I wanted to follow up with posting another set of images from one of the photographers I am keeping an eye on. Ed Pingol has recently contributed to a FF post on deleting the ambient. One of the things that really stood out about Ed's photography is the effort he takes to set up some of his formals. I think that a LOT of us can take some serious notes on this one... I often get lazy and claim that formals aren't my game... well, after looking at this stuff, I'm a little inspired to go out and try a tad harder.

 

Go to school on shooting some kewl formals.... Ed Pingol writes: The Importance of a Group Formals The bridal party which usually consist of family and close friends are typically required to take photos with the bride and groom. Providing the bridal party with the same personal experience as the bride and groom has been a HUGE benefit (even if there's over 20 of them total) for our business. Why? Because some of the individuals in the party can very will be your next client, plus they make for a nice spread in wedding albums which can add a great value to its worth. By taking a bit more time to set these "group photos", several benefits can be had: -you get an awesome portfolio - potential clients like to see these type of images because they see that we do take some time to get creative bridal party pictures. a huge factor when deciding on photographers -you get referred out by the bridal party if they don't hire you themselves - this part is pretty cool because several of our clients are great friends. when you shoot a close friend of the bride, you've already established a relationship before even clicking a single shot of her wedding. this makes things SO much easier than starting from square one. But the most important thing is that they already trust you -designing albums are easier - because you have taken a bit of time to set up, chances are the images you're about to capture is clean and well composed. clean and well composed images demand single spreads for themselves. one image per spread is SO easy to design, a caveman can do it. -it's just a lot more fun than traditional poses - of course we do the creative stuff AFTER we've done the traditional poses for the moms and pops. most of the bridal party has never experienced anything similar to this during a wedding. show them just one example and chances are they'll want to take several more. if you make it fun, they'll remember and referrals are sure to follow. Of course, when doing this, you should take several images of the same pose but just varying it up just a tad by saying "look anywhere AWAY from the camera (click, click, click), look to your left (click, click, click), look to your right (click, click, click), look at the camera no smile (click, click, click) and look at the camera AND smile (click, click, click)". We do this all the time to cover all the bases before moving on to the next pose. We include all minor variances of the pose (if the client decides to purchase a dvd) and more times than not, their favorite (and ours) are the ones when people are looking away. Go figure. =) So setting up a pose is cool and all but this is the time where we add a little FLASH FLAVOR to the mix. Below is an example of a typical "Ed Pingol" group photo (whatever that means) of the bridal party - setting is 100iso 1/180th @ f13 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28's triggered by a PW mounted on a monopod fired 1/1 @ 24mm beam spread - held high by Monica. See example of actual setup here. Kindly please take a look at the example below how an image typically looks like without any flash flavor. There's alot going on especially in the background that can distract the eye from your main subject. In order to "delete" that please read up on deleting the ambient. Other Examples: 100iso 1/180th @ f19 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28's triggered by a PW mounted on a monopod fired 1/1 @ 24mm beam spread - held high by Monica. 100iso 1/180th @ f13 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28's triggered by a PW mounted on a monopod fired 1/2 @ 24mm beam spread - held high camera right by Monica. 100iso 1/180th @ f13 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28's triggered by a PW mounted on a monopod fired 1/1 @ 24mm beam spread (heads swiveled left and right to provide wider cover) - held high by Monica.

 

Ed, how refreshing to see this post! I'm very impressed that you actually take the time to set these up. I know your clients dig them. I love it when you mix bright sunlight in the frame and blast them with the flash, just hotness! Lets hope that we all can take some inspiration from this one and change it up a little next time you set up a group of formals! Props Ed, thanks for sending me this submission. This is what Flash Flavor is ALL about amigo! Cheers matt