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January 12, 2012
Hanging out with my friend Brooke, (NYC boudoir photographer), at yesterday’s workshop, I noticed some of the images on her iPad that she was showing to explain her lighting techniques. The photographs had an interesting mix of gold and blue tones, and I thought the way she achieved it would be of interest to everyone. It might be familiar to regular followers of the Tangents blog. (Oh, Brooke is co-presenting a workshop on boudoir photography, and there’s a discount for Tangents readers.)
inspired boudoir lighting
by Brooke Ismach, New York boudoir photographer
Since launching Inspired Boudoir, a joint photography venture with fellow photographer Laura Eaton, I have been lucky enough to speak quite a bit about boudoir photography. Which means I’m showing boudoir images to photography groups. Consistently, I am asked one question more than any other: How did I achieve the “blue” background lighting in the attached photo. Most photographers guess using gels, but the answer is actually simpler than that …
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December 5, 2011
Stephanie Zettl, (who should by now be a familiar name here), recently showed me a photograph she shot of kids jumping on the bed. The photo was crisp and evenly lit. The lighting strongly reminded me of the way I lit the recent posted photo of Ulorin Vex, where I used off-camera bounce flash. And it turned out I was right.
And that is the beauty of this – clean, crisp lighting that is easily achieved.
off-camera bounce flash – photographing kids in their room
by: Stephanie Zettl (St Louis wedding photographer)
When I photograph kids my main goal is to capture the things that make them kids: their laugh, their desire to play, their sense of curiosity, their innocence. I want to create photographs that they will look at 20, 30, 50 years from now and cherish because I was able to captures moments that represent their childhood.
For me, to truly be able to do this, I like to just let the kids play and be kids. Generally I like to work with the available light because that allows me to take multiple shots quickly to get the perfect expression. Window light and open shade are my friends. However, sometimes the quality and the quantity of available light is just not there. But there should not be an excuse for bad lighting. As a professional photographer, we need to have the ability to see, shape and create the light as needed. When the quality of available natural light is poor, there is no excuse for not bringing out and using our flashes.
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December 1, 2011
The Hudson Valley Click is a group of photographers in New York who arrange photo shoots for photographers who are interested in learning more or who would like to build their portfolios. I’ve mentioned them a few times in the past - photo shoot / haunted fashion / pin-up photography. With these photo sessions, they arrange for models and hair stylists and make-up artists, and for a small entry fee, you get to play. They are also pretty cool bunch of people to hang out with.
At the most recent shoot-out, the one organizer, Nuby DeLeon, showed me an image that he had set up, and my jaw dropped. With great pre-visualization of the intended shot, Nuby had set this dramatic scene up. Even the color image on the back of his camera looked perfect! Nuby was gracious enough to allow me to share this with everyone, including the lighting diagram …
Film Noir Fight Scene
by Nuby DeLeon
portrait, wedding & commercial photographer – New York
Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to explore dramatic lighting when Hudson Valley Click did their monthly themed shoot at Mountain View Manor in Glen Spey, NY. The theme for the month was Film Noir so having a beautiful Victorian mansion to shoot in was a treat. There were a number of models, all dressed in period costume.
My inspiration for the shot is Frank Miller. I wanted to match the dramatic lighting with some dramatic, almost over the top action.
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November 29, 2011
off-camera bounce flash – my guest spot on Frank Doorhof’s blog
I was fortunate to make the acquaintance of a phenomenal Fashion photographer last year when Frank Doorhof visited New York. He was gracious enough to be featured on the Tangents blog with a guest spot - on learning the essentials of photography. And it is my turn to reciprocate. The topic of my post is off-camera bounce flash.
Showing a sequence of images that I shot of Ulorin Vex earlier this year, I explain the thought-process in the lighting that I used. The lighting technique itself was quite simple, but there were some steps in finessing the final result.
And it’s all there on Frank’s blog - off-camera bounce flash.
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September 2, 2011
Ring flash is one of those light modifiers that are quite trendy to use. It gives a distinctive halo-like diffuse shadow around your subject when used on camera. When used on-camera, it also gives very flat lighting. As a single light source this doesn’t suit all subjects, and this does mean that the ring flash has its detractors. But used in conjunction with other lights, it is a very useful addition to the photographer’s arsenal.
Stephanie, a frequent guest here, tried out the Orbis Ring flash (B&H),
a handy device which turns any speedlight into a ring-flash.
ring flash techniques with the Orbis Ring Flash
Bring up the topic of ring flash at a crowded table of photographers and opinions will vary greatly. You’ll hear everything from “It’s harsh ugly flat light.” to “This is the coolest, trendiest light out there!” to “It’s a great tool when used properly.”
For the new photographer or someone with limited knowledge of ring flash, such differences of opinion can be confusing. Some of the greatest fashion photographers out there regularly use ring flashes. But there are also examples of really bad work done with a ring flash.
So that brings up the question: Why would you use a ring flash?
