Recently, I motivated myself to come up with an idea I had and have since been practicing Seriously, I hadn’t tried the camera on the monopod idea before August 18 and at my very next wedding, August 25, I pulled it out to see what I could do. Folks, I plan to wear this bad boy technique out! Its clever and different almost every time you use it, because it allows you to change your vantage point.

How many times do you see yourself standing on your tip toes or leaning or stretching or doing something different to get the shot??? Almost every wedding I go to I’m trying to find a better angle. Plus, I’m short, 5′8…so I need the added height…

How do you change this technique up and add a little flash flavor? Well, I was shooting a reception in a room with a ceiling of 20ish feet of height, and decided to use that to my advantage. I put my Canon 5d on my custom made painters pole / monpod, and gave my camera 14 ish feet of reach over the dance floor. I kept the on camera 580 with the head rotated 180 and facing up so it would be bouncing off the ceiling to provide my down light fill and set my associate operated slave Nikon Sb-28 to 1/2 power with a RED gel and asked him to point it at the dance floor. I focused the camera with about 8 feet of distance to subject and raised the camera on the stick towards the sky…. BANG!!! this is the shot that I ran home with….

You can see my assistant dressed in all black, holding the strobe towards the floor. I told him to face the opposite way so he wouldn’t be recognizable….it kinda worked Feel free to check out the full wedding slideshow of photographer favorites here

I’m loving this one… If I had 10 times to practice this one…. well, forget about practice… lets see your examples I’ll keep it up, but for now, this is the best I can do for on the spot!

Cheers!

please post your new photo examples to the Flash Flavor Flickr group

***UPDATE*** After questions about how I did this…i reached into my vault and found this image that Sol Tamargo snagged of my setup with my rigged painters pole with a instant weld type product to hold the long threaded bolt to twist the camera down… This photo is not about fine art, but will give you a feeling of the “how to”

I found a killer photo online the other day and did a little investigating to check out the source. Turns out, the photo author had WAY more to offer than just the typical portrait session….He is totally the portrait master! And he was all about the Flash Flavor…. key thing is, he was shooting these puppies when I was in learning to drive! Yep, a film photograph…What the heck is that??? and he even used a light meter…I’m totally lost now…. This digital age has really taken off, and it is exciting to see photographers who mastered shooting weddings on film…Check his blog, linked later on in this post…. he is quite the photoshop guru!

Just remember, no chimping on this one….

“Somewhere in Time” by David Ziser

I was in Rochester, NY on a shoot a few years ago and, while filling some time one afternoon, wondered into a book store at the local mall. As I was browsing through the shop, I saw a poster of this location. I thought is was somewhere in Rome or Greece. The architecture “blew me away!” After inquiring where it was - I as told it was right there in Rochester, NY - it was City Hall!. I couldn’t believe it - I wanted to shoot there. After a few days of phone calling, I got the necessary permissions and set up the shoot. It still stands out as one of my favorite all time images.

Here is the technical background on the image. The image was made shortly after the noon hour so most of the building staff was at lunch. This is why it looks so empty. That said, you may ask… “Why is it so dark?” Here is the set up. I positioned the bride and groom on the second level of the building. I headed to the 4th floor. I had my assistant position my flash on the floor and out of site behind the bride and groom. It was set to about 100 watt-seconds. This flash supplied the nice broad wash of lighting behind the couple.

I then positioned my assistant behind the pillar to the left of the couple.
He was holding a small shoe mount flash which was fired with an optical slave. This is the flash that supplied the “front” illumination on the subjects. Since it was coming in from the left, it also provided the beautiful directional light.

The ambient light was metered at F8 at 1/60 sec, but I wanted the building to render much darker than the proper exposure would have rendered it. I was using a Hasselblad medium format camera at the time which will sync with the flash up to 1/500 sec. I put a 40mm wide angle lens on my Hasselblad, set the aperture to F8 and increased the shutter speed to 1/500 sec. Since the subject’s exposure was controlled by the flash, the reduction of exposure on the building was accomplished by “speeding up” the shutter to 1/500sec, thereby underexposing the building by 3 stops. This put the building’s lighter tonal values right where I wanted them - substantially darker than the couple. As I said earlier, the resulting image still remains one of my “all time” favorites.

