Cory's Photo School

A Night Portrait - Seattle Wedding Photographer in Bellevue

2011-03-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I took some photographs of Jane and Chris on their wedding night outside the Westin in Bellevue. Here is one image.

This image was taken with my Canon 5D and a 24 1.4L. I was crouched very low to the ground and took a "creative" approach to a level horizon. I had my lovely assistant, Alyssa (also my daughter) hold a 550EX with a 24" square softbox attached to a pole. It was high and camera right of the couple. It was set to eTTL wireless (using Radiopopper PX system) triggered by my Canon ST-E2 with -1 2/3 flash exposure compensation dialed in on the camera to keep the auto system from trying to light the entire street.

Here is a diagram. This is courtesy of LightingDiagrams.com.

As always, you can find more of my work at Seattle Wedding Photographer Cory Parris

Composition - Bend Your Knees!

2011-03-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

I’ve been meaning for some time to write some articles for photographers and those that want to be photographers. Here is one that I thought of while on vacation with my family. We were in Washington DC visiting museums and monuments. Seemingly every person walked up to whatever it was, took a snapshot and walked away.

So…every person took the exact same photographs. So I was pointing out to my kids that there are many ways to photograph the same subject to make it seem more interesting and dynamic. One quick trick that you can try just about any time is to bend your knees. I would guess that the average person makes 95% of their photographs at eye level. Whether that is standing or sitting, they pull out the camera and put it in front of them in their current position.

Here are a few samples of images that I have taken over the last year or so that are improved because of the lower than eye-level angle that I used to take them.

For this image, Carly’s soon-to-be-husband had sent her a note while she was getting ready for their wedding. At the end of the note, he made a mention of her tendency to be late and asked her to be on time. I bent my knees to include the clock and a laughing bridesmaid.

Signs are not the most interesting thing in the world, but they help tell the story of the wedding by spelling out the “where” in the story. Semiahmoo had some tulips in front of their sign so I bent down to include them as larger objects in the foreground.

Here I bent down at the bottom of the stairs to exaggerate the perspective of the trees behind them and the leading line of the railing going towards them. This was taken at the park at Snoqualmie Falls next to Salish Lodge.

To get a better perspective of this bride getting ready at Newcastle Golf Club, I bent to elbow level.

One of the best things about bending your knees (actually, I was laying down on the dock), is that is cleans up the background by letting you emphasize sky rather than clutter. This one was taken at a dock next to Salty’s on Alki.

Here the bride was putting on her shoes as she was getting ready at the Warwick Hotel in Seattle. The only way to get the image with both her feet and her face in the frame was by getting down.

This image of the bride and groom taken at Mount Baker Presbyterian shows the cool architectural details on the background.

This senior portrait was taken in a parking garage. Looks cooler with the pillars and industrial details behind her.

This couple was getting married at Willows Lodge in Woodinville, so we walked next door to Red Hook. I like the “worms-eye” view to take advantage fo the lines of fenced in beer kegs.

This image, taken behind the Palace Ballroom was a reflection in the water.

This image was taken just after they were married in a suite at the Alexis Hotel. By bending down I was able to minimize the distractions in the room for a more simple photograph about the couple.

Groom singing to his bride as she comes down the aisle at the Palace Ballroom.

This image taken at the Skansonia is taken at dock level to show the line of the dock.

This was taken at the Georgetown Ballroom. They have a very cool neon sign above the stage. I got lower to show the sign in the background of their first dance.

Getting low helped to change the feel of the image during the father of the groom’s speech at Kitsap Memorial Park.

Getting low is always fun on the dance floor.

If you have ideas for future articles, please email me at c@coryparris.com.

Gear Review - Canon 24 1.4L!

2011-03-17T11:37:00.000-07:00

I have to start by coming clean. I’m a geek. I love stuff, electronics, gear, and feel out of sorts if I’m not in possession of the remote control (preferably matched up to a nice HD TV). When I complete my taxes and it asks for my position at the company, I write in “Photogeek in Chief”. So…I love photo gear. With a rather unhealthy passion.

