While I am here in the Riviera Maya this week sweating big time I want to reflect on the cold weather days...geeze, today its 95 and feels like nearly 100% humidity! ouch! Often, we are left kept inside with our photographic duties due to outrageous weather conditions. It could be too hot and or too cold to snag a few photographic portraits outside. The off camera flash is your best friend if you need to be inside. I recommend that you program your mind to start thinking about accenting the image with a little added flash flavor. For this post, my friends Dave & Quin at DQ Studios were shooting in Canada and it was just -4F... that is just out of control cold.... Quin rocked out this high fashion image with a few tricks up her sleeve. Quin writes: On a cold winter wedding (-4 degrees F!), we had just finished taking a few shots outdoors and went inside to warm up. The high-fashion image below was taken in a cramped warming vestibule (20 bonus points for anyone who doesn’t have to look “vestibule” up) :). Here’s the how and why …. My goal was to create a high-fashion image which accentuated the curves of our bride. I also wanted to somehow convey the coolness of the winter light flooding through the window. To cool down the outdoor light, we setup our QFlash with a full CTO gel applied. I set my camera’s white balance to tungsten to blue the sunlight streaming in the window. We positioned the flash to both rim-light the bride and fill the right side of the groom’s face and I posed the bride on the ledge of the window. I set my exposure to blow out the mess outdoors and captured the image above. I love how the shadow of the necklace adds another element of interest to this high-fashion image. Technical Data: Camera: Canon 20D Lens: Canon 10-22mm at 20mm Shutter: 1/80 Aperture: f6.3 Flash: Quantum QFlash T5d with full CTO gel (triggered via Pocketwizards) Be blessed …. q DQ Studios Yin Yang Workshop Sweetness Quin, love that shot! Total Vogue! I'm diggin the slight accent on the groom in the background...NICE usage of gels! I've been having fun with this CTO as well! Cheers & looking forward to seeing some more amazing stuff from your video lights :) Cheers! matt

On a wedding assignment when the client asks for nearly 100% documentary coverage, it becomes the PJ's duty to discover moments of candid brilliance that can fill the album with beauty. This post is all about a simple technique I use at weddings occasionally to grab an awesome portrait of the bride & groom without them ever knowing it happened. This particular image comes from a reception where things were happening fast. The ceremony started at 5pm, on a December evening. It was total darkness when the bridal party started to be seated and served dinner. I have seen most photographers run away when dinner is served....which is ok sometimes, but you must be on the relentless pursuit of the image. Here, I placed a flash on the floor behind the bride and groom at 1/16 power, aimed at the sky. I manually focused my 70-200 (at 200mm) towards the head of the bride & groom table and anticipated the couple to look at each other and appreciate this amazing meal they were about to be served...amongst their best friends in the bridal party. Little did I know they would celebrate that short little private moment with a kiss... This image is 100% PJ. Raw emotions and totally non obtrusive. The remote flash flavor MADE this photo! Sneak up on the bride and groom, use long lenses and a remote flash.... get some rockin PJ! Cheers! matt

This post is all about dealing with tough circumstances at a wedding reception. Basically, night club lights! I did have a killer guest photographer assisting me on this one... If you didnt get a chance to see this piece of fine art, check out my amigo, Mark Adams from LaCour who contributed to this past FF post: beach ceremony at night with no available light. Mark recently took a trip down to the Riviera Maya to lend a 2nd shooting hand. We were covering a wedding in one of the most exotic locations I have ever seen... just off the hook folks. We teamed up to deliver one of my most favorite portfolios of 2007. This wedding took place at Xcaret an Eco theme park, just south of my studio in Playa del Carmen. Folks, this place is a must visit...just friggen unbelievable. Check out the wedding slideshow delivered to the client here: ****Luis & Denisse at Xcaret, Mexico**** Luis & Denisse's wedding reception yielded some pretty tough shooting conditions for us. We were dealing with strobes that are flying around everywhere, panning lights with patterns and gobos, bright strobes and spotlights, changing colors and smoke, in our FACE. Sometimes, you have too many lighting elements in the scene that you must harness to work in your favor... This post will showcase how we did just that.

