Rapunzel at Cairnwood

Our Little Princess

One of my favorite things during a wedding shoot is to catch the hidden moments throughout the day. And the easiest way to do this is to take advantage of having two photographers. When one is focused on getting the perfect formals, the second can have their eyes elsewhere.

So while my friend Liz was focused on getting her Bride & Groom in the perfect light, I had the freedom to watch and play with the children accompanying the wedding party.

We were shooting at the steps of the art museum (a very popular place for such ventures), and while the adults were busy looking their best, one of the flower girls (a twin) was off in her own beautiful little world, holding her basket and spinning.

The key to this picture was the number of shots I took and the short shutter speed. It was an overcast day, but still bright enough to catch the action. I set my camera to "burst" mode, and took several pictures of our little princess spinning and smiling. It was a simple matter to select my favorite, and bring it into photoshop.

The dreamy, fairy-tale look was created using a few special filters atop the original image, and blending the layers in at various percentages pleasing to the eye. In the end, I captured the spirit of magic and innocence that can only fill a little girls mind when she is dressed in her princess gown and playing amidst a whistful, castle setting.

Manayunk Morning with Greg the Dog

Jess and I met with wedding clients this morning in a cozy little coffee shop. As the meeting was wrapping up, a beautiful little puppy in a sweater caught Jess's eye. Dogs wearing clothing is a fun little topic we're divided on (I'll let you figure out which side I'm on), and as she's prone to do, she went out to say hi. As I finished up with the clients, I noticed Jess beckoning to me from outside, indicating that I should bring my camera. Now, I had finally purchased my precious Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 IS USM, which just happened to be attached to my 20D sitting in my bag. My clients graciously offered to watch my gear as I went outside to take a few snapshots of a woman and her dog while her significant other looked on. What followed was a very quick "photo session", and I managed to snap some adorable shots. After taking these pictures, I'm officially in love with the new lens, and have no more regrets about the astronomical cost. It was worth every penny. Click the post title to go see the rest of the photographs.

Basic Gear List; Off Camera Light

The Goal of this blog will be to educate readers on how to take some pretty neat pictures. Of course, you'll need gear, so I put together a list on amazon.com for your convenience (click the title above to go to the gear list)

Today's photograph was taken at Ponquogue Beach in my hometown of Hampton Bays. I was home with Jess for the Holidays, and like we normally do, we headed down to the beach to catch up with Mother Nature. She laid in the sand (dressed accordingly in her cozy winter garb), and of course I had my camera in hand. This time, however, I brought along my "off-shoe" cord, which allows me to use my flash (580 EX II, which I'm just going to call my strobe from now on) off the camera, which is where light really be anyway, whenever possible.
To achieve this effect, I set the strobe to "high speed" sync mode, which allows you to take pictures at a shutter speed higher than the "max sync speed' of the unit (which in this case is 1/250th of a second). Read more about this here.
The strobe was placed off to the left, I propped it up on my winter gloves (despite it being weatherproof, I didn't want to get sand on it), and placed it on its side, next to the shell about a foot away. I maxed out the settings (+3 EV on the flash unit), and manually set my aperature on the camera to f/5.6, with a maximum shutter speed of 1/8000th of a second. Of course, like most things, I shot in "RAW" format.
I brought it into Adobe Lightroom, and tweaked the exposure, brightness, and contrast, to acheive the desired mood above.
The Takehome: If you crank your strobe's strength, and shoot at a fast enough shutter speed, you can drown out bright sunlight.