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
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
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...
Wedding photography - Style, technique & choice of gear
With Manhattan as a back-drop, I wanted a cinematic look for the photograph of Nima and Peter. A magnificent view behind them as they snuggle in. While I approach wedding photography with my eye on telling the story of the day, for me, where a photographer really reveals a specific style, is in the portraits of the bride and groom.
I wanted a romantic look to this sequence of images, so there were specific choices to be made in terms of equipment, camera settings and the lighting. So let's run through the Read more inside...
By now it should be clear that I'm quite a fan of video lights for the romantic portrait session with a couple. The Incandescent WB of the video light usually matches the existing light fairly well. Because video light has a rapid fall-off in light intensity to the edges of the beam, it doesn't "flatten" out the light like bounce flash would. In addition, the video light can seem quite natural in context of the existing light, and not even look like additional lighting. Somehow the light just appears to be great right there.
Here are two Read more inside...
Deep into the busy part of the wedding season, the articles posted recently will be more wedding-centric than usual. But, as I've mentioned before, many of the techniques translate to other fields of photography.
This photograph of a bride, Christine, received some very favorable comments when I posted it on Facebook. So I thought it might make a good topic here, as well as being a good recap of some essential bounce flash techniques. The portrait is quite straightforward in execution - the lighting was quite simple, but effective. It was also Read more inside...
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...
using a gelled LED video light for a change in color balance (model: Rebekah)
Continuing with the theme of combining dramatically different color balances in a single image, there is this striking portrait of Rebekah. She is one of our models at the workshop at Treehaven, WI, this week. Working in the fading evening light, I had Rebekah pose somewhere in the middle of a large clump of trees. I knelt down so that I could shoot up and catch the last remnants of the evening sky as the background.
The blue light filtering through the trees was then exaggerated by using an LED video Read more inside...
A favorite image from today's workshop (Dana Point, CA), was lit by two LED video lights. Our one model, Virginia, was posed against the back of a waterfall display in the hotel lobby.
When I first saw this display in the lobby, and saw how it looked when backlit by the available light in the front, I knew it would make for an interesting backdrop. Flash would even out the light too much though - especially bounce flash - so I knew this would be an ideal place for a dramatic portrait with video light. So in the late afternoon, the workshop Read more inside...
