{"id":151,"date":"2008-08-30T23:24:31","date_gmt":"2008-08-31T04:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetneil.com\/tangents\/?p=195"},"modified":"2018-01-03T18:57:57","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T22:57:57","slug":"from-the-hip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/from-the-hip\/","title":{"rendered":"from the hip &#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a simple technique which some of you might already know of &#8211; shooting from the hip without looking through the viewfinder.<\/p>\n<p>At weddings, when photographing the party and dancing during the reception with a wide-angle lens,\u00a0I often don&#8217;t hold the camera up to my eye.\u00a0 Instead I\u00a0rely on the infra-red beam from the speedlight to show me what the camera is focusing on.\u00a0 Then, using the focus-lock-and-hold method, I keep focus and reframe the shot\u00a0if needed. This way I\u00a0can shoot from the hip without looking through the viewfinder, but still have images that are well composed.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few images from recent weddings I photographed:<br \/>\n(None of them were cropped to post them here.)<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/from-the-hip\/Johanna-Aaron-1545.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/from-the-hip\/Laura-Gareth-2399.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p>When moving between the guests like that, it is imperative that I don&#8217;t annoy anyone by blasting flash in their faces.\u00a0 This is a large part of the decision why I use this particular method to bounce my flash &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/my-choice-of-flash-modifiers\/\">using a piece of black foam to flag my speedlight<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/from-the-hip\/Monica-Tim-3619.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p>At the same time also note in this image above, that there was no dodging and burning\u00a0&#8211; yet,\u00a0the lighting on the guests dancing here\u00a0is quite even on a number of planes. And the guy in the foreground isn&#8217;t more brightly lit than the girls he is dancing with.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/from-the-hip\/Elaine-Mairaj-2530.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><br \/>\nOf course, it is the same technique when holding my camera overhead.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/from-the-hip\/Lauren-Trey-3027.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/images\/weddings\/from-the-hip\/Monica-Tim-3698.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #ffffff;\">.<\/span><br \/>\nIt isn&#8217;t simply a matter of hoping for the best and blindly firing away &#8211; with a bit of practice there is actually\u00a0a fair measure of accuracy here in framing the images even when not looking through the viewfinder.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><script type=\"text\/javascript\">\namzn_assoc_placement = \"adunit0\";\namzn_assoc_search_bar = \"false\";\namzn_assoc_tracking_id = \"tangents-books-20\";\namzn_assoc_ad_mode = \"manual\";\namzn_assoc_ad_type = \"smart\";\namzn_assoc_marketplace = \"amazon\";\namzn_assoc_region = \"US\";\namzn_assoc_title = \"Books on Wedding Photography\";\namzn_assoc_linkid = \"c26d824a2508082f576212df52ac406a\";\namzn_assoc_asins = \"0817424547,1608956997,1608959333,0321646878\";\n<\/script><br \/>\n<script src=\"\/\/z-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/onejs?MarketPlace=US\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a simple technique which some of you might already know of &#8211; shooting from the hip without looking through the viewfinder. At weddings, when photographing the party and dancing during the reception with a wide-angle lens,\u00a0I often don&#8217;t hold the camera up to my eye.\u00a0 Instead I\u00a0rely on the infra-red beam from the&nbsp;<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/from-the-hip\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Read more inside&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,42,1,45],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-flash-photography","8":"category-technique","9":"category-uncategorized","10":"category-wedding-photography","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43633,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/43633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}