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review: Westcott 7′ Parabolic Umbrella

August 16, 2012 Neil vN 15 Comments

review: Westcott 7' Parabolic Umbrella

Continuing the photo session with Ulorin Vex in the studio, I decided to swap out the big Profoto 4x3 softbox, for an even larger (but very affordable) light modifier - the Westcott 7' Parabolic Umbrella - white  (B&H / Amazon). Two things that immediately struck me about the Westcot Parabolic Umbrella ... it's sheer size when folder open. It is 7 feet if measured across the span of the umbrella's arc. And when it is folded up, it is surprisingly compact and light-weight. It collapses to a 43.6" size, and fits snugly  Read more inside...

High-key studio lighting (part 2)

August 6, 2012 Neil vN 12 Comments

High-key studio lighting for portraits (part 2)

Continuing the photo session with Ulorin Vex, doing high-key studio portraits in the studio, she changed into a different costume. I wanted a more interesting edge definition than just the light spilling back from the background, so I added two gridded softboxes to each side ...  Read more inside...

High-key studio lighting for portraits

July 31, 2012 Neil vN 21 Comments

High-key studio lighting for portraits

One of the models that replied to my casting call for a model at my workshops in San Francisco in 2011, happened to be Ulorin Vex. I immediately recognized her, since I've seen photos of her in various portfolios. I was both surprised and very happy, since I regarded her as a bit of a superstar. I scheduled a photo session with her for the day after the two workshops in SF, and the images from those sessions appeared a few times on Tangents, and I'd consider them among the best work I had ever done. It helps to have an inspiring model! Ulorin  Read more inside...

First impressions: Nikon D800

July 29, 2012 Neil vN 16 Comments

First impressions of the Nikon D800

I've been using the Nikon D4 for a while now, and love it. For me, the Nikon D4 offers more than enough resolution for wedding photography. Of course, wedding photography is a niche. There are other genres and types of photography where large files are a benefit. Landscape photographers and commercial photographers have a need for large digital files for maximum detail. And with that Nikon must have seen a gap, and made the surprising jump from the 12 megapixel D700, to the incredibly high (for now at least) 36 megapixels of the Nikon  Read more inside...

Off-camera bounce flash

November 29, 2011 Neil vN 7 Comments

Off-camera bounce flash

This portrait of an unusual model, Ulorin Vex, was truly simple in its execution - most of the work was done by Ulorin Vex with her outfit and her striking looks. Then, the composition and choice of background was the hotel room with this stripy wall paper. I thought the bold yellow and green stripes would complement her bright red outfit, without competing. Then the lighting - off-camera bounce flash - was simplicity itself. I had a speedlight that I bounced off a white surface to create a large light source for flattering, soft light. But it took me a few  Read more inside...

example: direct off-camera flash vs softbox

October 12, 2011 Neil vN 10 Comments

example: direct off-camera flash vs softbox (model: Ulorin Vex)

Ulorin Vex posing for us during part of the on-location session of the flash photography workshops which I presented in San Francisco earlier this year. Ulorin Vex is of course absolutely stunning, as always. While I often direct models how they should pose, this one is all her doing . Not even I can improve on that. The image here at the top was shot with an off-camera softbox - my usual preferred Lastolite Ezybox softbox. The direction of the light here should immediately reveal the approximate position where the  Read more inside...

Directional light with off-camera bounce flash

July 25, 2011 Neil vN 13 Comments

Directional light with off-camera bounce flash

During the same afternoon that I had the opportunity to photograph Ulorin Vex, I took several other sequences of images of her in other costume. Here we worked in the foyer area of the Hotel Monaco in San Francisco. (If only all other hotels had such a diversity of immediately photogenic areas!)  With this image, I wanted a near-symmetrical image, with just Ulorin Vex's posture slightly breaking the symmetry up. Just enough to make a stunning subject even more eye-catching. A little more about the train-of-thought to getting to this  Read more inside...

Mimicking window light with off-camera bounce flash

April 27, 2011 Neil vN 23 Comments

Mimicking window light with off-camera bounce flash

Continuing the photo session with Ulorin, we worked inside the hotel room for the next part. The photo above is a candid shot of Ulorin fixing her hair between changes in clothing. Ulorin's next outfit shown in this article, was more revealing than the previous outfits during the photo session. (Just a heads-up for the Tangents readers who are surfing from their workplace.) Photographing inside the room, I initially tried to work with just the window-light, but hit a small snag. The indirect light through the window kept changing  Read more inside...

Off-camera flash – Change your position, change the direction of light

April 26, 2011 Neil vN 37 Comments

Off-camera flash - Change the light by changing your own position

Ulorin Vex was one of the two models that we used in the recent workshops in San Francisco. Having seen Ulorin Vex's personal site and portfolio on Model Mayhem, I jumped at the chance of working with her again with a photo session the day after the workshops. Working with a model as professional and striking-looking as Ulorin, was an experience. The photographs shown in this article was from a sequence we did in the passage outside my hotel room. The lighting was surprisingly simple, but I had to improvise with the  Read more inside...

manual off-camera fill-flash, controlling contrast

April 24, 2011 Neil vN 17 Comments

manual off-camera fill-flash, controlling the contrast

In using a softbox outdoors on location, we easily get beautiful soft light. When we work indoors however, where the flash dominates, then the results can look very contrasty. The reason for this is that outdoors, the available light acts like a fill light.  This is especially true when we consider our available light in our overall result and balance our flash with the available light. With the softbox being the only light source, the light, while still soft, can be too contrasty for our liking. Still, that single softbox is a  Read more inside...

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