How do I reduce gear on shoots? I ask myself this question almost weekly. Since I shoot 100% out on location (most requiring travel), what’s in my bag can either cost extra baggage fees or save my keister on a shoot. Just because I can lug a three-light setup, doesn’t mean I should. My key: Be prepared not just as an artist, but as a Boy Scout. Gear holds me back more often than I admit. This coming from a frugal Boy Scout who admires MacGyver. Give me a van full of photo-related gear to bring to Burning Man (see above photo) and I’m happy as a clam. Granted, I used about 55% of it, but glad I had it all. It’s easy to say,
Archives
Inspired by an Old Master: The Importance of Lighting
Sometimes you should stop looking at photographs. Look to other artists for inspiration, especially the old masters. Touring the Rembrandt exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Art recently reminded me of the importance of three things: His lighting style stands the test of time. No fad, here. Most people have heard of it. There’s something to be said about a technique that has stood the test of time by a few hundreds years. It’s good to know that wedding photography today won’t be shunned in 50 years. He shared as much as he created in painting schools. Like, he had ‘followers.’ His creative school shaped his vision. This blog shapes mine. I’m a proponent of the philosophy “Create. Share. Sustain.” He created portraits of people flattered
Dramatic Dusk Shots: How To Create Them
Shooting photos at dusk can be tricky, but understanding a few things about lighting will give your images depth and a 3-dimensional quality. The main goal is to bring the brightness of your subjects in the foreground close to the brightness of the background. This is best accomplished by using a dedicated strobe, since they are able to output high-level light from a small, portable package. Step 1: Set Your Background Exposure. It’s best to use the manual exposure settings on your camera because any auto modes will attempt to balance the lightest and darkest areas of the image. Meter off the brighter part of the scene and leave the shutter set. Start with an ISO of 400. Step 2: Add light to your subjects.
A Real Life Review of Pocketwizards
This started as a real life review of Pocketwizards. Basically it said, “Pocketwizards are bulletproof and if you know the tricks, they work over 95% of the time.” And then last weekend happened. Over the course of two weddings, three of my eight wizards broke. One of them – a Mini TT1 model – broke during the rainiest and most humid wedding of the year. I accidentally overtightened the plastic shoe and by the time I realized it, the humidity and overcranking combined to cause the Pocketwizard‘s plastic shoe to jump off its track. Over the next day and a half, I managed to drop a Flex TT5 model, snapping the plastic off of its shoe, and then the battery door on another Flex TT5 snapped off
Tips for Instantly Improving Your Next Engagement Session
Engagement sessions are great ways to get to know your clients and to boost their confidence in themselves so that they’ll know their pictures will be beautiful when you show up at their wedding. Here are some simple, practical tips for instantly improving your next engagement session. Have them start in a sitting position. People often talk about not knowing “what to do” while they’re being photographed. If they’re standing, they can start getting nervous and move around a bit. I try to put people in a position where they don’t feel stiff and they don’t have the option to move around too much. Having them sit is a great way to accomplish that! My favorite sitting position is to have the groom sit while the bride
Wedding Day Portraits, Part 2: Quick & Dirty Solutions to a Common Challenge
Rarely are we handed THE perfect wedding day (at least not in New England!). We’re always going to face challenges. Try as you may to help clients and advise them as they plan their wedding timeline, more often than not, wedding photography is as much about problem solving as it is about capturing moments. As in, how can I make this situation as beautiful as possible, given the conditions I’m facing? Rather than try to think of every possible variable that could go wrong, I’ve picked a common situation that often challenges me and described ways I’ve dealt with it in the past. As with all my articles, it’s not rocket science, but hopefully you can take away one or two tidbits that will help
Price Objections: How to Deal
Statements such as, “Your prices are out of my budget” and “It costs too much” are the number one reasons for stalled sales. Yep, I said stall, not obstruction or objection. How do most of us respond when we hear these things? We get angry or offended or, worst of all, we drop the price! If you go that route, it pretty much implies that you were charging too much to begin with. So not only are you left with a potential client who doesn’t trust you, you lost some of your profit margin. But I digress. Potential clients complain about prices all the time. Heck, we even do this from time to time as consumers. When you realize why you ask these same questions
Remote Camera Setup Made Simple
When you don’t want to put your expensive camera far from where you’re working, or prefer to avoid hoisting thousands of dollars of camera gear on a stand surrounded by crowds of people, a simple solution is the GoPro. There are no remote controls, no triggers to plug in, and the camera is half the size of an iPhone. The camera easily attaches to a tripod, light clamp or light stand. While the GoPro can record in still and video mode, I use it only for still images so I can create a time lapse video of the event, wedding, conference, etc. Recently I was asked by a charity group to create a time-lapse of a playground being built in New Orleans. I was also photographing
The Day a Natural Light Photographer Busted Out a Flash for a Portrait Session
I’ve always called myself a natural light photographer. If you visit my site and peruse my portfolio, you’ll be hard pressed to find a single portrait on the site where I used a flash. Like many other photographers, I’ll bring out aflash for the reception, but when I shoot portraits – whether at a wedding, engagement session, or family shoot – I prefer to find the light that exists naturally rather than create my own light. I’d even go so far as to say I have never used a flash during a portrait shoot of a couple. Until this past Wednesday. Christi and Ndu hired me a few months ago because they had missed out on having engagement photos done before their wedding, and wanted to hire me to
So you have a camera that shoots video; you must be a filmmaker!
To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place…I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. – Elliott Erwitt You’ve got the gear – wireless mics, a slider, a monopod, some kind of knock-off follow focus. You’re ready to take on the world of wedding “videography.” You even know where to get the best indie songs that nobody’s heard yet that totally capture the essence of your couples, dude! Wait. Hold up. Why does the movie industry seemingly keep putting out horrible movies but people keep spending money to go see them? It’s not because they use the best equipment (they do usually).