I just wanted to say thank you David Hobby at Strobist for your kind words and recognition. David has helped both Sol & I achieve publication in 3 magazines, around the world… all in the last 2 months!

David Hobby is one of the super heros of internet marketing. If you sell anything marketed to photographers, you should be advertising on his site. He has zillions of readers and the come back again and again for a reason! He continues to keep the photo world informed and now he is offering a contest for folks who enter images into the strobist flickr pool!. I think that pool needs some HOT wedding photography representation! So if you are a wedding shooter, please submit your images there so we can represent!

Many Thank YOUS to all the people who called, wrote and commented on our blogs with congrats to us on our special day… The love is very appreciated.

Here are a few images that were shot by some of my photographer friends who were guests at my Dec 6 2007 wedding. Be sure to check links to their site to see a few more images from the sneak peek

***Disclaimer*** Sergio Photographer was the official commissioned photographer for this event, his mack daddy images coming soon! Sergio was digging on the FF at my wedding, so maybe we can see his techniques here

****UPDATE**** Checkalo Sergio’s photos: Sergio Photographer Slideshow
and his blog: Sergio BLOG

Here are a few of his images…

This one is ALL of my photographer buddies after a few BIG glasses of Don Julio…

Guest photographer friends:
These few images from previous FF poster, Mark Adams, from LaCour.

Ok, so I liked the Mayan Warrior thing!

And these from my amigo, Chris Savas. Chris works as a commercial photographer shooting events all over the world. He showed up to my wedding with a Mark III and a Canon 300 2.8 with a 1.4 extender… sheesh, that combo is heaver than me!

And here are a few from my amgio, Ben Chrisman. Ben Chrisman is a compositional FREAK! I am blown away by his stuff, just amazing work. He likely won’t be featured on FF because he doesnt slave flashes, nada! I’ve been thinking of doing and “Anti-Flash Flavor” post though… Ben would make a perfect candidate! Hit his blog to see several more of my wedding, including me SLAMMING tequila! Viva Don Julio Reposado

This one of Sergio in action

And these from my friend, Matt McGraw.

I took 15 dance lessons!

Here are a few from my bud, Patrick Williams

this is the group photographer shot….

THANK YOU to all my photog buddies who snapped a few frames, I’m sure I’ll be seeing some more here soon

Cheers,
mateo y sol

I have written about Epic Photography in a past FF post, and after seeing this week’s submission, I’m happy to suggest another photo that I feel defines the subject perfectly! Today’s image comes from an awesome photographer in Atlanta, Andrew Niesen from the LaCour Studio, a group of 4 photographers, 2 husband and wife teams. Mark Adams from the LaCour studio submitted this GEM a while back showcasing how one photographs a beach ceremony with NO available light.

Strictly Ballroom First Dance at the Historic Biltmore
By Andrew Niesen, LaCour

The iconic Georgian Ballroom at Atlanta’s Biltmore was the centerpiece of Robin Best and Brian Gage’s wedding. They scheduled their wedding based on the ballroom’s availability, and they described its beauty during every conversation we had with them.

The Biltmore was the hub of Atlanta’s social scene in the 1920s. With lavish marble floors, sparkling crystal chandeliers and handcrafted plaster ceilings, the Georgian ballroom exudes the dramatic elegance of the “Roaring 20s.”

As Robin and Brian’s wedding approached, I thought about how to create a striking photograph that would serve as the climax of their wedding story. To be meaningful, the photograph had to communicate on multiple levels. It had to reveal the personalities of the main characters, the context of the story and the mood of the event.

This communicative aspect of photography is especially important because I believe that our work becomes the foundation for family legacy. The story we tell through our photographs will be shared with several generations. Robin and Brian’s children will learn about their parents’ personalities and values through the wedding photographs.

By selecting the Biltmore’s Georgian Ballroom, Robin and Brian were making a statement about their style, personalities and values. The grandeur, classicism and history of the ballroom were consistent with other details they had carefully planned for their wedding.

Since the intricately textured ceiling is the hallmark of the ballroom, I chose to accentuate it by skimming light across the ceiling by backlighting it with a single White Lighting monolight. The monolight was triggered by a Pocket Wizard radio remote.

