Stanley Nov Photography

I’ve been asked many times what type of equipment I use and my preferred answer is that isn’t the lens that counts but the photographer, however, professional grade cameras and lenses helps a lot. Here’s what photo equipment I usually bring to client photo sessions.

• Cameras
• Canon 5D Body with Vertical Grip
• Canon 5D Body (2nd body is used as backup)
• Flashes
• Canon Speedlite 580EX
• Canon Speedlite 430EX 
• Lenses
• Canon 24-70 2.8 Lens
• Canon 70-200 2.8 IS Lens
• Canon 50 1.4 Lens
• Canon 15 2.8 Lens
• Canon 100 2.8 Macro Lens
• Canon 17-40  Lens
• Batteries, Cables, Chargers, Card Reader, External HD for backups  ….

What equipment do you use? What are you favorite lenses and why?

WB – White Balance is an art unknown to many beginning and amateur photographers. Now a days digital cameras are advanced enough to make “best guess estimate” on what kind of light is being captured and adjust the picture accordingly. Below is an example of the “best guess estimate” taken of my wife at a supermarket yesterday

As you can see, she’s holding a set of grey cards, you can also tell the image has a yellow tint. These cards are used as reference points to set the correct WB during post processing (can also be set as “Custom WB” in the camera itself). The resulting image is now properly white balanced.

In Adobe Lightroom, use the “White Balance Selector” tool to pick a neutral shade (a.k.a the grey card).

Once the ‘calibration image’ is captured for a given light environment, you can use it to color correct the remaining images in that batch.

Recently I had the honor to photograph a couple in their last trimester, practically several week before the delivery date. These photoshoots precede infant and child photoshoots and most couples miss the opportunity to document this unique stage of their life.

Naturally, most of the photographs are intimate and private (hence I fully transfer the ownership of these images to my clients) but here’s one I was allowed to share with you.

Why, why would you use a flash in the middle of a bright day? One answer would be to use the flash to fill the subject especially if the model (in this case) is located in the shade but that isn’t the case here (that case will be covered in my next post).

This post is dedicated to creating interesting and vivid effect that force the viewer to engage the picture as one would engage a puzzle. I wanted to create a setting where the eye is capturing a scene that the brain doesn’t consider as ‘normal’ or ‘usual’. As my programmer friends would say “something doesn’t compile”

This picture has the quality I’m describing above. As the model is looking up at the sun (presumably) her face is evenly lit. The unusual element is the shadow inside the umbrella. Read below the image for a technical explanation.

To achieve the following shadow control I chose to use an external flash unit with a remote trigger. The modification I’ve made to my EX580 really came in handy. I’ve positioned the flash about 2 feet of the ground (standing on tripod), pointing at the model from the left. Once the flash was in place, the challenge arouse around getting the correct exposure. I don’t own a light meter hence I had to resort to trial and error. Thankfully, after working with a wonderful photographer Mark Tselner of PhotoFXStudio.com, I’ve learned a thing or two about light control. The trick is to shoot in manual mode (M) and underexpose the subject by about 2 f stops. This will create the drastic shadows behind the model and give us room to create secular highlights to create that 3D effect we aspire to have. Once the exposure was set correctly on the camera, I’ve played around with the power setting on the flash to get the proper light conditions. I ended up using 1/16th power with a head diffuser.

Let me know what you think. Your comments are always welcome.