That being said, I also used to be a Finance Director for a small non-profit. That means, there has to be a reason for every purchase, and the reason has to be more than “I REALLY want it!” (say it in again your head with a nasally whine, it will sound more realistic – “I REALLY want it!”).

So here is some of my gear buying criteria…

-How does it help me create better photographs, and does it let me do something that my current gear doesn’t allow me to do?
-Will the difference that this piece of gear will bring to my photography allow me to increase my sales and profits? This usually takes the form of allowing my to create more dynamic work and increase the demand for my services.
-Will the new piece of gear inspire me to create new and better work? A common thing that happens with gear for me is that it will make me find new ways to use that particular piece. That, in turn, gets me to use the gear in different ways than I normally do.
-And finally, is it cool? Of course it’s cool, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted it in the first place!

Once I have all that information, I make a presentation to my Chief Financial Officer. More commonly referred to by myself and others as “Leslie”, or (mostly by me) “hey, beautiful wife".

This normally comes in the form of, “Hey, I was looking at this (lens, flash, etc.) today…”

“Oh. No…” says the Chief Financial Officer.

“…and I’m thinking…” says the Photogeek.

Conversation continues with the big, mean CFO grilling the poor Photogeek (Leslie, I’m kidding!). Then it ends with…

“You know your going to buy. Just do it now instead than worrying about it for a month!” says the beautiful, loving CFO. About a month later, Photogeek buys said piece of gear.

Anyway, that was quite the revealing tangent, wasn’t it? Here is my first in a new series of articles that I’ll call, “My Favorite Toys!”

My first toy that I’m going to talk about is the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L. This may be my most loved lens, and that is really saying something. I use this lens constantly. It makes up about 40% of all the images in my portfolio. I should mention that I use a full-frame camera, so this quite a wide lens.

Here is a photo of the lens itself. (Lovely studio product image taken with a couple of small Canon strobes and a piece of white posterboard).

It is a medium sized, but very dense, rather heavy lens. It is a polycarbonate body that can take some abuse. You can see some signs of past little incidents on the lens hood. I think the lens hood is actually designed to show every time it’s touched by anything. I have the version one of the lens, but there is a version two out. If you look at my criteria for buying above, I can’t come up with a reason to sell my version I and get a version II.

This lens has the rather unique characteristic of being both a wide angle lens and having the ability to have very shallow depth of field. If you don’t know what depth of field is, you can look below and see how the subject is sharp and the background is blurred and out of focus. That is called shallow depth of field while if everything was in focus, that would be a deep depth of field or greater depth of field.

Another great benefit is the amazing low light capabilities. To give you an idea, with each full stop, the lens cuts the amount of light in half. This lens has an aperture of 1.4 which allows you to take images in one-fourth of the amount of light of a lens with the aperture of 2.8.

Now for what everyone wants to see…the samples!

This is an excellent example of what this lens can do. This couple was married during mass at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Seattle. Because the couple was married during mass, they did not know most of the people around them. I wanted them to stand out from the crowd, so I made this photograph with a shallow depth of field with the couple sharp and the surrounding background soft.

This smart groom is watching his waistline on his wedding day. This is another example of the sharp subject and shallow depth of field that I love from this lens.

Groom waiting for his bride to see her for the first time that day. I love the sharpness on his face and the out of focus detail of the bride coming up behind him tells the story.

Wedding couple kissing in an alley at in the U District. I love the

With this image, I used the 24 and a smaller aperture to make the clouds and background sharp. I also used a flash to light up the couple.

This image was taken from a viewpoint at the Olympic Sculpture Park. I used the shallow depth of field the 24 1.4L creates to make the background beautifully out of focus.

Another image using the shallow depth of field to make the groom stand out.

This image uses the great light-gathering of the 24 1.4L.

I'm Back!

