We use our remote flashes to tell stories about our subjects, and in this case, I was again inspired by the flash inside the frame to post another one of Sol Tamargo’s image sets. This post is about using the off camera flash more dynamically when that flash is located directly across from the field of view of your lens.

Sol had her eyes on these children the entire time as they played with their toys all night long. I credit her for pursuing a strong photojournalism moment and then going one step further by telling a story with the light.

These little guys were playing just as Sol was sneaking around the corner to get the shot. The first shot, you can see the little girl is shooting the little boy, BANG, your dead. I like her choice to light them with the off camera strobe included inside the frame, powered at 1/4 power. She also added some bounce fill from her on-camera 580 to give us facial expressions. We see the flash burst in the frame, accentuated by the BANG of the little girl’s gun, pretty much like POP BANG, in your face, your dead.

What amazes me is that Sol had the wherewithal to watch this scene unfold and anticipate this little girl’s escape from the crime scene. By placing the flash behind the boy’s head and putting emphasis on the shadow on the wall showcases the movement and the quickness of the great escape! My jaw drops with her execution of this scene!

Way to go Sol… thanks for the inspiration! AND, if you haven’t had a chance to hit her BLOG recently, you may want to RSS feed that baby. She has some pretty motivating content.

Comments? Thoughts? Inspired? Please post your shots on The Flash Flavor Flickr group

Cheers!
matt

Ok… still on vacation last day.

I am in the hotel getting ready for 6 hrs of flying today and 3 or so hours of airport layover.

I was inspired by the last post “rim light” and decided to discuss the technique of including the flash burst INSIDE the frame. I have used this compositional technique “what feels like a million times” and each time I do it, I am trying to use the burst to strengthen the moment…

I challenge you to ask yourself, literally as you are shooting… “why you are making the compositional choice to include the light in the frame”.

This technique is one that I am seeing more and more these days, especially on wedding forums that I belong to. If you can come up with a reason that makes the image you are about to capture stronger by including the light in the frame, then go ahead and nail it. If it is a frame that is just ok or so so… then you may want to challenge yourself to compose a bit stronger or wait for a stronger moment.

In this photo example, Sol Tamargo included the “light in the frame” technique to emphasize one seriously amazing photojournalism moment, IMHO. A simple choice to wait for the singer to belt out these notes sealed the deal on superb moment vs an ok moment… highlighted by a strobe burst in the frame…

I’d like to see some more challenging use of this flash burst… Put side by side with an amazing PJ moment, I am sure that your photo will be stronger.

Please share your moments… Better yet, feel free to join my new Flash Flavor Flickr group and drop us a few photos there to look at… Please provide a comment if you feel inspired. If you have similar photos to share, post them there… The key is participation so that we can all LEARN and grow with our shooting experiences.

Cheerios,
Matt

going to make this short…still on vacation

I have been thinking about this shot as I was browsing the digital wedding forum the other day, looking at some images from many awesome photographers posting images with strobes behind their subjects or coming in from an angle, adding a halo of light to the frame…

I believe this technique is one you can put in your bag of tricks to carry around with you…its one that allows you many many very different possibilities. Include the flash in the frame, just out of the frame…shoot wide, shoot tight…. 1 million more possibilities here..

In this case, I was shooting a first dance… I decided to layer my composition by placing the couple between the shoulders of two of the members of the bridal party… this technique pretty much works all the time…So now that the framing of the image is out of the way, its time to decide where to place the light…

I was trying to contrast a soft elegant moment with some harsh strong powerful light and came up with the following photo example…Ethereal almost.. This photo would have failed had the best man’s head not been placed in front of the flash…IMHO.

I honestly have NO IDEA what my remote speedlight settings were in this frame…I was mixing it up by shooting available, then switching to on camera bounce, and mixing up just about every possibility I had and then decided to switch on the Pocket Wizard and fired away… my assistant was on the other side of the dance floor. OH, My on camera bounce added the exposure on their faces! yep, it is possible to add some on camera flavor ttl style

Thoughts?

Cheers!
matt

WHEW…Sol & I are officially going to go on vacation tomorrow. Flight leaves at 7am, will be out of the house at 5. No, I haven’t packed anything yet…

I’m going to try to enjoy the Black Hills of South Dakota, Jackson Hole WY, Grand Tetons & Yellowstone. We are there for 2 weeks. Problem is, Sol & I are totally up to our ears in editing… We shot 4 weddings, 2 e-sessions, 1 ttd session, 1 rehearsal dinner in the last 8 days…oh, we traveled 5000+ miles to do it. Virgin Islands, Captiva Island FL, Riviera Maya Mexico….whew…We just landed yesterday in the Atl Studio from that adventure…

SO, needless to say, i’ve got some work ahead of me while I am on vacation. I will likely NOT be updating flashflavor…sorry, please hang out. We return on July 23.

In the meantime, i’d like to get a little feedback about flashflavor!!! At this point, we have averaged a solid 500 unique visits per day, since FF’s birth… thanks for hanging out!

Is flashflavor working for you? Do you like the posts? Does the format work? Anything constructive would be helpful for us… Please drop a comment or send me an email. Participation is KEY

info@mattadcock.com

Cheers & thanks for stopping by!

PS: if you have an image that you would like to submit to FF, please do so. I am looking for strong PJ moments. Just remember that I may not have time to reply to every submission.

Matt

*****UPDATE*****

HOLY MOLY, i’m addicted!

to the internet…

Yes, we traveled thousands of miles to visit the beautiful black hills and they have internet in this state park where we are staying… I am going to be in trouble if Sol catches me out here again chatting away…. As I sit here watching Bison and deer crossing the road in the distance, i’m motivated to reply to some of your feedback:

Thanks SO much for offering feedback, and i’m humbled by the nice words… seriously, thanks for taking the time to visit! I’ve had tons of emails coming in with helpful comments and ideas. I need this stuff! In the day of web 2.0, its crucial to understand what your audience is thinking and feeling… Its almost as if this site is a living and breathing creature… I feed it and it talks back…

I really appreciate the participation, very much. I am glad this site is working for everybody… I would like to thank David Hobby, at www.strobist.com for motivating me to get FF started. Lots of you have commented that you were directed to FF via his awesome site. I think we all owe him a big THANK YOU for what he does!

With wedding photography today, I’ve felt the need to be a motivator and share my ideas and thoughts…FF has been a great outlet to do so! With the amount of weddings we are shooting these days, we will hopefully have enough material to keep this baby going. One day, we will be offering a workshop and hopefully there, I will be able to discuss some of our techniques on a person to person level!

Cheers!

matt

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

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!

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