photography workshops and seminars in 2012

full-day flash photography & lighting workshop – New York

I will be presenting three flash photography workshops in New York this year.
The first date is Tue, May 22   (follow the link for more details, and to book a spot.)
The other workshops will take place in July and October, with the specific dates to be announced.

Las Vegas mini-workshops: on-location flash photography

These mini-workshops are 4 hours long (1-5pm on each day), and the fee is $350 per person
Mon, Feb 20  ::  Tue, Feb 21
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, with a model to photograph. Contact me via email to book, or for more details.

After Dark Photography Education – Dallas, TX – Feb 27-29, 2012

This discount code: NVNP will save you $72 when you register
signing up and more details on the After Dark Education site.

Epic Summit – weddding & event business conference – Lodi, NJ – March 30, 2012

As mentioned in various posts last year, I had decided to pause the travelling workshops for the time being. The workshops in other areas of the USA, away from home, have been rewarding, but the time spent travelling has taken me away from my work as a wedding photographer, and I need to focus on that again.

However, if someone wants to help get a group together of 10 people, then we can figure out if a workshop away from New York is feasible.

I’m still finalizing dates and places for possible workshops in the UK and possibly the Netherlands. And maybe, maybe even Canada.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
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Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

I’m in the top 5% of wedding photographers in New Jersey!

Again it is quite a thrill to hear that I won the Bride’s Choice Awards 2012 from WeddingWire! This is the 3nd year in a row that I received the Wedding Wire award being in the Top 5 percent of wedding photographers in New Jersey. It’s wonderful receiving this recognition, even with the work as a wedding photographer being rewarding in its own right.

a big thank you to everyone

Seen in retrospect, 2011 was a great year, with a number of exciting things happening.

The one thing that I take great pride in is in how many people read and even follow the Tangents blog. It’s both inspiring and humbling to know that a great number of photographers across the world continue to find this website of so much value. This is where the graphic at the top comes in – the number of visitors to the Tangents blog during the Oct-Dec quarter.  During Oct to Dec 2011, there were 446,640 visits to the site.

In 2010, there were 372,000 visits for the last 3 months of the year.
In 2009 there were 251,000 visits for the final quarter of the year.

Again it’s been a massive jump in traffic to this website for 2011.  (As an aside, the reason why I look at the 4th quarter and not the entire year, is that at the start of 2009, I changed domain names from planetneil and it was simpler to look at only part of the year’s traffic.)

So thank you to everyone who follows the Tangents blog and forum, and participate and ask questions and even reply to questions. You all help make this site what it is.

Other highlights of 2011 …

1. My book, Off-Camera Flash, was published early in 2011. Feedback so far is very good. As a reminder, if you have the book and love it, a positive review on Amazon always helps.

2. The Tangents Forum continues to be active, with traffic more than doubling through the course of the year.

3. My photography page on Facebook surpassed a 7,000 total of fans during the last few days of the year.

3. There were the flash photography workshops that I presented in New York, as well as San Francisco and even two sold-out workshops in Dublin, Ireland.

4. I did various seminar presentations during the year:
- After Dark Photography Education – Cincinnati & Charlotte
- masterclass at WPPI 2011 (in Las Vegas) – Feb 2011
- Imaging USA 2011 (in San Antonio)  - Jan 2011
- Digital Wedding Forum Convention 2011 (also in San Antonio) – Jan 2011
- presenting at the Unique Photo booth at Photo Plus Expo in New York – Oct 2011
- as one of the keynote speakers at the Wedding Photographic Society  Convention (in North Carolina) – Aug 2011
- PPA Massachusetts, annual convention – March 2011
- PPGNY – June 2011
- Photo North East – March 2011
- Treehaven, Wisconsin PPA – May 2011
- webinars for ClickinMoms

5. I also made sure that I focused attention on my work as a wedding photographer. With that, I had my web techie guy kick my Latest Work blog into gear again.

6. All the new friends and acquaintances I made throughout the year.

thank you!

Neil vN

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

After Dark Photography Education - Dallas, TX – Feb 27-29, 2012

I’ve raved here about the After Dark photography conventions before, as being the best photography convention / learning experience that I’ve attended. So it is with great pleasure that I can announce that I will again be presenting at the next After Dark event. It will take place in Dallas, TX during Feb 27 -29, 2012

This discount code: NVNP will save you $72 when you register
signing up and more details on the After Dark Education site

photo seminar: Photography Tri-Age – January 11, 2012

Alongside my friends, Natalie Licini and Jennifer Rozenbaum, I’ll be co-presenting a photo shoot-out / seminar on January 11, 2012. The program is a varied one, with three groups alternating between us, the three presenters, over the course of the day. The subjects include boudoir photography and wedding photography, incl posing and lighting.

The fee to attend is $129, and the program runs from 9am to 6pm.

details:  Photo Tri-age Facebook page  |  signing up  |  PDF with details
(please note: details are subject to change)

To give you an idea of the venue, here is the sprawling mansion inside which we’ll be shooting.