2011-03-17T09:39:00.000-07:00

I have decided to resurrect this old blog. I really do love sharing what I know, so I'm going to see if anybody is out there listening!

To start, here is a simple image taken in a parking garage. The flash is set high and to the left to with a Honl grid spot to put them in a spotlight style pool of light. I underexposed the ambient light to have the pool of light feeling stand out more.

I hope to hear from you with questions and comments about my work and the blog!

Check out more of my work at my Seattle Wedding Photography portfolio site!

RadioPopper PX Review

2009-02-19T12:06:00.000-08:00

I just got some new ~~toys~~ tools for wireless, off-camera flash called Radiopopper PX. What they basically do is take Canon wireless flash technology and make it useful somewhere besides in a dark room with the flashes pointed at each other. You then use the flash system on your flash to set up lighting ratios, manually change the flash settings, use automatic flash without having the light source coming from on top of your camera. Today I took my son and Sounders FC superfan, Kyler, to the park to play with the system.

I wanted to test a few things: the High Speed Sync, speed of operation, and a comparison of the eTTL system versus the manual flash adjustments that I usually do. I used a flash 580EX flash on my camera acting as the master unit with a Radiopopper PX transmitter attached to the top of it and two 550EX acting as slaves with the Radiopopper PX receivers attached.

This is what I envisioned when we went to the park. I used the Radiopoppers to transmit the fire signal and the manual flash adjustments while keeping my shutter speed at the 1/200th top speed that the Canon 5D allows for traditional flash systems.

This image was taken using the high speed sync allowing for a much more shallow depth of field.

I really liked this image. Ky loves soccer and is really excited for MLS to be coming to Seattle (Sounders FC season starts March 19). For this I used the eTTL system rather than manually setting the flash and I was pleasantly surprised at the nicely exposed result.

This is more what I expected from eTTL. The camera saw the bright lightsource in the frame and didn't use enough flash power (even though the fired) to make a proper exposure.

In this image, I switched to manual flash exposure and I had a much better exposure. This image is processed identically to the image before it so that it is an apples to apples comparison.

This image shows the shallow depth of field that is possible using high speed sync and a fast lens.

Same as the image before, but with the focus on his face rather than his hands.

Another using the high speed sync to make him pop from the background.

Testing the range. I was about 150 feet away. Really all that I need it to work at would be this range. The system is supposed to work at 1700 feet. Nice, but not necessary for me!

The front of his jersey. This image was shot at 1/6400 of a second with a full power flash.

This image of my amazingly handsome son was taken at f2 for the shallow depth. Again using HSS.

Again using the two flashes and HSS. The shallow depth of field throws the trees and sky out of focus and makes them shapes rather than trees.

These last three images are for illustration of the Manual versus eTTL. The first is taken with manual flash, the second is eTTL. The third is eTTL with +2 stops of exposure compensation.

My conclusions are that the Radiopopper PX system works really well for doing portraits. The system fired the flashes every time the flashes were ready and charged. It works well at distance. It provides a reliable system to use the HSS (high speed sync) allowing for flash and shallow depth of field at the same time. And it allows me to change my manual flash settings without going over to the flash and pushing buttons (I can push buttons from wherever I am with the camera).

Where it falls down in my mind is the difficult installation (you actually have to semi-permanently attach it to the flashes you are going to use rather than take it on and off at will) and the fact that it is limited to speed of operation of the Canon wireless flash system. I tested it on motor drive and was able to get only four out of 12 to fire at 1/128 power at three frames per second (frames 1, 2, 3, and 9 of the 12). This was because the Canon master flash was not ready, not because the Radiopoppers or the receiving flashes were not ready.

Finally, I found that I got the results that I wanted most consistently when I used manual flash exposure. The eTTL was right about 75% of the time, but for me being wrong 25% of the time doesn’t cut it.

It is a very cool time to be a photographer with all the awesome equipment available!

New Photo Contest!

