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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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June 23, 2011
Video & photo fusion is something I’ve started working with recently. The idea with fusion is to create a vibrant blend of selected photographs with short video sections, to give a 5 or 6 minute overview of the wedding day.
As with the previous fusion clips I created with Jessica, my assistant with an attitude, I shot with the Nikon D3 bodies and she shot the HD video sections with the Canon 5D mk II (B&H). It’s a lot of work putting this together, for I think that adding stills and video is more involved than just doing either. But I like the result, and hopefully clients and prospective clients will also be taken with it.
While we’re on the topic of photographing weddings and showing new work to clients – this would be a good time to mention (or even announce! with fanfare!) that the Latest Work blog has been revamped and active again. With 900px wide images, it will hopefully show a selection of my latest work off to best advantage.
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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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April 17, 2011
a rainy-day wedding
A lighting strike in the background as a groomsman makes a mad dash across the rain-soaked path … this about sums up the weather we had on Saturday’s wedding. What you can’t see in this image is his umbrella being pulled away from him by the gusting wind.
Here is the shot I was aiming for when I got that lighting strike in the frame …
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April 15, 2011
finding something to bounce your flash off
One of the frequent questions that come up, is what to do when there is nothing to bounce your flash off. When working indoors and there are bounce-able surfaces around me, my first instinct is to use on-camera bounce flash. It is easy to use, and the results can look surprisingly good, especially if you consider the minimal effort that went into it. No extra gear to carry around and set up. But when there is nothing to bounce flash off, you have to adapt your technique …
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March 15, 2011
wedding photography – how to work with the videographer’s light
With wedding receptions, we’re most often working within a very warm spectrum. There are tungsten (incandescent) lights all around. (**) There is candle light. There might be twinkling lights as decoration … and there is the videographer’s light. The videographer’s light will be Tungsten balanced, even if it is an LED video light that they are using. (***)
So while a wedding photographer might be using a lot of flash to dominate the lighting .. and settle for Cloudy or Flash WB, there is often a conflict of interest when the videographer joins in with his video light. The video light obviously has a much warmer white balance than flash. So how do we best deal with this?
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February 17, 2011
looking for, and using the available light
Let me say this out straight – I hate gazebos. I hate gazebos and fountains and I especially hate having to photograph a couple at whatever landmark/feature that a reception venue has, where every other couple from the last five years has been photographed. There, I’ve said it. I feel better now, with that weight off my shoulders.
Wedding portaits should be about capturing the romance, and capturing the relationship between the couple. I want to show how much they are in love with each other, rather than the wooden structure that the reception venue bought from Home Depot. I would much rather work with the couple and with the light that is available … and augmenting the existing light with some flash or video light if needed.
This photograph from a wedding a few years back, remains one of my favorites in my wedding gallery. The portrait session with Simone and Damien and their family and bridal party was to take place in the late afternoon. The maitre d’ of the venue suggested I use the fountain on the venue’s grounds as a backdrop for the couple.
Instead, I looked at where the light was coming from … and it was stunningly beautiful glowing light. And the best part of it was, the spray from the fountain was lit up by the glow from the late afternoon sun. This created that ethereal looking golden mist behind them.
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December 30, 2010
2010 – my favorite wedding images from Neil van Niekerk on Vimeo.
There seems to be a pattern here – 2010 was another crazy-busy year for me. Photographing weddings, portrait sessions, maintaining this website and writing another book … all this added up to a full calendar and not much sleep.
It is always a rewarding experience as a wedding photographer to work with wonderful brides and groom and their families. So, as a wrap-up of the year – and also to show off a bit – here is a slide show of some of my favorite wedding and engagement session images of 2010. (Oh, and you had better like House music. Soundtrack courtesy of TripleScoopMusic. )
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December 15, 2010
Melissa & Dennis – their wedding day from Neil van Niekerk on Vimeo.
review of the Nikon D3100 video capability
Nikon recently released two very interesting D-SLRs – the Nikon D3100 (B&H) and the Nikon D7000 (B&H). Improving on several of the entry-level Nikon D-SLRs, they also offer HD video capability (1080p at 24 fps), and even does so with full-time auto-focus capability.
So when B&H sent me a Nikon D3100 for review, I thought what better test than to start in the deep end, and use it during a wedding to shoot HD video. The intention was to use the HD video from the D3100 along with the still photographs from my usual set of Nikon D3 bodies … and compile this as a stills & video Fusion clip, shown at the top here. I shot the stills, and Jessica, my assistant with an attitude, shot & edited the D3100 video clips. A first attempt at stills/video Fusion for us.
So how did the Nikon D3100 fare? Quite impressively actually …
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Filed under: equipment review, fusion, Nikon, Nikon D-SLR, video clip, wedding photography — Tags: New Jersey wedding photographer, Nikon D3100 review, Nikon D3100 video, review Nikon D3100, wedding photographers in New Jersey, wedding photography — Neil vN @ 10:06 pm
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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