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January 23, 2012
a simple lighting setup for photographing the wedding formals
Photographing a wedding can be pretty hectic at times, especially as it so often becomes the photographer’s de facto responsibility to keep everything on track. The formal photo session specifically is a part of the day that many photographers find challenging. (The other is photographing the wedding processional.)
When photographing the family portraits, you can really help yourself by nailing your lighting. Get it down. Then you can concentrate on getting the groups together, and concentrate on posing the groups. But your lighting works! Much less stress.
I mostly work with the Quantum flashes since they are workhorses and don’t melt when used hard. They also have a bit more power than a speedlight. But quite often, I like working with a speedlight setup …
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July 12, 2011
Sydney & Paul – their wedding day – photo & video fusion clip
This idea of blending photographs and video snippets from a wedding, into a fusion clip, still fascinates me. In a 5 to 6 minute clip you’re able to give a nicely condensed view of the wedding day. Combining the photos and video in a sensible way that visually makes sense, takes time however. And Jessica and I are still on the learning curve. (Is it even possible to really get to to the top of things these days with the rapidly accelerated pace of digital photography?) Anyway, I love the results so far!
So here it is – the latest fusion clip of a wedding I photographed,
with Jessica shooting & editing the video.
The music track is a royalty-free track provided via Triple Scoop Music.
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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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May 23, 2011
wedding photography – a photo-journalistic style … or more posed?
A photographer who attended the recent flash photography workshop here in New York, asked me an interesting question regarding my wedding photography style. His observation was about how I seemed to consistently get such well-timed un-posed and natural looking images with my wedding photography. Since my explanation seemed to surprise him, and even bordered on being a real aha! moment for him, I thought it could serve as an article here which might interest other wedding photographers.
When asked by photographers about my style of wedding photography, I like to reply that I don’t quite subscribe to the purist photojournalism, nor the traditionalist style. I think my approach is more along the lines of get-the-job-done-alism.
Instead of subscribing rigidly to a defined style, I’m there to give the bride and groom the best photographs I can on the day. And for this, my approach has to be flexible …
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December 12, 2010
using a variety of lighting techniques for wedding photography
I’ve had some questions about specific images posted to the Facebook page of my photography. Since I’d like to keep that page for my clients and potential clients, I don’t want to clutter it too much with photo-geek stuff. I therefore decided to select a few images to discuss here instead.
This recent post on lighting ideas for the romantic wedding portraits, showed that I like to mix it up a bit, and not rely on one specific technique. Not every situation we’re going to encounter can be solved with one specific approach only. Mixing it up in terms of lighting also helps to provide my clients with more variety in the look of the final selection of images. In addition, it also keeps it interesting and fresh for me. Constantly adapting to challenges is part of the process of growing to be a better photographer.
With the image at the top, I wanted something with a sense of the dramatic. I only had my assistant there with a softbox on a monopod. Just the one light. We were freezing, and had to move fast. So no time for more lights. To get this kind of separation between my subjects – the bride and groom – and still get even light on them, I simply made sure that my light was at an equal distance to both of them. This way there is no light fall off and one of them brighter or darker than the other …
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November 29, 2010
lighting the romantic portraits of the bride & groom
Scouting around the location during dinner time, I peered over the edge of this spiraling staircase and thought it would be a good idea to get some light on the couple, seated on the couch. I posed Melissa so that she lounged back with her head on Dennis’ lap. There is no way to get light on them from my position with on-camera bounce flash, and definitely not if my intention is to get light only on them. It needed off-camera flash.
To add some variety, I also thought of a few other things to try with the lighting, using the same set-up and pose.
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November 22, 2010
non-photography goodies in my camera case
Work as a wedding photographer isn’t just about the gear – cameras, lenses and flashguns – and about taking photographs of key moments. Often enough it is up to you as the wedding photographer to help guide the day’s time-line and flow, and also just to help. For me, wedding photography isn’t just a passively observed event where I take photographs in a photo-journalistic or story-telling motif. I’m there to record the day’s events, but also to help, if necessary, making it a spectacular day.
In the photo above, I took over from the maid of honor when her fingers weren’t strong enough for that final button and clasp at the back of the bride’s dress. My fingers were stronger, so I finished the last button. So as a photographer I’m often called on to do more than just take photographs. And in my camera roller case, I keep some extra non-photography related goodies …
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November 1, 2010
finding (and using) interesting available light
I hope that no one thinks that the flash photography and lighting techniques that I describe on the Tangents blog are only applicable to wedding photography. In a recent post I described where I photographed a model in an alley way when I noticed a splash of sunlight (reflected from a window) falling onto the wall. In recognizing that interesting splash of light, and using it, I got an image which was different than I would’ve had if I had just used the even shaded light in the alley.
I used this very same idea at a recent wedding in photographing the romantic portraits of the bride and groom. The safer way of working, which is my usual initial approach to make sure I have the essential photographs ‘in my pocket’, is to work in the shade, or have the couple backlit against the sun. In approaching this one area, I noticed the dappled light falling onto the wall. But it was a large area of sunlight sneaking through, not just a messy splotch of sun & shade …
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October 20, 2010
exposure metering – bride & the bride’s dress
From a technical point of view, photographing a bride in her dress can be a challenge … depending on the lighting. If everything is under your control as the photographer, and you’re lighting the formal portraits with off-camera manual flash, then it is essentially a study of the zone system.
The simplest way for me then to get accurate exposure, is to use the histogram. I place my brightest relevant tone at the edge of the histogram. All the other tones will fall into place. (It is clearly explained in that linked article, and in my book on flash photography techniques.) In using flash like that as your dominant light source, you simply expose correctly for your subject – the bride in her white dress.
Now, when working with ambient light (perhaps with a touch of fill-flash), things are slightly different .. but not really. You still always (or nearly always**), need to expose correctly for the bride’s white dress, making it the brightest tone that you want to capture detail in. For this article, we’re going to look at exposure metering for available light. The same thought-process can be applied to flash or other additional lighting, but just for simplicity of explanation, let’s just stay with available light here.
So, looking at this portrait above of Jill, a gorgeous bride whose wedding I recently photographed …
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September 19, 2010
wedding day portraits – simplifying composition for effect
With this article I want to reinforce the idea from a few recent posts about being very specific about your composition. By simplifying the image, we have greater impact. We include only what we need to include in the frame to enhance it. Just as important, is what we exclude:
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