I’ve heard this more than a few times: “Yeah, but MY weddings aren’t as nice as yours.”  The implication is that there is no opportunity to make portfolio images or images that will take you to the next level.  Respectfully, I call bullshit.  :)

You may not be shooting a wedding in the nicest of hotels, most picturesque of vineyards, but you always have the opportunity to make something look better or more interesting than it is in real life.  That is your job, and most times it doesn’t take much involvement to do it.  It just takes a proactive thought process and the skills to put a few things together to really surprise your client.  So where was the above image shot?  It’s in a church gym with carpet walls.

The awesomely funny Lynn Daly brought me out to South Carolina for one of my 3 day mentorships.  The wedding she happened to have was a big test in terms of what could we squeeze out of a very modest venue.  This couldn’t have been a more perfect wedding to have mentored on, seriously.  If you are starting your career and you can kick out amazing images from the most humble of places, those images will help step you up to the next level, and when you get to the next level, you’ll be all the better prepared for having worked your ass off finding the gold buried in the plain old ground.

Are you ready to see what we were working with?  Well here you go:

Certainly not the ideal location, right?  We did not move the table, cake, glasses, any object to make this happen, though we could have if we needed to.  When you walk into a church or reception venue, and you see the cake table position, the extremely basic surroundings, you need to be start thinking right then and there what you are going to do to combat the problems that face you.  Putting it off until they announce the cake cutting is going to get you nowhere.  When you do your walkthrough on arrival, you should be making a mental checklist of problem areas and start the process of thinking your way around them.  Whatever the situation, you can improve on what is given to you.  Everything is game.  Everything is at your disposal.

I’ll post more in a more detailed entry later.

So I flew out of the country to shoot this wedding, and just before the wedding it started pouring.  I was looking for an ark out of the corner of my eye the whole time.  It looked like we wouldn’t get any portraits outside that evening, though eventually we’d have about 5 minutes of a glorious sunset that we didn’t know was going to happen.  I had no choice but to make best use of the space they were in.  The best room there was really just a big empty room with two brightly painted walls with some glass art mounted in some sort of fancy installment fashion.

Flying out of the country meant basically two SB28 flashes at my disposal.  Below is a photo of this wall.  The lighting is courtesy of the gallery, some cans aimed to kind of give this install some interest.  I knew I had to make some awesome stuff here because, well, the only other rooms were packed solid with guests and it was buckets outside.

As you get away from the wall, it’s very very dark.  No other lighting was in this room.  Advantage: Photographer.  I had the perfect environment to do whatever I wanted, so out came a camera flash.  The challenge here, though, is controlling that light.  If you just take a flash out and fire it, no matter how you aim it, it’s going to splatter the whole area with big ugly camera flash light.  Unless you’re Weegee, forget it.

So these camera flashes make it really easy to control the angle of light exiting that fresnel.  Just hit a button a few times, and blamo, a concentrated beam of light you can really use in this situation.  Remember, a shotgun makes a big ole’ mess, but a rifle, well, there you go.  I think I had this flash zoomed to a mid-tele range, just enough that I could cover Jen and no more.  Again, I despise messing around in Photoshop (or anything else) burning and dodging and fixing sloppiness, especially when there’s no reason for it.

I did not, however, want big ole’ shadows on the wall.  I flew internationally, so I was really light on equipment.  To get around this, I used an RTG.  They are really handy and there’s almost always one around.  What?  Oh yeah, RTG = Really Tall Groomsman.  So it was his job to get that thing way up so the shadows fell very quickly behind this setup.  I did bring Jen out from the wall enough that this wasn’t too much a problem and also to put her in heavy shadow so I’d have independent control of my light on her as well as the background light.

With her in complete shadow, I could change my shutter speed, flash power, anything I wanted really without affecting each other, which is an amazing amount of control you can’t always get.  It allowed me to get just the shot I wanted.  The bonus of her reflection in the polished concrete gives the shot a lot of depth.  Shooting low really emphasizes this.  See how hard the light is without being totally obnoxious?  Getting that light off camera axis gets you a lot more flexibility.  Her pose is very much because of the limitation of where the light is coming from given the situation, but I think it turned out pretty nice!  There it is, straight out of Lightroom.

