INTRODUCTION:
Debbie and Jason’s wedding is quickly approaching and we decided to do one more engagement session to fill out their engagement guest photo books. For this session we decided to hit up the largest national fair in Canada. The CNE! Or The EX as they like to call themselves now. We grabbed some popcorn, cotton candy, and candy apples and had a fun time at the midway and exhibitions.

TECHNIQUE:
Low light photography is when my fast prime lens shine the most! Also this was the first time I got to test out my new Canon 5D Mark II which is supposedly pretty good with it’s high ISO noise control. I’d say from this first outing it’s good but not a massive improvement over my old 5D Mark I. I would use 3200 ISO on my 5D1 easily and now I can use 6400 ISO on the 5D2. I haven’t played with 12800 ISO yet but I hear it’s pretty usable as well. Just don’t be afraid to push your camera to it’s limits when shooting in low light as long as you capture the feel and emotions of a scene.

PHOTOS:

INTRODUCTION:
A couple weekends back I was invited by Donna and Lenny to head up to Montreal to shoot one of their engagement sessions. It was a real treat for me as it was my first time there and I had a great time with them, plus I got to spend the weekend as a tourist with my girlfriend and some of our close friends. Some highlights of the trip were the smoked meat and Montreal bagels! Yum!

TECHNIQUE:
I haven’t posted anything in the “Technique” section for a long time but I wanted to let you up-and-coming photographers know that along with lighting and posing, seeing lines and symmetry in the backgrounds is very important as well. A good photographer can use the background elements in good composition to focus the viewers attention on their model. Check out how I used the trees, and lines created from the buildings to do that in this set.

PHOTOS:

Introduction:
Ashley and I met late last year and it has taken almost four long months for our schedules to allow us to photograph together. Ashley is a recent graduate looking to possibly pursue a career in the dramatic arts. She contacted me to shoot a couple recent headshots of her before heading back home to Toronto.

Technique:
For this headshot session I had the wonderful assistance of Chi, a fellow photographer and friend. This allowed me to use a reflector to direct some light on Ashley without having to resort to using off camera flash. This was important as you aren’t limited to the flash sync speed of your camera (in my case 1/250th of a second), and I am able to use fast shutter speeds of over 1/1000th of a second. Why would I want to do this you might be asking? The answer is you want to be able to use a larger aperture (F2.8 in this case) to give you less depth of field and more background blur and bokeh to your images. With flash photography you’re fastest shutter speed is your flash sync and most of the time during bright sunny days this lets in too much light at F2.8 even at your lowest ISO settings. Usually this means having to stop down your aperture to something like F11 which usually means everything will be sharp and focused.

In photos #1 and #2 Ashley is sitting on the steps of a building. She is sitting in the shade created by the building while Chi is excellently holding the white reflector in front and to the side of Ashley’s face. Chi is close enough that even in the shade, the reflected light is enough just to add a bit of brightness to her face and you can even notice a bonus catchlight in her eyes! Below is a diagram of the setup we used for photos #1 and #2 compliments of a new Wacom tablet I bought.

Photos:

Lighting Diagram

I just met a couple today that had such amazing chemistry together that I couldn’t help not shooting non stop and gunning my camera’s 8.5 FPS during our engagement session. Now I have the fun task of going through, sorting, and editing over 500 photos! Haha. Anyways, here is a teaser photo from the session today. Like most of my recent work I’m going for a brighter happier look than my usual fashiony stuff!

This is a pretty techie article, most people coming to look at photography can just skip it but Canon event photographers read on:

I just want to let everyone know I am new to the Canon system and especially new to the Canon ETTL flash system. I’ve been getting by mainly using Nikon strobes in manual mode on and off camera. The only reason I would use a Canon flash is for it’s useful-in-dark-situations AF Assist light. However when using the Canon 580EXII with my Canon 1D Mark II I can never get the bugger to AF assist.

Today I finally had an ephinany and realized that the AF Assist light does’t work when my camera is in AI Focus mode. My camera is normally set with CFn 4 III where the AE lock button (*) becomes my AF button and AI Focus mode on. When I switched my camera to One Shot focusing mode it worked. Previously I had been relying on the available light, L lens AF performance, small apertures/greater DOF, and a pocket flashlight. I can’t wait to finally have access to AF Assist!!!