My assistant set up the strobe on a stand in the rear corner of the ballroom about 10 minutes before the first dance began, and I shot several test images, adjusting my ISO and aperture until the histogram showed data across the entire spectrum, from solid black to small areas of pure white.

I used a 17mm lens on a Canon EOS 1D Mark II to emphasize the magnificence of the space. Then, I waited until the couple moved to the center of the dance floor and were positioned in a way that a silhouette was visually “legible.” The resulting photograph appears as a 12×18” photograph in the center spread of Robin and Brian’s wedding album. It’s their favorite photograph from the wedding.

I’ve shot in this ballroom numerous times…Haven’t tried this…. I like to see other photographers interpretations of a wedding venue and how it all comes down to ONE defining photography. Andrew tells a wonderful story here and just imagine yourself in his shoes… “This communicative aspect of photography is especially important because I believe that our work becomes the foundation for family legacy“….. Don’t you think your photography would take on a new meaning if you used this motivation to photograph your next epic image?

The LaCour team have produced some studio management software that I have recently purchased. Although I don’t have it customized and working with my system, I have seen a live demo by Mark Adams. ShootQ is innovative studio management platform that almost mimics a studio manager. All I can say is that you must check out their product video demo. They are currently hosting studio setup parties for ShootQ across the United States. Also, would also recommend that you take a look at their blog, as they take a different angle to blogging than the typical wedding photographer.

Comments? Are you inspired by this photo? If you have any photos that you would like to reflect the “epic ballroom” type shot, please send them to the Flash Flavor Flickr group

Thanks again Andrew and LaCour.

This post is all about dealing with tough circumstances at a wedding reception. Basically, night club lights!

I did have a killer guest photographer assisting me on this one…
If you didnt get a chance to see this piece of fine art, check out my amigo, Mark Adams from LaCour who contributed to this past FF post:

beach ceremony at night with no available light.

Mark recently took a trip down to the Riviera Maya to lend a 2nd shooting hand. We were covering a wedding in one of the most exotic locations I have ever seen… just off the hook folks. We teamed up to deliver one of my most favorite portfolios of 2007. This wedding took place at Xcaret an Eco theme park, just south of my studio in Playa del Carmen. Folks, this place is a must visit…just friggen unbelievable.

Check out the wedding slideshow delivered to the client here: ****Luis & Denisse at Xcaret, Mexico****

Luis & Denisse’s wedding reception yielded some pretty tough shooting conditions for us. We were dealing with strobes that are flying around everywhere, panning lights with patterns and gobos, bright strobes and spotlights, changing colors and smoke, in our FACE. Sometimes, you have too many lighting elements in the scene that you must harness to work in your favor… This post will showcase how we did just that.

Just after the ceremony, Mark stepped outside and setup his tripod to shoot the chapel at dusk… I had to throw this one in there because it is Beauuutiful! Mark set his 5d to 8 seconds, at f16 ISO 800. He then walked about 10 feet or so away with his 580, set to manual mode and 1/128th power, and blasted off a burst aimed over towards the cross, not triggered by the pocket wizard! Mark used the 8 seconds and pushed the self trigger button on the back with his finger… Cool idear! He was able to spill just a tad bit of light on the cross for accent… I like how he had a little flavor from some ambient tungsten source mixed in there

Mark doesn’t own a fish eye and will often publicly denounce it… He discovered a new love for this lens as he was caught red handed, sneaking mine out of the bag. Mark set up his tripod and shot this perfect scene setter for a grand total of a 30 second exposure at ISO 100 at f16, to showcase the ambiance of the evening. Check out the house lights..Pretty much every column has a house light mounted above. I think there were 8 house lights that were spitting out patterns, color changes, rotating spotlights, and some insane stuff to try to balance with the camera settings. We call this “the night club setup”.

I’ve added this frame to showcase my setup with one of my off camera units. The strobe burst seen in the left of the frame was was set to half power with a half CTO gel. This frame brings to light a few things.. (pun) It showcases how hot the house lights were. This light was about 20 feet from center of the dance floor. I also had another unit set 45 degrees away from this unit, just over my left shoulder. You can see a shadow of a chair back on the floor. I made this “sweet spot” on the dance floor that would give me results that could slightly overpower the house lights… My settings in the camera for this shot were 2.8 at 1/30th at ISO 400.

