The second workshop here in the UK, (also sold out), was another full day of work work work and fun. With both the Brighton and Birmingham workshops, I mixed up the format again, bringing the practical parts of the workshop into the early morning seminar. This way the lecture-style seminar in the morning is broken up into various parts during the day, interleaved with more time with cameras in hand. I feel it works better than having the entire morning taken up by the seminar presentation, and I will most likely keep this format in future, with maybe a few more changes. As ever, the format and the material keeps on evolving ..
From the afternoon session where we used softboxes with manual flash – we brought both models together for part of the one session. And yes, the models did indeed stop the pedestrian traffic.
I must say I am pretty amazed myself at being able to come to the UK to present workshops, and that there was such interest in having me come over. So here we are .. the first workshop just took place, and it was in Brighton, the well-known tourist and holiday resort. As usual, part of the program included working outdoors with softboxes and manual flash .. and for this we went down to the colourful promenade.
The image above has our two models, Amy and Francesca, at the merry-go-round on the promenade. Some technical info about that photo ..
A portrait of Amy, one of our models at the recent workshop in Brighton, UK. Here we used a single video light on her.
I love the dramatic quality the light imparts, and how you can flag the light with the barn-doors to create a specific fall-off to the light in the background. The strong vignetting helps in giving it that dramatic look.
In figuring out the direction of light, and how to place the video lighting, I am largely guided by way the shadow of the subject’s nose is falling across her face. I then direct the model and the person who holds the light, to move slightly if needed. I usually don’t want the nose to cast a shadow across the cheek that blends into the other shadow areas.
As you can see from the shadow of her nose, the video light was to the camera left. In looking at this photo now in editing it, I think it might have been improved if the video light had moved slightly more to the camera’s point of view, so that the shadow of her nose is even less obvious. Then the way the left side of her face is shaded would’ve been less steep as well.
It’s in this analysis afterwards of a photograph that we learn how to improve the lighting and composition and posing for the next time!
I received a great comment on this image from a recent engagement session I photographed, and I thought I’d expand a little bit on the technique and way of working with a couple.
Jeffrey Steele wrote:
Heck of a capture! The bokeh is awesome. Not sure if it was intended but the brightness of the red and yellow lights behind each couples heads has a dramatic play from left to right forcing the eye to center right in on the couple.
I especially enjoy seeing the engagement stuff as its tough to get creative with that sort of thing. These look great, I am sure they are very excited about their upcoming wedding photos.
Now, the way the lights appeared behind them were intentional, but was also accidental in it wasn’t quite predictable. When photographing a couple for their portrait session, I try for a natural look. Even though the particular spot and placement is directed, I still very much aim for a spontaneous and intimate look. I want to photograph the couple as *they* appear, and therefore the style is less formally posed and more relaxed. Much of what we do, is to get some of the way the couple interact with each other. The session after all should be about trying to show some of their relationship.
With this in mind, during the photo session I allow the couple to talk and cuddle and just be with one another, while I stand back with a 70-200mm lens. The longer focal length helps isolate them; and then I also use an aperture between f4 and f2.8 – for this sequence, my aperture did vary from f2.8 to f3.5 as I felt needed to. So in the slide-show you will see some slight variation in exposure.
I chose this spot to photograph the couple when I saw the traffic lights change in the background, knowing that it would appear as large out of focus coloured areas in the background. The cars, buses and trucks moving by in the background also meant the background constantly changed. So I deliberately placed them there on the sidewalk. And then I would also fluidly change my position by a few inches or a foot or two, just to place the highlights in a specific way in the background. However, I didn’t try to get a static pose and position, since that would work against the style of photography here. On some level this has to be an instinctive response where part of your brain says, “ooh nice!”. This also makes it a matter of chance as to precisely what you’re going to get in the end.
Here is a slideshow of 19 images from the approximately 40 that I shot here in 2 or 3 sequences. It will hopefully show some of the technique in how I frame my subjects and move my position to change the background ..
When I recently photographed one of my couples in Hoboken, we worked for a while in one of the colourful alleys. To lift the shadows a little bit, I used flash. However a softbox might have been overkill when just a touch of fill-flash is needed .. especially when there is a useful wall directly behind me.
As a report-back on the most recent workshop in New Jersey, (held in Jersey City) I thought I’d simply post the first feedback email I received about the workshop. It is always good to hear the workshop has such impact:
Neil, So tonight I shot my first ‘post-workshop’ wedding…. Holy Crap – what an incredible difference!!!
