Today I and my assistant shooter shot some pictures at the Toronto National Bridal Show, and I think it might be useful for me to share a few things about that shoot. As you know, I like to share what I do and how, so that you can learn more quickly than I did. Photography is part art, part trade, part technical skill, and all three swirl around each other like a three-core DNA string.

Today was part portraits, like this of TV wedding organizer Jane Dayus-Hinch:

Those studio-type portraits were the easy ones. All I needed was:

1. Camera with 24-70 and 70-200 lens (the latter preferred but only if I have space);
2. Pocket wizard on the camera;
3. A portable light stand (yeah, we carried it through the exhibition hall);
4. Bracket for mounting umbrella and flash onto light stand;
5. Flash;
6. Shoot-through umbrella;
7. Another pocketwizard on the flash side;
8. Cable between flash and pocketwizard.
9. Flash set to manual, 1/4 power
10. Camera set to manual, 400-800 ISO, 1/60th sec, f/4 when mixing ambient light with the flash; 1/125th sec at 800 ISO and f/5.6 when not: play with the settings until the right balance between background and flash is obtained.

Those are simple, because you turn the subject to the umbrella, ensure the brim does not catch too much light, and once you have the exposure right, keep the distance the same as in other shots and every subsequent picture is good – guaranteed.

Now you can concentrate on composition, expressions, and so on.

But the rest was different. Some involved only ambient light:

For these, it is important to get a fast enough shutter, and shoot when the right light is on the subject. And use high ISO – I went to 1600. And here I used something I seldom do, namely a combination of:

• AI Servo (Nikon: “AF-C”) focus;
• The camera chooses the focus area, not me!

That is anathema to me normally, especially the latter; but here I found the subjects moved just a little too fast for me to set the focus point accurately, since I was shooting at f/2.8 with a long lens, meaning critical depth of field/focus. So I thought quickly and after a couple of shots set the above settings. Razor sharp shots as a result. Dogma should never get in the way of results.

Finally, some pics needed ambient light and a little fill flash:

For that, turn the fill flash level down – I used minus 3 stops flash compensation.

So: many different shooting situations today. A great way to do a Sunday, since photographers need to keep in practice just like airline pilots do. I am happy with my work, and if you learn the basics (do get the e-books: http://www.michaelwillems.ca/Buy_Books.html), so will you be with your work!

Today’s post is once again a “a day in the life of” post. The photo of the day one I took today of model Khoral, who is of course totally gorgeous, but much more importantly, who is both intelligent and a very nice person. Those are rare qualities: more rare than good abs (or whatever physical attribute you wish to name).

And as you see, she has dress sense too.

But how did I shoot her?

I shot her like this, in the studio:

The details:

• The main light was a strobe with a softbox, mounted on a boom. It was fired by a Pocketwizard.
• The hair light (needed for Shampooey Goodness™) was a strobe with a snoot. It was fired by using its cell (i.e. when the main flash fires, it senses the flash, and fires too).
• No fill light was used, but in some pictures I used a white reflector as the fill light.
• The background was a black paper roll. Black is good: it eats up stray light and given enough flash power, I can make it any colour I want, since it does not pick up white light from the other flashes.
• The background light was a speedlite (a Canon 580EX), also fired by a Pocketwizard. It was fitted with a purple Honlphoto gel stuck on top of a 1/4″ Honlphoto grid (the gel colours the light; the grid restricts it to a small area to produce that nice oval with dropoff).
• The camera was a 1Dx with a 70-200m lens. The longer the lens, the less distorted and more flattering the pictures.
• Why the purple gel? This was a key decision. Her clothes were extremely colourful, and I had to choose a colour that matched. Purple was a good choice.
• The camera was, of course, set to studio settings: 100 ISO, f/8, 1/125th second. You can finess this. For instance, if you have insufficient light you can either turn up the light, or turn up the ISO, or turn down the f-number. (Not the shutter speed. Why? Read the flash manual).

And one last one, one that shows the model’s genuine smile – an asset much greater than other assets people can have. No, models do not always need to look grumpy.

(You will see that once again, I used a fan for some of the shots, since she has longish hair).

One more word. Was this all done in camera? Yes, with a few exceptions. Slight exposure and white balance changes in post production (for which I use Adobe Lightroom) are OK: as long as they are slight, and could not have been done in camera. Skin blemish fixes are fine – but this model has almost perfect skin, so little needed to be done. Removing the odd stray hair? Fine. A little vignetting in post is fine too. Cropping and rotating, ditto. And I made the pink cushion into a red cushion (using the Lightroom masking tool and its colour setting). But these photos were mainly done in camera. You need to learn to do it in camera if you wish to call yourself a photographer. But even when you are, do realize that every ophoto needs a little TLC in post until you can call it “done”.

I was going to shoot some waterfall pictures yesterday. Alas: one park (Hilton Falls in Milton, Ontario) had its trails closed because of downed power lines and trees (which I discovered after paying the $14 fee, thanks, Halton Conservation), and the other waterfall, Albion Falls in Hamilton, Ontario, had its access routes closed also, but permanently, because of the danger. I had wide angle pictures in mind, but from above, which is all I could get to, they are not what I wanted, exactly. You will forgive me for that and just look at Albion Falls:

Imagine it is about minus infinity Celsius (a wicked cold wind, plus way below freezing), which is why my companion and I took only a few shots. Groan, that was freezing. I had to stop when my ears froze – literally, I felt ice inside my ear.

Now, the shot. How did I decide on settings?

I wanted a slow shutter, so I started with 100 ISO and f/16. I try to avoid apertures smaller than f/16: any larger f-number and the images tend to get a little less sharp. That would have given me a shutter speed of perhaps around a second at most: not long enough. So I used the variable ND filter, set to a dark setting, to get to 20 seconds.

And on the long lens, the 70-200, I used a polarizer, since it is all I had. That cut almost two stops from teh light, so I got to 5 seconds. Here’s one taken with that long lens:

(See the large version on my Flickr stream).

What do you need to watch out for when doing these shots: Mainly, motion.

• Avoid moving the camera while pressing the shutter. This is worse with shutter speeds between, say, 1/15th and 2 seconds (shorter and there is no time for camera shake; longer and the little shaking will disappear compared to the rest of the exposure).
• I had a tripod, of course, but it was too cold to go back to the car to get the sandbag I would have liked to hang from the bottom to stabilize it. So the tripod moved just a tad in the strong wind. This is worse with longer lenses, and much less noticeable with a wide angle lens.
• The viewing platform itself moved a little, leading to a little shake too.
• And finally: trees move in the wind over the course of a long exposure.

So of my ten pictures, three were good and sharp. Which is about what I had hoped for. Keep this in mind when shooting waterfall pictures!

And finally, here is a model shot at the same waterfall, from 2012. Just so you seee Canada is not always cold.

I cannot wait until it is summer again.

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Camera technique? Composition? Flash techniques? Specific situations?  I explain it all in my e-books. PDF files for viewing on computer, phone or tablet. Get them here.