then I really hesitate to use unfiltered flash. I nearly always gel my flash for tungsten light in this case – either with a 1/2 CTS filter, or a full CTS filter.
Another option to using gelled flash is to add more tungsten light …
(more…)
Comments (24)
January 10, 2009
[ this is an update of an article which has previously appeared on this website ]
Bokeh is the term used to describe the quality of background blur in a photo,
i.e. how pleasing the blur looks of the background areas. Since the softness of the background blur is usually more important than how the foreground items are blurred, bokeh usually relates to the background blur.
The bokeh of a lens is influenced by numerous factors, including
- the lens design,
- specifically, how spherical abberations are corrected,
- the number of blades in the aperture mechanism,
- focusing distance,
- the actual aperture used will also affect bokeh to some extent,
- the distance of the out-of-focus objects,
- and in the case of the Nikon DC lenses, by how certain aberrations are selectively introduced.
Bokeh is usually described as being subjective, and it largely is. However, when you’re able to recognize the difference between good bokeh and poor / harsh bokeh, then it becomes less subjective I believe. When you see good bokeh, you’ll recognize it. Same with bad bokeh.
To illustrate how good bokeh appears, and what poor bokeh looks like, I had set up this simple shot.
(more…)
Comments (58)
The pages on flash photography techniques and exposure metering, have been translated into Romanian by Leontin Stelea.
They can be found on these pages:
masurarea expunerii / exposure metering
tehnici de fotografiere cu blit / flash photography techniques
This translation into Romanian joins other translations of this site:
Chinese – translation by Tom Lan
Italian – translation by Sandra Luoni
Polish – translation by Bartosz Jastrzebski
French – translation by Melina Barrals
And there is a Spanish translation in the works too.
Thank you again, Leontin.
Filed under:
news — Neil vN @ 12:42 pm
