Fawn Creek Wedding

It was a gorgeous Wisconsin day for Fawn Creek Winery's first wedding.   Had a super fun time capturing Jen and Adam's special day

Fawn Creek Winery Engagement

I had the pleasure of capturing Jen and Adam's special day. It was the first time Fawn Creek Winery was having a wedding so we went out and scouted the gorgeous location and did some wine sampling.  Their summer sun is now my favorite.

End of Summer Pewit's Nest

Found these unique rock sculptures at my favorite place Pewit's Nest.  Very creative and fun!

here's some shots from the upper part of the nest...

Creative Live Workshop Entry

Fashion shoot or is it....

When Paul contacted me about the idea of shooting his proposal I was more than honored to be a part of it. I have worked with Melissa before in fashion shows and fashion shoots and we had a great time together. So the tricky part was how are we going to pull this off as she had moved away. Melissa has a very busy schedule so I mentioned if she ever makes her way back to Madison, we should shoot again. I knew that Paul would bring her here so we we just had to find a time and place and it just so happened to be the most perfect summer-like weather in October. So we started doing a fashion shoot and then worked in the proposal after we played up getting some "goofy shots."



Congrats again to Paul and Melissa. I hope your lives together are filled with happiness, love and everything wonderful.

Adventures in backlighting

May 21, 2011 was the day the world was going to end for some but for Justin and Jennifer it was a just the beginning. It was a real treat to go back to Monroe where I had worked for the paper when I first moved to Wisconsin over a decade ago. And it was also very interesting to go back with a digital camera to shoot at Turner Hall where I had shot my first magazine cover in the days of film. Since my Blog is mostly about lighting modifications and/or technical aspects of shooting I'll highlight, pun intended :P, some of the lighting I used especially backlighting. I knew the venue would be dark and wanted to add some life to it so I set up two extra lights, along with my main camera flash, as seen in the pic below. The goal was multi-purpose to use as fill, separation or rim lighting depending on my shooting perspective. Plus look at that huge black space behind them.


I originally had cross lighting set up but too many kids were playing around with my lightstands so I had to move it to a safer place up front. Ideal? No, but you gotta do what you gotta do and roll with the punches.

here I used natural window light...

things go fast and not always perfect but I had my assistant try to hold a flash on the opposite side of the couple from me as they danced

And I felt the cake ornament should be backlit to show it off

Hacking High Speed Sync

A photographer sees the world differently and unfortunately cameras see the world differently than the human eye. Many a time this causes problems for me but in a fun challenging rip-my-hair out kinda way. I noticed these pretty translucent daffodil petals as they were back lit from the sun. That's my background!!! And ooh, now I also got a pretty hair/rim light from that glorious orb in the sky. But shooting into the sun = doesn't work. I also wanted a shallow DOF so extra doesn't work. I wanted to shoot at f/1.6 or in that neighborhood with my 85mm. My Pentax setup, sync speed 180.. hmmn??? If I had an assistant maybe a reflector would work, and yes I have a holder but it doesn't like the wind, but then I wouldn't be able to try this nifty setup :)
This is where shooting with two different camera manufacturers gets tricky. For my Pentax, which I have the 85mm f/1.4 for, I have one flash that must be connected to the hotshoe to use FP mode, high speed sync, and shoot faster than 1/180 to not have everything blown out. But who wants to shoot with on camera flash??? yuck! And then you are also limited to small modifiers. So I tried this little hack your TTL cord trick where you splice your cable and use an ethernet cable to make it longer and PRAY you didn't mess up the wiring and fry your equipment. Ps this mod also allows you to black out your background when shooting indoors :) More detailed explanation found here.

So now I can use a 24" softbox, beauty dish, (my preferences for shooting outdoors due to less wind resistance) etc and get off camera lighting and shoot up to 1/8000 sec

hit this VIDEO to see the POV style shoot of the shoot using a GoPro mounted to my forehead

Oh and if you don't understand or know why all of this needs to be done This will explain how camera shutters and flash sync works and why you need to cheat it if you are a masochist like me :)