Dang Beautiful shot! film too…beaut! Recently, David has been showcasing more of his beautiful portraits on his blog, Digital Pro Talk and he also finished up a tour last year themed “The Digital Wake Up Call”. Resident photoshop MASTER, Scott Kelby , threw some diggs David’s way in AWE of the delivery & content from his workshop, turned dvd… I’ve got my set coming in the mail!

cheers!
matt

I haven’t even downloaded my 2nd shooter Sergio’s images yet, but felt like this story has urgency due to the implications that hurricanes have on our clients and that the fact is we just experienced what some brides would call, “THEIR WORST NIGHTMARE” Actually, this group was the complete opposite of that. Vanessa has to be the coolest bride I’ve ever met… Under the circumstances, she played it out like a champion of champions. This girl wins the all time award for brides that go with the flow and do not get stressed out. I’m serious here, not 1 ounce of stress from this girl, all happiness and smiles. She did after all name her wedding “Mission Mexico”

I had to put these images up before this storm hit landfall. Keep in mind, as I’m writing this post, this family is STUCK on the Yucatan Peninsula… They will be riding out the storm there in Valladolid Mexico, the small town in central Yucatan. Mexico has it figured out very well, government mandated evacuation. GET OUT NOW. And they do it several days for the Sh!t hits the fan… props to them. I can honestly say that this story is one that I will NEVER forget and I am so lucky that I was able to get these wonderful memories. The group totally didn’t mind at ALL that we were documenting the entire day… From the moment we were awake until after midnight, we were flying around shooting everything!

Why in the heck is this wedding on Flash Flavor??? Well, I managed to squeak out a technique that I feel folks need to try, when given the situation….more on that later. IN the meantime, I wanted to include a few images here and showcase the rest of them in my wedding blog, so feel free to jump over there to check out MY shots. I will update the link with sergio’s images when I get to it, amongst other things, a slideshow of favorites too!

I did a complete writeup over on my wedding blog,

26 + photos as well as a story time-line to showcase how I documented the event. I didn’t want to bloat FlashFlavor with all those shots… even though this one is a MUST see story… My most favorite project to date out of 150+ weddings.

First off, I was reading a post on Strobist the other day about this guy who was throwing his camera up in the air to get the shot…although innovative, I say the HECK with that idea… what do you do when you are shooting standing in the water? But it got me thinking….Why not put your camera on your monopod??? DUH? So, after reading that post, I was armed and ready to complete the idea and this wedding gave me the PERFECT opportunity to do just that.

Take some notes here folks, this technique WILL change your wedding photography!

All the guests were asked to bring all their luggage across the beach and to the edge of the ocean, and then to carry them over their heads about 100 yards to a few boats that were awaiting departure to get off the island… The scale of this was important to me…but, i’m kinda short, 5′8. Here, I was able to extend the monopod up to 8 feet or so, and then set the camera to timer mode (i didn’t have the PW cables to trigger it) and set my focus on a subject about 5 feet away, set my Canon 5d to shoot at f14 around 1/200 with a 580 on camera, adding fill at +2… BUT, the point here was to photograph the event from a perspective that showcased the awesome spectacle of what was actually happening. Can you imagine this happening at ANY of your weddings?

Here is another…

Ok, so here is one image from Sergio’s camera, showcasing the same moment seen above… and my bounce flash, aimed at the sky…do you like that???

and another (check out that freak storm in the background–not the hurricane) It arrived to add insult to injury or as a going away present to the evacuation… i guess it should be raining to justify evacuation an island to abandon your wedding location..

Here, Sergio & I are getting ready to make the “great escape”. The bride’s sister made this photo of our flee

At this point, you seriously must jump over to my wedding blog to read this story if you haven’t already… there is so much more pulp there to add to this experience…

Full story on the Evacuated bride

Anyway, fast forward to the end of the ferry ride over to the mainland, and then a 2 hour drive to the city where they planned for the makeshift ceremony… I commandeered (politely asked) a guest who I had been hanging with and chatting with, to assist me by personally assisting me with the speedlight. This is proof that ANYBODY can do this. We set our SB-28 to 1/16th power and figured a distance of about 15 feet, with our 5d’s set to ISO 800 F3.2 at 1/30th, to add some ambient in the frame.