I shot 30% less images tonight than I normally do. Out of those, I have more ‘keepers’ than I’ve ever had before *with* all the additional shots. I’m stunned that my first attempt at applying what you gave me produced results like this – I can only imagine where this will take me with practice! (oh, you can only use the above as a testimonial if you keep the “holy crap” bit in! )
I have to say, I loved the workshop – perfect balance of classroom and ‘hands on’ – for someone like me form a rock in the ocean where we have no way to learn other than reading and trying, it was an awesome experience. Thanks so much for everything.
Ben J.
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And as usual with the report-back on a workshop, here’s an image from the workshop and a little explanation of some of the techniques that can be expected to be covered.
I positioned Priscilla, one of our models, so that we could play around with the idea of getting directional light from our on-camera speedlights – even to where we could get very close to the short lighting style of portrait lighting. And just to show where we started from without flash:
A big thank you to Michael Kraus who generously put in the effort to do it. In addition to that, he also translated the pages on exposure metering techniques.
This translation into German joins several others:
Chinese – translation by Tom Lan Italian – translation by Sandra Luoni Polish – translation by Bartosz Jastrzebski French – translation by Melina Barral Romenian – translation by Leontin Stelea
The processional is technically probably the most difficult part of a wedding to shoot and get right. Light levels are low in cavernous churches while people are walking towards you. Getting enough light on them, and having that light look good, as well as getting the image sharp .. that’s a tall order.
This adorable flower girl just had to stop and check in with dad half-way down the aisle.
[ 1/80th @ f4 @ 1600 ISO // Nikon SB-900, Nikon D3, Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 ]
My preferred approach to photographing the processional:
(and I have to stress that this is my approach and might not be universally applicable)
find my settings so that the available light is about 1 stop (or a little more) under-exposed, and then bounce flash behind me into the church .. but still making sure you have a useful shutter speed. btw, 1/60th isn’t necessarily a useful starting point.)
This does mean cranking up the ISO considerably … I’m often somewhere between 1600-32oo ISO, at f3.5 – f2.8
Therefore a high-ISO capable camera like the Nikon D3 (B&H), is essential to me for my work. A Nikon D700 (B&H), or Canon 5D mkII (B&H), or Canon 1D mkIV (B&H), would be just as good a choice to shoot in what is usually an under-lit scenario.
I really really really try my best to stay away from using a diffuser cup of any kind, since this most often just makes for ugly flash photos. But sometimes when the church is simply too large, or has wooden panelling, then I am forced to accept that compromise.
I nearly always gel my flash for Tungsten, to make the flash not be as obvious. This way I am adding tungsten light to the tungsten light and the flash therefore blends more easily with the prevailing light.
A note to everyone who has their email (and website) hosted by GoDaddy – I can’t reply to your emails, since GoDaddy regards my emails as spam and they immediately bounce back to me.
I’ve tried to resolve this months-and-months long issue, but GoDaddy support simply points out that they use Spamhaus as their database to ban addresses they consider to be sources of spam emails. Spamhaus lists a block of addresses of Optonline, my Internet service provider, as being such. Optonline in turns says they can’t affect the problem.
Here I am now, caught between three (big) companies, finding it impossible to chip away at this problem. If you have emailed me and have had no response and you are hosted with GoDaddy, now you know why.
So if you are hosted with GoDaddy and want to contact me, please use an alternate email address such as a gmail, yahoo or hotmail address. Also, be aware that your own clients or potential clients might not be able to contact you because of this! And you would never know about it.
I have already posted several images from the extended photo session with Sarah and Mark – but here is the epic video. The intention with these photo sessions was to expand Sarah’s portfolio as much as we could.
We started off at Coney Island, doing a session with Sarah and Mark at the edge of the beach with Sarah in swimwear .. and from there it went into more of a lifestyle shoot with the two of them on the boardwalk. Later on we had Sarah run towards the camera in sportswear. But we rained out with a massive thunderstorm rolling in over New York. We picked up the photo session again in Battery Park. Much of this session and onwards weren’t caught on video since the-other-Neil, who assisted me, had to stay with the van and drive around looking for parking while we continued with the shoot. There is a short section though, showing some of the Battery Park session. From there we moved up to Times Square to photograph a very glamorous looking Sarah in evening wear in Times Square.
Hopefully all of this will be a great view of the approach during a photo session, and how there is no single static way of doing things. Various techniques are used; the lighting too is varied; all to give a wide range to the look of the final images ..
