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off-camera fill-flash in bright sunlight

November 19, 2010 Neil vN 29 Comments

shooting in bright sunlight with off-camera fill-flash

This adorable kid looked at the camera briefly because I was singing to him.  Kids are devious little creatures. They know when you're calling them and will purposely ignore you.  So you have to be crafty too in getting their attention. Of course, you have to be ready for the moment ... and shoot a lot. Sometimes that Decisive Moment is to be found in the edit. The photo session was from 12 noon to 1pm. So the sun was high overhead. We're often told that the sun directly overhead isn't the best time to take photographs.  While  Read more inside...

Flash photography tutorial – Balancing flash and ambient

November 4, 2010 Neil vN 103 Comments

Flash photography tutorial - balancing flash and ambient light

An email I received recently from someone explained how she is struggling with flash. The basic building blocks of photography are all there and understood, but it somehow doesn't gel when she uses flash. She explains how she understands exposure metering, but "the minute I attach my flash, nothing makes sense." Having read my book and scoured this blog, she admits that at the point where she uses her flash and needs to set aperture and shutter speed, she is completely lost. I'm sure this is something many many  Read more inside...

photo session – Modern Gypsies – something about a violin

September 12, 2010 Neil vN 13 Comments

For the last in the series of photo sessions with the Modern Gypsies on this day, we ended up here ... launching two girls in costume, onto the East River inside a giant ball. It really did make sense. And you may ask yourself, how did we get here?  Letting the days go by ... No, really, how did we get here?  Read more inside...

photo session – Modern Gypsies – PinkMan

September 10, 2010 Neil vN 6 Comments

Pinkman!  More from the recent extended photo session with the Modern Gypsies.  After the photo session with Martin on stilts, we moved to one of the many colorful areas in Brooklyn where we started with Dread Eye. Working in the same spot, Michael Saab fitted his character, PinkMan! out with jumping stilts. Absolute lunacy! Working in such bright light, I thought the best approach would be to cross-light the sunlight with off-camera flash ...  Read more inside...

photo session – Modern Gypsies – Martin

September 1, 2010 Neil vN 10 Comments

After our first, and very successful collaborative photo session with the Modern Gypsies, I was quite eager to meet up with them again. And today we had another series of photo sessions with them .. and it was one of those invigorating experiences you have working with truly talented and creative people. During the course of the day we photographed several set-ups and costumes and performers.  I will post more of these over the next few days, showing the results ... but also the progression of ideas; the setting up, and some of what went on behind the scenes ... The first performer we  Read more inside...

Sequence of photos in posing a model

August 8, 2010 Neil vN 13 Comments

Sequence of photos in posing a model

The photo above is one of my favorite images. It was also subsequently chosen as the cover image for my book about off-camera flash photography. Oktavia is a professional dancer and we both wanted some photos to extend our portfolios. Of the number of places we used as a backdrop, I really liked this place - an art gallery in Manhattan where we were kindly allowed to use as a setting.  What I'd like to show, is some of the images leading up to this final choice - how a combination of positioning Oktavia and changing the light, culminated in this  Read more inside...

tutorial: High-speed flash sync (HSS)

August 2, 2010 Neil vN 78 Comments

High-speed flash sync / auto FP .. vs .. normal flash

There have been a number of questions about high-speed flash sync (HSS), and how it affects the output from your flash. Also check this Video tutorial – High Speed Flash Sync (HSS). It covers the same material as this article, and will help explain why your camera and flash behaves the way it does when you change from normal flash sync to high-speed flash sync. I decided to do a series of comparison photos, so we can actually see what happens before, at and beyond maximum flash sync speed.  And we can also see what happens with  Read more inside...

Photography composition – Look at your background!

July 18, 2010 Neil vN 19 Comments

Photography composition - Look at your background!

The impact in this photo of our model, Jessica, relies equally on her looks and pose, the lighting, and the background. The background was very specifically chosen by how *I* positioned myself in relation to my subject. The background was out of focus neon lights in Times Square. I composed the photo very tightly with a 70-200mm lens, set to 200mm. By compressing the perspective with that tight focal length, I can select exactly what I want to include in the image. And that's the key here to the composition - deciding what to  Read more inside...

using a neutral density (ND) filter with flash

July 16, 2010 Neil vN 30 Comments

using neutral density (ND) filters with flash to control depth of field

Working in bright light, the limitation of having a maximum flash sync speed forces a small aperture on us.  That small aperture means more depth of field than we might like. There are two ways to force a high shutter speed / wide aperture combination: - go to high speed sync (HSS) mode. - use a neutral density (ND) filter. Using HSS dramatically cuts down our power of our flash, so if we're working in very bright light, we might be past the edge of what our flash is capable of. Then we need to bring it  Read more inside...

photo session – Modern Gypsies – Times Square, NYC

July 5, 2010 Neil vN 26 Comments

After the photo session where we played around with banners of fabric on the rooftops, we went to Times Square with the Modern Gypsies ...  Read more inside...

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