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February 14, 2011
May 2-6, 2011 (Mon-Fri) – Treehaven, WI
This is a 4-day workshop at Treehaven in Wisconsin, under the auspices of PPA. Last year’s workshop in Treehaven was very well received – in fact, fully booked – so this will be a repeat workshop. The fee for the workshop is an incredibly low $795, which includes all meals and residence in a dorm room at Treehaven.
This is incredible value for money. I don’t know how the Treehaven people do it, but they do.
The program will be an extended version of the usual workshop that I present, but spread over 4 days. With this leisurely pace, everyone is sure to get enough time to shoot and practice. What also made last year’s workshop great, is that, along with the attendees to the other classes, we all socialized in the evenings, hanging out and chatting with fellow photographers. A great time.
If you’re interested, follow the link for more details.
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February 13, 2011
With WPPI coming up soon, I have had a number of people ask about individual workshops and tutoring sessions. Instead of trying to co-ordinate all this around everyone’s crazy schedules, I’ve decided it would be easier to announce a series of mini-workshops.
Las Vegas mini-workshop: on-location flash photography
There will be 3 workshops; each will be 4 hrs long.
- Saturday, Feb 19, 2-6pm
- Monday, Feb 21, 1-5pm
- Tuesday, Feb 22, 1-5pm
The mini-workshops will be limited to only 3 people at a time. Definitely un-crowded! Therefore these mini-workshops will be closer to being individual tutoring sessions.
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February 12, 2011
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Syl Arena has steadily made a name for himself amongst photographers with his blog, Pixsylated. Followers of his blog would’ve noticed that Syl was on hiatus for several months in 2010, while busy writing a book on Canon speedlites. Having spent the most part of a year on writing, you’d expect something great. And it is. In short, I think Syl might just have written the definitive work on flash photography with speedlites.
If you’re a Canon shooter, this book is essential. If you’re a Nikon or Sony or Pentax shooter, you’d still do very well with this book. Within its 376 pages, 812 photos and 26 chapters, all the essential stuff is covered, and more.
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February 11, 2011
first photo session using the PocketWizard MiniTT1 & FlexTT5 & AC3 ZoneController (Nikon)
My friend Carol Beuchat, who works as a professional dog photographer, is back in New York for this year’s Westminster Dog Show. Some of you may remember the portrait we did last year of Chanel, a champion whippet. Carol asked me to help her again with portraits of Keegan, an Irish Water Spaniel, who will be competing at the Westminster Dog Show.
Keegan’s owners wanted some photographs with New York as a backdrop. I immediately thought of doing this on the Jersey side, with a grand view of Manhattan across the Hudson. I had just received a set of the brand new PocketWizards which offer wireless TTL control for Nikon cameras.
I specifically wanted to use this as a TTL setup, because I knew we would have to work fast, and I would have to control everything from my camera. The previous night the temperatures in New York had dropped to a bone-chilling 5 degrees Fahrenheit (-15 Celsius), and there just wouldn’t be time to run to and from the light setups, and change settings. It had to be done from the camera …
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February 10, 2011
For the second in a series of three articles on wedding album design, we have Stephanie Zettl, who is fast establishing herself as one of the best wedding photographers in St Louis.
the other related article is:
elegant & profitable wedding albums, by Fundy
why create a wedding album?
Ever since I started my business I have always included an album in our collections. Occasionally we will produce the rare “shoot & burn” but I really try to shy away from them. (Shoot and Burns are when you only deliver the digital images on a disc – no prints or albums are provided)
I believe an album should be provided with all collections because we are all losing a bit of our photographic legacy as images get achieved into the dark recesses of our hard drives. Having access to digital files is important. Sharing photos on facebook and your iPhone gives people a lot of pleasure and is a good thing.
But there also needs to be a hard copy that will survive the internet and the computer upgrades. There needs to be something that the bride and groom can touch and feel and show future generations. There needs to be something that will survive and create their personal legacy. I truly believe that people deserve good photographs and albums that their children and grandchildren will be able to appreciate.
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February 9, 2011
Albums can be one of the largest profit centers for both wedding and portrait photography, or it can be a logistical nightmare, overloading even the most dedicated photographer. Digital albums can be both a blessing and a curse. We are free to design whatever we or the client wants, but we are also the design studio.
As the first in a series of articles on wedding album design, we have Andrew “Fundy” Funderburg starting us off with some ideas on helping you increase profits and decrease your work load in an ever difficult business climate.
