Aleona was one of our striking models at the recent 2-day flash photography workshop held in Jersey City and Manhattan. The setting here was in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn, with Manhattan in the background. The challenge was to overcome the hard sunlight with a small speedlight … and still make it look good.
The flash photography workshops have undergone certain changes over time – the material and sequence of material are always honed over time. The biggest recent change is that the workshop has expanded with an optional 2nd day where we play around further with on-location lighting. The first day is still the intensive workshop – the combination of seminar and practical sessions where we cover everything thoroughly. The first day takes place in a hotel in Jersey City with a magnificent view of Manhattan. (It is right next to the Path station, so it is easily accessible for anyone coming from Manhattan or Brooklyn.)
The second day is where we have fun, and walk around with two models, and try different backgrounds and lighting scenarios. So that’s the workshop now … 2 days, with the first day an intensive 10 hour workshop, with two models. The next day is the application of that, and we roam around the Meat-Packing District in Manhattan with two different models.
Thank you to everyone who attended and made it a success. And a big thank you to our four models; my friend Richard and my assistant-with-an-attitude, Jessica, who helped on the day. For anyone who might be interested, the next workshop series is coming up in July.
In composing an image, it isn’t just a matter of placing your subject somewhere in the frame. This is true for whether you go by the rigid restrictions of the Rule of Thirds, or whether you like a more central composition .. or a composition with a lot of negative space .. or whether composition is more in the way you instinctively react to the scene and subject in front of you.
Equally as important as where you place your subject, is what you include and what you exclude in the frame. With photographic composition you have to look at the edges of your frame.
I really prefer getting it right in camera – composing for that 3:2 ratio. But it isn’t always possible. Sometimes a different crop works better .. say a square crop. With this image of our model, Catherine, standing inside this massive sundial, it made visual sense to use the shape of the sundial to dictate what the final composition should be.
combining video light and daylight for photography
An image from the most recent workshop, held in Jersey City – our model, Catherine, lit by a combination of daylight coming in through the window, and a video light held aloft. The careful use of the different color balance of daylight vs video light, gives this image its arresting palette. I did make sure that her face was mostly lit by video light, for a uniform color there. The camera was set to Tungsten WB – the preset appropriate for a video light.
The background is the Manhattan Skyline. It is blown out because it is much brighter than what the video light is capable of. But it does help in giving this photo a certain ethereal quality.
A retro-styled portrait of my assistant-with-an-attitude, Jessica.
While we were busy with another portrait session on location in Manhattan, we saw this old car, and decided we just had to use it in a shot. The pose is all Jessica. I decided to keep the composition simple, as if it could have been a snapshot taken in the 60′s of someone’s girlfriend and car. Or car and girlfriend, if you would.
The lighting is just the direct sunlight. No fill. I did bring up the detail somewhat in post-processing. However, Jessica was purposely positioned so that the light fell onto her face, not leaving part of her face in shadow.
The vintage look is then finessed in post-processing …
wedding photography: using on-camera TTL flash with additional manual flash
A common technique used in photographing wedding receptions, is to use additional lighting to lift the general light levels in large reception rooms. The additional lights can be wirelessly controlled TTL flash .. but more often would be manual flashes. Then an on-camera flash can be used, either in manual, or in TTL.
My preference when working like this, is for my on-camera flash to be used in TTL mode, and the additional light(s) to be in manual. Here is an example from a wedding this weekend:
This reception room is a large boxy room with high ceilings. The ceiling is too high to get good results easily by just bouncing an on-camera flash upwards behind you without a diffuser cup on the flash. And I prefer to not work with such a diffuser, unless I really am forced to. For my tastes, these type of diffusers give too flat a kind of light.
I have posted an example before where I used a few additional lights in manual, with on-camera flash in TTL. The question invariably comes up about how you control the manual flash. The answer is that with manual flash, you usually don’t. You set it up before the time to give just a touch of light to the background, and then use the on-camera flash to do the rest of the work. The additional lights here were triggered by PocketWizard Plus II units. With wireless TTL setups, you can off course control the off-camera flashes from the camera itself.