2008-01-04T15:04:00.000-08:00

Another Photo Contest at Wedding Photography Project. This time you can win a $1000 shopping cart system!

Wedding Photography Project - Cool Photo Contest

2007-06-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

Check out the contest that I have running over at The Wedding Photography Project - Win a Boda Bag!

Strategy Avenue

2007-06-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

Strategy Avenue

A great new resource for photographers!

Advice for aspiring photographers...

2007-05-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked what advice I would give photographers just starting out. As you have probably figured out, I like lists, so here's a list of my advice!

Follow your passion. Shoot in a the way that you like and inspires you. Don't get caught in the trap of "the way things should be done."
Be yourself. No matter how much you like a particular website, a person's work, their choice in music, or the clever way they wrote their "About me" page, DON'T COPY IT. Being inspired to a better level is good, but be yourself.
Learn about light and learn how to see light.
Don't be afraid to screw up. I throw out 3 out of every 4 images I shoot. I make mistakes on purpose just to see if I might get something cool.
Learn the "rules" of composition. Sometimes they help to make things interesting. Other times, just throw them out the window to try something interesting.
Be a good business person. If you have trouble with some aspect of business - reading a profit and loss report, marketing, or anything else - figure out how to do it better. Whether that is by reading a book, finding a mentor, or hiring someone that does that well.
Show people what you want them to hire you to do. If you love to do traditional portraiture, show books and images that highlight that. If you don't care if you ever do another family group photo, why have an album filled with them?
Backup gear is important.

That's my list! If anyone has something to add to it, post it!

Gearbox!

2007-05-23T18:37:00.000-07:00

I quite often get questions about what kind of gear I use. I'll happily tell you all, but first I have to get on my soapbox.

The most important piece of gear you will ever have in photography, is the gray thing sloshing around in your noggin! Gear is just a means to an end. Great photographers can create great images with cheap gear and horrible photographers can buy all the gear they want and it won't make any difference!

Here is the gear I use at almost every wedding:
-Canon 30D & 20D cameras
-Tokina 12-24 f4
-Canon 17-55 f2.8 IS
-Canon 50 f1.4
-Canon 85 f1.8
-Sigma 70-200 2.8 HSM
-Pocketwizards
-Canon 550EX x2
-Canon 580EX
-Lightstand

I have a whole bunch of other stuff that I sometimes use, but this makes my main kit.

Business - Make more money and provide better service!!!

2007-05-15T13:33:00.000-07:00

Many times I've struggled with the idea of sales and trying to sell more to my clients. I don't like to feel pushy or like I am trying to milk people for more money. My attitude towards sales has changed significantly in the last couple of years. Namely, I no longer assume that my clients work with the same budget that I would have.

I believe this new attitude towards selling things has actually increased my clients overall satisfaction. I still don't like the words sales or selling, because it sounds like I am pushing things that a client might not want. What I actually do is show my clients what is possible, tell them what I think would be really fun and cool to do with their photographs, and see if they have any interest in doing it. Instead of thinking, "They have spent quite a bit, do I show them something else?" I think, "What would be really fun to do with this couple (or these images) would be to..." Then I let them decide.

To give you an idea, I have a couple that wanted some engagement portraits for their local newspaper. Because I thought it would be cool, I showed them an album that I have done with engagement portraits. They loved the idea and are making a book. They are happy because they get a cool album with their engagement portraits. I am happy because I get to make something cool with their portraits. Also, my bank account is happy because I made a profit on it.

Great Workshops!

2007-04-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

There are some great workshops out there. Here are three that you might want to look at.

"Hey, Cory! Why is your flash sideways?" AKA, The Bounce Flash Article!

2007-04-30T15:05:00.000-07:00

I am finally getting started on my series of articles on flash. I am going to start with the type of flash I use most often - the on-camera bounce.

The reasons I use on-camera bounce:

I move quickly and quite often have the two options of available light or on-camera flash. Sometimes the available light in a room is not flattering.
I don't like direct on-camera flash in MOST situations as it produces very flat lighting with harsh shadows
Soft, bounced lighting, when balanced with room lighting, looks natural and flattering.

