Washington DC Engagement Photographer - Katie + Jeff - Johns Hopkins University

Katie and Jeff have an unusual first date/how they met story: Katie won a date with Jeff through some serious basketball skills (both were captains of their college basketball teams) and they wanted to capture that common interest and history in their engagement session. Moshe Zusman and I shot this session at Katie and Jeff's old stomping grounds at Johns Hopkins University, both in the gym as well as around campus. we had some beautiful overcast skies, and couldn't have asked for a better looking, and fun couple to spend the morning with! I took the opportunity to also test out two new pieces of gear, the Pocketwizard MiniTT1 and the LumoPro LP160 (which was triggered using a PWII), both of which worked wonderfully, with minimal hangups. For most of the gym photos, I used the LP160 racked into 105mm and rested it on top of the bleachers at about 45 degrees from where Katie and Jeff were doing their thing. I can't wait for their wedding later this summer! It's going to be at the beautiful Woodend (one of my favorite outdoor venues).

Fun with Flash and Friends - Cinematic Lighting

One of my friends was starting to put together idea for her project she needed to submit to film schools she was applying for, one of which (for USC) was to submit a series of six photos that told a story. There couldn't be any description of the plot or characters. The entire idea should be easy to understand by simply looking at the images submitted. I offered to help her with her concept of telling a story of...well I'll let you figure it out, since that was the point of the project. She wanted to not only not use words though, she wanted to not even have faces, so we brainstormed sort of a storyboard and shot as close to the waist down as we could. The other criteria of the project was that the images had to not be edited, couldn't even get the slightest brushing in Photoshop, so these images are straight out of camera. We used 5 Nikon speedlights to sculpt the light as much as we could in real life (and shot after dark to avoid having to fight the sun), which took a little while, but was totally worth it.

She got in by the way...

Motorcycle: Speedlite Style

One of my friends just bought a motorcycle and since I had a few hours of downtime, we decided to go out and take some cool night-time photos of it. We really want to do some motion shots on the highway, but didn't want to risk causing an accident during a weekend night (I already had my flashes attached to the car with Justin clamps and everything before I even thought about the problems we might cause!)...maybe later this week we'll get around to it. Anyway, I just wanted to share some of my favorites from tonight along with some setup shots so you can see where light was coming from (didn't think of taking setup shots until about halfway through the shoot). Enjoy!

Unfortunately all I had on me to take set-up shots with was my iPhone...not exactly the best quality at 10PM with little to no good light! As you can see, I was using three speedlites: two SB800 flashes and one SB900. Two were triggered using Pocketwizards and the other triggered by SU-4 mode on the SB800. All the flashes had different powers of CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gels and the camera was set on Tungsten white balance. This gives a nice gradient of different shades of normal to cool tones, which work well for glossy metal.

When taking pictures on shiny metal objects (like cars and bikes) make sure to place your flash where you won't get a direct reflection...except maybe on chrome accents