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Simple lighting setup with speedlights & white seamless backdrop

June 11, 2013 Neil vN 19 Comments

A simple lighting setup with speedlights & white seamless backdrop

A question on the Tangents forum asked about setting up and using two SB-910 speedlights against white seamless. It's a topic we've covered in a previous article - a simple lighting setup for studio photography - but it might be good to revisit this again. The article on that simple lighting setup with two speedlights, explained our choice of camera and flash settings in detail, so we'll only briefly cover it this time. Still, a different explanation from a different angle might trigger new ideas and questions.  Read more inside...

Photo session – Modern Gypsies – floating bubbles

June 9, 2013 Neil vN 15 Comments

Photo session - Modern Gypsies - floating bubbles

Another from the most recent publicity photo session with the Modern Gypsies, with two of the girls in French period costume ... inside plastic bubbles. Seemingly an easy setup, it took a few quick adjustments to the off-camera lighting while they were enclosed in the plastic bubbles. Time is very limited! Let's start off with the test shots, and see the progression from there ...  Read more inside...

Camera & flash settings: What do you want to achieve?

June 4, 2013 Neil vN 10 Comments

Camera & flash settings: What do you want to achieve?

In one of the multitude of photography groups on Facebook, I saw a newcomer to off-camera flash say that she bought an Alien-Bee set, but she has no idea what to set it to. My reply was that she needed a light-meter. My thinking is that then she'd know what the specific output of the flash or strobe would be, and then be able to set her camera to it. But then, thinking about it some more, I realized if there is hesitation there or confusion, it is about what specific camera settings (mostly aperture) should be in the first  Read more inside...

Using a neutral density (ND) filter to control DoF with flash

June 2, 2013 Neil vN 42 Comments

Using a neutral density (ND) filter to control DoF with flash

When working in bright sunlight with flash units that can't go into high-speed flash sync, we have a ceiling in terms of our shutter speed / aperture combination. The shutter speed limitation then would be our maximum flash sync speed. The bright daylight would then imply a small aperture - most likely around f/11 Why f/11 ? The Sunny 16 Rule dictates that in bright sunlight, we're most likely working at 1/100 @ f/16 @ 100 ISO. This translates into a handy short-cut of: 1/200 @ f/11 @ 100 ISO, where 1/200 is the maximum  Read more inside...

Posing tip – Check the wrists and hands

May 28, 2013 Neil vN 6 Comments

Posing tip - Check the wrists and hands

In posing, a good tip is to have the wrists and hands form a kind of S-curve instead of being straight. While this photograph works for me,  and I really like the composition and her direct gaze into the camera ... I should've guided Anelisa to bend her left wrist (the hand closer to her cheek), a bit more. That would've made her gesture a touch more elegant in this photograph at the top. Of course, in analyzing your photographs closely, there is (nearly) always something to pick up on how you could've improved the final image. Here is  Read more inside...

Simple lighting setup to photograph kids indoors – Bounce flash!

May 23, 2013 Neil vN 21 Comments

Simple lighting setup to photograph kids indoors - Bounce flash!

Meet Jack. He's 1 year old. We kinda photographed him just over a year ago with the maternity photo session with his mom and dad. But this is him now, for real. When Amy and Nick asked me to do a portrait session with him, we started off at their house. I wanted to grab a few candid photos of Jack happily playing before we set off to a nearby park. Since kids scoot around all over the place, for me, it made most sense to just use on-camera bounce flash. Minimal gear - just the speedlight on my camera. And of course,  Read more inside...

available light photo session in the studio – Elle

May 16, 2013 Neil vN 20 Comments

available light photo session in the studio - Elle

During the same photo session with Elle where the aim was for Hollywood Glamor lighting style with video lights, I also wanted to change it up completely with an entirely different look and lighting - an available light photo series in the studio. With so much light flooding into the studio, it was just a matter of positioning Elle into the light. To get away from a blank wall, the background was a backdrop. And yes, the studio needs more furniture. We'll revisit this territory with future shoots. But even with such a minimalist  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...

Photo session – Modern Gypsies – stilt-walking showgirl

May 10, 2013 Neil vN 4 Comments

Photo session - Modern Gypsies - stilt-walking showgirl

On the same day that we did the Silver Birds photo session with the Modern Gypsies, we did a few other setups, including this one where Irene was on stilts ... as a showgirl. Since the photos are meant for their promotional material, we needed to make the images vibrant. We scouted around a warehouse district of Brooklyn, looking for interesting backgrounds. I felt that this huge mural would make a colorful background compared to the bright white costume. Still working with the usual Profoto Acute B2 600 Ws powerpack  Read more inside...

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