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Go “Behind The Lens” with Brett Florens’ Photography iPad App

by Hannah Gal on November 7, 2011 · 13 comments

BehindtheLens AppNetframes’ “Behind the Lens with Brett Florens” app for iPad and iPhone takes us on an engaging wedding day shoot with top photographer Brett Florens. We follow this skilled professional as he guides us through the entire day, from arrival at the groom’s house and the couple’s preparation, to bridal and outdoor portraits, the church, reception, first dance, cake cutting, and more.

The app’s greatest strength is the comprehensive insight it provides into the hectic day. As we follow the admirably calm Brett from one setting to another, he shares his expert choices of equipment, exposure, wedding day proceedings, photographer’s conduct on the day, subject lighting, and pose. There are countless tips for every aspect of wedding photography, including constructive use of time on the day, building rapport with the couple, and tackling lighting challenges that arise. Coupled with the gorgeous resulting images, this information amounts to a priceless and highly-effective photography lesson.

Behind Brett’s masterful presentation hides an astounding amount of useful photographic detail. For a single outdoor shot of the groom riding a bike, for example, Brett explains how he uses pocket wizards—wireless transceivers—so that the flash can be triggered from 20-30 meters away. He attaches one to the camera and the other to the flash before bringing in a portable strobe unit to freeze the action. On this overcast day, Brett sets the camera to 400 ISO with a 200 shutter speed. The ambient light is around 200 at F11 and, as Brett explains, he is shooting at F14 to slightly underexpose the background and separate it from the subject.

Brett’s clear delivery is enhanced by the app’s superb editing. The overall emphasis is on elevating your photography—whatever your level of expertise—and creating classy images.

BehindTheLensBride

Some of the many tips I jotted down were shooting in pairs so you have images for both sides of the wedding album, getting at least one good shot of all bridesmaids and groomsmen, getting a shot of the groom as he listens to the bride’s reception speech, using an extension chord for the flash to get directional lighting, getting ambient light into a dancing shot (set to tenth of a second on F4), and checking image histogram on the fly. Brett chooses one histogram to show lack of highlights in the 1/125, F4, 400 ISO shot. On this occasion, he tackles the problem by slowing the shutter down to a tenth of a second, allowing ambient light in and adding atmosphere.

His ultimate control over his equipment is evident throughout. In one outdoor shoot, Brett makes a daylight shot look like it was taken at night, and in another reprints-generating shot, uses a wide-angle lens on a raised monopod for a photo outside the church that includes the couple’s entire guest party.

Brett’s professionalism provides a worthy lesson in fast thinking and thorough understanding of both ambient light and your equipment. When the light drops dramatically, Brett takes atmospheric shots of the couple before bringing the Ranger power pack into action. He swiftly adjusts his equipment for the reception, which is shot in a photojournalistic style with many emotive and candid images. After taking several detail shots around the room, Brett backs up onto the Epson P5000, where we get a glimpse of the many images taken so far. Using a 12-24mm lens and a slow shutter speed, he captures the couple’s arrival with lively images that have a sweeping effect, a fetching touch of drag, and sense of motion.

BehindTheLensReception

For the speeches, he uses a 600watt Elinchrome head with a white umbrella, a lighting set up which, as Brett explains, is suitable throughout as it covers both guests and speakers. For the first dance, Brett’s assistant shines a 2 million power flash light to illuminate the bride’s veil, allowing Brett to shoot romantic, warm images without a flash.

This is a superbly put together app that is guaranteed to elevate your wedding photography to a higher level and help you produce classier ‘winning shots’. It is a comprehensive and friendly guide to wedding photography, bursting with priceless photography tips for life. If you are curious about wedding photography or a practicing professional wishing to significantly improve your output and clientele, this app is for you.

Pick it up in the iTunes Store.

Profile: Kevin Kubota Photography and Kubota Image Tools

by Dan Bailey on November 1, 2011 · 6 comments

Successful photographers understand the need to “recession-proof” their businesses so they don’t crash hard when then economy dips.

Of course, there’s no stock way to do to this, and it’s always interesting to see how different people build and adapt their specific business models and find success. Today, I present a case study with a profile of Kubota Photography and Kubota Image Tools. I sat down with them at PhotoPlus Expo to find out how they’ve found success in a vey dynamic industry.

20 years ago, Kevin And Clare Kubota started their wedding photography business in Bend, Oregon. When the industry began moving towards digital, Kevin embraced the new format, became highly proficient with Photoshop and began selling custom retouching action sets to other photographers.

A few years later, Kevin expanded the teaching side by launching his Digital Photography Bootcamp workshops and other software preset packages. Today, he’s recognized as a leading Photoshop expert.

About six years ago, a Japanese company approached the couple about distributing a line of photo books in the US. This deal turned into their AsukaBook line, which offers gorgeous, high-end photo presentation solutions to other wedding and portrait photographers.

In order to further serve their book customers, Clare and Kevin formed Red Boot Design. This sector of their business offers graphic design that helps photographers create presentation albums, books, and cards. Although Red Boot offers templates and custom options that are geared around their AsukaBooks, they’ll do design for other projects as well.

By building a line of separate companies that all relate to each other and revolve around Kevin’s mastery of image making and processing, Kevin and Clare have developed a solid business model. While many photography-based businesses suffered greatly during the recent downturn, the Kubotas rode through the crisis with relatively smooth sailing.

Their business keeps expanding into the new decade with photo workshop tours in Italy and a recent book, Kevin Kubota’s Lighting Notebook, published by Wiley Press. His Dashboard photo action series and software tool sets continue to rate highly with other photographers.

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Senior contributor Dan Bailey is a professional adventure, outdoor and travel photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska.