The photo right at the top was shot by Natalie Licini, and it should give you an idea of just how large the venue is inside.

Natalie is a wedding photographer in Staten Island.
Jennifer is a boudoir photographer in New York.

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

One Perfect Moment – New Jersey wedding photographer

During the past week I did a major (but nearly transparent) change to my one website. My wedding & portrait photography blog, One Perfect Moment, now resides on the base domain, and not in the /blog/ folder. The change was purely to clean up the website and simplify a bunch of things. No changes to the actual content, aside from the usual regular updates.

The reason why I mention this, is that I know a fair number of people who regularly follow the Tangents blog, also has the One Perfect Moment site on their RSS feed. This is the new RSS feed for One Perfect Moment. So please update your RSS feed.

As as aside: as I mentioned in my page on my style in photography, was that the name, One Perfect Moment, encapsulated the ideal that I strive for with photography – capturing essential and distinctive moments. It derives from the idea of the ‘Decisive Moment’ in photography where everything just falls perfectly into place. Hence … One Perfect Moment.

Photoshop fairy dust / Neil’s secret sauce

As much as I believe in the “get it right in camera” ethos, it is near inescapable that most images can use some sweetening in Photoshop. My own preference is for fairly subtle retouching of photographs.

The photograph above is one I’ve shown a few times as a great example of how good on-camera bounce flash can look. I did have to adjust the WB and exposure as part of my usual RAW post-processing workflow. And for the image on the left, I also removed some skin blemishes with the Healing Tool. So it does look pretty good .. but it can be subtly enhanced. And the keyword here for me is *subtle*.

My post-processing retouching for portraits involve some Photoshop plug-ins that I use, but there are some useful (and well-known) Photoshop techniques to make an image pop a little bit more. Over several articles on Tangents, I’ve referred to it as either “Photoshop fairy dust” or in a humorous way as my “secret sauce”. The techniques vary, depending on what is needed, and on what I’d like to achieve.  So the “secret sauce” varies from image to image by some degree. It really depends.

With the help of Photoshop wiz, Adrian (aka, Trev from the Tangents forum), we’ve put together two action sets that make these Photoshop techniques quite accessible … and more importantly, accessible in a subtle way. No over-the-top effect. Just that sweetening of the photograph as is necessary. The image on the right-hand shows the type of retouching that is possible with this action set.

The action set, called Neil’s Secret Sauce, is available for download for a $10 fee from that linked page. The zip file includes two actions as well as a PDF instruction sheet.

And of course, we’ll gladly help!

Where this Action can and can’t work:

Adobe Photoshop: YES
Adobe Elements: NO
Lightroom in Conjunction with Adobe Photoshop: YES
Lightroom Standalone: NO
Aperture in Conjunction with Adobe Photoshop: YES (not verified)
Aperture Standalone: NO

updated flash photography page: flash + ambient light

When I posted the first few pages in 2006 on the topic of basic flash photography, I never expected it to snowball into a much larger website. Those initial few pages became the flagship articles around which the rest of the site hinged. But with an ever-increasing workload, and the desire to post newer articles, I haven’t had much time to update the original pages. I recently decided to start on those 15+ pages, and update them with newer images and also improve the text.

The page that has been updated, is the flash + ambient light discussion. I’ve expanded the page with more images, and finessed the text somewhat. While the material is familiar to the regular visitors to this site, the page was in need of drastic updating for the new visitors. Hopefully though, in covering the familiar topic, it might just help click things into place for some.

The photo above, is of a couple, Alli and Scott, whose New York photo session took place in Central Park, earlier this year. It is typical of how I use bounce flash to sweeten the contrast, and enhance the available light. I bounced the flash behind me into the large open area there. Enough light returned to brighten the shadows and make the photograph just that little bit more romantic.

camera settings: 1/60 @ f4.5 @ 800 ISO … TTL flash at 0EV.
Nikon D3;  Nikon 24-120mm f/4 VR (B&H)

I used another portrait of theirs to illustrate the updated flash + ambient light page.  I also used images from this photo session for the article on the technique of using lens flare for effect.

And that’s it … enjoy!

If you find these articles interesting and of value, then you can help by using
these affiliate links to order equipment & other goodies.   Thank you!

Stay informed of new articles via the monthly newsletter.
Also join us on the Tangents forum for further discussions.

PhotoPlus Expo – NYC, 2011

I’ll be doing a short presentation on bounce flash photography at the PhotoPlus Expo trade-show, on three days this coming week. I’ll be at the Unique Photo booth (#464) on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from 12:30 – 1:15 on each of those days.  The presentation will be on how to use the black foamie thing with bounce flash, to get studio quality lighting.

Those who are familiar with the Tangents blog will recognize the topic (and photos), but come stop by anyway and say hi. I look forward to meeting everyone.

Details of all the presentations taking place at Unique Photo’s booth.