The reasons NOT to use bounce flash

Some rooms don't lend themselves well to bounce flash (ballrooms a mile wide with 40 foot ceilings, black paint on the walls, red paint on the walls if you are shootingJPG, etc.)
It does not add any drama to the photographs (harsh lighting is dramatic and can add or detract from a photograph, soft lighting usually does neither).
Beautiful natural lighting already exists in the environment you are in.

Equipment that you will need.

A digital (or film, I suppose) SLR
Flash capable of tilt and swivel.
A piece of black plastic and some Velcro.
Good batteries

Okay, here we go with the meat of the article.

Bounce flash is a quick and easy way to upgrade the lighting in a room. Whenever I am looking through my camera I am looking at the type and angle of light as well as content and composition. When I see that the lighting is mostly from overhead sources, I usually want to modify it somehow. Overhead lighting as the only source of light leaves dark shadows in the eyes and causes people to look tired. This is probably my least favorite type of lighting.

To use bounce flash, you don't have to do anything too difficult. You attach your flash to your camera (or to an off-camera shoe cord if you wanna get funky) and point the flash in the direction that you want the light to come from. Imagine that you have a big softbox on a set of wheels that you can position anywhere you want in the half-circle behind you. You can place directly to the left or right, directly overhead, directly behind you or the the left or right of directly behind. You obviously can't make it come from the far side of your subject because of the physics involved (think of shooting a cue ball in pool - you can't bounce the ball off the bumper directly on the far side of another ball without hitting the ball).

The softbox concept

A portrait on the fly using bounce flash

Now that you have your flash bouncing around the room, you need to control it a bit. The first thing to keep in mind is how you want the lighting to appear. Do you want to drown out the existing lighting, add to the existing lighting or somewhere in between? My favorite way to do it is to add to, but not completely overpower the existing lighting. I do this by manually setting the exposure to keep the room lighting the way I want it (to add to, but not completely overpower, I might set the exposure to underexpose the existing light by one to two stops). Also, the slower your shutter speed, the more you have to have the room lighting below the flash setting. To give you an example, if you are shooting at 1/20 of a second with only a one-stop difference between room light and flash, you will have blur from the movement of the people as recorded by the by room lighting after the flash has fired. In which case, you need to increase the difference to two stops to avoid the flash-blur look. Unless, of course, that is what you are going for!

Bounce from the right of the room balanced to the room light.

Something else that I wold recommend is controlling the light from falling directly into the frame (this is a more common problem when shooting wide). To do this, you either need to zoom your flash or create some sort of snoot-type device for your flash. You can see what I did here with a piece of black plastic (a file folder from Staples) and some Velcro. This prevents flash from hitting someone directly into the scene I am shooting. I've shown it to other people, but most don't share my enthusiasm for attaching ugly, home-made devices to their flashes, but willingly spend $40 on a piece of Tupperware to sit on top of it!

My setup with black plastic "bounce tunnel"!

I have four more hints with bounce flash. The first is to use a high ISO because this increases the sensitivity of the sensor, which in turn reduces how hard your flash has to work and reduces how badly you blind anyone that makes the mistake of standing next to you! Second, buy a good pair ofNiMH batteries. NiMH batteries keep a consistent recharge rate during the life of the batteries. With Alkaline batteries, the recycle times on your flash become longer and longer as the power is drained out of them. Third, be aware of your surroundings. It doesn't do any good to want the light to come from the left if the nearest wall is 120 feet away. It also doesn't do any good to point a flash directly at the mother of the bride's face! No matter how annoying you may find her, nothing good will come of blinding her! That last is just a joke; I haven't had an annoying MOB in years.

Another example of side bounce.

Finally, experimentation is good! In fact, it is the only way to get a good handle on using bounce flash. Go forth and bounce!