Guest assistance…who would have thunk it? I don’t do this all the time, but I have actually enjoyed a few successful photographs with it!

and the father and bride walking across street, traffic being stopped by hotel staff.

We work lite at our gigs, after all, this one was some intense moving around. We had to utilize our resources and make do with minimal setup. Light stick (monopod) a few sb-28’s and our cameras with our normal zoom lenses..

Please keep in mind that this post is all about being resourceful and making the best out of a situation… I think we all can improve in this category. These people were able to have a ceremony in a place they had never visited, all planning done at the very last second… like planning a 35 guest reception, 30 minutes away from the start time of that reception. Imagine that?

Please provide comments
cheers!

matt

I am on isla holbox, a 45 minute ferry ride for a point in the north of the yucatan peninsula, 3 hours away from the nearest big city, cancun …writing from a dialup computer. I have a bride getting married today who has been told by the govt that she is to evacuate the island with friends and family. i am with my amigo, sergio photographer, and we are going to document the event as it goes… this one is going to be exciting.

The bride plans to still get married today, somewhere on our way out, be it with her family on a ferry, in a shelter, or wherever it can happen. The priest coming to the island is forbidden to be here and there are no other options except for a word that someone here knows someone on the mainland who does mayan ceremonies.

this one is going to be good… look for some updates on this one folks. today, i am a true photojournalist, photographing a wedding on the run. imagine that?

oh, did i mention there was a predicted category 5 hurricane headed this way, in 2 days???

wish us luck, por favor

mateo y sergio

***update***

this is really going to be mission mexico. our bride has a killer website, totally check it out.
mission mexico she has arranged for a private ferry off the island…amazing. there are hundreds if not thousands of locals escaping this island. our ferry will have all of the guests, and transportation to a small town, valladolid in central yucatan. there we will all have a room and a makeshift ceremony and dinner. crazy huh?

sorry for the spelling errors and such, no time to care but time to tell the world that i am having a crazy adventure.

if you want to be a destination wedding photographer, think about what you are signing up for.. this one is going to be a friggen doozy!

best,
mateo y sergio

***ANOTHER UPDATE***
i’ve completed the assignment, after hours and hours of driving and then a full evening of shooting, I was able to recommend a location for the bride and groom in Valladolid where Sol & I have stayed a few times, and they had one of the most romantic wedding receptions (they arrived dressed as bride and groom) and actually had the dinner before there ceremony, at this long elegant table with 32 table positions…. dance, cake, friends, fun, a mission completed!

photos coming soon on this one

Recently, I ran into an image shot by some friends of mine, a husband and wife duo in Atlanta, Chris and Katie Torres of 6 of Four Creations. This image is a must see! How many times have you been at a wedding for 7,8, or 9+ hours, and at the end, you are totally dead tired and ready to give up…. Chris & Katie’s story about this image will WAKE YOU UP at the end of your gig! I really wish I had this one in my portfolio!!!

Katie writes:
Rome, Georgia, is one of our favorite places to photograph weddings. The stunning architecture of the historic buildings in this little Southern town has always inspired us. This image was made on the campus of Berry College, at the Ford Buildings. Couples who have their reception at Ford Hall usually exit through this archway. Earlier this year we photographed a couple whose exit was during the daytime. The exit photo we got from that wedding, shot from behind the couple under the tall, beautiful arches, became our signature image on our website. Then, on August 4th, we had a couple who had an evening wedding at the same location.

Chris and I knew we needed to think of something to showcase the architecture and the dramatic exit of this wonderful couple. We are really focusing on our exits. We feel that it encompasses the whole wedding.
Chris says it best: “…to me it depicts what marriage is about. Your friends and family around you, the newly married couple, cheering you on, encouraging you forward into the unknown as a life together, as one, new family.”

With this goal, I started to think how we could make it work. We had a lighting set up at the reception. Three Calumet lights and one SB800 on a stand by the dance floor. We took the SB800 out to the exit area. Chris put it on the other side of the car, so it would not block the bride’s ability to get to the car and also to create a way to get light in the archway. We both had pocket wizards to trigger the flash. He set it to 1/2 power. I stood on the other side of the arch and tested the light for a few shots. I shot the image with a Nikon D200 with the 17-55mm 2.8. As usual, I was in manual mode and exposed it at 1/30th at F/5, ISO 800. In the settings process, I knew I wanted certain aspects. I wanted the ambient light of the sconces, and I needed the light from the flash to be dramatic, but not over take them.

