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Using gelled flash in the studio 

March 26, 2018 Neil vN 4 Comments

Using gelled flash in the studio

Shooting in the studio with Brian and Anette to do promotional portraits of their band, Cut Like This, this one sequence was really fun to shoot. The images directly out of camera had impact already with the swath of blue light against the wall. The lighting is fairly simple - I used a gelled flash to get that color effect. The flash, a Profoto B1 flash  (B&H / Amazon), was bare, with just the turquoise gel taped over it. The main light (to camera right) was one I often use when I want that interesting combination of soft light  Read more inside...

How to bounce flash

March 8, 2018 Neil vN 21 Comments

How to bounce flash

An elegant portrait of a delightful young woman, Supriya, taken at her Sweet 16 party. With events there isn't always the opportunity to use involved lighting setups, and to keep the interest of your subject, you need to shoot fast. Yet the results need to look top-class. For this I most often revert to on-camera bounce flash. How to bounce flash - this is a topic we have covered thoroughly here with previous articles. This time I want to I want to highlight an aspect of that - the direction of bounce flash - and this is best served by showing correct and  Read more inside...

Lens review: Trioplan 100mm f/2.8

February 25, 2018 Neil vN 4 Comments

Lens review: Trioplan 100mm f/2.8

My favorite adventure in photography for the past year or so, has been to explore vintage lenses. Many of these lenses render the background in an interesting or unusual way which makes them appealing in helping to create a distinctive look to your photography. A recent purchase was the Trioplan 100mm f/2.8 lens (affiliate) for use with my Sony A7ii camera. The Trioplan 100mm f/2.8 is well known as the 'soap-bubble bokeh' lens. Created by the Meyer Optik Görlitz  company, it gives perfectly spherical circles in the background when used in  Read more inside...

Focal length comparison: 645 format vs 35mm format

February 23, 2018 Neil vN 10 Comments

Focal length comparison: 645 format vs 35mm format

We all know know that when you use a full-frame lens on a crop-sensor camera, that we can consider there to be a new “effective focal length” of the lens on the crop sensor because the field of view changes. When we now change our composition with the crop-sensor camera to match that of the 35mm camera, we change our own position, we then effectively get thane 1.5x or 1.6x focal length increase. This has been explored in the article:  Full-frame vs Crop-sensor comparison : Depth-of-field & perspective. But now what happens when  Read more inside...

Time-Lapse Photography project in New York: Cipriani

February 15, 2018 Neil vN 11 Comments

Time-Lapse Photography project in New York: Cipriani

The beauty of time-lapse photography is that you are able compress a much longer event, into a shorter video which can be visually grasped. One of the biggest time-lapse projects I have been involved in, is for a New York event planner, Norma Cohen Productions, who needed a time-lapse video to show the epic scale of a wedding reception that she was tasked with. It took 3 days to set up this entire event! I shot 32,500 RAW frames with 4 cameras over the course of those 3 days. And yes, it took my computer several days to grind  Read more inside...

What’s in my bag – lighting gear for headshots on location

February 7, 2018 Neil vN 17 Comments

What's in my bag - lighting gear for headshots on location

In one of the previous articles dealing with lighting gear for headshots on location - headshot photography lighting on location - I showed the need to be flexible. There I showed a number of the setups I have used, depending on the client's needs, and also dependent on where we are shooting. With this article now, I want to more specifically show the lighting gear I have in my lighting roller case - my usual minimum setup. As you might expect by now, my lighting choice is based on the Profoto B1 and A1 flashes. It is a  Read more inside...

Fitness photography – photo session in the gym

February 4, 2018 Neil vN 10 Comments

Fitness photography - photo session in the gym

Collaborating with other photographers, I am often involved as a kind of lighting tech, bringing along the necessary lighting gear, and setting it up as needed. With this Fitness photography photo session in the gym, I helped my friend Yasmeen who specializes in fitness photography here in NJ and New York. On this occasion, I arrange the lighting as needed for various setups she decided on. This is a large part of what I like about being involved on this end of a photo shoot - not just collaborating, but being problem-solving,  Read more inside...

BTS: Fashion catalog photo shoot in the studio

January 25, 2018 Neil vN 5 Comments

behind the scenes: Fashion catalog photo shoot in the studio

From a recent photoshoot in the studio for a fashion designer, Isle By Melis Kozan, I want to give a bit of a glimpse behind the scenes. Further below there is a short video clip that shows what went down in the studio. Nothing frenetic - the pace is calm and steady. As it should be when you need to get through a large number of items. Fashion catalog photo shoots are fairly straight-forward - the key is consistency is lighting and positioning. You also need consistency in the camera's viewpoint. There is no Art  Read more inside...

Wedding photography – Style & Serendipity

January 1, 2018 Neil vN 6 Comments

Wedding photography - Style & Serendipity

There's this balance I feel I need to maintain in my professional photography, and especially with weddings. The photos I take, need to solidly be within the style that I show on my website - this is what my clients hired me for. On top of that though, there is the urge within as an artist, and as an obligation to my clients, to produce more. To deliver photos with a little extra. Something slightly different. I want to expand what I do, and expand on my style and 'look'. So with every shoot and every wedding, I'm always looking for  Read more inside...

Tips on photographing dancers and ballerinas

December 25, 2017 Neil vN 5 Comments

Tips on photographing dancers and ballerinas

Photographing a talented dancer / model, Anna L Russel (Instagram), in the studio, I wanted to think further than just sequences. Recently I have moved more to thinking in terms of larger projects or longer-term projects, even if just over a single photo session. I liked the results from the first few jumps Anna did - explosive movements within which she momentally holds a pose before landing again.  I don't know much about dance movements or what would be the perfect execution of a dance move ... which would then affect my timing  Read more inside...

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