Flash Freeze

I created this image at Erin & Jason's wedding last week. Everyone was marveling at how dramatic the moon was that night. It didn't take much prodding to get Erin & Jason to join me for a daring adventure to capture that drama in an image of them! :-)

Working with a minimalist amount of gear, I had my two Nikon D3's, each fitted with a Nikon SB-900, plus one remote SB-800 on a Bogen 3333 stand I had used earlier for group photos.

I set the SB-800 off on camera right, zoomed to 70mm to concentrate the beam of light on them. I took the SB-900 off one camera and flipped it to remote mode (I LOVE how quickly you can switch modes on the 900 vs. the 800). This one was placed behind the couple for a rim light. I positioned Erin & Jason so that the street light in the distance was behind her veil. And there's some landscape lighting on the famous Pineapple Fountain I liked.

To pick up the ambient light of the moon, street lamp, and landscape lighting, I used ISO 1600, f2.8. Even so, I was at 1/30th of a second. I was using the D3 with the 70-200. I had no tripod with me. So you're probably thinking at that slow a shutter speed, this image is going to be blurry, right? Well, by carefully placing Erin & Jason so that all the ambient light was behind them, the couple was pretty much pitch black at this point. The only light hitting them from the camera side was the off-camera SB-800. This is VERY IMPORTANT! By doing this, I am essentially using the high-speed burst of light from the strobe to FREEZE them in place. At this point, the shutter speed of the camera is only affecting the ambient light, it has nothing to do with the exposure of the main subject. So even hand-holding that long lens at such a slow shutter speed, Erin & Jason are as sharp as a tack!

And that's how you use Flash Freeze to save your behind when you don't have a tripod with you! :-)

Blue Sky Magic

I've had a lot of folks asking me how I get my dramatic "BLUE SKY" effect. It's a technique I learned from the legendary Sports Illustrated photographer, Dave Black. And I recently saw a couple shots by Joe McNally with this technique as well.

Take this scene for instance. It was a dreary, overcast, hazy, UGLY GRAY evening sky. Who wants a BLAH background like that, right? So to make it POP, you have to set your camera's White Balance Setting to a cooler tone. You can set it on the Tungsten setting if you like. I prefer to use the Kelvin Scale since it gives me more control. I often use 4,000K, which is a little warmer than full Tungsten. Now changing this in the camera means it's a GLOBAL change...everything in your scene will be blue, including my subject.

So to get the right color back on my subject I place a WARMING gel over my flash and light him separately. I underexpose the sky by about a stop and a half to make this easier and to give the background more saturation. I have an SB-800 just out of camera frame on the left, zoomed to 105mm, with a full CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel, at about 1/4 power. I'm controlling this flash through Nikon's CLS system (I didn't have my Radio Poppers on me at the time). The flash on my D3 is an SB-900, pointed strait at the sensor on the remote flash. All it's doing is telling the SB-800 what to do and when to do it. I was shooting from across the street with the 70-200 to frame the subject with just enough of the beautiful Spanish Moss covered oak tree overhead. This was shot last week at Legend Oaks Golf Course.

As you can see, legendary golfer Bill Kalback now has a nice warm shaft of setting sunlight on him, while the gray sky in the background shifts to a complimenting blue twilight tone. Next time you're faced with an ugly sky, give this a try!

Joe McNally on the D3

Joe McNally has been an inspiration for me over the years. He was in town recently, so I thought I'd share this video with his thoughts on the truly amazing Nikon D3, our camera of choice as professionals...