The workflow

2007-04-29T14:48:00.000-07:00

I sometimes get asked what my workflow is like. So, here is a quick sketch!

1) Shoot the wedding in RAW
2) Download the cards using Downloader Pro by Breezebrowser and a Sandisk Extreme USB 2.0 Card reader to an external drive
3) Renumber images using Breezebrowser
4) Burn 2 copy discs of RAW images to DVD using Nero
5) Import into LightRoom
6) My wife picks images from 3000 to 700 using LR flag feature
7) Process picked images using LR
8) Export JPG's
9) Check the JPG's using Breezebrowser fix anything that needs to be fixed in Photoshop
10) Renumber the JPG's using Breezebrowser
11) Burn three copies of the final JPG's - one for client, two for my files
12) Jettison the RAW images (still have the backups)
13) Run RedCart script in Photoshop
14) Upload Cart
15) Choose favorite images for Slideshow
16) Size images for proofing section of website using Breezebrowser
17) Upload slideshow images to website
18) Size all images for proofing and add border with Breezebrowser
19) FTP proof images to ProDPI\
20) Select best of best for blog, size & post

Creating an Image (for your business)

2007-04-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

One of my most common questions from other photographers is about advertising to get the clients you want. To me, this is putting the cart before the horse.

When you are creating a business, I believe that you have to start with an idea of what your business personality will be. To get this, I think you start with your own personality on your best day or what you strive for your personality to be. This could be "Like me, only more attentive to detail." Then start describing that person/business in single words.

Sophisticated, Down-to-Earth, Confident, Real, Sweet, Intriguing, Mysterious, Responsible, Trustworthy, Fun, Sarcastic, and Unique could be words to describe yourself and your business. Choose what you think are the two most important words, add in a short description of the work you do, and add the clientèle you wish to serve.

When you add it all up, you will end up with a statement that completely describes your business.

Cory Parris is a fun, relaxed and attentive photographer that creates beautifully elegant photostories for brides and grooms that put photography on the top of their priority list for both importance and budget.

This does not have to be difficult and it can change over time, so don't agonize over it. However, you now have a statement that you can pull apart and use for your marketing, creating your business plan (whether it is on paper or just in your head), and for guiding your creation of business image products such as your business cards, letterhead, brochures, logo and, most importantly, your website.

Once you have all of the ideas and materials in place, then it is time to market your business aggressively, whether you do that by advertising, networking, or word-of-mouth depends on your target market (that you just identified) and personality!

New main website for me!

2007-04-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

I've just updated my website. Check it out and tell me what you think!

Cool Camera Bag!

2007-04-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

My friend Jim Garner has come out with a new camera bag. This is a wedding shooter that designed the perfect bag for a wedding shooter. Check it out at GoBoda.

Great Gear Article by Jeff Ascough!

2007-03-22T08:04:00.002-07:00

Cameras and the Desire to Upgrade

New variation on stroke and border!

2007-03-20T17:13:00.000-07:00

I just finished the tutorial, when I decided to change it! Here's my new version. I played around with changing the canvas size in two steps rather than one, with the second step only streching the canvas from the top. Have fun!

Adding a stroke, border and logo!

2007-03-19T08:06:00.000-07:00

I received an email the other day asking how I created my blog proof action that adds the border, keyline and logo to my images that I post on the blog. So here is a step by step tutorial on how I do it.

I want my blog proof to end up as 600 pixels on the long side. To do this, we will need to set up two actions, one for vertical and one for horizontal. Record this as you do it.

