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Video tutorial – Using LED video light for photography

May 25, 2011 Neil vN 31 Comments

Video tutorial - Using LED video light for photography

Regular visitors to the this website will know that I favor video lights for dramatic portraits. The what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature of continuous light, makes it really easy to get interesting light on your subjects. But it does need some finessing in how you position it for portraits. Meeting up with Anelisa, one of my favorite models, we created this tutorial video clip to show exactly how I use the video light for portraits. It also explains my starting point in choosing the direction of light, and also shows how I often  Read more inside...

wedding photography – a photo-journalistic style, or more posed?

May 23, 2011 Neil vN 38 Comments

Wedding photography - a photo-journalistic style ... or more posed?

A photographer who attended the recent flash photography workshop here in New York, asked me an interesting question regarding my wedding photography style. His observation was about how I seemed to consistently get such well-timed un-posed and natural looking images with my wedding photography. Since my explanation seemed to surprise him, and even bordered on being a real aha! moment for him, I thought it could serve as an article here which might interest other wedding photographers. When asked by photographers  Read more inside...

Using a macro lens for a photo session of a newborn

May 21, 2011 Neil vN 13 Comments

Using a macro lens for a photo session of a newborn

I had the pleasure of photographing Jen and David's newborn baby. Aside from photographing the proud parents with their little one, it is also essential to get detail photos of the baby. With close-up images, you see even more clearly just how small this newborn baby is, when you show the scale. A tiny hand clasping a finger. Tiny toes gently flexing against her mother's hand. For this, a macro lens is an essential part of my camera bag.  Read more inside...

Multiple off-camera flash – gelling your flash for effect

May 3, 2011 Neil vN 33 Comments

Multiple off-camera flash - gelling your flash for effect

All the light you see in this photo, is from two speedlights. The blue color in the background is because I gelled my one flash. While that might give you the idea that I gelled the background flash with a blue gel, what I actually did, was gel my main flash with two 1/2 CTS gels (affiliate). That's all I had with me, but I wanted those hard cold blue tones to the background. A single 1/2 CTS gel would take the flash to 3700K. Adding a 2nd gel didn't take it as far as a full CTS would've, but closer to 3350K, going  Read more inside...

directing & posing an available light portrait

April 29, 2011 Neil vN 24 Comments

directing & posing - using randomly found available light as portrait lighting

During a trip to California, I was keen to meet up with another favorite model, Bethany. We were allowed to shoot in a night-club on a Sunday afternoon when it was all quiet with no one there. It's an interesting place to work with a beautiful model, and I had a multiple-flash setup ready to use. However, the first series of photos of Bethany was shot with just the available light there. But first I had to recognize the light as being interesting light for a portrait. I had to "see" it first. As it  Read more inside...

wedding portraits: finding something to bounce your flash off

April 15, 2011 Neil vN 22 Comments

wedding portraits: finding something to bounce your flash off

One of the frequent questions that come up, is what to do when there is nothing to bounce your flash off.  When working indoors and there are bounce-able surfaces around me, my first instinct is to use on-camera bounce flash. It is easy to use, and the results can look surprisingly good, especially if you consider the minimal effort that went into it. No extra gear to carry around and set up. But when there is nothing to bounce flash off, you have to adapt your technique ...  Read more inside...

Flash photography basics

April 12, 2011 Neil vN 27 Comments

Flash photography basics

In teaching workshops on flash photography, I frequently encounter newer photographers who are overwhelmed by flash photography. Overwhelmed to the extent that they fear their flash, and would rather not deal with flash photography at all. Instead, they adopt the idea that they will only specialize in available light photography. Now, that kind of thinking is an artistic dead-end. As a photographer that aspires to truly being creative, you need to understand light, regardless of how it is supplied to us. I do feel that flash photography is one of those  Read more inside...

Cherryl & Jim – their wedding day – stills and video fusion clip

April 1, 2011 Neil vN 21 Comments

wedding photography, The Grove, New Jersey

overview: Cherryl & Jim's wedding at The Grove, NJ A little bit of info about the video and stills photography ...  Read more inside...

video light as fill-light for wedding portraits

March 28, 2011 Neil vN 17 Comments

using video light as fill-light for the romantic wedding portraits

Having just photographed my first wedding of 2011, I'm back in the groove of things. Keeping to the recent theme of showing how video lights are used for photography, I'd like to show a small selection of images of Cherryl and Jim's wedding where I used a video light to enhance the existing incandescent lighting at the reception venue ...  Read more inside...

Wedding photography – Dealing with the videographer’s light

March 15, 2011 Neil vN 34 Comments

Wedding photography - Dealing with the videographer's light

With wedding receptions, we're most often working within a very warm spectrum. There are tungsten (incandescent) lights all around. (**) There is candle light. There might be twinkling lights as decoration ... and there is the videographer's light. The videographer's light will be Tungsten balanced, even if it is an LED video light that they are using. (***) So while a wedding photographer might be using a lot of flash to dominate the lighting .. and settle for Cloudy or Flash WB, there is often a conflict of interest  Read more inside...

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