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January 10, 2012
wedding photography – using bounce flash outside
When working with a couple during the romantic portrait session, there’s the need to bring variety to the images – not just in posing and composition, but also in terms of light & lighting. For this reason I use a variety – available light; video light; off-camera flash and on-camera bounce flash. I really like using on-camera bounce flash since it is such an easy light source to use, always at hand. There was a recent article on using bounce flash outdoors, but I’d like to add another example where I used bounce flash outside a wedding venue. Let’s look at the sequence of images …
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January 3, 2012
2011 was another busy year for me as a wedding photographer. This slideshow features some of my favorite wedding and engagement session images of 2011.
(Soundtrack courtesy of TripleScoopMusic.)
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December 12, 2011
back-lighting with flash for dramatic silhouetted wedding portraits
One of the easiest ways to create dramatic light for a silhouette when photographing the wedding portraits, is to add a flash behind the couple. The beauty of this is that there is a fair amount of leeway as to what would work. We need not be all that exact, but there are some a few things we should check …
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December 10, 2011
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.
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November 14, 2011
wedding photography – when technique, style & choice of equipment converge
With Manhattan as a back-drop, I wanted a cinematic look for the photograph of Nima and Peter. A magnificent view behind them as they snuggle in. While I approach wedding photography with my eye on telling the story of the day, for me, where a photographer really reveals a specific style, is in the portraits of the bride and groom.
I wanted a romantic look to this sequence of images, so there were specific choices to be made in terms of equipment, camera settings and the lighting. So let’s run through the thought-process.
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October 19, 2011
wedding photography – favorite image – city lights
This photo from a event wedding received a lot of favorable comments when I posted it on my Facebook page, as well as questions about how it was shot.
For the romantic portraits, I often take a couple around the venue – the light is just different than during the day. This is where video light comes into its own. Here though, I wanted some of the city lights and light from the traffic outside the venue to appear in the background. The way I envisioned it, was as a stream of cars behind them, but in the first few test images, the cars were too distinct, even at f2.8 and 200mm focal length. Looking at how the approaching cars lined up at the traffic intersection, I decided to use that instead, and let the cars’ headlights flare out.
Then I just needed some light on the couple to complete the image …
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September 22, 2011
romantic wedding portraits with video light
By now it should be clear that I’m quite a fan of video lights for the romantic portrait session with a couple. The Incandescent WB of the video light usually matches the existing light fairly well. Because video light has a rapid fall-off in light intensity to the edges of the beam, it doesn’t “flatten” out the light like bounce flash would. In addition, the video light can seem quite natural in context of the existing light, and not even look like additional lighting. Somehow the light just appears to be great right there.
Here are two of my favorite images from a recent wedding, where I had my assistant hold up an LED video light to help light the couple. (It’s the same wedding where I used the black foamie thing during the indoor ceremony.)
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August 12, 2011
wedding photography – the romantic portraits – more than just, “and now, kiss”
More frequently than not, when looking at the work of other photographers, I see that the romantic portraits of the couple are just of them kissing. Having worked with a number of photographers over the years, I’ve also seen how the instruction “and now, kiss”, becomes reflexive. Pose the couple; have them look at each other … *snap* … and now kiss … *snap*. And then the photographer takes no other photos of the couple at that specific place. Yet, there are more (and perhaps even better) ways to show intimacy in the romantic portraits than just having the couple kiss …
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July 31, 2011
wedding photography – tips for detail shots of the wedding rings
In photographing the detail images of the wedding rings, there are a few things to aim for:
- context within which to place the rings,
- a few images with different angles,
- great lighting which is easily achievable.
Then we also have to take care of the depth-of-field and the tricky focusing …
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July 10, 2011
wedding photography – lighting large groups
Weddings are one of those occasions when families and friends come together from far and wide. An opportunity to see people they might rarely see otherwise. So it is an important task of any wedding photographer to record this – to get photographs of the various family groups.
This photo is the pull-back shot from one of the big groups I had to photograph at an Indian wedding this weekend. Now, everyone who has been to an Indian wedding, knows that they are sprawling events. There’s lots going on and it can be slightly chaotic at times. So when the bride warned me before the wedding date that there were several large groups of people that she’d love to have photographed, I was ready …
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