Elegant, profitable wedding albums
© Finao Albums
Clean and Simple Sells
When digital albums first came out, everyone jumped to put as many flurries, borders and backgrounds as we could on the page. It was natural, some of these things were cool, some of them were painful to look at. The end result was simply, we were spending a lot of time designing busy-looking albums.
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February 7, 2011
photography questions and answers
The past few days’ posts were all set to be part of the on-going question and answer theme where I look at search engine queries, and directly answer a selection of 10 questions. But they all expanded into something longer that warranted individual posts:
- available light vs fill-flash
- best fill flash settings
- exposure metering modes
Anyway, here is the usual instalment with 10 fairly random questions and answers:
01) do I need to adjust my camera exposure with flash photography
Interestingly phrased – and the answer is, yes, to an extent. To an extent you don’t need to adjust your camera exposure when you use flash photography .. IF (and a big if) .. IF your ambient exposure is low enough.
With this wedding portrait, my camera settings were 1/50 @ f4.5 @ 800 ISO, using TTL bounce flash.
The flash entirely dominates. It is in effect the only light source here. Since my ambient light levels are so low, I could’ve had a whole range of combinations of camera settings, and the TTL flash would still have taken care of the exposure.
In that sense, I need not adjust my camera settings. I could take numerous photos, and the TTL flash technology would take care of my exposure. It’s now just up to me to make sure my composition and timing and direction of light is good. So to a large extent, I could ignore my camera settings. But this only works when the ambient light levels are low. The moment the ambient light becomes more prominent .. eg, in brighter light, or because of my camera settings .. then I need to think more carefully about how to balance my flash with the available light.
This somehow segues into our next question, by way of contrast …
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February 5, 2011
best fill light flash settings
Yup, another post intended as one of the entries in the question & answer series, but somehow expanded into a post which should stand on its own. The question that popped up in my webstats was: ‘best fill light flash settings’
First, we need to understand that there is a whole range of ratios in which we can balance available light with flash.
A whole range in how we mix flash and available light. Anywhere from:
- correct ambient exposure with just a touch of fill-flash,
all the way to where we:
- under-expose the ambient light, and use flash to give us the correct exposure.
There are of course numerous possibilities inbetween those two scenarios. None of which are particularly more ‘correct’ than the other ways we match flash and available light. For simplicity of explanation though, it is easier to describe the two ‘extremes’, and hopefully this will make it easy for us to figure out the inbetweenie scenarios … where we mix some flash with the available light, and still get good lighting and great exposure.
Now, when we talk about ‘fill-flash’, we’re usually describing the scenario where our ambient exposure is correct, and we’re just lifting the shadows with a mere hint of fill-flash.
So for anyone who wants to know the best fill-flash settings, you have to think in terms of your ambient exposure first and foremost. That is your starting point – correct exposure for the available light. Then you can add flash to it. But just a touch of fill-flash. In other words, “best fill flash settings”, would revolve around your camera settings for correct (or close to correct), ambient exposure. And then adding a touch of flash to even out the shadow areas or lift the contrast.
In this photo, my exposure for the couple was correct. I didn’t allow the brighter street scene or background to influence my camera settings. I based my exposure on the couple. The next step was adding fill-flash with my on-camera speedlight …
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February 4, 2011
The previous post about metering modes was all set to be part of the on-going theme where I look at search engine queries, answering a selection of 10 questions more specifically. But then it expanded into something longer than just a quick reply. Same with today’s post. It was going to be a short explanation, but then expanded into something which is probably better as a stand-alone post. The question was stated in an interesting way:
do natural light photographers always use fill flash?
The question curiously implies that you might not find natural light which is perfect. However, as photographers, that is something we’re constantly searching for: perfect light. It is out there, somewhere. So, resisting the temptation to just answer with a cheeky “no”, let’s consider an example of when you would not want or need fill-flash.
The thing with natural light, is that you have to look at it. You have to look at the direction of light. And see whether it gives you the quality of light that you need …
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February 2, 2011
which metering mode to use -
Matrix / Evaluative, or Center-weighted, or Spot-metering?
I noticed that search engine query come up in my web-stats – ‘which metering mode for outdoor photos’. So it might be a good idea to answer it specifically. Which metering mode should you use for outdoor photography? Or for that matter any kind of photography?
My approach is quite simple: Since I’m using manual exposure mode nearly exclusively, no matter which route I take to get to a specific shutter speed / aperture / ISO combination … I would be getting the exact same exposure regardless of which metering mode was used.
In this way, the metering technique is the essential factor, not the metering mode …
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