We showcased Aaron’s favorite color, green, into her portrait session. Green is one color I am craving right now, given official ‘Spring’ in Colorado lies too far in the distant.

We headed to Sportique Scooters, hands-down the best scooter shop in Colorado. One of the first big purchases Allie & Aaron will make living in Japan will be a cool scooter. Looks like Allie has one already picked out.

Then we hit a (sugar) high, thanks to Katie over at Happy Cakes in the Highlands. Denver brides, if you are looking for an alternative to a wedding cake, think Happy Cakes cupcakes. $2 Tuesdays give you all the excuse you need to sample daily flavors. Nicole and I have a sweet tooth for Happy Cakes.

Rawr.

A quick headshot:

Wrapped up the session with some dramatic light and a Rocky Mountain backdrop and a frozen Sloan’s Lake in Denver.

Get there early so you don’t miss out! RSVP in the comments section if you know you’ll be there.

Dave Hill, Jill Greenberg, and Dan Winters have used ring flash on-axis fill technique in some way/shape/form as of late. While I’m not always a fan of their work, learning the technique has been a goal of mine… to learn for the sake of learning.

The big question is why? For starters, the whole principal of off-camera lighting, for me, is to add greater dynamic range to a photo. At a deeper level, controlling light offers the ability to create impact, causing the curious eye to explore the subject longer. This lingeringness grabs our less-than-a-Super-Bowl-commercial attention span. Bingo.

New to the lighting concept? David Hobby has a great on-axis fill intro for beginners. Few fashion or portrait photographers experiment and use ring-flash for fill light, as David among writes about. Voila: Motivation!

Shooting with a ring flash requires a bit of practice. For starters, you’ve got this big circular thing adding bulk to the camera and creating a small wall between you and the subject… not something that many first timers are used to. But, not mounting the ring flash on the camera, and holding it in my left hand while camera in the right, I’m still able to interact and point and guide the subject when necessary and not hide behind a camera rig.

Brian, a former wedding client, agreed to serve as my model, as he fit the bill for a buisness-like power portrait. Here, you can see the effect of just the beauty dish with and without the fill with the ring flash.

The ring serves as nice fill for what could be racoon eyes. Would an on-camera flash work? Probably, but it might also create more shadows than erase.

Advanced stuff? Perhaps. Rocket science? Nope. The technique requires a tad of effort but produces a unique effect in camera without Photoshop. And I’m all about that. Here’s the setup.

I brought it along for some more testing during Alyssa & Scott’s engagement session recently. Here’s Alyssa:

Feeling a bit more comfy using two lights, I jumped into the full 5-light setup. Assembling a 5-light kit isn’t easy on the wallet, so exercised restraint and built up the kit up over time. I opted against a medium-format Contax 645 kit which could have easily have fit the bill as well (nothing against medium format film… I’m just not ready to make the full leap, yet).

For legged-furry friends are great to practice on. Here’s my final test shot of the 5-light setup I was going for.

Ingredients:

1. Main – 22″ inch beauty dish – placed close above subject to cast an nice triangle shadow under the nose.

2. Fill – Alien Bees ring flash. Building a Ring Flash may not be your cuppa joe if you want to shoot under mid-day sun with a single speedlight as your light source. Dropping $400 on an Alien Bees ABR800 offers greater versatility.

3. Kickers (2) – the Creative LIght 1′ x 4′ softbox provide a even rim light in a controlled manner. The grids velcroed to the front on the softboxes offer directionality & control of where the light shines (and more importantly, doesn’t). I positioned the stripbanks about 45 degrees to the rear of subject, aiming downwards. Don’t forget to order the proper speed rings to mount the softboxes to your strobe heads.

4. Background light (optional). My reasoning: 1) it helps to offer a bit of dynamic pop to an otherwise boring background and 2) kills any ringflash shadow on the background. I used a handmade grid on a Nikon speedlight, zoomed to 105mm at 1/32 power.

5. Westcott Illuminator Collapsible Disc Background (5′ x 6′). Not necessary, but a better alternative than dealigl with a cross-bar and two lighting stands to hold the thing up. Laurence Kim offers a great review. Since it is reversable, you’ve got two background colors to choose from (black & white).

Another test shot of my favorite plush toy/comic strip character: What the duck?