 

 

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Link Roundup – May 18

by Sophia Betz on May 18, 2011 · 2 comments

This week’s Link Roundup is conference-flavored, with news about the New York Photo Festival, the PMA Photo Show, and the Creative Freelancers Conference. [click to continue…]

Creating Art or Taking Pictures: When a Painter and a Photographer Become Friends

by Jessica Ford on March 25, 2011 · 5 comments

A rather painterly photo by Joelle, the author's friend

My friend Joelle got hooked on photography after she started taking pictures of things she wanted to paint. She is actually a formally trained painter, and we became fast friends when we discovered our shared passion for photography. We have gone out shooting together a number of times, and we have taught each other a lot over the past year.

Each time we go out, I teach her a little about camera controls and she teaches me how to look at the scenery in a more creative way. Amazingly, our images often look similar, even though the thought processes behind them are completely different. [click to continue…]

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Make a Custom Brush for your Watermark

by Caroline Moore on March 22, 2011 · 41 comments

Like many necessary tasks, uploading your photos to your blog can be tedious: after a while, all that resizing, tagging, and watermarking gets old.

But there are lots of ways to make this process more efficient, and one of my favorites involves making your watermark a custom brush. [click to continue…]

Open Thread: Photograph of the Year?

by Sophia Betz on January 14, 2011 · 8 comments

Ragnar Th Sigurdsson / Arctic Images

There are some truly amazing images in TIME Magazine’s recent 2010 best photos roundup. And there are a ton of best-of lists around the web claiming to sum up the year in great pictures. But looking at all these slideshows made me wonder: what images were neglected, which didn’t receive the publicity they deserved?

What do YOU think was the best image of 2010? Or, what was your favorite image of all the photos YOU took in the past year?

Please leave your answers/thoughts/links in the comments!

Interview: Steve Mayes, Managing Director of The Photojournalism Cooperative VII, on the State of Photojournalism and a Photographer’s Worth

by Reuel Golden on September 3, 2010 · 72 comments

Since 2008, Steve Mayes has been the managing director of VII, whose members include photographers such as James Nachtwey and Ed Kashi. In a career spanning over 25 years, Mayes has held a number of high profile positions including group creative director of Getty Images, CEO of Photonica, COO (Americas) for Image Source, creative director of Eyestorm.com, and director of the Image Archive at Art + Commerce. He is a frequent lecturer, writer, and has been Secretary to the Competition Jury of  WordPress Photo since 2004.

Reuel Golden: Could you please tell us a little bit about VII’s mission and how it differs from other photo agencies?

Steve Mayes: VII derives its name from the number of founding photojournalists who, in September 2001, formed this collectively owned agency. Now owned by ten photographers and representing an additional fifteen Network affiliates plus nine developing talents in the Mentor Program, VII has expanded considerably but remains true to its core mission of using photography for positive change.

RG: Describe a typical working day. [click to continue…]

How Do You Know It’s Time to Upgrade Your Camera?

by Dan Bailey on March 10, 2010 · 6 comments

I recently ran a post titled “Which Camera Should I Buy,” in which I break down the different grades of camera models and relate them to your capabilities and personality as a photographer. Basically, I advised you to get the camera to match the type of shooter you are. Simple enough, right?

Sure, but how do you even know if it’s time to upgrade?

That’s easy. The answer is already there, simply determine which one of these categories you fall into:

1. The Techno-junkie: If it’s new, you have to have it, regardless of whether you really need that particular item. You endlessly cruise the camera rumor sites, trolling for any shred of information about an impending upgrade by one of the major manufacturers. You bought an iPhone 4 even though you still had 9 months left on your perfectly functioning iPhone 3GS contract.

You’ll buy the latest camera as soon as it comes out, because you know you’ll find a use for whatever technology they pack into the new model. You’ve already bought your Nikon D7000. As photographers, especially those of us who reside on the professional side of things, we all have a these tendencies- some more than others.

2. The Hardcore Pro: You use your cameras every single day. No, let me rephrase that, you beat up and abuse your cameras every single day. Getting a new body is a regular occurrence for you. When is it time to start thinking about buying a new body? When six months have passed since you bought your last body and your shutter is approaching the 100,000 shot mark.

And with you there’s no such thing as upgrading, at least not until they release the next model. You already own a D3x or a 1Ds Mark III. If there’s nothing new on the market, you’ll just buy another D3x or 1Ds Mark III.

3. The Yankee: Of course, by Yankee, I’m not talking geography, I’m talking about the resourceful and frugal “use it until it wears out” mentality that many of us have. You bought your last camera before Barack Obama was a contender for the White House and you’re still using it. It’s not broken and it still makes great pictures, so why buy a new one?

I’ll tell you why, because camera technology has made great leaps in the past couple of years and because you don’t even know what your missing. If your DSLR shoots less than 10MP or less, it’s probably time to think about upgrading; your photography passion or career is worth it.

4. The Rest of Us: Quite honestly, most of us fall into this category, even me. Sure, I’m a pro, but I end up using my cameras for quite a few years before upgrading. We don’t necessarily rush out and buy the latest greatest thing all the time, but we also don’t use our camera until it teeters on the boundary of complete obsolescence.

We recognize need to stay current with the advances in technology and we know how they can help us in our photography. We do careful research, buy the camera that suits us best, and then use it until the next generation model becomes available.

Then we seriously consider upgrading, sit on the idea for a few weeks or months, while we save and budget for the new expense, and then jump with both feet into the new technology. Our old camera becomes a backup and our backup goes up on eBay.

Sure, cameras are expensive, but in the long run, it’s worth it to stay ahead of the curve, no matter if you’re a working photographer or a hobbyist who is serious about the quality of your imagery.

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Senior contributor Dan Bailey is a professional adventure, outdoor and travel photographer based in Anchorage, Alaska.

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