I then saw the couple walking toward me to go through the archway. I asked them to take their time and not run through it. They did just as asked. I kept placing myself so that the flash would keep on the other side of the bride’s head. I did not want a large flare.

Some of our favorite aspects for the image: the blue feel the flash gave to the black night in the back ground, the golden feel from the ambient light in the archway, and the fact that they used rose petals and bubbles.
Bubbles filled the archway on the left and petals on the right. The bubbles on the left actually come right out to the camera and give good depth to pull you into the shot.

To once again quote Chris, to us, this image captures their “timeless beauty, wrapped in the mystery of marriage.”

Great stuff Chris & Katie….I respect your ability to balance ambient in this photo, beautiful! I love your desire to keep your creativity all the way to the end! This type of dedication will result in imagery that will define your portfolio!
Be sure to check out their blog for recent updates, 6 of Four BLOG.
Cheers!

mateo

PS. I’m in Riviera Maya Mexico for the next 10 days with 2 weddings, tell that hurricane Dean to GO AWAY!

I shoot some pretty direct flash, as hard as the light may be sometimes…i kinda like it. I’ve heard talk about photographers that use hard light and it seems that sometimes it may be frowned upon…My take is “who cares”. If you have had a chance to dig through my stuff, you will find a portfolio with some hard light hanging around. I’d say the edgy feel sorta defines my style a bit. You can always migrate to a bounce flash and soften the situation quite a bit but, most of the time, I’m on the fly and have no time for a big soft box.

Occasionally on the beach, we are on the run and walking around with limited supplies. Speedlight and a battery pack with a monopod with a small backpack of extras… I have many photo examples of this type of light, here are just a few to tell my tale

In a few of these photos, I juxtaposed the hard lit subjects against a beautiful background…edgy light with an amazing setting…emphasizing the mood and light’s radiance …All images in this post were shot with a Canon 5d using Nikon Sb-28 slaves triggered by PW, usually with a Nikon Sd-8a battery pack. Everything shot on Manual.

Lens (mm): 16 ISO125 F8 1/200 | Slave: 1/2 power I specifically remember setting the flash on the side of the scene, without aiming at anything and got lucky that the light actually spilled onto the subjects. This shot was really a happy accident!

Here is another one from that same sequence, this time I decided to use a rim light to strengthen this moment, emphasized by the wind.

Lens (mm): 16 ISO125 F2.8 1/100 | Slave: 1/4

We were approaching dusk and needed a little help from a 1/2 power speedlight and waited for a PJ moment to snag this portrait…ocean waves and the face grab (totally unplanned) just helped me seal the deal on this moment… its TOTAL HARD LIGHT CITY. but who cares.. i certainly dont… my client is a member of several public bridal forums and posted this image as her signature for a while… Hard light sells!

Lens (mm): 16 ISO: 125 F 2.8 1/100 | Slave: 1/4

I shoot at this resort with a rocky shoreline quite a bit, and happen to have a photo example from a honeymooner session, shot by Sol Tamargo… In this case, I was her helper:) The snooted sb-28 is on a monopod with a sd-8a battery pack. Sol took this photo of me because she enjoys watching me work …I’ve included it here only to showcase setup for the above photo, same location.

I put this one in there because I like the content…makes me smile! Sol got this one while we were shooting a coctail reception at the beach. Does this guy have a handful or what?
ISO 100, f2.8 1/50 | Slave: 1/64

Have some cool shots? Drop them off at the Flash Flavor Flickr group

Tell me about your hard light city stories
cheerios,

matt

I wanted to talk a little bit about using your flash on your engagement sessions. Yeah, its harder and more work but the results for me turn out WAY better if I’m using the remote strobe for assistance. Let me show you what I’m talking about.

