Two shooters, One wedding, One moment...

(photo by Mark Greathouse)

This last wedding presented a wonderful lesson that everyone should remember when they are out shooting. The concept of walking around your subject looking for the best light, the best angle, the best backgrounds has been around for a long time but rarely do many of us do it in the heat of the moment. (okay that's prolly a lie, but what the hell it sounded cool)

I digress...

Mark and I took the Bride and Groom out for one last portrait session before the rest of the reception started and we had perfect light. What is perfect light you say? Well, that depends on your taste. The top image is a favorite of mine from this wedding. Simply light by the direct sun, super clean background, nice colours, its perfect. Also pretty flat light. Flat light is not always bad. In this situation it works. Everything fits, in my eyes. The sun is low enough that it is not to direct or harsh and brassy but it still gives you that wonderful warm glow to the skin. The image below is shot exactly from the opposite side. Here I've used the natural sun as a kicker to rim the subjects and with a little exposure compensation got a good exposure on there faces. This is also wonderful. There is a little more depth, and dimension to this image because of the way I used the light in a more creative way but that's not to say that either one is right or wrong. They are both solid images, sellable, and creative in there own ways.

Basically I just wanted to show you the difference it makes when you take the time to walk around the subject to find different light, angles, and backgrounds. Each photo is of the same moment but each photo has a distinctively different feel to it, deeming them each just as sellable.



(photos captured via Nikon D700, 70-200VR, Canon 1ds Mark II, 70-200, on Sandisk digital film)

Matt and Jennifer Kilgore

Fun fun fun wedding. I had the great honor to photograph with Mark Greathouse this wedding as John had another wedding to go to. Mark is a terrific shooter and great guy. Check him out here.

I was assigned to cover Jennifer getting ready this time, uhh, talk about nervous. I've never been put with the bride before but I just had to put on my game face and go at it. Very exciting and I'm glad I was able to have a little more responsibility. I got to try out a new technique I've learned from Cliff Mautner and I think it turned out great! Mark and I went out to the Country Club, where the reception was taken place, and scouted and did some tests the day before. We only had 15 minutes to make some great pictures before the party started. I'm not complaining, these guys were gorgeous. I love photographing people who look good and can work it. They did great.







I must give credit where credit is due. Cliff, thanks for the idea!!!


















(Images captured via Nikon D700, 70-200VR/24-70, sb-900, on Sandisk digital film)

The Greathouse Clan

Photographed the Greathouse Clan tonight. Sooo nerve racking shooting another photographer. I could almost hear Mark thinking to himself...what the hell is this guy doing? Man I'm gonna have to get another photographer, this guys crazy...and he doesn't even know how to make a picture...eeek! I never want to do that ever again. Anyway, we were able to make some images despite not having an assistant to schlep grip equipment for me. Oh well, I'm 20 years old...do I really deserve an assistant?




(Images captured via Nikon d700, 24-70/70-200VR, sb-900 (x2), on Sandisk digital film)

"It Don't Gotta Be Human to Light It"

"When we think flash, we think face, right? People. I mean, we grow up with parties, birthdays, and weddings where the flash is going off in our memory. Smile! Flash!"

That recent excerpt from Joes new book "The Hot Shoe Diaries" explains that "it don't gotta be human to light it" and that is exactly what I did here.

We missed our light (sonuvabitch) as we were doing 85 down the old dirt country road to get to our location. We got halfway there and in the blink of an eye, the light was gone. Consumed by that one cloud the size of Texas that always seems to come from no where at the worst possible time. We got to our location and I tried various different HDR techniques with one last attempt to pull out what colour was left in the sky and with no luck I gave up. Having working for a newspaper for 2 years I've come to realize that I need to make a photograph regardless of if I lost the light or not. The editor doesn't care what happens while your out there as long as you come back with a strong image. So, I was sitting there on this rock, inspired by absolutely nothing, pissed that we missed the light, as my buddy Joe was pacing back and forth photographing this and that. Knowing I needed to make a photograph I thought to myself (I tend to do this to often) "What would Joe McNally do?" FLASH! I smacked my palm to my head in a very desperate "could have had a V8" moment and whipped out ('scuse me while I whip this out!) 4 hot shoe sb units.



