Recently, I was assembling a few galleries and found a few shots that Sol shot and wanted to share with you.  Let this be a little motion motivation for you :)  Here are 3 frames where a flash helped act as the shutter and freeze the action involved, just enough so the ambient and movement patterns would leave a ghosting look.  This technique is easy to follow, drag shutter, add flash :)   low power flash preferably.

She has done very well capturing motion or the sense of motion which directly puts the viewer in the seat of the action.   How much motion have you been shooting lately?   I found myself getting a little crazy with motion and using flash so I wanted to add a little shot to my motion post as well.

ISO 1000  1/50th at 2.8  

Sol shot this one with a little lens barrel effect.

ISO 100 1/40th 2.8

I shot this one on Saturday, 11/8/08.  I liked SO many from this wedding that I decided to send them to the hotel yesterday...  Besides the hotel manager, you will be the first to see this photo.  We will finish the editing on this wedding over the next 3-4 weeks... more to come!

ISO 500 2.2 at 1/25th.   The flash and subtle camera movement combine together well.  They look like they are floating almost.

Hope these inspire you to move your camera, zoom your lens, run around, do something fun with the camera and flash when shooting to emphasize movement!

cheers,

matt

I was doing some browsing around and hit up my buddy David Ziser's site and found a tutorial he recently put together on "tricking" the sync speed of your camera. I'm liking this idea and can't wait to try it... ALL this time I've been afraid of going above the native sync speed of the camera in fear of the big black stripe on the bottom of the frame.

David makes use of this by filling that black stripe with ambient and highlighting just a certain part of the subject that still remains in the lit part of the frame's upper to mid half.... COOL TRICK MAN!


Also, Strobist featured this and has a few tid-bits to add, so check out David Hobby's article too!


Thanks for the great advice amigos!
Enjoy!

Mateo

Where have I been lately? Not writing too many FF posts... sorry bout that. I wanted to add a little weekly motivation to your wedding photography diet. I shot a wedding last night, Friday in Athens Georgia. To my surprise, I woke up this Saturday morning with a SMILE on my face that I didnt have to go to a wedding!!!!! Just to show you how my day started, here is the first awake thing that I did this morning...*note that the eggs fell as you see them, no arranging :)

NO FF value, but smile value is 100%. I didnt manipulte this at all :)

OK, howsa bout a little FF motivation :)

Do you ever feel stale or tired of doing the same ol' thing at your weddings? Welcome to the club! Often, I am constantly challenging myself to figure out how I can make my imagery more dynamic. How can I tweak my lighting? What special twist can I add to the frame to enhance the overall message I am trying to communicate? These are questions that I constantly ask myself. If you are seeking growth or are just looking for a few ideas, I think this FF post will help you out!

I'd like to talk a little bit about balancing ambient light in a reception environment. First thing you must consider is that it is your GOAL to tell the story and communicate not only the actions and sequences of the wedding day or reception, but a clear idea on the mood and ambiance.

With off camera flash lighting, its too easy to let it get out of hand and light up the entire world, especially if you are using bounce flash carelessly. Recently, I made a HUGE effort to try and make sure that I captured an event with the most subtle mix of strobe and ambient that it would give my client an exact remembrance of the ambiance. This is a challenge as all reception rooms are different and every event can present you with new challenges... big bands bring big lights.... ambient can sometimes be turned WAY down, or WAY up or WAY orange or RED....etc.

At this event, I found that shooting with a few primes and adding a subtle bounce gave me just the desired look. As you are evaluating these frames, really give it some time and visualize this room.

ISO 400 1/200 @ 1.4 NO FLASH, ambient only. This shot is provided to show the setup of the room. There were 90 guests. Ambient light fixtures on ceiling pumping out a little tungsten color. Band lights with par can's providing red, orange, yellow gelled lights. BIG band, 10 members.

ISO 400 1/125 @ 1.4 I used a Nikon Speedlight on a stand with a very low power bounce flash, 1/32 power. I made sure to position the bounce setup so that it would highlight an area of the dance floor and I could increase my ISO if I needed the flash to travel more distance. I also left myself with the ability to drag the shutter to give the bounce light a boost if I needed more distance. My advice is to figure out these equations with a little trial and error. You will be surprised how easy it can be. Overall, I made sure NOT to blow out the room and let the ambient in the distance fall 1 or 2 stops under the foreground exposure.

Here is a photo using the same lighting setup, just from the opposite side of the room. You can see the small dispersion of bounce flash in the reflection of the glass. The light is located on a stand just behind the musicians lights to camera left.

ISO 500 1/200 @ 1.8 Here the strobe isnt adding much but it is making a small statement. The band's lights were very HOT and they provided me with most of the exposure seen here. There is a nice highlight on the toasting hand of the maid of honor and a highlight on the edge of B&G. This frame mostly shows the setup position of the camera position in the above photo example.

Here is one more from a different angle slightly closer to the strobe as you can start to see shadows.

ISO 400 1/100 @ 2.2 I was able to freeze action here but think that I could have made a slight adjustment in the flash's position as the flash head is so close that there was a little direct spill, causing the few shadows seen on the girls. Not alarming, but a slight technical flaw.

I hope that this helps you with a little motivation to make sure you are capturing the Mood and Ambiance at your events as your clients remembered them. Are you blasting flash all over the place? probably shouldn't do that...

Next post is going to be from the SAME wedding... VIDEO LIGHT Flavor... coming soon!

Cheers!
matt