 

Just after the ceremony, Mark stepped outside and setup his tripod to shoot the chapel at dusk... I had to throw this one in there because it is Beauuutiful! Mark set his 5d to 8 seconds, at f16 ISO 800. He then walked about 10 feet or so away with his 580, set to manual mode and 1/128th power, and blasted off a burst aimed over towards the cross, not triggered by the pocket wizard! Mark used the 8 seconds and pushed the self trigger button on the back with his finger... Cool idear! He was able to spill just a tad bit of light on the cross for accent... I like how he had a little flavor from some ambient tungsten source mixed in there

 

 

Mark doesn't own a fish eye and will often publicly denounce it... He discovered a new love for this lens as he was caught red handed, sneaking mine out of the bag. Mark set up his tripod and shot this perfect scene setter for a grand total of a 30 second exposure at ISO 100 at f16, to showcase the ambiance of the evening. Check out the house lights..Pretty much every column has a house light mounted above. I think there were 8 house lights that were spitting out patterns, color changes, rotating spotlights, and some insane stuff to try to balance with the camera settings. We call this "the night club setup".

 

 

I've added this frame to showcase my setup with one of my off camera units. The strobe burst seen in the left of the frame was was set to half power with a half CTO gel. This frame brings to light a few things.. (pun) :) It showcases how hot the house lights were. This light was about 20 feet from center of the dance floor. I also had another unit set 45 degrees away from this unit, just over my left shoulder. You can see a shadow of a chair back on the floor. I made this "sweet spot" on the dance floor that would give me results that could slightly overpower the house lights... My settings in the camera for this shot were 2.8 at 1/30th at ISO 400.

 

 

Mark was not using any off camera flash assistance during the entire reception as we felt like we could offer a more dynamic portfolio with one of us triggering and one working with available. Available light in this circumstance is in my opinion, the most technically challenging condition to shoot in. These lights are moving, hot spots are in, out, red, blue, yellow, strobing, patterns...just friggen everywhere. If you drag the shutter, you risk unwanted movement blur when unexpected light sneaks in across the face or other body parts... shutter speeds are constantly changing to accommodate this shooting environment. We took 2 approaches on the first dance. Mark shot some moody stuff here.... I would qualify this one with "added flavor"

 

 

Here is one of mine, same exact moment as above. I took the safer route and depended on my flash to place some "dependable fill" on my subjects... It also had to be as hot or hotter than the house lights, or we would have unwanted blur. Luckily, the house added some bluish flavor. In these circumstances, you are at the mercy of the lighting technicians to get the flavor added. Is my shot a "safe shot"? I dunno... Shot at 1/40th 2.8 at ISO 1000.

 

well, that is going to wrap this one up... I have so many more that we could write about from this wedding... If you want to see more, spend 5 minutes and watch this slideshow. ****Luis & Denisse at Xcaret**** Cheers! matt PS. Thank you Mark Adams for coming down to hang out!

 

This one is short and sweet because I'm headed on vacation and I don't have too much time here so I just figured I'd get to the point.. Happy Accidents, thats all... Yep, they happen to everybody just about every day. Sometimes you don't even realize they are happy until AFTER the wedding... At that point, you can put them into your reserves and turn a happy accident into a sweet moment! In this photo example, Sol was shooting a portrait moment with her bride who was patiently waiting for her call to walk down the isle... Taking advantage of this time and the beautiful contrast of colors, Sol quickly placed her associate over left shoulder with a speedlight on a stick (monopod) extended so that she could position the light coming across the wall at a 45 degree angle, spilling down more naturally. A snoot helped focus the light into this more controlled spread of light. Its pretty tough to reach out with a 5 foot extended monopod with a snooted speedlight attached...even tougher to HIT YOUR TARGET.... DOH... In this case, I kinda like the moment where it appears a sunbeam is coming across the wall...adds a layer of texture. Who would of thunk it? Put your light on the something other than your subject? Sounds easy enough...but how many times can you remember doing that? I know I'm going to try it more often! Nice shot Sol! love me some happy accidents! Cheers! matt