Sweet. So now I know I want to strobe something but what? I've been eying this tree on a nearby hill for some time now so I must make this work. I always start by getting an ambient exposure so I can see what the camera is thinking so I can dial in my EV to my taste. Above you can see my starting point, kinda dull. Lifeless. A boring, overdone silhouette of a tree on a hill. It is safe. "Safe, as in...blah. A smooth exposure. Publishable. But nothing with edge or difference or colour. So, I got rid of it. All of it. I took over the controls and put the camera into manual mode."-Joe McNally



I knew I wanted some drama to the light so I under exposed the ambient by 2 stops or so do darken the whole exposure significantly. In doing this I also was able to saturate the colours of the sky to get that rich dark blue you see above.





Time to add the light. Time to talk about colour. Small hot shoe strobes are balanced to a mid day, daylight temperature. In other words they put out blue light, exactly what the sky colour is. Colour is also a big additive to drama so I needed to mix it up. I know that cold and hot colours together in the same photo pop really well, making each other stand out. I also wanted to create a feel as if the last shaft of sunlight was popping through the clouds and falling on my tree. Looks pretty fake to me in that respect but screw it, that is the last of my worries. Having this kind of lighting grid also helps to define the hill line and separates it from the hill in the background, giving depth...all with one speedlight. I put a full cut of CTO gell on the fresnel head to get that warm light. To get the defined shaft of light I wanted I went to the power of the sb-900. The 900 is extremely advantageous in the fact that it can now zoom to 200mm. This is HUGE! I can now, and we could zoom with the 800 but now we can zoom so much more) take that spread of light and throw it right at my subject from a ways away. This, in turn will be a long, hard, and super direct throw of light perfect for what? Shafts of light. Hey, I'm in luck! So I did just that. I had Joe hold the light about 30 feet away from me and I started making pictures.

I triggered the strobes via an sb-800 on the hot shoe of the camera, zoomed to 105mm, and aimed towards the remote unit. It took some moving around and tweaking via flash exposure compensation but I was able to create a stunning image without the natural light that everyone runs for!

The image at the top of the post was pretty much the same idea. I believe this was a 30 second exposure at f/10 and prolly around ISO 400. Again I wanted to use vibrant colours to express the beauty of the actual drab grass hill I was on. Kansas really is beautiful, I promise! Here I had Joe paint the foreground with a daylight balanced LED headlamp while I focused on the tree with my CTO gelled strobe. I dialed down the test button to 1/128th power and popped off around 20 pops. As all things like this do, it took some time to perfect the technique and amount of time for each painting. Again, we got a wonderful image full of colour and drama that you could not have got via any HDR or layering technique.




No flash in this picture. I just thought it was cool. ISO 1250 for 30 seconds at 5.6. I had to raise the ISO for two reasons. One, I forgot (doh!) to bring my cable release so I could only go for 30 sec. and two, I wanted to freeze the stars in the sky. 30 seconds lets me do just that. I shifted the WB manually into some weird colour and was really amazed at how much light and colour I could pull out of the sky so late at night!

Please read Joe's new book (The Hot Shoe Diaries) and you will learn everything you need to know about strobes and light. You can even apply those techniques to shooting landscapes like I've done here. The possibilities are virtually endless!

(Images captured via Nikon D700, 24-70, sb-800/900 units, small LED headlamp, on Sandisk digital film)

Cara and Kirby

The beautiful and young Cara Bradley and Kirby LeMoine are getting married!!

Okay, third wedding that I shot with John and Cindy at J&C Imaging. Again, being a third shooter I could get a lot of the little details that John can't get. But he did give me some time to lead some images with a little more complex setup. Tried experimenting with my first of the Cliff Mautner technique.

So, every thing happened in Sharingbrook in a huge house. The reception was in the back yard. Wonderful people, wonderful day.

The photo above is one that we put together right before they ran through the sparklers and took off for the night. I was able to use the Nikon system to hang a strobe on a wood panel right behind the curtains on this little gazebo area. I had a master flash that drove the remote attached via a Justin Clamp. I had a full cut of CTO to warm up the light. I only had two strobes with me so I had John take one of his strobes and manually fire it for a separation light as I exposed for the image, about 1 second. We ended up adding Cindy in with another strobe as a second kicker. Overall it was a great idea for a very unique portrait.





















(Images captured via Nikon D700, 14-24, 70-200VR, sb-800/900 on Sandisk digital film)

I got Joe in my Mind...

