A Night Portrait - Seattle Wedding Photographer in Bellevue

Last weekend I took some photographs of Jane and Chris on their wedding night outside the Westin in Bellevue.  Here is one image.

This image was taken with my Canon 5D and a 24 1.4L.  I was crouched very low to the ground and took a "creative" approach to a level horizon.  I had my lovely assistant, Alyssa (also my daughter) hold a 550EX with a 24" square softbox attached to a pole.  It was high and camera right of the couple.  It was set to eTTL wireless (using Radiopopper PX system) triggered by my Canon ST-E2 with -1 2/3 flash exposure compensation dialed in on the camera to keep the auto system from trying to light the entire street.  

Here is a diagram.  This is courtesy of LightingDiagrams.com.

As always, you can find more of my work at Seattle Wedding Photographer Cory Parris

     

Composition - Bend Your Knees!

I’ve been meaning for some time to write some articles for photographers and those that want to be photographers.  Here is one that I thought of while on vacation with my family.  We were in Washington DC visiting museums and monuments.  Seemingly every person walked up to whatever it was, took a snapshot and walked away.

So…every person took the exact same photographs.  So I was pointing out to my kids that there are many ways to photograph the same subject to make it seem more interesting and dynamic.  One quick trick that you can try just about any time is to bend your knees.  I would guess that the average person makes 95% of their photographs at eye level.  Whether that is standing or sitting, they pull out the camera and put it in front of them in their current position. 

Here are a few samples of images that I have taken over the last year or so that are improved because of the lower than eye-level angle that I used to take them. 

For this image, Carly’s soon-to-be-husband had sent her a note while she was getting ready for their wedding.  At the end of the note, he made a mention of her tendency to be late and asked her to be on time.  I bent my knees to include the clock and a laughing bridesmaid.

Signs are not the most interesting thing in the world, but they help tell the story of the wedding by spelling out the “where” in the story.  Semiahmoo had some tulips in front of their sign so I bent down to include them as larger objects in the foreground.

Here I bent down at the bottom of the stairs to exaggerate the perspective of the trees behind them and the leading line of the railing going towards them.  This was taken at the park at Snoqualmie Falls next to Salish Lodge.

To get a better perspective of this bride getting ready at Newcastle Golf Club, I bent to elbow level.

One of the best things about bending your knees (actually, I was laying down on the dock), is that is cleans up the background by letting you emphasize sky rather than clutter.  This one was taken at a dock next to Salty’s on Alki.

Here the bride was putting on her shoes as she was getting ready at the Warwick Hotel in Seattle.  The only way to get the image with both her feet and her face in the frame was by getting down.

This image of the bride and groom taken at Mount Baker Presbyterian shows the cool architectural details on the background.

This senior portrait was taken in a parking garage.  Looks cooler with the pillars and industrial details behind her.

This couple was getting married at Willows Lodge in Woodinville, so we walked next door to Red Hook.  I like the “worms-eye” view to take advantage fo the lines of fenced in beer kegs.

This image, taken behind the Palace Ballroom was a reflection in the water.

This image was taken just after they were married in a suite at the Alexis Hotel.  By bending down I was able to minimize the distractions in the room for a more simple photograph about the couple.

Groom singing to his bride as she comes down the aisle at the Palace Ballroom.

This image taken at the Skansonia is taken at dock level to show the line of the dock.

This was taken at the Georgetown Ballroom.  They have a very cool neon sign above the stage.  I got lower to show the sign in the background of their first dance.

Getting low helped to change the feel of the image during the father of the groom’s speech at Kitsap Memorial Park.

Getting low is always fun on the dance floor. 

If you have ideas for future articles, please email me at c@coryparris.com. 

Gear Review - Canon 24 1.4L!

I have to start by coming clean. I’m a geek. I love stuff, electronics, gear, and feel out of sorts if I’m not in possession of the remote control (preferably matched up to a nice HD TV). When I complete my taxes and it asks for my position at the company, I write in “Photogeek in Chief”. So…I love photo gear. With a rather unhealthy passion.

That being said, I also used to be a Finance Director for a small non-profit. That means, there has to be a reason for every purchase, and the reason has to be more than “I REALLY want it!” (say it in again your head with a nasally whine, it will sound more realistic – “I REALLY want it!”).

So here is some of my gear buying criteria…

• -How does it help me create better photographs, and does it let me do something that my current gear doesn’t allow me to do?
• -Will the difference that this piece of gear will bring to my photography allow me to increase my sales and profits? This usually takes the form of allowing my to create more dynamic work and increase the demand for my services.
• -Will the new piece of gear inspire me to create new and better work? A common thing that happens with gear for me is that it will make me find new ways to use that particular piece. That, in turn, gets me to use the gear in different ways than I normally do.
• -And finally, is it cool? Of course it’s cool, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted it in the first place!

Once I have all that information, I make a presentation to my Chief Financial Officer. More commonly referred to by myself and others as “Leslie”, or (mostly by me) “hey, beautiful wife".

This normally comes in the form of, “Hey, I was looking at this (lens, flash, etc.) today…”

“Oh. No…” says the Chief Financial Officer.

“…and I’m thinking…” says the Photogeek.

Conversation continues with the big, mean CFO grilling the poor Photogeek (Leslie, I’m kidding!). Then it ends with…

“You know your going to buy. Just do it now instead than worrying about it for a month!” says the beautiful, loving CFO. About a month later, Photogeek buys said piece of gear.

Anyway, that was quite the revealing tangent, wasn’t it? Here is my first in a new series of articles that I’ll call, “My Favorite Toys!”

My first toy that I’m going to talk about is the Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L. This may be my most loved lens, and that is really saying something. I use this lens constantly. It makes up about 40% of all the images in my portfolio. I should mention that I use a full-frame camera, so this quite a wide lens.

