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How to overpower bright sunlight with on-camera flash

June 3, 2015 Neil vN 34 Comments

how to overpower bright sunlight with on-camera flash

How to overpower bright sunlight with on-camera flash

The photograph on the left shows one of the toughest lighting conditions you get to deal with. Your subjects are half in the sun / half in the shade ... and there is no way you could interrupt and change things in your favor. There is no way to have the flower-girls move. No way to bring in additional, off-camera lighting. You can't scrim the sunlight either with large reflectors. There are these times when your options are limited, but you still have to get the best out of this challenging situation. There is one viable option  Read more inside...

Flash photography tutorial: Balancing flash & ambient exposure

May 22, 2015 Neil vN 47 Comments

flash photography tutorial: balancing flash and ambient exposure

Flash photography tutorial: Balancing flash & ambient exposure

This topic - balancing flash and ambient exposure - seems to one that many newer photographers struggle with. The big hurdle seems to be the basic starting point - how do you decide on the exposure for each? I'd like to explore this topic a bit with this post. The trigger for this was a question that someone emailed me regarding an image in one of my books on flash photography. Instead of answering the question directly, I thought that a wider answer might be more illuminating. We're still on that perpetual quest  Read more inside...

Flash photography: questions & answers (FAQ)

July 9, 2014 Neil vN 41 Comments

Flash photography questions & answers (FAQ)

Looking at some of the questions about photography that appear via Google searches, I wanted to more directly answer some of the questions. This article is a selection of questions on the topic of photography, that I decided to amalgamate into one longer article.  Read more inside...

Composition, posing, light & lighting

March 5, 2013 Neil vN 21 Comments

Composition, posing, light & lighting - when it all comes together

I just love this photograph of Anastasia Z, and want to share some of the through-process in how it came together. To test the Canon 6D camera (affiliate) and the Canon 24-70mm f/4.0L IS lens (affiliate), I met up with Anastasia Z in New York. I scouted this area, while we were waiting for Anastasia who was running a touch late. Just as well I did the scouting earlier on, because it was freezing outside. I saw the way this building over the Highline in Manhattan was creating this jagged  Read more inside...

Wedding photography – Using bounce flash outside

January 10, 2012 Neil vN 31 Comments

Wedding photography - Using bounce flash outside

When working with a couple during the romantic portrait session, there's the need to bring variety to the images - not just in posing and composition, but also in terms of light & lighting. For this reason I use a variety - available light; video light; off-camera flash and on-camera bounce flash. I really like using on-camera bounce flash since it is such an easy light source to use, always at hand. There was a recent article on using bounce flash outdoors, but I'd like to add another example where I used bounce flash outside a  Read more inside...

Gelling your flash for effect – Blue background

December 4, 2011 Neil vN 18 Comments

Gelling your flash for effect - Blue background

The idea of gelling your flash for effect has been a topic here a few times. I most often use gels on my flash to correct my flash when working with tungsten / incandescent light. There are times though when I gel my flash just for effect, creating a shift between my foreground (lit by gelled flash) and my background. In the examples shown in the several articles here, there wasn't the type of background where the effect can clearly be seen on easily recognizable "neutral" background. In the article turning day into night, we turned  Read more inside...

Flash photography technique – Turning day into night

November 23, 2011 Neil vN 19 Comments

Flash photography technique - Turning day into night

During the photo session with a couple, Laura & Todd, I wanted to add some variety to the images from the urban setting we were in. The sky had been overcast, but started to clear later on, leaving wispy clouds. Just perfect for a dramatic sky as the background. Of course, it is impossible to get your subject AND a bright sky equally well exposed without resorting to graduated filters or additional lighting, ie, flash. The technique with off-camera flash is quite straight-forward ...  Read more inside...

Simple lighting setup for home studio photography

October 30, 2011 Neil vN 40 Comments

A simple lighting setup for home studio photography

This photo of Anelisa and Aleona, two of my favorite models, were taken towards the end of the evening of the most recent flash photography and lighting workshop in New York. The studio that the workshop was held in, had a white cyclorama that was just inviting to be used. As a recap of manual flash photography, I wanted to show how simple and easy a basic studio lighting setup was ... and that it was quite within the reach of every photographer. Well, not the studio itself, but the lighting setup and equipment, as well as the  Read more inside...

shooting promotional photos for a band

October 17, 2011 Neil vN 17 Comments

camera settings: 1/50 @ f8 @ 800 ISO ... lens zoomed to 35mm;  available light

shooting promotional photos for a band

Anyone who knows me well is probably very aware that my first true love is music. I live my life to a music soundtrack. There's always music playing. Not the radio, but music of my own choice. I love music ... however, my sense of rhythm isn't all that it should've been for me to be a natural muso. But still, I love music. All of which meant that one few non-negotiable rules for my daughter was that she had to take music lessons. So she plays bari sax in the  Read more inside...

photo session: urban ballerina – Oktavia

September 12, 2011 Neil vN 8 Comments

photo session: urban ballerina - Oktavia

Oktavia is the stunning model on the cover of my book about off-camera flash. We've intended to do another photo shoot ever since then, but busy schedules kept us from that until recently. A theme that Oktavia wanted to explore, was that of the Urban Ballerina. The idea with the urban ballerina is the contextual dissonance of having a graceful dancer in the middle of some urban setting. There's no real meaning to it other than contrasting art & beauty against the harsher urban setting.  Read more inside...

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