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Back-lighting with flash for silhouetted wedding portraits

December 12, 2011 Neil vN 11 Comments

Back-lighting with flash for silhouetted wedding portraits

One of the easiest ways to create dramatic light for a silhouette when photographing the wedding portraits, is to add a flash behind the couple. The beauty of this is that there is a fair amount of leeway as to what would work. We need not be all that exact, but there are some a few things we should check ...  Read more inside...

Gelling your flash for effect – Blue background

December 4, 2011 Neil vN 18 Comments

Gelling your flash for effect - Blue background

The idea of gelling your flash for effect has been a topic here a few times. I most often use gels on my flash to correct my flash when working with tungsten / incandescent light. There are times though when I gel my flash just for effect, creating a shift between my foreground (lit by gelled flash) and my background. In the examples shown in the several articles here, there wasn't the type of background where the effect can clearly be seen on easily recognizable "neutral" background. In the article turning day into night, we turned  Read more inside...

Looking for photo opportunities

November 24, 2011 Neil vN 5 Comments

Looking for photo opportunities

This is what we do as photographers - looking for photo opportunities and looking for angles and backgrounds which are not mundane. Even when not taking photographs, it is always a good exercise to look for what would have made a good photograph. It's constant training for the mind. We stumbled upon this opportunity for this portrait of Jessica - the reception room for a wedding we were photographing had several large boxes of lights against the walls as a kind of light mural, with baubles inside that were lit up. And the back of each of these displays  Read more inside...

Making your images pop through lens choice – Compressed perspective

November 16, 2011 Neil vN 33 Comments

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...

Wedding photography: Night-time city lights & off-camera flash

October 19, 2011 Neil vN 28 Comments

Wedding photography: Night-time city lights & off-camera flash

For the romantic portraits, I often take a couple around the venue - the light is just different than during the day. This is where video light comes into its own. Here though, I wanted some of the city lights and light from the traffic outside the venue to appear in the background. The way I envisioned it, was as a stream of cars behind them, but in the first few test images, the cars were too distinct, even at f2.8 and 200mm focal length. Looking at how the approaching cars lined up at the traffic intersection, I  Read more inside...

“Using the available light” is not a random decision

July 20, 2011 Neil vN 27 Comments

"Using the available light" is not a random decision

Since I often use flash or additional light, there was some surprise in the (favorable) comments in the Facebook album when I mentioned this photo was shot without any flash. Not even fill-flash. Just the available light. But where I posed the bride, was a specific decision. It wasn't just random. Now, I often get the feeling that when someone boasts they only use available light, that it is meant to disguise that they don't know how to use additional lighting. My thought here is that unless you find yourself in great light, or  Read more inside...

technique – using lens flare for effect

July 18, 2011 Neil vN 15 Comments

technique - using lens flare for effect

While lens designers try to minimize lens flare, and we use lens hoods, we can often use lens flare for special effect. Shielding the front element of the lens from direct sun and other strong light sources helps giving a more contrasty image. But letting the lens flare take over in a controlled way, can really give impact. That golden, sun-drenched summery feel to a photograph enhances the mood. During this recent photo session in Central Park, New York, with a couple, Alli and Scott, the lens flare was quite intentional. But as is usual,  Read more inside...

Using flash with incandescent / tungsten light

June 14, 2011 Neil vN 23 Comments

Using flash with incandescent / tungsten light

I have used this photograph several times in the past to illustrate various aspects of flash photography in low light, so it might be time to discuss this image more thoroughly. We'll also pull together a few other topics and see how it all comes together at this one point: Dragging the shutter Gelling your flash Bounce flash technique Direction of light The advantage of using TTL flash Working alongside a videographer    Read more inside...

photographic composition – eliminate & simplify

June 6, 2011 Neil vN 19 Comments

eliminate & simplify - the first steps in photography composition

These two images were taken from more or less the same spot. All that changed was my vantage point, and my choice of lens. This vibrant park in Manhattan seemed like an interesting place to photograph, but when photographing a couple, I really want the accent to be on them. The best way to do this is to frame them so that the background is as simple as possible, but still complements the final photograph. I had the couple sit on top of this grassy mound, and I lay down on the grass, and framed them tightly  Read more inside...

Exposure metering – expose for your subject !

June 1, 2011 Neil vN 27 Comments

Exposure metering - expose for your subject !

In preparation for a review of the Fuji X-100 camera, I met up with Anelisa to see how this little camera performed during an actual photo shoot. The image above was one of the photographs we ended up with. Now, there is something specific about it that I wanted to explain in a separate article, instead of it being glossed over deeper inside a camera review. The composition is simple - I do like my compositions fairly central, it seems. Similarly, the lighting is simplicity itself - all available light. There were two main sources of  Read more inside...

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