Here is a photo of the lens itself. (Lovely studio product image taken with a couple of small Canon strobes and a piece of white posterboard).

It is a medium sized, but very dense, rather heavy lens. It is a polycarbonate body that can take some abuse. You can see some signs of past little incidents on the lens hood. I think the lens hood is actually designed to show every time it’s touched by anything. I have the version one of the lens, but there is a version two out. If you look at my criteria for buying above, I can’t come up with a reason to sell my version I and get a version II.

This lens has the rather unique characteristic of being both a wide angle lens and having the ability to have very shallow depth of field. If you don’t know what depth of field is, you can look below and see how the subject is sharp and the background is blurred and out of focus. That is called shallow depth of field while if everything was in focus, that would be a deep depth of field or greater depth of field.

Another great benefit is the amazing low light capabilities. To give you an idea, with each full stop, the lens cuts the amount of light in half. This lens has an aperture of 1.4 which allows you to take images in one-fourth of the amount of light of a lens with the aperture of 2.8.

Now for what everyone wants to see…the samples!

This is an excellent example of what this lens can do. This couple was married during mass at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in Seattle. Because the couple was married during mass, they did not know most of the people around them. I wanted them to stand out from the crowd, so I made this photograph with a shallow depth of field with the couple sharp and the surrounding background soft.

This smart groom is watching his waistline on his wedding day. This is another example of the sharp subject and shallow depth of field that I love from this lens.

Groom waiting for his bride to see her for the first time that day. I love the sharpness on his face and the out of focus detail of the bride coming up behind him tells the story.

Wedding couple kissing in an alley at in the U District. I love the

With this image, I used the 24 and a smaller aperture to make the clouds and background sharp. I also used a flash to light up the couple.

This image was taken from a viewpoint at the Olympic Sculpture Park. I used the shallow depth of field the 24 1.4L creates to make the background beautifully out of focus.

Another image using the shallow depth of field to make the groom stand out.

This image uses the great light-gathering of the 24 1.4L.

I'm Back!

I have decided to resurrect this old blog. I really do love sharing what I know, so I'm going to see if anybody is out there listening!

To start, here is a simple image taken in a parking garage. The flash is set high and to the left to with a Honl grid spot to put them in a spotlight style pool of light. I underexposed the ambient light to have the pool of light feeling stand out more.

I hope to hear from you with questions and comments about my work and the blog!

Check out more of my work at my Seattle Wedding Photography portfolio site!

RadioPopper PX Review

I just got some new toys tools for wireless, off-camera flash called Radiopopper PX. What they basically do is take Canon wireless flash technology and make it useful somewhere besides in a dark room with the flashes pointed at each other. You then use the flash system on your flash to set up lighting ratios, manually change the flash settings, use automatic flash without having the light source coming from on top of your camera. Today I took my son and Sounders FC superfan, Kyler, to the park to play with the system.

I wanted to test a few things: the High Speed Sync, speed of operation, and a comparison of the eTTL system versus the manual flash adjustments that I usually do. I used a flash 580EX flash on my camera acting as the master unit with a Radiopopper PX transmitter attached to the top of it and two 550EX acting as slaves with the Radiopopper PX receivers attached.

This is what I envisioned when we went to the park. I used the Radiopoppers to transmit the fire signal and the manual flash adjustments while keeping my shutter speed at the 1/200th top speed that the Canon 5D allows for traditional flash systems.

This image was taken using the high speed sync allowing for a much more shallow depth of field.

I really liked this image. Ky loves soccer and is really excited for MLS to be coming to Seattle (Sounders FC season starts March 19). For this I used the eTTL system rather than manually setting the flash and I was pleasantly surprised at the nicely exposed result.

This is more what I expected from eTTL. The camera saw the bright lightsource in the frame and didn't use enough flash power (even though the fired) to make a proper exposure.

In this image, I switched to manual flash exposure and I had a much better exposure. This image is processed identically to the image before it so that it is an apples to apples comparison.

This image shows the shallow depth of field that is possible using high speed sync and a fast lens.

Same as the image before, but with the focus on his face rather than his hands.

Another using the high speed sync to make him pop from the background.

Testing the range. I was about 150 feet away. Really all that I need it to work at would be this range. The system is supposed to work at 1700 feet. Nice, but not necessary for me!

The front of his jersey. This image was shot at 1/6400 of a second with a full power flash.

This image of my amazingly handsome son was taken at f2 for the shallow depth. Again using HSS.

Again using the two flashes and HSS. The shallow depth of field throws the trees and sky out of focus and makes them shapes rather than trees.

These last three images are for illustration of the Manual versus eTTL. The first is taken with manual flash, the second is eTTL. The third is eTTL with +2 stops of exposure compensation.

My conclusions are that the Radiopopper PX system works really well for doing portraits. The system fired the flashes every time the flashes were ready and charged. It works well at distance. It provides a reliable system to use the HSS (high speed sync) allowing for flash and shallow depth of field at the same time. And it allows me to change my manual flash settings without going over to the flash and pushing buttons (I can push buttons from wherever I am with the camera).

Where it falls down in my mind is the difficult installation (you actually have to semi-permanently attach it to the flashes you are going to use rather than take it on and off at will) and the fact that it is limited to speed of operation of the Canon wireless flash system. I tested it on motor drive and was able to get only four out of 12 to fire at 1/128 power at three frames per second (frames 1, 2, 3, and 9 of the 12). This was because the Canon master flash was not ready, not because the Radiopoppers or the receiving flashes were not ready.

Finally, I found that I got the results that I wanted most consistently when I used manual flash exposure. The eTTL was right about 75% of the time, but for me being wrong 25% of the time doesn’t cut it.

It is a very cool time to be a photographer with all the awesome equipment available!