Have you ever shot people toasting at a wedding? Every shot it from below? Yeah, we probably all have. If you haven’t yet, give it a whirl. If you use on camera flash and just blast them with light, it will be less desirable and likely a whatever photo, not getting a lot of interest.

This technique will help you visualize how to take a normal / standard exposed moment that you have seen a million times and add a little flavor to it. First step is to make sure you have evaluated the surroundings and know exactly where your ambient light exposures are in relationship to your flash power on your manual off camera flash. In this example, Sol has decided to underexpose the ceiling to contrast the glasses and the shape of the hands reaching out. Its crucial here to make sure that your exposure has some depth to make an impression vs a whatever frame.
Sol Tamargo dropped the ambient out of the background and had an assistant with a slave set to 1/16 power, extended on a monopod in the ceiling. I don’t know the actual distance, but likely 6-9 feet away. The key to this photo’s success is the angle that the light is coming from. I’m guessing it is 35 or 40 degrees from camera left, in the air over their hands.

ISO 200 1/200 2.8 | Sol Tamargo

The glasses light up, the ceiling goes dark, contrast rocks! I really love the subtle touch of the ceiling lights scattered between the arms. Those lights tie in the background and give this photo a magical feel! I also love the timing of arm coming in from the upper left. Love the fact that you squeezed the shutter before her toast clinked the other glasses. This is an excellent PJ decision that subtly changes the composition to be WAY more likable.

Great idea and nice shot Sol!

Cheers!
Matt

For my operating settings, I’ve got a few secrets that will help you snap quicker / better exposed photos when your flash is too hot.

My wife tells me that I’m too fast for this world so this trick my not apply or matter to some of you. del Sol Photographers all use Manual photo control when shooting our weddings. We have grown close to cameras performance and when shooting, we find it helpful to be able to adjust your shutter and aperture settings while also working some photojournalism in there. I know that everybody will have their own way to adjust these controls… if you open your mind to a little change now and then, you may become inspired.

This technique also has a little flashflavor advise built in as well. With a manual power slave flash, your exposure latitude is pretty short, not allowing much room for error with the brightness to darkness of your frame. the closer that slave gets to the camera, the hotter its going to be and vice versa going the other direction getting further away.

For example, if you were shooting a group of people who were gripping and grinning, your flash could be 2 times brighter than you thought it *should* be however, drastic measures are needed and quickly inside the camera to make the photo you are shooting that second, perfect! I enjoy rolling my right index finger on the top right dial on my camera, allows me to adjust my shutter. Think of it as a finger-roll technique. If you want to shoot a test but don’t have time to test your flash to subject distance, keeping in mind that photo moments happen way faster than you can remember, you aim and shoot. Your light’s intensity may be considerably high or low in relationship to how it *needs* to be. Roll the finger on the dial (front or back dial) as fast as possible to stop down or open up. I have calculated that there is a scale of how hard to how soft you can roll the dial, thus resulting in a multi f-stop roll, a single f-stop roll, or a little bit of a f-stop roll…. or something like that. I call that rustic technique the finger roll.

Just thought I would share this idea. For me, shooting Manual flash slaves can be a challenge and this technique has helped me in situations where I was totally unprepared with the power settings of my manual slave flash.

Here is my secret: Notice the index finger’s position, on the shutter control.

I give my camera’s shutter the middle finger.

I honestly didn’t even realize this until one of my assistants pointed it out to me at a wedding the other week… I don’t even know what they heck i’m doing these days, but glad some body has figured it out for me. Thanks Diego for pointing that out!

DO you have any crazy camera quirks that help your game? Wanna share? Tell us about it.

Cheers!
mateo

This is my very first image captured by utilizing the Radiopopper system. Thank you Kevin King for getting these to me, all the way in Mexico no doubt!

I am such a bad professional. I ripped the bag open to reveal my new set of RP’s just 45 minutes before I walked out the door to a wedding 2 days ago. I ran around my place like a crazy man testing for a few minutes, but really didnt do much pro testing on these units before I unveiled them at a pro gig… shame on me eh? My client will be so disappointed that I tested a new product out at her wedding…

Shame on me…

here is my first TTL RP frame

The down light is from a ceiling lamp in the bathroom…
the rp slave is located just in below the bride’s right arm, next to the sink in the bathroom…

I didnt use the RP’s too much at this gig, but I did play a little
More test results coming!

Cheers!
mateo

Edited to add…. If you are a pocket wizard junkie (like myself) TTL is a foreign language that takes some serious time to learn to speak. If you want to use baby steps to learn to speak the RP language of TTL, then try this technique…

This is a REQUIRED element for those testing the RP who are use to the PW system….

good luck

I’ve seen adverts for Elinchrom Skyports and until recently, hadn’t seen images from this system of transmitters until I ran into Jaco Fourie, South African photographer. Along with his wife Daleen, they are producing some amazing imagery that I felt needed to be seen here on Flashflavor. I have been keeping an eye on the Flashflavor flickr group and noticed his stuff along the way. His images are very romantic and his compositions are all very pleasing to look at! Not yet contributing to the Flashflavor Flickr Pool, please drop a few wedding shots off there!

Jaco writes:

Don’t you just love it when it all comes together? This image was a bit of luck on the one side. I had the lights set-up on the dance floor as I normally do. I like to use off camera flash on the dance floor and have them pointing at each other to get some cross lighting. This creates a more 3D look. I kept on moving around on the dance floor and decided to move the 2 lights to the same side pointing at me. As luck would have it the DJ blew some smoke on the dance floor when the father and the bride started to do their dance. The groom and his mother joined them and I saw that they were moving in a circle on the floor. I lifted the camera and waited for the moment when both the couples where in front of my lights. I did fire off a couple of shots just to make sure I had it. The smoke added some real drama to the image.

