high ISO is no substitute for good light
The light on Valerie here is from the evening sky, some city lights, and some of the parking lot's lights. All of this added up to give me enough light to use for a lovely impromptu available-light portrait of her, right there in the middle of the parking lot. My settings were: 1/160th @ f1.4 @ 1250 ISO My equipment: Nikon D3 and Nikon 85mm f1.4 The light was soft, but wasn't necessarily the best for a portrait where she is simply looking at the camera. Because of the surrounding buildings, the light was fairly top-heavy. So I asked Valerie to lift her gaze slightly - and in this way Read more inside...
Bouncing on-camera flash off a brick wall
Bouncing flash off other surfaces
When I am stuck in an area where there aren't any white or near-white surfaces to bounce my flash off, I will look around for alternate areas. In the image above, I bounced off the wood paneling and brick walls in this large enclosed entrance area of a restaurant. As most of you already know, the problem with the bounce flash technique, is that you will pick up the color cast of the area that you are bouncing your flash off. When this color cast is slightly warm, it is often simple enough just to switch to a Daylight White Balance. This Read more inside...Personal photos from the archives – South Africa
Personal photos from the archives - South Africa
Digging deep into the archives, here are some of my favorite images from way back. These were all shot on transparency film - Fuji Provia RDP being my choice of film at the time. And as usual with personal photography, there are memories and stories attached to these images. To get this photograph above of the DC3 flying over Johannesburg, I had to wind down the window of the WW2 vintage Junkers I was flying in. Because there was no window glass in the way, I could get a crisp photo of this DC3 following us. The golden glow to Read more inside...destination wedding photography ..
destination wedding photography
A few times a year I'm fortunate enough to photograph a destination wedding, where I fly out to a more glamorous location than New Jersey. The Bahamas, Aruba, Jamaica, and even locations within the USA are choice destinations for couples who are looking to have their weddings in an exotic locale. The choice of equipment to fly out to photograph a destination wedding, as well as the way to transport them becomes a real concern. You have to have a flexible selection of gear with you, with a certain amount of redundancy in case something goes wrong Read more inside...machine-gunning a photo .. (model – Priscilla)
A technique I often use to get crisp images in low ambient light when I shoot without flash, is to simply put my camera on continuous drive, and let it rip for a second or so. So while camera shake may ruin some (or even most) images, I am usually sure of getting at least one image that is really sharp. I know this runs counter to so much of the philosophizing in photography - waiting for that oh-so-perfect-moment when it all comes together, and then with great precision and superb intuition of the moment you're in, to take the photograph. Much of my personal photography is driven by the Read more inside...
fluorescent lighting .. I give in! (model – Priscilla)
[ Nikon D3; Nikon 200mm f2 AF-S VR .. 1/100th @ f2 @ 1250 ISO ] click on the image to see a larger version My friend Steve Z from Colorado was around for a few days, visiting friends and family here in NJ. So we got together to do a photo shoot, and I arranged to meet up with Priscilla, a model with whom I've worked before. I also was fortunate in getting permission to photograph inside the Paterson museum - an interesting historic building. Steve Z is also into photographic lighting, so we packed up a bunch of gear - a beauty dish, softboxes, speedlights and video lights. We were Read more inside...
Lens hoods – the best protection for your lenses
Lens hoods - the best protection for your lenses
Discussions about equipment where the pros and cons are weighed in favor of something, have flexibility to it. For example, I can see the debate about filters on your lens - yes or no? lasting forever. There are valid points to either view about whether filters are detrimental or useful. But one topic which shouldn't be up for discussion, is whether lens hoods are recommended. Not to be dogmatic about it, but I can't see how anyone could argue in favor of not using lens hoods. They are just so obviously useful. Mostly Read more inside...how much depth-of-field? just enough!
choosing the necessary aperture for depth of field (DoF)
Depth of Field (DoF) is one of those elementary factors in photography which seem to mystify most (new) photographers. A question that I'm often asked is, "How do you know how much depth of field you need?" Now anyone who has delved into the topic and has done some research knows that you soon stagger back .. your head spinning trying to tie together all the concepts: circle of confusion, focal length, subject distance, size of enlargement, format size, hyper focal distance, and so on. But a working approach might just Read more inside...video light & boudoir photography
using a video light for boudoir photography
An image from a boudoir photo session today. I ended up mostly using a video light (or two) for the directional and dramatic quality of the light. I tried on-camera bounce flash a few times, but even when I carefully flagged and bounced the flash, there were a number of times where I found that the bounce flash just evened out the light too much. Sometimes it is soft light, and sometimes it just becomes flat light. With the video light (held up by my assistant), I was able to ask my assistant to flag the light and drop the light off Read more inside...- « Previous Page
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