Wedding sparklers

I recently shot a wedding, and as it's that time of year the couple left the reception in the dark. The parents had a plan to use sparklers to form an archway for the happy couple to leave through. I didn't know that this was planned so I had to act fast... which I did.

Fortunately, the sparklers were huge and would be mistaken for RPGs in the middle-east. And because they were huge they would sparkle for three or four minutes which was more than ample for the photography I had in mind.

I grabbed my tripod, camera and SB-600 flash and made a dash for the final part of the archway (which disintegrated in chaos within a few seconds) so I could shoot through the sparkle. I set the camera to shutter priority at 1/15th of a second and changed the flash to use rear curtain. I'll explain that in a moment as it wouldn't do any harm, and could help with what I wanted to accomplish.

Without warning (my shouts were unheard in the commotion), the bride and groom appeared walking through the archway of flames trying to smile and not be blinded by errant sparks. I started shooting without the flash and quickly check the results on the camera's display... which were okay but didn't show the movement that I was looking for... so I dropped the exposure to 1/4 second and shot again. The results had movement, but the camera was firmly mounted on the tripod so no camera shake.

When the couple got within ten feet of me I signaled them to stop and turned the flash on using 2 stops under indicated for TTL flash and took a test shot... not bad so I changed the camera setting to manual after observing the "correct" exposure and started playing with the (then) manual flash output to get as many shots as I could (8) before the sparklers died or the couple were blinded, and I could get the result I wanted. Which I did.

FYI, the rear curtain flash make the flash fire at the end of the exposure. It's particularly useful when photographing vehicles as it gives the illusion of a car with light steaks behind it. If you use standard flash settings, the streaks will be traveling "forward" and it will look odd.

The missing link

I have been working for a while to solve a inscrutable problem, and it is not fixed. It cost me just $3 plus $3 shipping. I bought 2 for $10 delivered. Here's the problem, and how this $3 device fixed it.

For some time I've used studio strobes to light the background when I shoot weddings. My problem is that if I shot into the strobes to back-light the subject - usually the bride and veil, then the subject's face was in shadow so it took a lot of effort to bring out the detail in post processing.

My plan was to use an on-camera strobe set to minimal output so I could brighten the shadows, and leave the big strobes to handle the background. The problem was that my wireless trigger caused the strobe to lockup, as the Nikon SB-800 couldn't deal with the trigger. FYI, the SB-800 has a jack to facilitate using accessory strobes, but it doesn't work as advertised as once you switch the camera off the strobe will freeze powered up and you'd have to take the batteries out to reset it. During a wedding, you don't have time to mess around for this. Enter the solution...

I bought an accessory hot shoe which fitted between the strobe and the camera. In that way, when the shutter sends an electrical pulse to fire the on camera flash, it must pass through the $3 doo-dad. And that doo-dad has three accessory sockets to allow for multiple devices - a wireless trigger to be connected to one of them with two left over. Now I don't have any problems, although I have to shoot on manual which isn't a problem. The SB-800 works fine, as does my SB-600s. The wireless trigger works every time and nothing locks up. Problem solved.

Paper or plastic

No, I'm not recommending which type of bag to carry your groceries around, but I am making a change in my studio and will save you time and money if you follow these recommendations.

I recently attended an excellent fashion photography class. In addtion to learing some interesting lighting, and lighting ration techniques I paid close attention to the backgrounds used. For a long time I have used standard linen/muslins. While they allow nice graphics if you like that, they aren't that good in the standard plain flavors - white, black, grey, etc. While I just dealt with the wrinkle problem by moving the model well away from the background and using a large aperture to throw the background out of focus I never pursued an alternative until now.

I found that the class paper background were far superior to mine as they were clean, unwrinkled, fairly inexpensive and produced very nice unobtrsive results. So I plan to change soon. Take my advise, and don't bother with the plain muslins. They aren't worth the time and effort.

The V spread

When you photograph a wedding reception, particularly at this time of year it often gets dark very quickly. As such, it becomes more and more difficult to produce good images as the background soon turns black and the dancing and other events begin. You can use this to your advantage using what I call the V Spread. It's simply using two studio strobes on tall light stands in an approximate V surrounding the dance floor or where the garter or bouquet toss takes place.