I have always been a big fan of video light photography. People like Jerry Ghionis had a big influence in my style of photography. But now off camera flash has added another dimension to our work. Thanks Matt for creating this blog and inspiring us to be better at what we do. Viva FlashFlavor.

Here is another:

Nikon D3
ISO 2000
F-stop F4.8
Shutter 1/13

Thank you for making inspiring images for us to see! Check a look at Jaco’s website if you need some inspiration this week:

Jaco has also taken his time to give us a tutorial and a review on the skyport. Check his handy work out:

Here is a link to his blog post where he has a few more video tutorials on the Skyports. Thanks Jaco!

Any questions for Jaco on this system? I’m curious to see if anybody else has been using / experiencing good results with skyports?

Cheers!
matt

After reading flashflavor and seeing our work day in and day out, do you ever wonder what it is that we do to get the business that we get walking in the door week after week? Well, In this FF post, I am going to give you my true secrets. I’m telling you this because letting this secret out isnt going to diminish my “true fan” base. Hopefully, this post can be about some inspiration for you. For the last 5 years, we have been very client driven and have done all or everything to build a fan base. We have been doing everything we can to go ALL out do deliver the most amazing imagery, delivering tip top customer service, and separating ourselves from the rest!

The secret to success for the creative artist is finding 1000 true fans. The content of this article is 100% copyright Kevin Kelly Genius, Blog Author, Book Author, Wired Magazine Co Founder amongst other affiliations… Kevin writes about obtaining 1000 true fans:

…the gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:

The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

To read the rest of this amazing eye opening and career starting article, please go read Kevin’s Kelly’s article about 1000 true fans…

Kevin nailed it here folks. This has been the key for my survival and the motivation behind all of our development since day 1. This article is only 1 month old however, it is the answer to any artists search in life to find clients.

Flash flavor’s motivation has been nothing short of a straight line down the path of finding 1000 true fans… My motivation with Flashflavor has the Karma approach in mind. If I give and give and give, if I’m lucky , on of these days what goes around comes around… I’m not selling anything (yet) on FF… However, I guess one of these days I’ll be offering a workshop or selling some sort of software and hopefully, my “true” fans will shine for me I must be getting somewhere because as I write this post, we are receiving 1000 unique visits every day Hey!! thats a start!

Now take some time, and bookmark Kevin’s blog on your RSS feed or write about him on your blog. While you are at it, bookmarking Flashflavor would help me out in many many ways, por favor!

Cheers & start finding your true 1000 fans!

mateo

I was unloading batteries today after a recent shoot. We stage all of our gear on a table as we pull old batteries out and put new ones in. I looked down at our equipment pile and got to thinking about a Flashflavor post. Since ALL our gear is mixed up, how the heck do we know whose is what? Once you start to build a nice equipment inventory, its about darn time that it get cataloged or labeled so you know what ya got!

We are a studio with 4 maybe 5 shooters at a given time. It is crucial to us that we have our ducks lined up in a row! Yeah, a Sb-28 is just the same as the next one but I have found that ALL my equipment seems to come to life and we experience problems with our gear at almost every wedding. How do you identify the problem what it is happening to? For at least 4 years, I worked with a pile of gear in and out of bags. When I found my wife, Sol Tamargo, I knew that something had to change. After the 2nd time of “hey, you got my batteries” or “do you have my pocket wizard, I’ve only got 2 and I should have 3″ or whatever.. I was SICK of that.

If you label your gear, you will actually know what is yours… novel thought eh? Ok, lets say that you are a 1 man / woman show and you know exactly what gear you have and therefore there is no need to label anything… Sounds like my thought train for my first 4 years. Guess what? Your WRONG!

Why? Everything we use BREAKS at one point or another. Especially in the world of pocket wizards.. I have pulled my hair out a time or two switching cables, changing receiver units, checking batteries…when something fails, its important to identify it and move on. We have experienced MAJOR problems with the Pocketwizard system specifically. The short PC cords are poorly made for our work environment. With tugs, pulls, and catches, these things fail.. oops, there goes another $20 to buy a new one. So we started labeling our PC cords… Yep, i have them all labeled. If we have problems with one on assignment, I pull it out of operation, make a mental note of the cord’s labeled number, tuck it away in a special place, and switch to a backup.

This kind of mindset works with ALL your gear. We have tons of slave flash units. Flash tubes go out (afterall, the SB-28 has been discontinued for years). PC posts break, zoom heads go out, flashes get thrown in the ocean…heck, a plethora of problems greet you at every wedding. Its about dang time that you can identify your problem unit, put it aside, and address it later in the shop if necessary.

Ok, I hope your getting the point. Check out these photo examples of my gear pile and their labels. I purchased my label maker for $29 at a local office store… you can too

LABEL IT.

WE even label our rechargeable batteries. These things have a life expectancy so at some point, they will fail. We recommend that you put a few different color rings around them when you buy them new, make a note somewhere citing the date when those colored batteries were purchased. It helps if you can identify which photographer gets which batteries… Also, I’ve included our trusty labeler in the lower left, next to a few of our batteries

You can see that we actually label our gear with the first initial of the photographer who owns that particular unit. Everything has a label, lenses, camera bodies and tripods! Give this a try Hope this helps?

Cheers!
mateo