Tuesday Tip: Flash or No Flash

Today’s tip is really just something to consider. Recently I photographed a Victory Campus Ministry Meeting. VCM is a college outreach of my church, Greenville Christian Fellowship. For their meeting they created something similar to a concert environment for worship. There were cool lights of different colors and even some fog. After photographing this event I realized that it is really easy to get caught up in what you have recently learned. I started out in wedding photography about a year and a half ago and it has been a big learning experience in terms of lighting different spaces using a flash or multiple flash units. Before wedding photography I normally used a studio setup to do my art work. So, now that I have been using flash to light interior spaces, sometimes you forget that there are instances where you just don’t need it and it would be much more interesting without it. I think I get caught up in “filling the room” and in making it an even distribution of light that I tend to forget how interesting available light can be in certain situations. I began the night making exposures, that I wasn’t really happy with. I really wanted to capture the atmosphere and it just wasn’t happening with the flash, so I just turned it off, bumped up the ISO and opened my aperture and started shooting. I liked the available light much better. I did bring a bit of flash back in by bouncing off a wall behind me and dialing down the power on the flash so it wasn’t as intense.

Tuesday Tip: Jacques says…Merry Christmas

Today’s Tuesday Tip is a bit off subject. But, I wanted to share this…

Jacques is famous! Well, sort of. A while back Karen Roberts of New York City contacted me about using a Christmas Card image of Jacques (my French Bulldog) she found online. She wanted to use the image in a book she was creating about wacky Christmas Cards. Karen sent me a copy in the mail this week, we were super excited to get it. It is titled: “Merry Christmas From…150 Christmas Cards You Wished You’d Received.” What I love about the book, besides all the different Christmas Cards, is that 50% of the proceeds go to Smile Train, “an organization dedicated to providing free cleft lip and palate surgery to millions of children in the developing world” (exert taken from book). To find out more information about the book you can go to www.merrychristmasfrom.com Or if you think you might like to purchase one you can find it on Amazon. I let Jacques sniff his book out to see what he thought. 

Mike and Summer….

Mike and Summer had quite a beautiful wedding. Lots of pretty water and pretty weather…I even got to ride in boat! Congratulations Mike and Summer…thanks for letting me be a part of your big day. I wish you guys the best!

Just for fun…

Ashley’s Bridal Portraits

Congratulations to Corey and Ashley who were married this past weekend. Stay tuned for images from their wedding! She is yet another beautiful bride. As I was editing her images I knew she reminded me of someone, maybe a celebrity, and then I finally figured it out. She reminds me of Audrey Hepburn….a classic beauty!! Here are some of my favorites:

Tuesday Tip: Vignette in ACR

A compositional technique to keep the viewer’s eye contained within your frame is to make sure your corners are “burned” in or dark enough to contain the image. That is one thing my students hear constantly when they come out of the darkroom: “your corners are a bit light, you need to burn them in a bit more.” There is a slight and subtle way to do this in Adobe Camera RAW. It is a global adjustment (all over), so you may have to do some local adjustments (isolated areas) in Photoshop later. After you have made your basic exposure and temperature adjustments, click on the “Lens” tab. Under vignette, simply drag the slider to the left to get the desired amount. Every image is not the same, so this will require different values for each image. You can also change the midpoint as well. This will adjust where the amount will center around or start from. Here is a look at the dialog box as well as a before and after image (only adjustments in Adobe Camera RAW have been made to these images):

Before Vignette Adjustment (changes are very subtle):

A little TLC in Photoshop:

Mike + Summer…just a quick view

Congratulations to Mike and Summer! I recently had the opportunity to photograph their wedding in the charming little town of Edenton, NC. I just wanted to post just a few for a sneak preview…more to come:

Summer’s Bridal Portraits

Summer and Mike are married, yeah!! I photographed their wedding in Edenton this past weekend so stay tuned for some images from their wedding. I met Summer in her charming home town of Edenton to do some portraits. Summer is quite the glamorous bride…beautiful! Here are some of my favorites from our session:

Tuesday Tip: Get the Time Right!

This is a follow up from last week’s tip. Last week, I suggested using Adobe Bridge to help organize your images from a shoot. In order to use the Sort by Date Created feature in Bridge it is a great idea to make sure that the clock in your camera (or more importantly cameras) is set to the right time. This will not put the time and date on your images like some point and shoot cameras, it just embeds the time in the metadata of your file. If you have one camera set to 7am and the other set to 6pm and you are shooting at the same time, that will be annoying if you try to use the Sort by Date Created feature. Also, if you have a second shooter, make sure their camera(s) are synchronized to yours.

Scott + Stephanie….here they are:

Yeah! Scott and Stephanie, I wish you guys the best….what a great wedding! Thanks to my second shooter for the day, Heather Sullivan…she did an awesome job! Here are some of my favorites from Scott and Stephanie’s wedding…there are a lot, I just couldn’t make up my mind:

The Ceremony Site: The Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse

The flowers were done by The Embellishers….very cool!

I had some stiff competition…

Scott + Stephanie….just a glimpse

Congratulations to Scott and Stephanie! They were married on September 13th in Manteo. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding. I wanted to share a quick sneak peak of what is to come…we had such a beautiful setting for this shot…and it was at twinkle time too!