Technique Tuesday: You Light Up My Life; One More Time!

Good Morning Everybody,

Yesterday was the first day of the WPPI trade show and it was humongous! This year's show is covering two large halls and one more room with table top displays from even more vendors.  Even though we spent several hours in the trade show, we still only managed to see about 1/3 of it.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  These kind of trade shows are a great place to learn. Why? Because of all the booth demos going on at so many booths.  These mini sessions feature photographers that are tops in their field and that are making a difference in the profession.  You could spend an entire day just watching the booth presentations and come away with a wealth of knowledge.

And speaking of booth presentations I did one for my good buddies at Westcott yesterday.  We had a huge crowd blocking the aisles for about 30 minutes and everyone was having an interesting time. Today’s Technique Tuesday speaks to what I showed at the Westcott booth yesterday.  I hope you enjoy it.

You Light Up My Life – One More Time!

In my presentation I demonstrated just how easy it is to control nasty light light on the wedding day.  What kind of light is nasty light? How about the burning, bright, high-in-the-sky sunlight you get on those hot July weddings. How do you work with that kind of light?  For me, it’s all about translucent umbrellas and reflecting panels.

It’s all about playing photon ricochet with the light. For me that means always putting a DIRECTIONAL light of my subject creating a highlight next to a shadow to create the detail, depth, and dimension on the subject.  That is what makes a big difference in wedding and portrait images from everyone else with a camera and that’s what sets you apart from the competition.

Make life easy when shooting outdoors in bright sunlight. Outside I
use a lot of off camera flash, but in a bright light situation,
nothing beats the lighting technique I'll show you in this video.
The results are just beautiful. This video is a bit long but jammed packed with good lighting info so don’t miss a minute of it.  Hit the PLAY button and enjoy the show. –David

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Hey gang, that’s it for me today.  We’re catching another program or two and walking the show floors again.  Hopefully we’ll get through another 1/3 of it today;~)

Tonight we catch up with our buddies at Peachpit and later in the evening we’re visiting with our friends at Animoto.  The Animoto party is called to be very casual with soft, relaxing music, and get this – masseuses available to massage the stresses and strains of the day away! Who knows what time I’ll see you tomorrow ;~)

Have a great day yourself.

Your soon to be relaxed and stress free blogger, David