On the wall perpendicular this one was a blue wall with all this glass art in a very rigid pattern.  This was perfect for this kind of shot.  I knew the glass would throw some wicked shadows if I lit it right.  I had someone just hold that flash straight up from the floor back toward the wall a bit so I could get those shadows and to put the hot spot right where I wanted it, again because of the ability to adjust the flash zoom.

So there you have it!  Two great portrait setups out of a fairly ordinary situation!  I wish I’d have shot the room as it looks without any extra lighting.  Then you can see how much a little technique can really dress up a room fast.  Oh well, next time!

Ok! So here we go!  I get request for help a lot.  How do you do what you do, etc.  The questions seem to lean technical and process.  There are numerous workshops out there, so I wanted to do something different.  There are numerous mentor programs out there, but I still wanted to do something different.  I like the idea of 1 on 1 mentoring.  It suits me.  We can tackle exactly the problem areas and get straight to it.  However, it didn’t make sense to me to have them come here.  This should be about them, their gear, their offices, their weddings, not mine.  It’s way too easy to say, “Well MY weddings aren’t as nice as yours.”  So let’s do this on their turf, learn to make the best of any situation.  Besides, either way there are travel expenses, so why not do this centered around them?  Here is what I’m basing this around:

“You need to know how to market your work. Period. But if your work isn’t strong, the marketing won’t help.” – Brenda Milis

This is not a marketing or branding or business approach.  This is for people who are new to shooting and feel in over their head on the equipment/execution side of things.  They have all this gear and are new to the business, and there are just too many options, too many things vying for attention.  They are having limited success with images, but maybe have a hard time achieving consistency.  Maybe some things are flipped around and it’s causing a lot of problems with trying to figure things out.  And really, if you’re asking money, ANY kind of money from clients, you owe them competency.  That is your currency.

These are *extremely* limited and subject to availability and my schedule.  Currently, only open dates between now and early April are available.  I have a two day or 3 day option.  So far everyone has gone for the 3 day, which is 30 hours or so of individualized time.  This is out of the state of Georgia only, please.

Here is what happens with a 3 day mentorship.  I fly or drive in to your city the night before we officially begin.  Then day 1 is spent going over your hit list of priorities, which we determine before I arrive.  We cover as much as we can in the most efficient way possible in an effort to start to affect some changes in the way you cover a wedding.  This is anything, cameras, lighting, approach, etc, etc.  Day 2 is spent with you at one of your weddings, watching how you work, applying new methods and techniques, things you learned, etc.  I can be an official 2nd photographer if that is what’s contracted or I can simply tag along and shoot a bit here or there if it’s solo coverage.  Mainly I am observing and helping out in implementing anything discussed that might apply.  Day 3 is spent looking over images, reinforcement of things learned over the previous 2 days, discussing workflow, best practices for safekeeping of images, color work, anything that will speed along the process or make the ship run tighter.  I fly out the morning after we’ve deluged your brain.

After this, you have access to me for 1 year beyond our mentor sessions (time permitting of course, scheduled in advance) by phone or IM.  You are also welcome to tag along at one of our weddings as well.  No shooting, just helping out and watching us.  I want to see major progress being made within that year’s time.

One of the aspects of doing this “there” versus here is that I want this to be about you finding your own vision.  I’m there to cut through the mess and nudge you along in the right direction, the direction of understanding your equipment inside and out and what it will take to capture your vision.  This is not intended to crank out a bunch of mini-me shooters.  We are going to try to find the spark in your current work that gives us a peek into how you think, how you see, how you want to be seen.

That aside, I want to profile Jesse Inskeep (seen above shooting in the corn!).  I had a rare free weekend in October, and Jesse wanted me to come up and do just this sort of thing.  I have to say that I wasn’t expecting drastic results in a short period of time. I figured it would be a while before things became apparent.  That’s still the attitude I’m going to take, but I was surprised at how quickly Jesse improved on the wedding we shot together compared to all the others we looked at before this trip.  I asked before going up for him to put up a gallery of some of his favorites to date.