Now time for the real talent… the cutest French Bulldog you’ve ever seen, our Stella (yeah, we’re biased):

Dash, our pet Hungarian Viszla Veloceraptor:

Promise folks, we didn’t train him to stick his tongue out:

Flipped the Wescott reflector around for a black background to give our little 6-month bundle of snorts a Body Armor appearance:

‘Go big or go home,’ I like to think when it comes to learning something new. I’m all about commitment, learning something new, pushing my comfort zone into a Cirque du Soleil arena of excitement. What a better way than to recruit a few friends to join in on the learning. Special thanks to Katie & Chris Humphreys for bringing over their 3-month old Malamut, Shep:

To round off the self-assignment, I felt I was ready for some real people portraits, suitable for use in a Facebook or Twitter profile shot. The lighting setup is about the same as illustrated in the backyard studio above.

Jenna Walker gets the award for the quickest expression change from serious to laughing.

Steve Stanton exudes personality in a genuine sense and does a great Jerry Ghionis impression (bottom right).

Yours truly:

Lessons Learned

- As with really any studio setup, my ADHD shooting style don’t perfectly match. One of the biggest adjustments (as opposed to natural light shooting), is all the lights have to be meticulously setup up to achieve the right affect and vary slightly from subject subject. Using the ring flash as fill, moving a few feet closer quickly changes the nature of the fill, since the light ratio to the main is so close (perhaps 2:1) The confined setup didn’t seem to be a huge hurdle.

- Using the AB1600 as the main light wasn’t a good idea… even dialed down to the lowest setting, it was too powerful. I was still shooting at ISO 100, f/250, f/19… a bit too small of an aperture for my liking, since lens diffraction is rampant that f/19, creating softener than desired images. I prefer to be between f/11-f/13, so using a lesser powerful strobe like the AB800 did the trick.

- Position the stripbanks close to your subject fire and power them up to get a good rim light. Otherwise, they will blend into your main light, thereby flattening the appearance of your subject because there’s either no highlights or shadows (read: boring light). I was shooting the strips at full power and had no problem with recycle time shooting about one image per second.

- Don’t underestimate the amount of space needed to pull this off. Inside a single car garage would be a bit cozy, especially if you want the 1′ x 4′ stripbanks positioned outside the frame and are using a 5′ wide background.

- I’m still not completely sold on the background light.. it was rather a pain to keep adjusting as the subject moved.. not quite my thing. I just want to shoot, shoot, shoot.

Overall, I think there’s a market for this effect, especially Twitter or Facebook portraits where details make a statement.

The invitation came after a rigorous review process by the board, which includes some of the best wedding photographers in the world including: David Beckstead, Ben Chrisman, Del Sol Photography, Glen Johnson, Anna Kuperberg, Crash Taylor, and David Ziser. The board reviewed our portfolio and decided it ranked among the best in the world, voted, then offered an us invitation too good to turn down. And we took it.

Four other Colorado photographers were chosen, including buddies Autumn Burke, Grant Oakes, Otto Schulze, and Angie & Andy Wood. If you haven’t seen their work, you’ll see they have phenomenal work as well as solid business practices!

The Best of Wedding Photography blog (BOWP) contains some phenomenal work, serves up a fresh dose inspiration on a daily basis and showcases a world of creativity that shoots outside the box.

A few things we were impressed by the organization so far:

Exclusive listing. To be a member in the organization, you don’t just pay a bunch of money. Rather, you have to be nominated by members, then voted on by a committee of world class photographers who review your portfolio, ensuring what you have to offer is unique and right at the frontier of what’s being done today.

Prompt communication. Several other organizations we’re apart of respond very slowly to email or phone correspondence. Erick Danzer, the Executive Director of Best of Wedding Photography, offered top-notch service in a genuine way, including personalized email responses.

Low risk, big return. Print advertisers expect upwards of $3,000 or more for a single advertisement in their magazine, and that’s a big gamble, especially in the current economy. Even if you might book a single wedding from the advertising, you still didn’t make any money unless you book several more weddings from the same investment. BOWP isn’t just another online advertising organization requiring a commitment of hundreds of dollars upfront.

New Relationships. The philosophy of Best of Wedding Photography reflects long-term value for members in their ability to connect with other leading photographers, resulting in relationships that will generate new opportunities for mutual advancement. Now that’s refreshing.

Dash’s main mission when playing at the dog park is 100% focused on chasing tennis balls. He could care less about other dogs or people. Stella, on the other hand, could care less about tennis balls, just wants to lick peoples toes, snort with affection, and beg to be scratched behind the ears.