Tangents

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Wedding photography: Using high ISO and flash at the reception

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Wedding photography: Using high ISO and flash at the reception

Chatting with other photographers at the recent WPS convention in Chapel Hill, NC, I was again struck by how there are so many different ways of approaching lighting. In this case, lighting at the wedding reception. The one photographer I was chatting to, set up multiple speedlights around the reception room, and then controls which are fired, from his on-camera Master speedlight.  Very impressive. In recent years, the wedding reception venues where I've shot on the East Coast of the USA, have moved away from being the  Read more inside...

Photography lighting patterns

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I'm always very happy to feature Chuck Arlund as a guest on Tangents. Anyone who knows Chuck in person will tell you about the crazy energy he has, and how inspiring and innovative he is in his lighting. Back to basics. When shooting a portrait or any person for that matter it is good to understand some light patterns to help determine what kind of mood you would like to create.  

Photography lighting patterns

a guest post by Chuck Arlund, Kansas City photographer    Read more inside...

example: direct off-camera flash vs softbox

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example: direct off-camera flash vs softbox (model: Ulorin Vex)

Ulorin Vex posing for us during part of the on-location session of the flash photography workshops which I presented in San Francisco earlier this year. Ulorin Vex is of course absolutely stunning, as always. While I often direct models how they should pose, this one is all her doing . Not even I can improve on that. The image here at the top was shot with an off-camera softbox - my usual preferred Lastolite Ezybox softbox. The direction of the light here should immediately reveal the approximate position where the  Read more inside...

using multiple speedlights with high-speed flash sync

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using multiple speedlights with high-speed flash sync

This photo of Angelique, our model, was taken at 1/8000 @ f2 @ 100 ISO. Yes, an eight-thousand-th of a second.  The accompanying wide aperture (with an ultra-wide angle lens), gives a unique look to the image. The shallow depth-of-field and high shutter speed are mutually dependent effects in shooting in bright light. Working with a fast shutter speed, brought us into high-speed flash sync (HSS) territory. Do keep in mind that this shoot was more of a technical exercise to work through the settings and see how the flash behaves  Read more inside...

reverse engineering an image (3) – a contest!

wedding portraits with multiple light sources

edited on Dec 08, 2010 : contest winner has been announced, with feedback from Josh about this photograph When we've previously featured photographs that we tried to reverse engineer, there was a great response by readers of the Tangents blog. Similarly, many participated in the recent Photoshop contest. So I've decided that we should combine the two. Maybe even make it a regular event. The contest then is to reverse engineer this photograph in terms of the lighting. The winner gets a $50 B&H gift  Read more inside...

portrait: Janine vN

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portrait using a gridded softbox

It's been about a year since I last took a more formal portrait of my daughter Janine. Last year it was her with the steam-punk goggles, when I used a beauty dish (with a sock) as lighting. During a restaurant dinner last night I noticed Janine had 'LOVE' scribbled on both her forearms with a felt marker. I asked her about it, and she explained the idea behind 'To Write Love On Her Arms'. So I decided to include this tonight in the portrait of her. Lighting her and the words on her arms was a slight challenge. I wanted a moody portrait, instead of  Read more inside...

Flash photography tutorial – Balancing flash and ambient

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Flash photography tutorial - balancing flash and ambient light

An email I received recently from someone explained how she is struggling with flash. The basic building blocks of photography are all there and understood, but it somehow doesn't gel when she uses flash. She explains how she understands exposure metering, but "the minute I attach my flash, nothing makes sense." Having read my book and scoured this blog, she admits that at the point where she uses her flash and needs to set aperture and shutter speed, she is completely lost. I'm sure this is something many many  Read more inside...

tutorial: High-speed flash sync (HSS)

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High-speed flash sync / auto FP .. vs .. normal flash

There have been a number of questions about high-speed flash sync (HSS), and how it affects the output from your flash. Also check this Video tutorial – High Speed Flash Sync (HSS). It covers the same material as this article, and will help explain why your camera and flash behaves the way it does when you change from normal flash sync to high-speed flash sync. I decided to do a series of comparison photos, so we can actually see what happens before, at and beyond maximum flash sync speed.  And we can also see what happens with  Read more inside...

overpowering hard sunlight with flash

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overpowering hard sunlight with flash

With this part of a photo session with Johannie, we worked in an alley. The light was very uneven, with some swathes of sunlight falling directly on her.  (See the image below for the photo without flash.)  To get rid of this uneven sunlight falling on her, we have to add at least as much light on her as the brightest areas lit by sunlight. In the example above, our exposure is set to 1/250 @ f13 @ 200 ISO and we can see from the bright patch of light on her shoulder, that we’re at the edge of acceptable exposure. Any wider on our aperture, or  Read more inside...

background exposure and flash

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flash photography - background exposure and flash

When I saw this dramatic sky with the approaching storm during our recent shoot at Coney Island, I knew I wanted to photograph our model against it.  By the time I actually started taking photos, the raindrops were already spattering around us. So there was little time to work. I knew I wanted a brooding sky.  Now, depending on how I chose my exposure, I could've had a much the sky appear much brighter, or just a little bit brighter than shown here.  There's a whole range of possibilities in how I could've exposed for my  Read more inside...