{"id":6338,"date":"2011-01-07T18:14:11","date_gmt":"2011-01-07T22:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=6338"},"modified":"2018-01-03T19:19:22","modified_gmt":"2018-01-03T23:19:22","slug":"kate-new-york-photo-session","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/kate-new-york-photo-session\/","title":{"rendered":"Kate – a New York photo session"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Kate – a photo shoot in New York<\/h1>\n

Kate is from Ukraine and has a deep fascination for New York. As a present, Kate’s sister flew both of them out for a vacation here … and had me photograph Kate around New York yesterday. The idea was to get a mixture of portraits of Kate and some photos of Kate in obvious New York locales.<\/p>\n

We started off in the Meat-Packing district because I wanted a photogenic spot that wasn’t too crowded during a weekday (in winter), so we could have an easy start to the photo session. Since Kate might not have been experienced with photo shoots, I thought this would be the gentlest start. From there we wandered around a few other chosen spots.<\/p>\n

Shooting on my own, I brought along a 70-200mm f2.8 and a 24-70mm f2.8 and two speedlights. Even though this winter’s day was slightly overcast, giving us soft light, I still didn’t want to rely entirely on just the available light …<\/p>\n

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I brought along my latest purchase: the Lastolite Ezybox speed-lite 8.6″<\/a> (B&H) which is a compact softbox. Just 8.6″ square, it folds up small enough to fit inside my Crumpler shoulder bag, along with the 2nd lens and speedlight. At times I held this aloft in my left-hand, and sometimes I had Kate’s sister hold the softbox up high. Having the off-camera flash helped immensely a few times. And having it diffused, even in such a small softbox, created a more pleasing light than hard direct flash. So with this softbox in my bag, I felt ready for the shoot.<\/p>\n

Here is one of the photographs where Kate’s sister held the speedlight and small softbox up for me.<\/p>\n

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It looks pretty good I think for such a small softbox. The starting image here was this one, where I forgot to set my on-camera flash to Master (to control the Slaved speedlite), and it gave direct flash. Since I had the flash pointed forward and towards the Slave speedlite, the spread of light is uneven.<\/p>\n

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You can see the area to the left is overlit by direct flash. There is also the very noticable side-ways shadow behind Kate. A slight oversight giving amateurish results. A quick check of my preview and I realized my mistake, and switched my on-camera flash to Master. (I have its output disabled, so only the Slave flash adds light to the scene.)<\/p>\n

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With these shoots, I obviously want to get new images and not just re-tread the same shots. I need to balance this though with the desire for a consistent style, which is why clients hire me – they like what they see on my websites and galleries and blogs. But it still needs to be fresh and original images .. within that style.<\/p>\n

There will be those photographs which appear familiar, but then I am also constantly on the look-out for new spots and interesting ways the light may have changed in familiar places. Having shot in the Meat-Packing District often, I know where to start off to kick-start a photo session. Instead of scrabbling around looking for something entirely new, we start in a familiar place to get the rhythm of the shoot going.<\/p>\n

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This image was in the same place where I photographed Catherine<\/a>, a workshop model, before. I knew the light would work there. So this was a ‘safe’ shot for me at the start of the photo session. Similarly with the next photo of Kate, we were close to a spot where I have photographed another workshop model, Anelisa<\/a>, before. I knew the direction of light would work in my favor.<\/p>\n

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These two images, as well as the image right at the top, was shot with available light only. Not even on-camera fill-flash. But the choice isn’t random … as described in that first linked article, direction and quality of light is an important consideration.<\/p>\n

Another few image with only available light being used.<\/p>\n

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A few photos around well-known New York City landmarks:<\/p>\n

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Here I handheld the Lastolite 8.6″ Ezybox<\/a> (B&H) in my left hand.
\nSlightly clumsy, especially if you’re used to the zoom, but the light looks good.<\/p>\n

For the next two images, Kate’s sister held the softbox up for me. But instead of wirelessly triggering the speedlight, I used the a TTL cord. (In this case the Nikon SC-29 TTL off-camera shoe cord.)
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Here I noticed a patch of light, as sunlight reflected off a building. It gave a warm-colored hot spot … perfect to highlight Kate against the out-of-focus background.<\/p>\n

And finally, the distinctive stairway in Times Square. (Available light only.)<\/p>\n

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Two days later I met up with Kate and her sister again. We had run out of time on the Thursday shoot, and I felt we had missed out on giving Kate a photo of herself against the Manhattan skyline – a quintessential photo. So we went to Brooklyn for a quick follow-up session. I used an off-camera speedlight in the Lastolite 24×24 Ezybox softbox<\/a> to get great lighting on Kate and have her pop in the image. With the grey weather and stark skyline, she stood out anyway. But the lighting helped.<\/p>\n

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That beaming smile says everything.<\/p>\n

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With this overview of this photo session, I wanted to show that even though there is a distinctive style, it helps to mix things up a bit in terms of the lighting. And then look for new and interesting places and light. Different techniques and ideas to all help a photo session flow.<\/p>\n

Related links:
\n– tips on posing people<\/a>
\n– direction of light and choice of background<\/a>
\n– effective on-location portraits<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Equipment used during this photo session:
\nNikon D3; \u00a0\u00a0Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S<\/a> (B&H);
\nNikon 70-200mm f2.8 AF-S II<\/a> (B&H);
\nNikon SB-900<\/a> (B&H); Nikon SD-9 battery pack<\/a> (B&H)
\nLastolite Ezybox speed-lite 8.6 x 8.6″ softbox<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0(B&H)<\/p>\n

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Kate – a photo shoot in New York Kate is from Ukraine and has a deep fascination for New York. As a present, Kate’s sister flew both of them out for a vacation here … and had me photograph Kate around New York yesterday. The idea was to get a mixture of portraits of Kate Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30394,"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":[140,17,179,31,42,1],"tags":[888,872,141],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6338","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-available-light-photography","8":"category-general-photography","9":"category-new-york-photo-session","10":"category-photo-shoot","11":"category-technique","12":"category-uncategorized","13":"tag-new-york-photo-session","14":"tag-photo-shoot","15":"tag-photography-technique","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338"}],"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=6338"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43661,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6338\/revisions\/43661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6338"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=6338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}