Tangents

photography tutorials, reviews & workshops

tangents photography blog
learn : discuss : share
  • Tangents
  • Tutorials
    • Flash Photography
    • Wedding Photography
    • Studio Photography
    • Posing People
    • Understanding Your Camera
    • Exposure metering
    • BFT
    • Best Photo Books
  • Reviews
    • Sony
    • Nikon
    • Canon
    • Fuji
    • Profoto
    • lighting gear
  • Workshops
    • Info: Workshops
    • In-person
      tutoring sessions
    • Online
      tutoring sessions
    • Workshops in
      New Jersey (NJ)
    • Workshops in
      New York (NYC)
    • Photo walks in NYC
    • Studio Workshop
    • Video tutorials
    • Workshop results
  • Books
    • On-Camera Flash (revised ed.)
    • Direction & Quality of Light
    • Off-Camera Flash Photography
    • Lighting & Design
    • On-Camera Flash (1st ed.)
  • Projects
    • Two Perspectives
    • B&W Infrared
    • Vintage lenses
    • Time-lapse photography
  • Info
    • About
    • Contact
    • My Photo Gear
    • Books by NvN
    • Join us on Facebook
    • Acclaim
    • Success Stories

Behind-the-scenes video clip – Photo shoot w/ Ulorin Vex

March 30, 2014 Neil vN 8 Comments

Video clip: behind-the-scenes during photo session w/ Ulorin Vex

I've posted some of the images from the recent photo session in my studio, with Ulorin Vex - and here is the behind-the-scenes video clip. The instructional stuff will be in the related articles - this is more of a glimpse of the rhythm of the shoot in the studio.  Read more inside...

Harder light sources in the studio – Flash & Continuous light

March 14, 2014 Neil vN 2 Comments

Harder light sources in the studio - Flash & Continuous light

With the recent photo session with Ulorin Vex in the studio, I played with variations of using harder light and using shadow as part of the image's composition. The first setup was similar to a previous photo session in the studio with Anelisa:  smaller light = dramatic light. Ulorin Vex easily fell into poses well suited to this idea of using the shadow as part of the image's design. For this final image, I used a textured overlay to enhance the sun-drenched look. I also wanted to hide the texture of the wall a bit  Read more inside...

photography – inspiration, learning, and then adjusting & adapting

February 23, 2014 Neil vN 10 Comments

photographic style - inspiration, adjusting & adapting  (model: Ulorin Vex)

Photography has a never-ending learning curve. I think this is even more true as the technology expands and accelerates. Sometimes I feel that we're running at full speed just to remain at a stand-still. That's just the technology that we have to acquire what we need to know about to do our work and art the best. But even with the techniques and methods we have as photographers - we should always be investigating and analyzing the work of others, learn, and then rework and adapt it in our own style. Even  Read more inside...

Photography – Creating foreground bokeh effects

February 18, 2014 Neil vN 31 Comments

Creating foreground bokeh effects in-camera

The closer you move to a foreground object, the more it's shape and color and opacity will affect the image … in unpredictable ways. It's a well-established technique then to create unusual color splashes and shapes in the image by creating flare highlights. It is often called "foreground bokeh effect". Ulorin Vex is an unusually photogenic model that I have photographed on a few occasions. When Ulorin visited the East Coast again recently, I jumped at the opportunity to meet up with her again and play in the studio. Her striking looks  Read more inside...

Camera & flash settings: What do you want to achieve?

June 4, 2013 Neil vN 10 Comments

Camera & flash settings: What do you want to achieve?

In one of the multitude of photography groups on Facebook, I saw a newcomer to off-camera flash say that she bought an Alien-Bee set, but she has no idea what to set it to. My reply was that she needed a light-meter. My thinking is that then she'd know what the specific output of the flash or strobe would be, and then be able to set her camera to it. But then, thinking about it some more, I realized if there is hesitation there or confusion, it is about what specific camera settings (mostly aperture) should be in the first  Read more inside...

Using a neutral density (ND) filter to control DoF with flash

June 2, 2013 Neil vN 42 Comments

Using a neutral density (ND) filter to control DoF with flash

When working in bright sunlight with flash units that can't go into high-speed flash sync, we have a ceiling in terms of our shutter speed / aperture combination. The shutter speed limitation then would be our maximum flash sync speed. The bright daylight would then imply a small aperture - most likely around f/11 Why f/11 ? The Sunny 16 Rule dictates that in bright sunlight, we're most likely working at 1/100 @ f/16 @ 100 ISO. This translates into a handy short-cut of: 1/200 @ f/11 @ 100 ISO, where 1/200 is the maximum  Read more inside...

review: Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Light

May 14, 2013 Neil vN 10 Comments

review: Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Light

The dramatic look that video lights lend to photographs, is a regularly explored topic on Tangents. I also cover the use of video light in my book Direction and Quality of Light. The video lights that I have been favoring, are the Lowel ID-Light (affiliate), but like other halogen video lights, it tends to run hot. LED video lights (affiliate) that are meant to be hand-held or mounted on a camera, also tend to be under-powered for some uses. And since video lights tend to be small light sources, their light is quite  Read more inside...

Bounce flash portrait & post-processing

December 24, 2012 Neil vN 10 Comments

Bounce flash portrait & Photoshop retouching technique

When we were done with the studio shoot with Ulorin Vex, we still had a few minutes left, so I thought I could do a bounce flash portrait as well. Just for a comparison of sorts to show that on-camera bounce flash can give interesting results too. Here is the low-key portraits we did with the Profoto set-up. The only semi-interesting background I could find in the studio (that wasn't a white wall), was this grungy green door to one of the store-rooms. I thought it might work as a gritty urban setting. I shot about eight  Read more inside...

Behind the scenes video – Photo session with Ulorin Vex

September 19, 2012 Neil vN 18 Comments

Photo session with Ulorin Vex - BTS video

The video clip is a behind-the-scenes view (with some techie info) of the photo session with Ulorin Vex. This photo session was also the first time I tried out the Nikon D800, and I also got to play with my Profoto D1 studio light (500 Ws) (affiliate), for the first time. An exciting day.  Read more inside...

Studio photography: Low-key lighting variations

September 18, 2012 Neil vN 8 Comments

Studio photography: Low-key lighting variations

The mood and simplicity of low-key lighting make it especially effective. So when Ulorin Vex appeared out of the dressing room with this black dress, I knew it would work very well with a low-key set-up in the studio. We had set up the darker background for previous outfits, but for this black dress, the simplified lighting - just a Profoto beauty dish (affiliate) - worked especially well. There were two lights behind her to show off the curves against the dark background.  The gridded softboxes are exactly the same as shown  Read more inside...

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • Next Page »

categories

Articles & Tutorials

  • • About myself & this site
    • Books by Neil vN
    • Best photography books
    • Black foamie thing
    • Photographers’ success stories
  • • Flash Photography Techniques
    • Natural looking flash
    • Flash + Ambient light
    • Dragging the shutter
    • Bouncing your flash
    • On-camera flash outdoors
    • Exposure metering
    • Flash exposure compensation
    • Bounce flash examples
    • Which is the best flashgun?
    • Flash brackets
    • Off-camera flash photography
    • Flash photography basics
    • Using video lights
    • Flash photography tips
  • • Photography workshops NJ / NYC
    • Models @ photography workshops
tutorials:
flash photography
Photography
Workshops

All rights reserved. Copyright © Neil van Niekerk 2025 · Customization by The Traveling Designer

Copyright © 2025 · NvN on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in