I've been spending my time these last few days hanging out at WPPI in Vegas and finally got to meet up with Kevin King, creator of Radiopopper. Kevin is a pretty rockin photographer and an awesome entrepreneur as well! Kevin let me play around a bit with this killer device and he even told me that I may be able to get my hands on a set pretty soon so I can experiment with them at my next wedding on the 29th. I hope to be doing some killer testing on this device as I just may have a new weapon to my arsenal! r....I fired this baby off TTL at 1/8000 at 1.4...(i'll have to get Kevin to send me a few of those shots to post here as I was using his camera for the quick test). I'll keep you posted on my results...keep an eye on this guy, radio popper may be a big friend of FF very soon! Ps, jump over to strobist to read about David's meeting with Kevin recently.... Cheers! matt

We have been very lucky in a sense that our clients commission us to fly all over the world and shoot in some super exotic places. One of the requested sessions is typically an after wedding session where there are no rules and the dress likely will end up in the sand or swimming in the ocean. This allows for total creative freedom. I wanted to share another one of these sessions we shot recently in the Dominican Republic. We ended up spending the whole day with these folks driving across the entire country and exploring a few locations. Shooting in these conditions is risky as you never know what the locals are going to do to you, and sometimes, equipment is in danger. I'd like to cite a specific example where I was in the water with my wast belt of lenses and for this particular example, I was helping Sol with the flash and we were under exposing the background as the bride and groom were splashing each other. I was also shooting (bad idea). Somehow, I ended up tossing a Nikon SB-28 slave and pocket wizard into the ocean. Lets just say that was the end of those pieces of equipment. $130 for the flash, $189 for the PW and a nice SHOCK to my face as the flash does not like water... I had my SD-8A batter pack plugged in, when I unplugged it I got a jolt! Here is Sol's photo just moments before the flashes death... I walked back to the shore to sulk and drop that now useless equipment and snagged this frame of Sol shooting... Since we had tons of backup, I added a CTO gel to another flash and shot this frame of the bride on the sand (special thanks to our taxi driver for holding the light (he has a cameo in the slideshow with a brides reflection in his shades). Here is Sol's version of this a few moments later when the groom decided to enjoy himself...

 

If you want to check out our entire adventure across the Dominican, check out this TTD Slideshow. Well, I hope you enjoyed these TTD del Sol moments. Maybe you had a smile or two after visualizing me tossing that flash in the water. Moral of the story, dont try to shoot and assist at the same time, just dont do it! Cheers & thanks for checking us out here at FF! Mateo

How much can I begin to say about the fun that we are having with our subjects. Our clients are escaping to a wonderful destination location and planning the wedding of their dreams. Why not dream a little more and go out on an exotic excursion to be photographed in the land of fairy tales? This is exactly what we are doing with our sessions and I often need to pinch myself. Picture yourself in the middle of a muddy deep dark hole and bats are flying around, everywhere. Watch out, if you step in the wrong place, you will be up to your knees in quickmud and sinking fast. Oh, there are little round balls of bat poo everywhere... I am stepping on them with every step through this mud cave. Insert bride and groom in this non-friendly environment and you are slap in the middle of a del Sol TTD. It gets cleaner and eventually becomes a "Wash the Dress" session. I've talked about one of our previous sessions before HERE and if you have seen that, you will see something familiar. We added a little color to the background again but this time, we used a mix between the amazing power of the video light and a red gelled flash flavor. The combo worked very well for the looooow light circumstances. I am hoping that my viewers can live vicariously through this session and help us keep the TTD phenomenon alive. You can do this by posting this TTD link in your blog. Show it to the world, tell a friend or neighbor about this insane video you watched. Del Sol is making a huge effort to keep an interest in the TTD session.

checka lo this video from the session

Many thanks to our friends Paul & Rachel at Playa Weddings for the awesome video work.

 

OK, OK, OK, I've used red flash gel in the past to add some sauce to the frame... Well, I thought the flava was oh so nice.... Anyway, here is a set of images that we got recently while doing a little spelunking. Here are a few of my favorite photos... JUST an FYI. The del Sol studio has been undergoing a little brand development. Sorry for all the inconsistency... But you are beginning to see some of the results of our new face. This is our new blog template with the new logo. New blogs for Flashflavor and del Sol coming very very soon! and this is the "scene setter" from the bat cave... We we were getting stuck in some serious knee deep stuff in there... (shot courteous of Sol Tamargo) Sol also snagged this killer frame. If you have been curious up to this point as to some specifics about our lighting, we would like to introduce you to the power of video lights. In ALL these frames, we are using a very inexpensive low wattage SONY Video light. Makes for some pretty sexy fill, eh? 100% Sol Tamargo... and another one from Sol Ambient light all over the background of the cave.... the sun was beaming into the cave producing this beautiful light quality that was being reflected all over the place by the ripples that we were causing by our movement through the water... her is an example of total ambient with a tad bit of low power flash flavor fill. In the video, you can see what I am talking about with ambient splashing everywhere. This shot sets up the ambient beam of light that helping us with these frames...

 

Again, the movie file at: www.delsolphotography.com/ttd/ttd2 Please, throw the link to this around to share the love. The more people (clients included) helps our worldwide efforts to keep the TTD thing going! Thoughts? We had some serious fun on this one. It is our hopes to perpetuate the TTD phenomenon for the next few years. We believe that fun times and exotic locations such as this continue to stir the imagination. Do you? Cheers! matt