Open a horizontal image
Create a new Action called "Horizontal Blog Proof"
Resize the image to 500 pixels wide
Duplicate the layer - you can do this in the layers palette by dragging the layer called "background" to the new tab, which looks like a miniature blank piece of paper, at the bottom of the palette
Resize the Canvas to 600 pixels and choose the appropriate color for your background (I chose black, of course). This will create a large, even black border all the way around your image.
Select the top of your two layers and add a stroke of the color you like by clicking on the circled "f" at the bottom of the layers palette and choosing stroke. The image above is a one pixel, white, inner stroke.
Now stop recording and create a snapshot of your file.
It is time to set up your Logo file, so open your source logo.
Resize your logo to slightly larger than you expect to use it on your image.
Drag the logo to your image, this will create a new layer with just your logo on it. There should not be a background on your logo at this point. If there is, you may have to go to a different version of your logo that you received from your designer.
Drag the logo to where you want it on your image.
Resize the logo to the right size by using the Free Transform tool (Cntrl+T). Make sure to hold down the shift key as you drag the corner so the logo does not get warped.
Delete the layers besides the logo (to delete the layer titled "background" you will have to rename it first)
Create a blank layer and drag it to underneath the logo. You should now have two layers, one with your logo on it, and one blank below it.
Save this in a location that you can find it again as a photoshop (.psd) file with the name something like "horizontal logo file for blog"
Now look at your history palette and choose the snapshot of your file that you created before you started working on your logo.
Go to your action and start recording again
Choose the Place command (File-->Place) and choose the Horizontal logo file for blog.
If it does not automatically put the logo in the right place, you may have to make sure all the corners line up.
Flatten the image (Layer-->Flatten) and stop recording, you are done.

You will have to repeat this for the vertical action. It is also then possible to create a script that tells whether the image is horizontal or vertical and run the appropriate action on it. Once it is set up, you can always modify the action as your tastes change. Also, once it is set up, all you have to do is run the action and it does all this work for you automatically, every time!

Direction and Quality of Light

2007-03-14T08:28:00.001-07:00

I was going to start writing my articles on flash today, but I thought that as a prologue, I would first talk about the quality and direction of light.

Light, in my mind, has two characteristics. Direction and Quality. Light can surround you almost perfectly even from every direction, or it can stream harshly from one direction. It can be soft or it can be harsh. It can have these traits whether you are using natural light or creating the light with flash (this is why this article came first).

Light can be soft, harsh, directional or enveloping. I've grabbed some examples from my latest wedding to illustrate and show you how I use the different light qualities.

Natural, soft window light streaming in the door. I chose to backlight the dress so that the light would shine through it.

This was taken with available light in the room. This was less of a conscious choice and more of grabbing a moment with the current equipment.

I placed Kellie near the window to get the soft, very directional light on her face.

Available light in the chapel.

As the ring bearer and flower girl were walking down the aisle, I was luck enough to capture the harsh, directional light of Grandma's flash, which backlit them beautifully.

Again, using the available light (actually more available darkness). The alter was lit, but the rest of the room had only candles for illumination causing the couple to be severely backlit.

The soft, enveloping lighting of a bounced flash.

This image is the result of two flashes. One on a lightstand creating the main exposure and backlighting the couple, and one on camera at one stop below the exposure to illuminate the near side of the couple.

This image is during the college fight song, with the off-camera flash creating the main exposure (and harsh directional lighting) and the on-camera at one stop below filling in the shadows and making the effect less harsh.

The final image of David's fist-pump is again the soft, enveloping, directional (from the right and above) light of bounce flash.

The Wedding Photography Project!

2007-03-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

Most of you probably already know that I run another website that features articles written by photographers other than myself at the Wedding Photography Project. There are two new articles there by Jeff Lazo of ProDPI lab talking about printing, and an excellent article by Neil van Niekerk about balancing flash with fireworks. Great stuff!

Good Article at PhotoEdu!

2007-03-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

Jerry Frazier has a great article about the cost of doing business and how to do business with the opportunity to make a profit at his PhotoEdu blog. You don't have to constantly buy new gear to get great results!

PHOTO LOVECAT: ALBUM RESOURCES

2007-03-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

For professional photographers and aspiring professionals, check out the album resource list over at Photo Lovecat: PHOTO LOVECAT: ALBUM RESOURCES

My favorite books are Graphistudio, Leather Craftsmen, Zookbinders, Queensberry, and (one that's not listed on her list) Photomounts Australia.