Courtesy of B&H, I had a copy of the brand-new Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS II lens to play with for review purposes. The lens is touted to have improved optical quality, faster auto-fousing, and much better stabilization than the much-loved previous version of this lens. Using the lens on different shoots and walkabouts and tests, I got a fair idea of how the lens performs. In short, the lens is all that .. faster, sharper and with better image stabilization. Noticeably so.
The bokeh of this lens is pleasant. Easily seen in this portrait of my little model, where she is busy collecting feathers. (And to go off-topic for a moment: shallow depth-of-field is not the same as bokeh.) Anyway, this lens has pleasant bokeh. Other lenses might render the background even smoother, but the bokeh in this image above isn’t harsh and intrusive. The image above was shot at f3.2
My main disappointment with the lens is that it looks so much like the previous version. The focusing grip is slightly different, and the lens is a touch longer by a few millimeters. They are quite hard to tell apart. The disappointment would come in that no one would really know you had just spent a small truck-load of money on a new lens. Unless they bothered to read the numerals on the front lens barrel. At least Nikon had the courtesy to make their new lens look substantially different. Easier to swagger with the new gear. ;)
This dramatic image of lightning directly behind this old building, is this week’s entry for the alive for 365 project. It has appeared before in this article on how to photograph lightning. The frame is from the porch I was standing under, sheltering against the rain. The yellow colour cast is from the artificial light, possibly Tungsten. More details about the photograph .. and the ‘how to’, in the linked article.
You can’t really see it in this photo taken from the lounge at this small airfield in Wisconsin, but the snow was coming down hard there. Hard enough to cause flight delays and cancellations. However, en route to the airport, the snow was only falling lightly, so I wasn’t concerned at the time. After all, this is just a few weeks away from the start of Summer.
I had presented a week-long workshop in Wisconsin as part of the Wisonsin Professional Photographers School at Treehaven, and was due to fly back home to New Jersey on Friday afternoon. I absolutely had to get home sometime that Friday night, since I had a wedding the next day that I was photographing. So when the progression of flight delays and cancellations were announced, it was soon obvious I would miss my connecting flight in Minneapolis. This was enough reason for a mild state of panic – at some point I knew I would be late for the wedding the next day.
But I had my iPhone with me. Of course. I have this thing clutched in my left hand most of the day anyway. But I digress. I had the contact info of all my photographer friends in New Jersey. I sent out text messages to a few of them, hoping someone would have the day open to help me out. A few were even willing to change the times of their existing photo shoots to help me out. However, my friend Geri Nelson was free on the day and immediately offered to help out. Better yet, she lives in the same town as the bride and myself. I phoned my bride, and left a phone message with her. And then I finalized details with Geri. From the timing it looked like I would be able to join the wedding at the start of the ceremony. Which meant I would rely on Geri to cover the bride’s preparation. But, just to be sure in case of more hiccups, I told Geri to be prepared to shoot the entire wedding.
The flight left at 7:30 pm that Friday night, and I over-nighted in Minneapolis. The next morning then was a mad dash to get home from the airport, and grab the rest of my equipment before heading out to photograph the wedding. I did arrive just before the ceremony, and easily got into the swing of events. Geri stayed with me through the ceremony and portrait session, and I continued until the end of the wedding reception. I was also fortunate that I had a couple that was easy-going and very cool about it all.
The point to this rambling anecdote?
When trouble hit, I had a system of back-ups in place, whether formal or informal …
I took this photo of the Hotel du Louvre during a trip to Paris in 1993. I carefully propped my camera against a hand-railing to steady it during the slow exposure of 1/4 second. As I took my first frame, a bus drove past. I cursed my luck and took the photograph again. (This was pre-digital, and I was poor enough that every frame of transparency film that I shot was expensive.) Anyway, I cursed my luck, thinking the bus would spoil the image I was after. However, when I saw the results, the ‘accident’ looked far better than the intended shot.
This favourite photo of mine, is this week’s entry for the Alive for 365 project.
[ Pentax Z-1; Pentax-FA 28-80mm f3.5-4.7 / Fujichrome RD 100 ]
[ Paris, France / April '93 ]
