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Headshot photography: What makes for good head shots?

April 29, 2014 Neil vN 12 Comments

Headshot photography: What makes for a good headshot?

A few out-takes mixed with a few keepers from this headshot photo session, and it helps illustrate some of the process of getting to a good headshot. The lighting is key. Posing is important. But there's another aspect that makes a great headshot - your subject's personality needs to come shining through. So, yes, it is in the lighting. It is in the posing. It's in the expression ... but a very important key is the personality of the photographer - how to make your subject feel relaxed. How to make the photography not feel like  Read more inside...

review: Nikon D4S auto-focus / AF performance

April 24, 2014 Neil vN 19 Comments

review: Nikon D4S auto-focus / AF performance

The Nikon D4s  (B&H / Amazon) updates the already-awesome Nikon D4. The short summary lists some improvements, which while they may appear incremental, overall make for a solid new release by Nikon: - a newly designed sensor, offering better high-ISO performance, - an additional AF mode has been added - Group Area AF - for more accurate subject tracking, - 11 fps continuous shooting with continuous AE/AF (compared to the 10 fps of the D4) - 'small' Raw size of 8 Mpx, - 1080/60p video - faster processing with the new  Read more inside...

My hard drive has died – what should I do?

April 23, 2014 Neil vN 15 Comments

My hard drive has died – what should I do?

"My hard drive has died – what should I do right now!? I don't know what to do!" These were the sounds the angry woman next to me at the Apple Store counter made, while crying about her hard disc that had died. "But it was fine this morning!" My sympathy was more with the blue-shirted geniuses who took her anger with a calmness that was impressive. My sympathy for her? Well, I just thought to myself, "Now here is someone who doesn't understand the concept of single point of failure." Back your data up, all the time. Constantly.  Read more inside...

B&W infrared photography – Urban landscapes

April 22, 2014 Neil vN 8 Comments

B&W infrared photography - Urban landscapes

Funny how personal projects often work - there's the initial enthusiasm, and then life and work takes over. Last year I bought a used Canon 5D mark II that had been converted to Infra-Red. I did take it out twice for walkabouts in New York - and posted the initial results. But then the work-load added up, and then a particularly harsh winter where it was just too miserable outside to go exploring in the city - and I never took it out again, until now. With the weather improving now and the sun shining, it was just a good time to go out  Read more inside...

Post-processing workflow: How to deal with color banding

April 21, 2014 Neil vN 12 Comments

Post-processing workflow: How to deal with color banding / posterization

If you've ever noticed banding or  posterization in your photos, where you'd expect solid colors, then there's a relatively easy fix for it. This posterization effect appears as bands of colors, where the transitions between similar tones aren't smooth, but have jagged edges instead. It is caused by the 8-bit JPG not having enough data to give you a smooth gradient when large blocks of color slowly change. You'll often see it in the blue sky in landscapes, or as in this case, with large areas of color in the  Read more inside...

After Dark photography education

April 19, 2014 Neil vN 10 Comments

After Dark photography education

This photograph was taken at one of the stations at the After Dark workshops. Two strip lights on either side, freezing this acrobatic performer doing jumps on his board. Pretty wild, I think. "Pretty wild" would also sum up the general experience of attending the After Dark workshops.  This is where After Dark differs from other workshops and conventions, in my opinion.  Just a simple description of the workshop as being 3 days of a series of seminars and demonstrations, doesn't quite encompass it ...  Read more inside...

slideshow: Favorite images – wedding in Melbourne, Australia

April 15, 2014 Neil vN 14 Comments

Peiwen & Eric - wedding in Melbourne, Australia - slideshow

I've shown a few images already of the wedding I photographed in Melbourne, Australia, early in March 2014. Everything fell into place during our visit to Australia - and on the wedding day itself - great weather, lovely people, a truly fantastic couple. It's a huge honor indeed that Eric reached out to my last year, enquiring whether I'd be up for photographing his and Peiwen's wedding in Melbourne. And yes, I did feel a lot of pressure. The images dared not be mediocre! But Eric and Peiwen really were great to work  Read more inside...

software review: Capture One Pro v7 RAW Converter tests

April 14, 2014 Neil vN 13 Comments

software review: Capture One Pro v7 RAW Converter Tests

guest article by: Adrian Mackay wedding photographers (Adrian is better known as Trev in the Tangents forum) Recently I have been trialling the Capture One Pro v7 Raw Converter to see if I could get my files better from the get-go before I started tweaking in Photoshop. Short Verdict: Simply outstanding; makes ACR and Lightroom look very mediocre compared to Capture One Pro v7 in initial rendering of images. Now, to be clear, I am not doing full edits within it like a lot of people do in  Read more inside...

Exposure metering: Under- / Over-exposure vs. exposing correctly

April 13, 2014 Neil vN 18 Comments

Under-exposure / Over-exposure vs. exposing correctly

When I posted this photograph of Peiwen & Eric's wedding in Melbourne, Australia, on Facebook, someone asked the question: how much did I over-expose this photo by? We have to be very clear with our terminology regarding over-exposure and under-exposure. This photograph is not over-exposed. It is exposed correctly! Did my camera's light-meter jump all the way to the right-hand side? Yes, it surely did. Does it matter? No, it does not. Why not? Because I exposed correctly. Not under, not over, but correctly. This  Read more inside...

Overpowering the sun with Off-Camera Flash – What are my settings?

April 1, 2014 Neil vN 72 Comments

Overpowering the sun with Off-Camera Flash - What are my settings?

Teaching a class on using off-camera flash at a photography convention, I took a group of attendees outside on the street with two models. Then I stepped them through the thought-process in how to get to your basic, fail-safe, works-everytime settings for off-camera flash. We specifically looked here at camera and flash settings to match / over-power the sun. Regular visitors to the Tangents blog and those who have read my books on flash photography, should know the algorithm off by heart. There's a specific  Read more inside...

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