Got done with another amazing photo shoot today with Grant and Kellie. Created some cool light, got Kellie topless...hmm, seems to be a reoccurring theme...and turned her into a fashion model. I've been trying a great deal to improve my on location "strobist" techniques and this little church gave me some amazing opportunities to hone some new ideas.

I get so much inspiration from Joe McNally so I take what I've read and learned from his blog and try to implement that advice into my own photos. Since I've purchased my new strobes I've had a blast going out and playing. I love natural light, don't get me wrong, but being able to create and augment your own light in ways that you can't do with natural light is just such a good feeling. And when you look a the LCD and see what you've just accomplished is astonishing. Having the tools we have now in the digital format is such an amazing gift that I am so thankful for and will continue to embrace and create things that I never dreamed about with film.


Okay, here we go. Started out outside the church, bright sunlight, harsh contrast, one strobe. I wasn't getting enough power through the Ezybox so I slipped the strobe into Manual 1:1 ratio and went hard and bare bulb. Nice enough.




Sun went away, softened the light. The strobe went back into the Ezybox...voila, soft light!

I shot various scenarios in this church but this was my favorite set up. Grant was shooting Kellie at the time and I kept thinking what could I do that would be different, what would Joe do? I found myself thinking about introducing colour, shadows, drama, and then it hit me. Throw the light in front of something! I've shot Kellie in front of this doorway before but now I was using the ripped open wall to make my shadow pattern. Took an Sb-900, zoomed all the way out to 200mm (I LOVE that feature) to send out a hard, direct punch of light, with a full cut of CTO. Instant late afternoon daylight! In this earlier scene I had the light to low so it did not jump over a wooden barrier creating shadow on her entire lower half of her body. I immediately fixed that by raising the light up a foot or so but I do like the natural gradient that it gives me.






This image I really like. Same setup, nothing's changed. Kellie had the idea to sit in the old window sill so naturally I didn't argue. I let her do her thing, and again, voila...a decent image. I left the entire door frame in this one because I wanted to show more of the environment and it just so happens that it adds to the idea of it being late in the afternoon...hence the late afternoon daylight.





Now the image everyone has been waiting for! This is the idea that brought us here in the first place. I wanted to do this shot for a while now but could not find the right venue to bring it all together. I've seen many many rimmed out bodies in my time but I've learned a cool, extremely advantageous, tip from Joe in his newest lighting video for Nikon. Yeah, its so simple that you're immediately gonna have a V8 moment and bop yourself in the face. Basically instead of just using two strobes you use four. *SMACK* See, told ya. Pretty much the thought behind this is that by using four strobes, two on each side, you can complete the rim of light down your subjects entire body. Having your strobes attached to Justin Clamps gives you a huge advantage in the fact that you can attach one to the pin on the top of the light stand, raise that up, then just clamp the other strobe onto the lower half of the light stand with the A-clamp built into the J-clamp. Did that sound confusing to you? I used the Su-800 commander unit to trigger all of the strobes and voila...an image!





There was a bit of modifying I had to do to the strobes. Although they were zoomed to 200mm I had to make gaff tape gobos to keep the light from spilling onto the back wall. Simple solution that only took a few minutes to do.

(Images captured via Nikon D700, 24-70, 14-24, Sb-900(x3), Sb-800(x1), Su-800, on Sandisk Digital Film)

Be There or Be Square...Get it, huh huh?

So, I came across this image of Times Square I shot with my good ole' D70 back in 2006. I always loved this picture. I tried to get there when the royal blue of the NY twilight was still high and mighty but I learned very quickly that you can never trust MTA...NEVER TRUST MTA, and one more time in cause you didn't get that, NEVER TRUST MTA! And with that being said, you get an image with black sky.

but I digress...

I always loved this image just because of the way the car streaks came out. I shot a bunch of shots like this, lets face it everyone has shot a bunch of shots like this, but none of them had car streaks just like this. Simple 30 second exposure prolly f/8 or 11 I don't remember. I was, and still am, amazed at how the three people in the middle median managed to stand still as a rock for 30 seconds, not to mention it was like 10 degrees out. This whole image is full of wonders, to me at least, so I share it with you. Not my best photograph ever but one that I enjoy very much, and thats what its really about right? Pleasing yourself first...I think so.