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wedding photography: portraits of the bride & bridesmaids

July 15, 2012 Neil vN 17 Comments

wedding photography: portraits of the bride & bridesmaids

Continuing with the theme of photographing great portraits on a wedding day when there aren't beautiful surroundings: when I have the time at the bride's house, I will always try to get individual portraits of the bride with each bridesmaid. I like doing this early in the day already at the bride's house, because everyone's energy levels are still up. Everyone is still excited, and emotions are still high. No one is hungry; with shoes that hurt them. So, with that idea in mind, I like getting as many of these portraits  Read more inside...

Off-camera flash: Short lighting vs. Broad lighting

July 9, 2012 Neil vN 8 Comments

Off-camera flash photography: Short lighting vs. Broad lighting

"Short Lighting" is when the side of the face turned away from the camera, is better lit than the side of the face closest to the camera. (top image) "Broad Lighting" is when the side of the face closest to the camera, is better lit. (second image) This has as much to do with the position of the light, as with how your subject is posed into the light. This is true for studio photography and off-camera flash on location, and for when you photograph a subject with just the available light. As shown in a previous  Read more inside...

Simplifying composition with a fast telephoto zoom

July 6, 2012 Neil vN 13 Comments

Simplifying composition with a fast telephoto zoom

If you can create a good photograph out of seemingly "nowhere", then you can bring a variety to your images that is out of the league of photographers who have to rely on picture-perfect scenery. This is especially true with wedding portraits. We're under pressure for time, and on top of that we can't always control where we shoot. We have to make it work wherever we are. One of the basic techniques I rely on heavily with my wedding photography, is to eliminate distracting elements by shooting with a fast telephoto zoom. The  Read more inside...

Shooting wedding photos in the mid-day sun with off-camera flash

July 5, 2012 Neil vN 27 Comments

Shooting wedding photos in the mid-day sun with off-camera flash

Shooting under the mid-day sun is always a tough scenario we face as photographers. Recent topics here have included photographing wedding portraits in bright sunlight, as well as generally taking photos in hard sunlight. These techniques mostly revolve around adapting to the harsh light. We can often sidestep having to work in the hard sunlight by positioning our subject so the light is more flattering. Sometimes though, these alternatives are out of our hands, and decisions are made for us. Then we have to deal  Read more inside...

review: Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.8G lens

June 27, 2012 Neil vN 43 Comments

review: Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.8G lens

At the same time that I photographed Anelisa for the review of the Nikon 28mm f/1.8 AF-S lens, I had the brand-new Nikon AF-S 85mm f/1.8G lens (B&H / Amazon) on my other camera body. For every place that I photographed Anelisa with the 28mm f/1.8 lens, I also shot similar images with the 85mm f/1.8 lens. In a way, these two lenses complement each other, if you like working with a dual prime lens setup. A nice wide-angle view with the one lens, while the 85mm is a sweet portrait lens. Wanting to show off the shallow depth-of-field, I  Read more inside...

review: Nikon AF-S 28mm f/1.8G lens

June 25, 2012 Neil vN 17 Comments

review: Nikon AF-S 28mm f/1.8G lens

To test out the Nikon AF-S 28mm f/1.8G (B&H / Amazon), I met up with Anelisa in Brooklyn to try my hand at some environmental portraiture. With such a wide field-of-view, you inevitably have to include the background. I wanted to show the effect of the shallow depth-of-field of this lens, so I shot at f/1.8 or f/2.0 throughout. When you use a fast (i.e., wide aperture) wide-angle lens, and have sufficient distance between your subject and the background, that shallow depth of field can be used to great effect. It can be tricky  Read more inside...

Adding rim-lighting to available light, with off-camera flash

June 21, 2012 Neil vN 14 Comments

Adding rim-lighting to available light, with off-camera flash

Off-camera flash need not be all that complex as it might appear to you if you are new to this. During a lunch-time conversation, a friend told me that she felt intimidated by the on-location flash photography by other photographers. The way to use multiple-flash setups seemed impenetrable to grasp. How would one go about and where do  you even start. This made me wonder - just how complicated should photography lighting be? I don't think it has to be complicated. It just has to be enough to be effective or solve a  Read more inside...

The best walkabout camera – the iPhone

June 18, 2012 Neil vN 7 Comments

The best walkabout camera - the iPhone

My love for the iPhone knows little bounds. Not only do I have my office in my hand, but I also have a device with which I can contact anyone in the world via phone; email; text messages. (I am extremely contact-able!) I can surf the web; I can take photos; record 1080p HD video clips; record voice recordings and send them to anyone. I have a built-in GPS. I can check train and flight schedules from this device. I can listen to music. I have a staggering number of ways I can interface with the world around me. As a friend of mine commented to  Read more inside...

Lightroom tutorial – Local adjustments

June 12, 2012 Neil vN 20 Comments

Lightroom tutorial - Local adjustments

This photograph of the outdoor wedding venue gives a great sense of what it looked like there at the time. But the original image looked a lot more dull. There just isn't a way to capture the deep shaded areas and the bright sky with a single capture, in camera .. without some post-processing work. Get it right in camera? ... sure, but on occasion some post-processing helps.  Read more inside...

video clip: using the Canon 600EX-RT Speedlites on a photo shoot

June 7, 2012 Neil vN 5 Comments

BTS video: using the Canon 600EX-RT Speedlites

In my review of the Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT, I raved about the ease of use of the new speedlite by Canon that has built-in radio transmitters. The same with my subsequent review Canon ST-E3-RT Transmitter. This system is going to have huge impact! The behind-the-scenes video clip as I set every thing up, is of the photo session with Molly K where I used Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite (B&H / Amazon), and the Canon ST-E3 Speedlite Transmitter (B&H / Amazon), during an actual shoot. You can actually hear the  Read more inside...

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