Lighting for on-location photo sessions – pick your battles
Lighting for on-location photo sessions - pick your battles
When doing a photo session with a couple on location, I mix up the lighting as needed. Some sequences are shot with shoot available light only; for other sequences I may use off-camera flash with a softbox. Sometimes I use on-camera TTL fill-flash if that helps working faster. Even in varying the way I may use the available light and flash, I still aim to have a consistent look to it all. My specific style has to be apparent. Or perhaps, in the way that I work, my style becomes apparent. The one way that I help make Read more inside...Photographing in bright sunlight – find the shade!
Photographing in bright sunlight - find the shade!
Hard sunlight must be one of the most difficult lighting scenarios to work under. But with a bit of thought, we can work around it and still easily get photos that look great. It's a topic that we've touched on a number of times on the Tangents blog, (see related articles at the end here). Where I can though, the simplest approach for me though, is where I can, is to just not deal with the hard sunlight. I find shade. This maternity portrait session of Amy was taken on a bright day, and I wanted to avoid her squinting in Read more inside...Top 5 tips on shooting engagement photo sessions
Top 5 tips on shooting engagement photo sessions
I love doing engagement photo sessions because this allows me the opportunity to connect with my clients before their big day. Even more so, in that there's much less pressure and haste during this photo session than there'd be during the wedding day. The engagement photo session is also a good opportunity to impress your clients with your photography. They did sign with you because they liked your style, but it's even better when they love the photos you took of them. Time to shine. Their friends and family will also be Read more inside...Flash photography tip: Find your background, then your settings
Flash photography tip: Find your background, then your settings
With flash photography on location, we nearly always start off by figuring out what we want to do in relation to our available light. We might just need fill-flash, or or flash might need to do the "heavy lifting" and expose correctly for our subject in relation to the available light. When we have our subject in (relative) shade, and need to figure out our flash exposure, we also need to decide exactly what our background is. It usually works best to be specific about our background ... and how we position ourselves Read more inside...Photography composition – Finding the other angles
Photography composition - Finding the other angles
At the same photo shoot-out that the stunning Film Noir Fight Scene came out of, I again worked with a model, Jill. Her hairstyle and dress were strongly reminiscent of the flapper era. Therefore a more dramatic and sexy pose and styling was suited. And of course, dramatic lighting. For off-the-cuff / on-the-fly dramatic lighting, a video light is hard to beat. The photo at the top is the angle that my friend Peter Salo found, while I was standing on a short ledge, shooting from above. The irony here is that the first time Peter Read more inside...The flow of a photo session
The flow of a photo session
In the recent article, turning day into night, I described the thought-process of a photo sequence. Starting with an idea, we worked up to a photo that looked impressive. So that entails a few test shots, including one to show the couple what we're trying to achieve. Then we finesse it. That's the usual process when coming up with ideas - it's a succession of photos, changing things up a bit until we have a few images that look really good and show the couple at their best. But sometimes, the idea doesn't work. It takes time for a photographer to Read more inside...Making your images pop through lens choice – Compressed perspective
Making your images pop through lens choice - Compressed perspective
The immediate reaction when considering how you could make your photographs *pop* might be to juice it up in Photoshop. But the process should start much earlier - in camera. With a few easy techniques, we can consistently create images that jump off the page or screen. With some of the engagement photo sessions that I've shown, I get comments about the 3D look to some of the photographs. The look is achieved through a simple technique - compressed perspective with a longer focal length. Read more inside...Available light photography – Observing and using the available light
Photography - Observing and using the available light
With a few top-end point & shoot cameras to test, I met up with Anelisa on this crisp late-Fall afternoon in New York. Similar to how I often work, the idea was to walk around and explore and find interesting places and interesting light to take photographs in. So when at this particular spot in Bryant Park, and I saw the light was just incredible, I ditched the point & shoot cameras, and grabbed my Nikon D3 with the Nikon AF-S 35mm f/1.4G (affiliate) on it. Since the idea with today's photo shoot was to *find* Read more inside...photo session – vintage pinup style (on location)
photo session - vintage pinup style (on location)
When the hot-rod show which didn't offer as much in terms of photography as I had hoped, Jill and I moved over to the pier in Brooklyn. Having a model in a retro sailor-suit type outfit ... well, it just seemed to good an opportunity to waste. I thought of perhaps using the Ice Cream Factory there as a backdrop to a straight-forward pinup photo, but ultimately decided the Hudson River waterfront would work better as a setting for the photo. Then we just had to add some simple but dynamic lighting, and give the final image a vintage Read more inside...- « Previous Page
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