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Using video light for romantic portraits of the bride & groom

October 10, 2013 Neil vN 15 Comments

Using video light for romantic portraits of the bride & groom

One of my favorite photos of the day. Why can't wedding portraits of the bride and groom be a little bit sexy? When I went back to the bridal suite during a quieter moment in the wedding reception to fetch some gear I had left there earlier, I had this thought that mmmm, yes! romantic portraits of the bride and groom on the bed in their suite. This might just work! So I called Julia and Louis back to the the bridal suite at the venue, and we did a sequence of images using video light. I'm a big fan of video light  Read more inside...

Lighting a vintage styled boudoir photo session

September 4, 2013 Neil vN 14 Comments

Lighting a vintage styled boudoir photo session, using LED fresnel lights

Working with the ever-delightful Olena in my studio, we went for a mix of outfits and looks. We started off the photo session with straight-forward headshots, but then when Olena showed me this outfit, it just begged for something with a more vintage feel in lighting. So, drawing on the classic Hollywood glamor lighting for inspiration, I used the Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Lights  (B&H / Amazon), to create that dramatic light on her, and on the background. I've used the same lights before  Read more inside...

Hollywood Glamor lighting with video lights

May 15, 2013 Neil vN 8 Comments

Hollywood Glamor lighting with video lights

The old Hollywood masters such as George Hurrell, CS Bull and Laszlo Willinger had a dramatic way of lighting their portraits, with specific use of light and shade. For my review of the Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Lights, I had Ulorin Vex as model. Her style and clothing are quite unique, and dramatic enough that these lights enhanced her look. I loved what we came up with. In using these Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Lights (B&H / Amazon) to specifically emulate Hollywood Glamor lighting, I called in another model,  Read more inside...

review: Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Light

May 14, 2013 Neil vN 10 Comments

review: Litepanels Sola 4 LED Fresnel Light

The dramatic look that video lights lend to photographs, is a regularly explored topic on Tangents. I also cover the use of video light in my book Direction and Quality of Light. The video lights that I have been favoring, are the Lowel ID-Light (affiliate), but like other halogen video lights, it tends to run hot. LED video lights (affiliate) that are meant to be hand-held or mounted on a camera, also tend to be under-powered for some uses. And since video lights tend to be small light sources, their light is quite  Read more inside...

review: Litepanels Croma LED video light

March 13, 2013 Neil vN 7 Comments

review: Litepanels Croma LED video light

What sets Litepanels Croma LED video light  (B&H / Amazon) apart from most, is that you can vary the color temperature. You can vary the WB between 3200K and 5600K by dialing a knob. No more need for a gel to be clipped in and out. The gel (or lack of gel) would mean a specific WB with the LitePanels Pro. With the variable adjustment of the Litepanels Croma, you have every color balance setting inbetween.  Read more inside...

Exposure metering when using video light for photography

October 2, 2012 Neil vN 11 Comments

Exposure metering when using video light for photography

In response to the article on how to shoot romantic wedding portraits, using video light, someone asked about exposure metering with the video light. "Much in the same vein as using flash, do you establish the ambient exposure first (to your taste) and then add the video light to expose ‘correctly’ for your subject? How do you meter for this video light and therefore adjust the light power to the right level? By chimping on test shots?" While this would certainly be a correct way of doing it, the practical way of doing it,  Read more inside...

Photography with video light and daylight

July 20, 2012 Neil vN 8 Comments

Photography with video light and daylight

With the recent lighting workshop in New York, we again played with the use of video light ... and then took it out to the street. The blue-ish tones of the shady side of the building here, contrasted beautifully with the warm glow of the video light. As with the article, gelling your flash to get a blue background, this is something that can work very well when we use light sources with different color balance, thereby attaining those complementary colors. The rapid fall-off in light also helped give the photograph a dramatic  Read more inside...

Using video lights for outdoor night-time portrait photography

May 24, 2012 Neil vN 9 Comments

Using video lights for outdoor night-time portrait photography

These outdoor night-time portraits of the bide and groom were taken on the streets in Baltimore. We sneaked away briefly from the reception to shoot a few impromptu portraits. With the unpredictable nature of found light out on the streets at night, we had to use additional lighting - and my choice was an LED video light (affiliate). The beauty of these kind of lights is that the White Balance can be changed from Incandescent to Daylight. This helps immeasurably in matching your light to that of the existing  Read more inside...

Photography composition – Finding the other angles

December 3, 2011 Neil vN 6 Comments

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...

wedding photography: bride & groom portraits with video light

November 25, 2011 Neil vN 11 Comments

wedding photography: bride & groom portraits with video light

For that dramatic Hollywood look, a video light is probably the easiest light to use, especially when there is the need to work fast like on a wedding day. With Alli & Scott's engagement photo session, I knew I'd be working with a couple that would easily go along with any ideas that we'd come up with. We worked indoors at the Temple Israel in Long Island, New York, and there were all kinds of interesting nooks to explore.  Read more inside...

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Recent Comments

  • Noel Whitman: That 135 produces beautiful images!
  • Neil vN: Hi there Michael — the easiest might be to post it in the Tangents Facebook group. There’s an...
  • Michael Taylor: Hello Neil, I am a 71 year old retired ambulance paramedic and a keen photographer. I own a Canon EOS...
  • Matt: There’s a beautiful quality to the light in these portraits. Good advice from you here. I’ve often...
  • E: Ugh I did this too with Chase just today. Are you still waiting for it to hit your account? Or has anything else...

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