For designing the books, I prefer to do my own using Photojunction software.

Back to Basics - 3 Camera Settings for Rockin' Exposures!

2007-03-02T08:16:00.000-08:00

There are so many bells and wistles on cameras that people get lost. It is a great example of how adding capabilities makes things more obscure. I recently bought a camera that is around 50 years old. How few buttons and features there were on the camera really made me realize how complex a digital SLR really is.

On this camera, there are three settings - aperture, shutter speed and focus. Because it has no built-in meter, getting the correct exposure was a little bit of guesswork for most people. With film, though you could be pretty far off and still get a decent image.

When everything is stripped down like this, you can see that there is really only three setting that you need to get a proper exposure, plus you need to focus the camera. Everything else is extra or bonuses.

The three settings you need to take control of on your camera are the basics, that we talked about above, plus the ISO (it used to be called film speed, but, since film is optional these days, let's call it ISO). The ISO is what people forget they can change.

Shutter speed controls the amount of time the sensor/film is exposed to light. Aperture or f-stop controls the size of the hole at the back of the lens. ISO controls how sensitive the sensor/film is to light. With film, you are basically limited to what it says on the side of the film box (there are other options, but that is far more advanced than we are talking now). With digital, the ISO can be changed anytime!

The effect of changing shutter speeds
When your shutter speeds are slow, you will see blur in fast moving objects. A faster shutter speed freezes the action. Also, if your shutter speed gets too slow, the shaking of your hands will cause the entire photograph to become blurry. For a good rule of thumb, try to keep your shutter speed at 1/60 of a second or higher (1/125, 1/250, etc.) with a normal lens. With telephoto lenses you will need faster shutter speeds.

The effect of changing apertures
The aperture controls what is called "depth of field". Depth of field is how much of the photograph will be in focus. We are all familiar with depth of field, but we rarely think about it. Ansel Adams liked a lot of depth of field. He wanted everything in his images to be sharply in focus. Most fashion models and many portrait photographers like the opposite. They want their subject to be sharply in focus, with the background becoming extremely blurry. That way, when someone looks at the photograph, they notice the person rather than the background. A wider aperture makes for more background blur (1.4, 2.0, 2.8), which you can see with much of my work. A smaller aperture provides more of the image in focus (8, 11, 16, 22, etc.).

The effect of changing ISO
Changing your ISO also has a significant impact on your images. Lower ISO speeds provide finer detail, smoother gradations, more vibrant color, and greater exposure latitude (exposure latitude is a fancy way of saying that you can screw up more and come up with a good image). Higher ISO creates more noise or grain. So it seems obvious that the lower ISO's are better. Well, that is true for most cases, but, when you have very little light to work with, or you are trying to create a particular look, higher ISO is the way to go.

How they work together
Okay, so all of this is fine and dandy. It's pretty simple to understand. Now, how does it all work in the real world?

I'll start by explaining how I work. I love shallow depth of field, vibrant colors, sharp b&w's, and high ISO's. The shallow depth of field makes whoever I am photographing stand out from the background. Vibrant colors and contrasty b&w images are fairly self-explanatory. I prefer that images have impact rather than being subtle. I love high ISO's because they allow me to take photographs that I might not be able to get otherwise.

I keep my cameras at apertures around f2.8 or lower most of the time. The exceptions are when I am taking scenics and when I am photographing groups. At these times, you need more depth of field to make all the important stuff be in focus. That means the things that change more often are shutter speed and ISO. They change according to the light level that you are shooting in.

If shutter speeds get too high (above 1/1000 of a second unless I'm already at ISO 100), turn down the ISO. If they get too low (below around 1/60 of a second with a normal lens), turn up the ISO.

Of course, this a vast over-simplification (from my point of view), but it's how I work in many instances. As always, let me know if I'm speaking a foreign language (photogeek), and I'll try to say it again in English!