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August 31, 2011
Adrian, a regular follower of the Tangents blog, (better known as the ever-helpful Trev in the Tangents forum), has the guest spot this week. Adrian has expanded on his explanation of the actions that he mentioned in the comments section of the recent article on Selective Sharpening in Photoshop. Even better, he has made it available as two downloadable actions as well.
Photoshop actions to help with Post Processing after RAW conversion (free download)
Intro:
The following downloadable actions with the instructions on their use can save some time and grief on getting a good result after RAW conversion. Even using your RAW converter may not get a fully desirable end result and these very easy to use actions will help in that regard. They are not complicated and you don’t need any plug-ins to achieve a simple lift to your final image.
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August 11, 2011
4 tips on selling wedding albums
We all want our clients to get nice wedding albums. On their 50th wedding anniversary, this will be the one thing that they will cherish from their wedding. But, being a big investment, clients often need to be convinced of the value.
Selling really isn’t that hard, and selling albums isn’t that hard if you have a few tips that will get you launched. Here are some simple strategies for selling albums in a straightforward way, by making your clients want the albums.
photography & design by Frank Salas, Orange County Wedding Photographer
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June 20, 2011
by: Stephanie Zettl (St Louis wedding photographer)
Have you ever tried to connect your very expensive speedlight to a light stand or flash modifier with a coldshoe? Have you tightened the coldshoe around your very expensive speedlight and had that bad feeling in the back of your mind that with a little bump, the coldshoe would loosen and your very expensive speedlight would go crashing to the ground? I know I have.
Ten years ago, I did not have many problems with coldshoes. Part of the reason was because the coldshoe tightened around the flash foot and the flash itself had a rotating locking wheel that tightened the flash to the shoe. Since speedlights have gone to a pin and lock system, coldshoes have become much more unreliable. Most coldshoes are not built to have a pin lock into them.
Then came along the Frio. I have never been so excited about a $15 piece of plastic. If you use off camera flash or any coldshoes mounts, this is a product you might be interested in.
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May 17, 2011
high-end wedding album designs
in three simple steps
Album design can be one of the most time consuming parts of running a wedding photography. “How to design a wedding album,” is often one of the first questions that a beginning a wedding photographer asks. And “how can I design albums better and faster,” is a question that seasoned wedding photographers often ask themselves over and over.
Don’t get me wrong, designing an album will always take a fair amount of time. It is one of the most expensive items in a wedding studio and also is the one that will last the longest. Albums are the single most durable photo product around. Prints in albums last many times longer than prints or canvases hanging on the wall. Every time I see a wedding album I imagine it being found in a trunk 100 years from now by a great great grandchild and the look on their faces as they see their long lost relative. They’ll see how young they look, how vibrant and alive they were and it will spark that moment of seeing themselves as something bigger than just their own life.
© Frank Salas – Orange County Wedding Photographer
It’s evident how important wedding albums are. But, it’s also clear that we can’t, as a business, spend all day designing a wedding album. It just isn’t profitable. We can’t spend hours upon hours designing every album. If we did, we wouldn’t be able to take care of our own families. Let me share with you three easy steps that will help you not only design better albums, but design them faster and design them to stand the test of time.
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May 15, 2011
At the recent After Dark workshop series in Cincinnati, my friend Stephanie Zettl surprised me with an image she showed on the back of her D700. She was hyper about it. Really excited. When she explained to me how she shot this, my reaction was, “holy macaroni!” What fascinated me was how she combined in a single image, the world’s oldest camera – the camera obscura, with what is arguably the most technologically advanced camera you can get – the iPhone. But I don’t want to steal from the impact of what she created. Just check the resulting image, and then read the description of how she did this. You just have to be impressed with such ingenuity!
Stephanie, a frequent guest here, is one of the top wedding photographers in St Louis, MO
a nude photographed in a Camera Obscura and lit by an iPhone
Some ideas and concepts come to you instantly, as if struck by a bolt of lighting. Other ideas come to you gradually, building and morphing from past experiences and research.
A few weeks ago I wrote about my experience of building a digital pinhole camera for Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. The most common response I got from it was “why?”
It’s a fair question. Why do I want to stick a body cap with a hole in it on a very expensive camera and take fuzzy mediocre photos with it?
I personally thought it would be an interesting little Sunday afternoon project that would be reminiscent of the shoe box cameras we made in school. It would be a relatively cheap project (cost of a lens cap and a can of Coke) and I would be able to say I did it – instead of just surfing the internet or watching television and doing nothing productive.
But what I didn’t expect is that I would get curious about the process and start researching about simple cameras and optics. In my research I came across images created by turning hotel rooms into camera obscuras. Camera obscura literally means “darkened chamber” and it is a device used to project an image onto a screen or the wall of a room, by using either a lens or a pinhole. (For more information on camera obscuras, check out the Wikipedia article on the subject.)
The wheels in my head started turning. It would be interesting to turn a hotel room into a camera obsura and project a cityscape on to the wall. What if I photographed a model inside the camera obscura? How far could I develop this theme? What could I create?
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