Graphic Design in Toronto: Business Cards

Even though I concentrate heavily on photography these days, I still do the occasional freelance graphic design job for people in Toronto and the GTA looking for logos, business cards, brochures, ads, and even web site design. This particular images is that of a business card and logo I designed for a high end Audio and Video installation company:

Technical Info and Toronto Wedding Photography on Twitter

Since social networking is all the rage these days, I decided to find yet another venue to make the posts from this blog available. This time the medium is Twitter, and as you probably have already noticed, there's a Twitter feed already on the right-side bar. So if you crave instant updates, I might not be that person but I'll try my best to keep the blog updated.

Alien Bees vs. Nikon's SB-900: The Battle Continues

Well, is not really a battle, as each one has their place and time and at Stephanie's and Rene's big day I had to use both. The first and only time that I had to bring the ABs out was for the family and bridal party pictures. This particular situation required quite a bit of power because the couple wanted their images taken under a gazebo on a very bright day (can you say severely back lit?).

The following image was taken with a simple setup of one (1) AB1600 on a medium foldable ocatbox at camera right at 1/2 power triggered via PWs and one (1) AB800 on a 22" beauty dish at camera left at 1/2 power triggered via PWs.



The same setup was used for this larger group image:


By contrast, I just required one (1) SB-900 off camera on a Lumiquest Softbox III set to TTL -0.7 EV and one (1) SB-800 set to TTL 0.0EV positioned across the room (you can see it in the picture). All triggered via Nikon's CLS.

Alien Bees vs. Nikon's SB900: Engagement Session at Toronto's Waterfront with Stephanie and Rene

It's been awhile since I last posted here but I had a few good reasons to keep me away from the computer. First of all, I got married shortly after shooting Angela and Sunny's wedding and then it got real hectic moving out of my place and moving in with my wife. After the dust had settled I had multiple shoots week after week, so I had been slacking off on my blogging duties for the technical aspects of my shots.

Stephanie and Rene's engagement session was long overdue as our schedules didn't coincide for the longest time. I decided to bring as much gear as I could in order to get the shots that I wanted. Little by little I've perfected my "equipment carrying" technique to the point that I can take a Vagabond II, a B1600, a 13' heavy duty light stand, a 22" Beauty Dish or Octabox depending on the location or effect I'm looking for, three (3) SB-800s and one (1) SB-900, two (2) more smaller light stands, two (2) dual purpose umbrellas, Pocket Wizards, Camera body and three lenses all by my lonesome. More often than not, the convenience of the Speedlights wins over the power of the B1600, but there are times where the SB-900 is not enough to overpower the sun.

Here's a clear example:
While I like this frame, it's clearly underexposed in comparison to the background and for a good reason, I was shooting straight into the sun. I had the SB-900 on camera set to Manual and at full power.


I took a few more frames using the Sb-900 but I made sure I had the sun coming from the side, as opposed to trying to overpower it. This made it a lot easier to underexpose the ambient, as seen here.


or here


I still wanted to have a dramatic sunset as a background so it was time for the B1600 to shine, triggered via PWs and set to 1/4 power. Believe it or not, at 1/2 power it was blowing out the highlights for my subjects:

In this image the 22" beauty dish was powered via a Vagabond II and set at camera left at approximately 45 degrees:


Same setups, with closer crops:




As you can see, the B1600 is very good for those times when you need raw wattage. However, when the sun settles and the ambient light starts to disappear, an SB-900 is more than enough to get the job done, as evidenced in this image:

The setup for this one was as simple as it gets: one (1) Sb-900 on a translucent umbrella set to TTL EV -0.3 triggered via CLS positioned at camera left.

Using Strobist Techniques for Tricky Lighting at Weddings

This past Friday (July 3, 2009) I shot a wedding at The Berkeley Church in Toronto. The location is beyond great for wedding photography, as it's an 1800s restored church turned into a banquet hall/event venue. The place where the couple held their wedding ceremony is lined with stained glass windows which created severe backlighting. The challenge was in lighting the couple without having the flash wash out the whole scene and killing the light coming through the windows. After trying a few setups a couple of hours before the actual ceremony, I finally settled on an SB-800 fitted with a HONL Speed Grid. positioned at 25-30 degrees camera right, triggered via Nikon's CLS. Here are a few of the resulting images:

Converting your WordPress site for the Iphone using WPTouch Plugin

I had initially mentioned on this blog a website called Mofuse as a very reliable tool to make your website iPhone and mobile friendly. Well, as good as the Mofuse site is, I was restricted in the number of pages available for viewing other than the posts. That meant that potential clients could only read my posts but couldn't get any other info about the company and pricing info. Enter the WPTouch plugin for Wordpress, which ports your entire Blog, including additional pages for contact info and pricing, to a mobile friendly presentation.

Check them out, they are definitely worth a try.

Classic Black & White Portraits in Toronto

The countdown is on for our own wedding next Friday, July 10. This past Sunday I had the chance to take a few shots of my future bride, Miriam, and her family. Thanks to the amazing features found in Nik's Silver Efex Pro I was able to process the RAW file for this image to get the initial B&W tones, which was culminated with good old dodging and burning in Photoshop CS4 to give the various gradations of light on Miriam's face.