slrlounge.com
Wedding photographer duo Lin & Jirsa have a new post up on SLR Lounge, showing you how they got a dramatic shot of a couple in a wine room.
The post shows you the shot both before and after they added lighting, so you can really see just how much it added to the atmosphere and mood of the final photo. In the lighting diagram you can see that they used two strobes, triggered by two PocketWizard Plus® II radios, outside the room and behind the subject and one tungsten video light in front. The contrasting color temperatures from the mixed light sources, in addition to the fisheye lens, give the photo style to spare.
For details, check out the post on SLR Lounge. See more photos from the shoot on Lin & Jirsa.
All images in this post are used with permission and ©SLR Lounge, all rights reserved; story is ©Sekonic. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.
joemcnally.com
Award-winning photographer and fine art printmaker Corinne Alavekios was recently chosen by Epson to be featured in their “Finish Strong” ad campaign.
Inspired by the natural beauty and light of the Pacific Northwest where she lives, Alavekios took her shoot out of the studio and into a cold—and deep—river, where Joe McNally was on hand to document the process.
They used a large, soft light source to keep the natural look of the light fired by PocketWizard radios. When you and your crew are chest-deep in water, it’s a pretty good idea to go wireless.
Check out both Joe’s and Corinne’s account of the shoot on their blogs. If you ever wanted to see Joe McNally in waders, now’s your chance!
All images in this post are used with permission and ©Joe McNally, all rights reserved; story is ©PocketWizard. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.
© 2012 Stephanie Zettl
Wedding and portrait photographer Stephanie Zettl, author of The Nikon Speedlight Handbook, strives to tell stories through her photos. In this post, Stephanie shares some behind the scenes details from a senior portrait session, giving us the how and why of how she got the shot.
Good portrait photography tells a story about your subject. Both your location and your style of lighting will have an impact on the story you tell and the way you tell it. Being a good portrait photographer requires you to make conscious decisions about your lighting to tell a story properly.
Mandy is a talented, intelligent, and accomplished young lady with big dreams. When she showed up for her senior portrait session with a beautiful red dress and a pair of black pointe ballet shoes, I knew I wanted to highlight her elegant form and still give her a sense of strength and power. An old vacant church with large stone pillars proved the perfect backdrop to convey that sense of strength.
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gregvojtko.com
While working at Naval Sea Systems Command in California, photographer Greg Vojtko had the opportunity to photograph engineer Dan King, designer of laser calibration standards.
Instead of taking a traditional headshot and calling it a day, Greg created a dramatic portrait of a man at work. In a darkened room, Greg set up two speedlights to illuminate his subject, triggered them with PocketWizard radio triggers, then left his shutter open while filling the room with smoke to burn in the light from the lasers.
He writes, “While the phrase ‘Smoke and mirrors,’ is often considered a metaphor for a deceptive or fraudulent explanation, in this case served to bring a portrait to life.”
Read the full post and see more of his work on his site.
All images and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Greg Vojtko, all rights reserved; story is ©PocketWizard. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or re-post elsewhere without written permission.
© 2012 Olivier Allamand
Olivier Allamand won a silver medal skiing in the 1992 Winter Olympics. When he photographs sports, he’s photographing what he knows. His images of BMX riders are both powerful and delicate at once, using a lighting style often found in photographs of dancers. The effect, as you can see, is pretty awesome. His account of a recent shoot follows.
On this shoot, I photographed Jeremy Brosset, one of the best flat BMX riders in France. For the location, I looked for an abandoned factory in order to create a moody atmosphere.
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Rod Cross © 2012 Chris Crisman
Chris Crisman continues his behind the scenes coverage of the Heroes of Conservation project with Rod Cross, president of Pennsylvania’s Falling Spring Chapter of Trout Unlimited.
The first shoot took place early in the morning, but on dry land. For this next shoot, Chris takes to the water to capture a portrait of Rod, a fisherman who has raised over one million dollars in grants to protect Pennsylvania’s waterways.
As with the first shoot, Chris masterfully blends the ambient light and strobe, using a small softbox with a grid to light Rod, while taking advantage of the dappled afternoon sunlight.
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Direct from the hidden, snowy mountain lair laboratories where the magical engineering of PocketWizard technologies takes place, we were sent the following photo and story…
Occasionally our tools get turned on us. Such is the case with our Tech Support Manager, Patrick Clow, who leads a double life of intrigue in the local theater world. By day, he can be found managing our tech support team and finding solutions to the challenges of some of the world’s top photographers. By night, he might be playing the role of just about any character you can imagine – in this case the devious and “creepy” Dr. Moreau in a campy original musical reimagining of the H.G. Wells classic, Pre-Code style.
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The popular photography blog FStoppers recently featured a behind the scenes video by CEB Imagery photographer C. Edward Brice of a dance powder shoot.
While many behind the scenes videos are merely “music videos of the photographer shooting,” CEB Imagery’s video includes a large amount of detailed and technical info on the shoot and doesn’t shy away from showing mistakes (and how to get past them).
The resulting images show a strong sense of movement and are somewhat ethereal in feeling. They were shot using three 580EX II’s and triggered by PocketWizard MiniTT1’s and FlexTT5’s.
Check out the video above, the post on FStoppers, and more of CEB Imagery’s work. Connect with CEB Imagery on 500px, and Flickr.
All images and videos in this post are used with permission and ©CEB Imagery, all rights reserved; story is ©PocketWizard. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or re-post elsewhere without written permission.
Viridian © 2012 Ed McGowan
A designer by trade, Ed McGowan picked up his studio’s DSLR in 2008 and has been hooked ever since. His delicately composed shots lie right at the intersection between design and photography. Below, his account of Viridian.
The idea for this portrait came the day before when some co-workers and I were exploring a little creek down the road. The creek itself was not too impressive, but I started to think of ways to disguise and transform it with the use of some clever photography. One of the ways was to use short DOF by shooting a wider aperture. The issue with shooting wide apertures is it tends to let in too much light. To counter this I used a ND filter. Since I knew we would be shooting in the later afternoon and the sun would be at the subjects back, I decided to use off-camera lighting to light the subject.
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© 2012 Tom Bol
We don’t know what possessed photographer Tom Bol to give his speedlights the cement shoe treatment and sink them to the bottom of a river, but we do know that experimentation is always a good excuse to do something just a little bit crazy.
He starts out by giving the speedlights just a taste of what awaits them, by putting them in ziplock bags and placing them in the bow, stern, and middle of the kayak that his wife, Cree, paddles out into the middle of the river. “In order for these flashes to fire,” he writes, “I used PocketWizard FlexTT5’s as receivers on all the SB900s. The radio signal triggers flashes in the boat, no line of sight needed.” Using an AC3 ZoneController, Tom sets all the flashes to group A and fires away. The result is a glowing, yellow kayak.
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