If you position yourself between the V, you can take many fun images and produce great edgy shots. Focus on the newly married couple and you'll probably get one really good image out of every five clicks. You'll need a reliable wireless trigger' you'll need to turn off the strobes' optical senors or put some tape over them and you'll have to trustauto-focus. Other than that click away and blind everyone with the colossal flashes that emanate from the strobes. :) It gets to be like a disco from way back.

Wireless flash triggers

Other than discussing the merits of various wireless fash triggers, I thought I'd post a note as to why they are so valuable.

Imaging a situation that you want to add a little edginess, or separation of your subject to your background to your photograph. How do you do it?

The standard method is to have the subject face the camera with the sun over their shoulders. In this way the sun creates some nice rim lights. But if you're indoors or its cloudy, or the background doesn't work for you using this simple technique, you can use a remotely triggered flash to simulate this effect.

There are three methods to trigger the remote flash - one, use a long flash cable, two, use an optical trigger, and three, use a wireless trigger. I like the third option.

Although a physical wire works well, you always run the risk of falling over it, or it not being long enough as it has to be positioned where the lens can't see it.

An optical trigger also works well, but works best in a small room where your use an on camera flash to pulse light at the remote sensor and fire the remote flash. If the sensor is hidden or too far away, or outside it probably won't work.

Which brings me to the wireless triggers. They use a part of the wireless spectrum to send a fire command from the transmitter on the camera to the receiver attached to the flash. They are both reliable and have a very long range. An expensive trigger can fire a flash over 1/2 mile away. Don't ask me why you'd want to do that, but they do have the bragging rights.

Finally, you'll need to buy some adapters so that your flash can use a receiver and the camera, transmit assuming that neither have that factory installed feature. One word of warning. I've bought over 10 triggers through the years, and found that the cheap eBay Chinese products either don't work, only work within a few feet of the camera and are unreliable. You can get reliable triggers for $125 a pair and up. Stick with those.

Tales from the dark (underexposed) side

If you are shooting weddings, you're shooting the dress. Period. In order of importance, you have the bride, her dress and then her mother. If you get them right, you've done a nice job. Be sure to get a few of the groom, but don't worry. As long as he shows up, sober he's fine.

In all seriousness, shooting a bride and groom together is a problem. No sensor in daylight can accommodate both the white dress details and the black tux. So what to do?

Expose for the dress, use RAW files exclusively and sort it out in post-production. It's much better to have a solid black tux, than screw up and overexpose the dress so all of the expensive detail is lost. On occasion, that's fine but as a rule of thumb, the bride will examine your images for dress details, and that will be her make or break position on how well you did. If you err slightly to underexposure; you can tell from the histogram then you'll be okay.

I love to use big, studio strobes at weddings. I think that I'm the only one, but that's fine. Someone has to be right. As long as you have a white ceiling, preferably 12-15 feet high, and white walls if possible you can position a big strobe in the corner and shoot the light out towards the room ceiling center and you'll get very nice soft directional light. You can add a small 1/128th manual setting on the on-camera strobe for fill to taste and you'll do very well. If you shoot against the light, or farther down the room, just change the manual to 1/64th or similar and view the LCD for results. Of course, the strobe and wireless trigger must work together.

How to avoid the “Ooops”

I had the occasion a few days ago to take some open air bridal portraits of a wonderful woman, of whom her wedding I’ll be photographing in a few weeks.

As I am convinced that preperaton is key to a good night’s sleep I brought a variety of redundant equipment to the shoot. And I needed it.

All went well, except that my wireless flash trigger - the CyberSync trigger stopped working. I thought that it may have shorted, but I couldn’t open the transmitter case without damaging it. Having thought ahead, I hunted through my case and found not only a long cable to connect the studio flash to the camera, but also the camera adapter to make it work. It turned out that the transmitter just needed the battery removed and replaced, but the cable saved the day.

The moral of this story is to think through each shoot and bring enough equipment that you can bypass a disaster.