I have been following the work from a Louisiana photographer who seems to be breaking all the rules and taking the "brides in the water" craze to an entirely different level. I've shot a few of these underwater sessions but nothing like this. What I love about Kevin's work is the passion he puts into the job to get it done and get it done RIGHT! Kevin Beasley writes: The idea for shooting under came to me after some serious soul searching for a new(er) idea. The first underwater photo I had ever seen was from Larry Peters, (a senior portrait photographer in Ohio). Not only is shooting in UW time consuming and challenging, it is also very expensive! I had a very sizable initial investment to purchase an UW housing for my 5d, UW flash, UW port, Accessories and DRESSES. I never intended shooting UW to be a Trash the dress so I actually purchased 3 wedding dresses from 3 different type of materials to learn how each would respond to the treatment. My clients have really risen to the challenge of shooting these images. Most of my brides actually practice in preparation for their shoots. They practice breathing, body movement and posture in their free time. When I got started with this, I was amazed by all the work involved in making these sessions successful! These shots take place in an ordinary pool in the middle of the afternoon. The stage for shooting UW is exactly the same as shooting in a normal studio except all the elements (stage, setup, equipment, bride, photographer) are completely UNDER WATER, which makes everything very difficult. Because of the danger of being electrocuted, using anything in the water or anywhere near the water that plugs into an outlet is out of the question! The lighting power comes from 4AA batteries in an UW flash. The flash output is set to -2 stops underexposed in TTL mode. The flash is off camera left or right, mounted on a special arm that attaches to the housing. Flash position adjusted to subject location. All images shot with a 5d in AV mode with careful care taken to control all available light so that it is soft and has low impact on the subject.

 

When I first saw Kevin's stuff on Trash the Dress I was absolutely blown away! I called Kevin and asked him a little bit about this process and he gave me an in depth run down of his process. Kevin prefers to keep some of his techniques and ideas proprietary at this point, which I don't blame the guy, who else has the "underwater bridal" on their package list? Not many if any other wedding photographers that I know of. I say hats off to Kevin for making a cutting edge product in an extreme environment. I'm very impressed by his setup.. I've been drooling over shooting with a complete underwater rig, but I'd have to drop $10,000 USD to even get close to the setup he has! One day Kevin :) I recommend a visit to Kevin's blog where you can see even more killer imagery.... Like this one: So be sure to check out Underwater Bridal Photographer, Kevin Beasley

 

Anybody have any thoughts for Kevin? Comments? I'm keeping my eye on him for sure, great motivation! Cheers, Matt

This post comes from a photographer that I've been checking out for many years now, Neil Cowley. Neil's efforts to better the lighting community can be showcased on his lighting website, Make Light Real. Neil goes pretty deep here to talk about his motivations to get this artistic shot during one of his engagement sessions. He also tosses in a cool "how to" with textures and his lighting overlay demo...

 

Neil pulled a quote from one of my past FF posts about "Epic" photography.

adj. Surpassing the usual or ordinary, particularly in scope or size. When photographing a setting, it is the photographer / photojournalist’s duty to tell the complete story. Sometimes that requires the photo author to step back and see the big picture, incorporating the grand scale of the event in the frame. This sounds easy however one needs to make careful compositional decisions when shooting wide lenses.

How does the off camera flash come into this equation?

Wendy is a native of Manhattan, lived there her whole life and I shot her wedding to Billy last year. I definitely wanted to give them the epic treatment as I met them at Madison Square Park to shoot some portraits. Trying to impress a Manhattan native starts an epic job. I started out by the Flatiron building on the street with the natural light failing to sunset and coming from behind the flatiron building leaving me few options for good street pictures. So we moved into the park. We curiously noticed the shiny tree sculptures and worked our way past the fence to get access. Upon wandering up to the sculptures we were quickly ask to leave by a bossy photographer who was shooting the sculpture for a documentary project and evidently didn't care to have anyone in his 4x5 images. I could see that I needed just a little more time for the sunset to lower to bring some color into the other side of the sky - so we went and shot by the pool for a few minutes. Upon our return, I immediately recognized that the conditions were perfect, and I needed to work fast. Out of my camera bag came my Canon 550 shoe flash, a Photoflex XTC softbox and plugged it into my digital camera battery high voltage battery. In a minute they were put together and positioned on my camera bag lower to camera left to give a slight under light to the couple so that they glowed against the sunset illuminated clouds. I then positioned my second 550 on a Bogen 3350 Baby stand (out of my bag) far camera right and triggered them both with pocket wizards. I quickly determined the ambient exposure in manual mode and allowed one stop of underexposure for the sky. I then adjusted the light in the soft box to give a proper illumination to the couple. Looking back now at my camera files, I started at 6:07, and by 6:15 the cloud had passed and my one exposure with good expression is shown above. I was shooting at 1/250th of a second f/4.0 with a 24mm lens on my Canon 1Ds Mark II. I have a suspicion that there must be something like a 6min rule when trying to work a location. Either you can capture it within the first few minutes or you've blown your opportunity; either because of environmental reasons or subject reasons. Looking into my camera files shows me that this images was created at 6:11pm. The first in the series was shot at 6:07, and by 6:15 the lighting and the couple's interest with continuing this same thing had ended. With my capture of the unique shapes of the sculptures in Madison Square Park, the environmental sky and the Empire State building in the background I think I've exceeded the Epic expectations of my clients. Not being able to highlight the distant tendrils of the sculpture better remains my only regret. The silver of the sculpture presented a uniquely backwards challenge to light. Unlike standard objects such as tree branches, pointing the second flash unit at them did me no visible good. Because the surface of the sculpture was reflective it presented a reflection of whatever light was hitting it, not a reflection of itself. So to allow the sculpture to reflect something, I should have pointed my second flash away from the sculpture into the grass and trees nearby. If I had the prescience to make this move while shooting, I would have liked to have put the flash far enough into the camera frame and behind the couple so as to give them a little rim light as well. Live and learn to do better! When I have no more regrets from my photos, I'll know I'm out of creativity - so maybe that's a good feeling to have. But the location lighting and scene is not the limit of my vision, and so I push on in Photoshop - and share with you the image out of camera raw:

I try to process my images with the mantra of 'make light real' and in this image, I feel I failed to nail the balance between subject and sky with the perfect balance for a realistic effect, I underexposed the sky too much, or the light on the sky failed to give the right amount of contrast with the exposure I was using. So to correct the issue and bring the necessary balance to the image, I used my One Photoshop Action which takes me through a LAB color space work flow in which I can heavily alter the tonalities and colors in the least destructive way possible. Here is the screen shot of my Photoshop layers:

I also felt inspired to add a lighting overlay to accentuate the cloud form as a repeated shape in the toning of the image. You can download that image from my website as a 'Free Light Friday' image on 11-9-07. You see the lighting overlay used as a hard light and overlay layer to help unite the mood between the foreground and background and prepare the image for it's final printed destiny.

I also used this photograph in an acrylic collage on canvas, and you can see it in it's current state above.

________________________ Neil Cowley - Visual Artist

 

Neil, You are so right about your 6 minute rule... When working in the "magic hour" as the light is leaving or coming, one must absolutely work quickly to achieve the desired settings given the current circumstances, because if you blink, current becomes PAST! cheers! Matt

This last week, Sol Tamargo & I were in Mexico City covering a traditional Mexican ceremony. What is totally odd about that is the fact that we shoot 50+ weddings in Mexico every year and rarely is ONE of them a Mexican client. These guys had 400 guests with pretty beautiful decor. The bride's preparation took place in her parents home in a very exclusive home in suburb of the city. How many times have you seen the dress hanging? Did you just shoot a snapshot of with available light? I'm sure it was beautiful..... but, did it have flava? I really love Sol's vision here as she took an ordinary moment and added this splash of color with her snooted slave Nikon SB-28 speedlight. The mix of ambient behind the blue just makes this photo for me!

 

 

I'm inspired by this as I shoot with her all the time and we totally think differently on every shoot... We will be including this image in her album, full page! Check out a sliideshow from their wedding here: Amaya & Alberto (caution, its 250+ photos), lots of great stuff! We added color to spice up these frames, seen in the following FF posts: Color on the dancefloor & High fashion with color & Color underwater and Color in the hallway If you have experimented with gels, please send them to the Flash Flavor Flickr group or email them to me :) I'd love to see what is happening out there!

 

Any comments for Sol? She would love to hear your thoughts :) Saludos, Mateo

I got another killer shot from Dave & Quin Cheung of DQ studios to show you. I really love how they approach making beautiful portraits during a wedding. I am a firm believer that they are one of the best studios in the entire continent of North America... They raise the bar by challenging the ordinary portrait... a spoonful of flava :) Or shovels full, when DQ is in charge...

 

Quin describes her shot: Jess and Rob wanted to take some portraits at a historic burnt out church, just outside of beautiful Banff, Alberta. Well, we couldn’t find the church, but the ruins of a small building would do. It was cold and windy this fall day, so we had to work fast to prevent everyone from freezing. One of the difficulties of using multiple lights during the portrait time is engaging the couple in the experience, and capturing true emotion. This shot is one of my favorites from our time together because of Jessica’s easy smile and the capture of that magic moment-before-the-kiss. How it was taken. Here’s a shot of us taking this shot (courtesy of a cool pro race-car-driver groomsman. Thanks Choi!). A 580EX II was placed on the ground behind the dress and Dave was holding a Quantum T5d extended from high above on a light stand. The T5d was set to give roughly the same light output as the 580EX II and the frosted diffuser was removed to create a harder, more directional light. White Balance was set to shade to add a touch of warmth under the daylight balanced flashes while the exposure was set to overpower ambient by about 2 stops to add drama and darken the blue skies that are peaking through the broken walls of the ruins. I love how this pose accentuates Jess’s figure. All we needed was to capture Rob coming in for the kiss, and the natural smile of Jess’s face makes the image all the more powerful. Here’s the geek-speak: Camera: Canon 30D Lens: 16-35mm at 16mm White Balance: Shade Mode: Manual ISO: 800 Shutter: 1/250 Aperture: f13 * Light 1 (from behind the dress): 580EX II at 1/16th power * Light 2 (from above): Quantum T5d at 1/8th power (with frosted diffuser removed) * Both lights triggered via Pocketwizards. Double lighting takes more work and time to setup, but we love the results we achieve when we put the extra effort in. Don’t forget to have fun with your clients and make the experience a great one for all involved :) Quin Cheung DQ Studios www.dqquikeys.com

 

I'm totally inspired by this!!!!!! If you are a photographer looking for a source of creative juices, make sure you spend the next hour or so digging though the DQ Studios Website. Dave & Quin are one seriously dynamic duo. They submitted a few other killer shots to FF in the past... Check out This FF image that Quin shot with some definite added flava. Dave was flying HIGH with this killer idea. Anybody have any comments for DQ? Are you as inspired by them as I am? Please, let them know! Cheers! matt