a club in Manhattan on Tuesday, past midnight Canon 1D mk3, Canon 50mm f1.2 // 1/25th @ f1.2 @ 32oo ISO Read more inside...
direct fill-flash from your on-camera speedlight
using direct fill-flash from your on-camera speedlight
Here’s a question that comes up often in emails I receive: Do I use a diffuser of some kind outdoors or do I just use direct flash, with the flash in the straight ahead position. The simple answer is that yes, outdoors I most often shoot with my speedlight straight-on with no diffuser or light modifier, especially if I only use my speedlight for fill-flash. But then again, the answer is not quite that simple - so let's take this back a few steps: Read more inside...world in motion …
This image from the recent photo-session with Amy and Nick in Manhattan received a number of comments and questions about the technique. The basic camera settings for several sequences of images here, were 1/20th (at f8) and 1/10th @ f11. The image above was one of a sequence at 1/20th. But there's more to it ... Read more inside...
traveling light in Vegas
Even though most of the tutorial pages here deal with on-camera flash, I don't limit myself to just using on-camera flash. When I need off-camera lighting or when I need more juice from my flashguns than a speedlight can deliver, I use the Q-flashes made by Quantum. For this wedding in Las Vegas, I decided to travel light and as an additional flashgun, bring along a single Quantum Q-flash in addition to the two speedlights I normally take along with me when I photograph a destination wedding. I also wanted the flexibility of wireless TTL control over the flash, and therefore I chose a Read more inside...
this happened in Vegas ..
Doug Fairbairn asked me about this image from a recent post on my wedding photography blog, where I showed some images from a Las Vegas destination wedding: Great photos. I’m wondering about the lighting for the second photo - B&G and wedding party walking to camera with sun in background. How did you get so much light on their faces? Was it just reflected from the walkway or what? Too far away to use flash it would seem. Doug .. thank you for the compliments! About the look of that image and the way their faces are lit - this has less to do with the use of flash than it has with Read more inside...
wedding photography: standing out / blending in
wedding photography: standing out / blending in
An interesting question I received in an email recently had me thinking about, and considering my style in photographing weddings: Do you sometimes feel as if you can't be inconspicuous in order to get a certain shot during a wedding? There have been times I feel like I'm not blending into the background enough. How do you handle this? (Regina Coble) In trying to verbalize my answer, I came upon some interesting insights for myself. Read more inside...Nikon D300 custom settings
Nikon D300 custom settings
The Nikon D300 (which superseded the highly-regarded D200), offers great image quality and offering many of the same features of the Nikon D3, but at a more affordable price - all of which will make the D300 a camera that many professional photographers will chose as their main camera. Many of the custom settings of the D300 are the same as for the D200, but there are a few differences. (eg, Auto ISO is now set in the Shooting Menu.) Here are my preferences for the Custom Settings .. and why. Read more inside...off-camera flash photography: what are your camera settings?
off-camera flash photography: what are your camera settings?
What are your settings? - a question that I am often asked about various images. Sometimes, the answer is surprising - it doesn't really matter. Sometimes the specific settings are of importance, but usually much less so than the method of getting to correct exposure of the ambient light and the flash. This is the photographic equivalent of teaching someone to fish, versus just slapping a fish down on a dinner plate. Just telling my settings will reveal very little about the how. And yet, the how is far Read more inside...cross-processing …
Many photographers who have entered the industry in the last several years aren't readily aware that a number of the digital techniques and special effects available today in Photoshop, are actually based on processes that were available to film shooters of past years. One effect that seems to be a particular favorite of photographers recently is cross-processing - an effect where colors are made more vivid, and the tonality and contrast are skewed to create a high-fashion or slightly surreal effect. Fuji Sensia 200 exposed at 125 ISO - processed as C41 print film. Nikon F90 camera; Read more inside...
