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Tangents

photographing in bright sunlight – find the shade!

April 11, 2012

photographing in bright sunlight – find the shade!

Hard sunlight must be one of the most difficult lighting scenarios to work under. But with a bit of thought, we can work around it and still easily get photos that look great. It’s a topic that we’ve touched on a number of times on the Tangents blog, (see related articles at the end here). The simplest approach for me though, is where I can, is to just not deal with the hard sunlight. I find shade.

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Photoshop tip – easy effect for more punch to your images

April 9, 2012

Photoshop tip – easy effect for more punch

Here is a well-known Photoshop technique – one that I like and use on occasion. It desaturates the photograph, while also compressing the tonal range. It creates a modern look that also looks quite trendy. It is also quite easy to apply, by dragging the layers from a reference image once you’ve set it up.

Starting with the original image, I add these two layers:

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book review: boutique baby photography, by Mimika Cooney

April 7, 2012

boudoir photography

Baby portraiture is an unexpectedly difficult branch of portrait photography. You have to work around the baby’s schedule, and then there is the added challenge of making a baby which doesn’t move much, an interesting subject. It’s not like this little kiddo is going to hop, skip & jump around. With that, everyone can use some advice and guidance to get an edge on the baby, and take some pressure off as the photographer.

First of all, I have to mention that I have a slight bias here – the author, Mimika Cooney is also originally from South Africa. So there is some pride in someone “local” doing great and becoming successful … and write an (excellent) book.

book review: boutique baby photography, by Mimika Cooney

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workshops & seminars in 2012

April 5, 2012

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    – sold out!
The other workshops will take place in July and October, with the specific dates to be announced.

After Dark Photography Education – Charlotte, NC – May 14-16, 2012

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

Blog posts about my experience with After Dark Edu … I love it!

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After Dark Photography Education – Charlotte, NC – May 14-16

After Dark Photography Education – Charlotte, NC – May 14-16, 2012

I’m very happy to say I’ve been invited again to present at After Dark Education’s next event, which is in Charlotte. As you may well know from my previous blog posts about After Dark Edu, I love it! It is in my opinion the best opportunity for any photographer to learn and shoot. A lot.

This discount code: NVNP will save you $72 when you register!
To sign up, or for more details, check out the After Dark Education site.

(The image at the top was taken at a previous After Dark event in Las Vegas.)

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bridal portrait – working with the available light

April 4, 2012

bridal portrait – working with the available light

This striking portrait is of Rachel, a bride whose wedding I photographed yesterday. Yes, a Tuesday wedding! The prep was at a hotel on the Jersey shore, and when Rachel was ready, I wanted to shoot a few straight-forward portraits there in the hotel. There was a lot of light in the hotel room itself, but the decor was white – which helps for high-key portraits. But I wanted some variety.  

So I scouted around, and decided to do some photographs in the passage outside her hotel room. Since it was a wedding on the Jersey shore, and we did other portraits later on, on the beach, I thought this bright wallpaper wouldn’t be too inappropriate as a backdrop. Now it was just a question of light …

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even with high ISO settings, you still need great light

April 2, 2012

even with high ISO settings, you still need great light

Still having fun with the new Canon 5D Mark III (B&H), I met up with Elmira again in New York. Elmira is the model I used in my initial tests of the Canon 5D Mark III high-ISO performance. Being a delightful model to work with, I decided to use her again as a subject.

New York was cold on this day, so shooting indoors just seemed a lot more attractive. We went to Grand Central Station – a grandiose building, but with light levels quite low. Low enough that I was glad that I brought the Canon EF 35mm f1.4L (B&H) along.

camera settings: 1/100 @ f/2 @ 3200 ISO
Even with a high ISO like that, I had to use a fast aperture.

An approach that I strongly believe in though, is that “using the available light” is not random decision. It needs consideration of what your light is actually like, and whether it is flattering. What I did here was to pull Elmira towards a light source, so that the light would come in from an angle over her shoulder …

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news: Polish translation of my book: Off-Camera Flash

April 1, 2012

Fotografia z lampa blyskowa w praktyce

Google’s translation says that means: “Photography with a flash in practice”. Either way, I’m very proud to announce that my second book, Off-Camera Flash, has been translated and released in Poland. More details here on this Polish site. A big thank you to the followers of the Tangents blog there in Poland who made this possible!

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photography workflow – back-up plans (update)

March 31, 2012

photography workflow – back-up plans (update)

A previous article on Tangents, on the topic of photography workflow – back-up plans for your main computer, dealt with two ideas:

  • safe-guarding yourself against catastrophic failure or loss of your computer
  • preparing yourself for when your hard drive crashes.

I do think the ideas there are solid – making sure you’re not vulnerable to a single point of failure in your system. The comments from others supported this and also offered a lot more advice and other possibilities. With that, I slightly adapted what I was doing:

  • my bootable clone hard drive is now a fire-proof & water-proof safe made by ioSafe
  • Back-Blaze as an off-site / online duplication of my files
  • Using the PackRat feature of Dropbox

With all this in place now, I think my back-up plans are very solid, especially with some extra redundancy thrown in there …

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review: Canon EOS 5D Mark III – high-ISO noise performance

March 29, 2012

initial impressions: Canon EOS 5D Mark III – high-ISO noise performance

I have to confess something first – whenever an important camera is announced, I have just a cursory interest in the specification sheet. The difference between 40 AF sensors and 70 AF sensors … you know, that’s just a number on the paper. It never really tells you how the camera performs. And with the announcement of the details of the Canon 5D Mark III (B&H), there were a number of websites eager to list the detailed specs. Yay! Well, not really.

There might be some interest in the nomenclature, but what does it really mean that the 5D Mark II has the DIGIC 4 proce­ssor, but there’s a new DIGIC 5+ on the 5D Mark III. Those are just names to me. I can’t get excited about it, or even feign interest in the actual name. I’m much more interested in how the camera will actually perform. You can name it anything you want … but does the camera deliver?

Details for the photo at the top:
camera settings:  1/160 @ f2.8 @ 6400 ISO
Canon 5D Mark III (B&H);  Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II (B&H)  at 170mm

There is real excitement about the Canon 5D Mark III (B&H), since everyone is curious if it is that much of an improvement over the 5D Mark II. I have to say, I really think it is. It’s a massive improvement. The AF is more responsive. The camera *feels* better in my hands. The controls are better laid out … although the right forefinger still does too much work, stretching here and there, all over the top plate.

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