[ click on the photo for a larger image ]
This was the view from the top of the Hyatt in Jersey City this afternoon as a storm rolled in over Manhattan from the West. The photo doesn’t do it justice - you just had to see Manhattan slowly being engulfed in mist, followed by hard sudden rain. You can actually see the streaks of rain in the photo.
Flash, for me, is an essential tool in sweetening the available light and improving the quality of the existing light.
I often see comments on the photography forums to the effect that with cameras like the Nikon D3 or Canon 1D mk3, where you have exceptional high-iso noise performance, that you don’t need flash. The crucial point that is missed though, is that flash is not merely there just to use when the light is so poor that you can’t stop any motion blur from your subject, or stop camera shake spoiling your photos.
Here’s an update on the Fall series of flash photography workshops. There are a total of 16 workshops planned for the rest of the year throughout the USA:
Details and dates can be found on the workshops page.
The workshops now feature a new format with the day split between a seminar/presentation in the morning, and a hands-on practical workshop in the afternoon
The morning portion consists of a presentation of photographs and the techniques explained, followed by a Q&A session where I’ll answer any and all questions to make sure you have a full understanding of the material.
The afternoon/evening portion of the day consists of practical application where you will photograph models in a variety of settings and lighting situations, putting into practice everything you learned in the morning session. This section of the workshop is strictly limited to 8 people to ensure that everyone gets plenty of time with the models.
For feedback on previous workshops, check the comments left by the attendees for each workshop.
Oct 22 (Wed) has been added as a date for the NY/NJ workshop. This date was chosen specifically to make it convenient to attend for anyone who is coming to New York for the big Photo Expo (Oct 23-25)
Nov 12 (Wed) is a requested workshop date for St Petersburg / Tampa in Florida, and has been opened for general registration. As such, the full-day workshop is already nearly completely sold out.
The full-day workshop in Denver Colorado (Aug 18) has sold out, but there are still 6 places left for the seminar session in the morning. Similarly, the Philadelphia (Oct 13) workshop has sold out, but there are still open spots for the seminar session.
There Austin, TX (Dec 09), and St Petersburg / Tampa, FL (Nov 12) workshops are nearly full. There are still a number of places open in the morning seminar session for all these dates.
This is one of the toughest lighting conditions to deal with. Where I can, I try and position my subjects so that they are in shade, or at the very least their backs are to the sun. This way they are looking away from the bright light and less likely to squint and frown, and they will also have more even shaded light on their faces, with rim lighting around the sides.
But where you can’t position people and you have to deal with the lighting situation as it is, you have a few options:
You can get lucky with the angle so the features and details of most of the people are shaded, providing you with fairly uniform light on the essential parts of what you want to capture. Some parts of the scene will blow out, but hopefully nothing really relevant.
With this photograph, no flash was used. However, I did work things in my favour by shooting in the RAW format so that I have much more control over the image in post-production. I can more easily hold detail in the highlights while bringing up detail in the shadow areas.
(The examples in this posting assume that you are a solo photographer without the team of assistants to hold up large scrims and fill lights, but that you have to make do with what you have – a camera with a speedlight mounted on it.)
But if you’re stuck with full sun where part of the subject is in shade and the rest in sun, you have two options:
Every week James Robinson features an interview on his blog with a photographer that has caught his attention. And this week the privilege is mine - and you can read it here:
spotlight interview - photographer Neil van Niekerk.
And for no other reason than to spruce up this quickie post, here is one of my favourite images from a destination wedding I photographed in the Bahamas recently.
A few days ago I posted on an online forum (DWF) about a persistent problem I’ve been having with Bridge CS3. The problem arises when I open Bridge and navigate to a folder, in that Bridge doesn’t show any thumbnails but will just show a blank grey right-hand pane.
Just a few hours later, one of the most knowledgable photographers on the forum, Brian Tao, came up with several possible causes and solutions. Since I believe that the probem is quite prevalent, and the solution not obvious at all, I thought that it would be of benefit to a lot of Bridge CS3 users here if I posted the solution here.
During the portrait sessions with my couples, I try to maintain a fluid style of photographing them. Instead of rigidly posing I try to direct only a little, adjusting my position and my composition. I really want as natural looking and flattering portraits as I can, while getting a variety of images. For these reasons I move around a lot while shooting … and I often try to get some lens flare on purpose. I love the way the image warms up and the flare creates pools of light within the image.
This is an unpredictable effect, but when it works, I feel that the flare adds something to the mood of the image - perhaps an image that is more romantic because it is drenched in light.
I shoot in manual exposure mode since I don’t want my composition to affect my exposure and because I want as fast and efficient a workflow as possible. But then I sometimes get a few frames that blow out completely because of the amount of flare …