I know I know, I’m a lucky A$$ for having a Mexican wife and for being able to shoot in the Riviera Maya…I figured if I’m going to get to pimp my locations I was damn well going to utilize all my tools in the toolbox to do it! I was asked to shoot this couple’s engagement, rehearsal, & wedding, 3 consecutive days of shooting this past July 5, 6 & 7… The Maroma Resort was magnificent…One of my clients was trying to book this place last week but unfortunately, Maroma has 0% availability up to July 2008. WOW!

Anyway, back to the pulp. Case in point is that I had a portable studio of 2 small flashes with backup battery packs (Sd-8A’s). This lightweight portable studio is the key for moving around in 2 hours time and hitting all the locations we set up…

I am going to post a slideshow of my favorites from the session (which I recommend you watch) so you can feel out the location and understand why I made some of my choices to light the couple as I did.
David & Lynore’s Engagement Session at Maroma, Riviera Maya Mexico Keep in mind that I had a photo assistant for the entire session. Every image was shot with the Canon 5d with L glass, shooting 100% in Manual Mode. Strobes triggered by Pocket Wizard on Hotshoe. NO on camera flash used at all.

Here, I used 2 Nikon Sb-28 speedlights set to FULL power. Each light was bounced to reflect off a small roof to provide fill for their heads and faces. This was the first photo I shot. This was the balcony of their room, and it was a killer killer view.

ISO 100, 1/200 F7.1

This was the 2nd image I shot. I moved around to stand on the top of the wood railing seen in the first photo, to get this high angle. I was going for the reflection and you can just see the edge of my shirt, concealed by the center of the door…this one was a balance act and tough to get… Same flash settings, I just moved them a little closer in to my left and right. You can see the flare coming in…

ISO 100 1/200 F6.3
and here is my setup shot for that image showing the placement of the 2 Sb-28’s. Shown only to showcase setup.

I shot a few images with a snooted speedlight hand held from about 10 feet away and then decided that the best place for the light was on the bench across from them. Set to full power.

ISO 100 1/200 F11

Here we bounced the speedlight to 1/2 power to light up the room (white everywhere threw the bounce to help fill everything)…pretty simple stuff but I felt like this would provide a dynamic and interesting framing choice next to the setting sun and cloud formations in the background.

ISO 100 1/200 F13

Walking along the beach… I’ve got my speedlight set to full power again. My assistant is walking and keeping a consistent distance to subject so the throw of the light doesn’t change.. I think he was about 10 feet away. The shooting technique is very dangerous and I wouldn’t recommend it to anybody who doesn’t have adequate backup or insurance. We will pretty much do anything to get the shot and here we are walking in the ocean, with the camera not strapped around my neck, and I am walking parallel with the subject holding the camera about 12 inches off the ground. Walking in the ocean isn’t advised because the waves are crashing against your heels and possibly your camera rig. I seem to splash the lens and body every time I do this, but always end up with killer stuff!

ISO 50 1/200 F5.6

this one was made with a homemade snoot , about 15 feet away, set to 1/2 power to spotlight the couple against the background.
ISO 50 1/200 F5.0

Finally, we ended up in the couple’s room again, this time on their SPA DECK…can you friggen believe it? Anyways, it was a perfect location to finish off the session… I spent about 45 minutes here shooting different setups and so forth, the SLIDESHOW has lots more to see. We used 1 flash, set to full power, and bounced it off the white wall next to the couple. This setup shot shows how we bounced the light… A waiter was pouring the glass of champaign and I tried to sneak off a cool pj shot of that moment, kinda forgot about my assistant in the background and missed the waiter’s face…oh well, it turned into a setup shot.

This light was my favorite of all, flash was set to full power.

ISO 50, 1/200 F5.0

ISO 125 1/200 F7.1

And last, we pulled a white sofa cushion, seen in the 2nd photo early on in this post, and used it as a bounce wall because if you look at the photo with the 2 champaign glasses, you will notice a wall made of natural vines. I wanted soft light, so we set the speedlight to full power and used a full CTO gel, switched the WB on the 5d to tungsten and viola!

ISO 125 1/200 F5.6

Thoughts? Comments?

I know, i hardly post here but please bear with me… I’m trying to keep up. This one has some super duper pulp, I hope it helps out. If you feel so inspired from these images, please go to the Flash Flavor Flickr group and post a few images there and tell us your motivation for the shoot!

Cheerios!
matt