Amsterdam Workshop, Flash bouncing Demo

Todays workshop we had a cool dark sky in the background, This is cool because I wanted to overpower the ambient light at 3:30pm in the afternoon, in broad daylight(this is best when its cloudy), I was able to use my 580 exII and bounce into a 4x6 reflector, then I had another sunbounce mini (silver 3x4') bouncing the light from the 1st flash back to fill the shadows. I wanted to have my bride walking so the wind would be blowing through her hair and I was able to do that with my 2 assistants walking along with us as a unit, all at the same speed. Setting were pretty simple:

85mm, 50 iso, 1/200th, @ f /4.5

In this second shot I wanted dramatic lighting coming in from each side and I wanted even more light to make the sky darker, the only way to do that was to have more flash power, two flashes worked perfect, same sunbounces on each side as before, yet my settings were pretty much the same with exception to the f-stop:

85mm, 50 iso, 1/200th, @ f / 7.1.

Amsterdam Tour

Day 3, and I feel totally warmed up now. The people in the Netherlands are amazingly friendly. One of my favorite things is to hear the photographers talk about the industry in their country. I LOVE hearing the differences & similarities, and then comparing to figure out how they match up in America. The topic of the quantity of photographers increasing every month as competition came up. its pretty easy to get into photography came up a lot. As I was sharing with them, creating great images is one key to giving a client something original. The trend today for people to shy away from “traditional or cookie cutter images” or photos that do not really represent who the couple is. Images that years later will show more of their character, and less of traditional poses. I believe that what we as photographers should create art that makes our clients proud of themselves. Not only that, our character of who we are, separates us from other photographers more than the gear we use, or the products we buy. And our reputation and the consistency of the choices we make, makes us who we are. That is important not only in our business, but our personal lives. Thanks to everyone coming to the workshops, it’s a blessing to share with you guys...

Thanks to Peter Geller for shooting these Shots

Here we are demonstrating with two relfectors, how to overpower the sun with no flash. I am addicted to these reflectors, as they have changed the way I photograph, and enhanced my images with sweet warm light. Tech Details : ISO=100, Aperture=2.8 Lens=24-70, Shutter speed 1/1000 sec.

So many great questions were asked about all the possible problems of light and how to overcome them.