Mark was not using any off camera flash assistance during the entire reception as we felt like we could offer a more dynamic portfolio with one of us triggering and one working with available. Available light in this circumstance is in my opinion, the most technically challenging condition to shoot in. These lights are moving, hot spots are in, out, red, blue, yellow, strobing, patterns…just friggen everywhere. If you drag the shutter, you risk unwanted movement blur when unexpected light sneaks in across the face or other body parts… shutter speeds are constantly changing to accommodate this shooting environment. We took 2 approaches on the first dance. Mark shot some moody stuff here…. I would qualify this one with “added flavor”

Here is one of mine, same exact moment as above. I took the safer route and depended on my flash to place some “dependable fill” on my subjects… It also had to be as hot or hotter than the house lights, or we would have unwanted blur. Luckily, the house added some bluish flavor. In these circumstances, you are at the mercy of the lighting technicians to get the flavor added. Is my shot a “safe shot”? I dunno… Shot at 1/40th 2.8 at ISO 1000.

well, that is going to wrap this one up… I have so many more that we could write about from this wedding… If you want to see more, spend 5 minutes and watch this slideshow.

****Luis & Denisse at Xcaret****

Cheers!
matt
PS. Thank you Mark Adams for coming down to hang out!

Today’s post comes from an amazing team of photographers located in Atlanta Ga, LaCour Photography. I asked my friends to submit an image or two along with a dramatic story to go along with the theme of this blog, creative off camera lighting. Mark Adams has one killer image along with a unique story and tops it off by shooting in one of the most challenging of all shooting conditions:

Beach Ceremony at night with NO available light.

Mark Adams writes:

When we were asked to photograph a small, intimate wedding ceremony at sunset in Laguna Beach, we expected beautiful California light. But a few hours before sunset, we learned that the minister’s flight was delayed. The bride and groom made the decision to still have the ceremony on the beach at whatever time the minister arrived, which was definitely going to be after sunset. So we were presented with the challenge of photographing a beach ceremony at night with no available light.

Before becoming a wedding photographer, I worked for newspapers and magazines, shooting assignments all over the world. One of the things I had to get good at quickly was learning to adjust to any situation no matter what the challenges and no matter what the lighting conditions. As a news photographer, I simply had to make sure I came back with good pictures that documented the action without interfering or altering the mood.

The problem with flash is that it can be a distraction, especially when you’re photographing in complete darkness as we were. But in situations like this, there’s not much you can do about that pop of bright white light. The ambient exposure was between 20-30 seconds. That doesn’t work for capturing expressions on people’s faces. But what we did do was simply minimize the amount of flash we used. Rather than shooting a ton of photos and creating a strobe-like disco, we simply waited, anticipated the key moments and shot those moments, which were just a handful of photos.

My wife Erin stood back near the rocks behind the minister and shot photos with direct flash to get the “safe” shots of the bride and groom’s reactions and emotion. That freed me up to try to make a photo that showed the uniqueness of the ceremony. I wanted to make a photo that captured the mood of the moonlit scene. So I steadied my Canon 5D with a 16-35mm f/2.8L USM at 27mm on my Gitzo Mountaineer tripod. I set a base exposure in manual mode for 10 seconds at f/2.8 at ISO 400, which was about one stop underexposed from a reading off the sky. I then set my on-camera Canon 580EX to Master and also set it to not participate in the exposure, and then I signaled Erin to switch her on-camera Canon 580EX to Slave. Then I released the shutter. I shot about three frames this way. The Canon E-TTL technology worked flawlessly and allowed us to quickly set up this shot and execute it swiftly without having to fiddle with manually setting the power on the remote flash.

Most of the other photos from the short ceremony (less than 10 minutes) were shot with direct flash, no diffusion, but this photo does a couple of things for us. 1) It captures the mood of the ceremony 2) Shows the ceremony environment and 3) Adds diversity to the wedding album.

If all the photos from this ceremony had unique lighting, this photo wouldn’t look as dramatic when shown next to all the other images. Just as we try to diversify the type of images we shoot, we need to diversify the type of lighting that we look for or create.

But most importantly, this image reflects what I felt being a part of the ceremony and this image is an accurate representation of that moment.