Jesse’s favorites before the mentorship:

A lot of the problem was a clash of information picked up from all kinds of sources.  The internet is great, but it can be a detriment when you have access to so much information when you’re not really ready.  One of the benefits of formal training and/or photography school is that they break everyone down to the basics, the absolute minimum of gear and technique, and you steadily build up from there.  It creates a great foundation for a lifelong learning process.  You intuitively know when you’re getting in over your head and you need to back off and solidify your skills.

As I said, I was quite surprised to see how much Jesse improved on that one wedding alone.  I’m looking forward to seeing what he does from here on out!  I’m certain his work will be getting more and more solid as time goes on.

Jesse’s favorites from the mentored wedding:

He’s already starting to show a clarity of vision just from having some mental clutter alleviated.  He got plenty of really strong, clean images, and he’s catching some really nice moments because he’s thinking less about the gear and more about what’s happening in front of him.  He kind of obliterated his former portfolio, which means more work for him!  But it’s good!  He’ll command more money because of these strides he’s taken in the quality of his images.

I asked Jesse to comment on the experience and what it meant for him.  Here’s what he had to say:

Marc coming to help me furthered my photography more in 3 days then I would have in 3 years without his instruction. I had all the “head” knowledge about photography. I knew how to make a correct exposure, click a button and get a good “image” but I was missing the concept of taking a photograph. Sometimes, especially as newer photographers, we get caught up in all the gear and think we need to be very complicated. Personally, I thought that meant “good photographers” used flash all over the place, bouncing here and there and trying to recreate the wheel. I learned that instead I should take my photography back to the basics and just worry about capturing the moment and documenting what’s happening vs shooting flash everywhere and having everything lit up. It is such a simple concept and starting giving me the dimension to my photography that I’ve been trying to get for a long time.

After working with Marc for 3 days I was getting better images with a $97 (Canon 50 1.8) than I ever got with a $1500 (Canon 16-35 2.8L) on my own. My gear bag has been cut in half and I’m producing much better work.

I also got a new stash of funny YouTube links and to hear crazy funny stories about what it really means to be a photographer…

If anyone is interested, contact me for details and to check my availability for the dates you are considering.  Take it easy!

Marc Climie
marc@climie.com
404-759-7336

As wedding photographers, we have to provide lots of high quality images at every event under extreme time constraints and with minimal equipment all while remaining extremely adaptable under every conceivable scenario.  Piece of cake, right?  This is why the sooner you learn to use equipment limitations (or intentionally limited equipment) to your advantage will set you on the road to successful image after successful image.

So it’s dark.  What’s the first thing that comes to your mind?  I need light! What kind of light?  Oh, I dunno.  LIGHT! Well, what are you trying to accomplish?  I want to light this place up! So how do you take a very difficult situation like the one above and knock out a portfolio quality shot of a night exit?  What’s the thought process?  What are the problems we have to overcome to make this work?  I don’t have time to work up images in Photoshop, so I have to get it right in camera.

So we have this looooong line of people throwing flower petals for this exit, and we’ve chosen to shoot from a balcony for dramatic effect.  Hey, how about lighting it from below on the lower porch?  Well, there’s no way to bring enough gear and set up a lighting scenario in the 5 minutes you’ll have to set it up.  At most you’ll have one, maybe two lights.  From this vantage point, lighting from camera position is kinda gonna look like ass.  It’s going to look like on camera flash at night, aka “crap”.

We then decide to light it from behind, which will give us a very dramatic exit, and the flower petals in the air will play much better.  But we have a major problem.  That line of people is looooong and narrow, so how do we light this effectively so we get this right in camera and don’t lose the folks closest to the camera?  Take a look at this graph roughly showing the difference in lighting patterns from a bare parabolic reflector and then one of that reflector with a 20º grid attached.

As you can see, a bare parabolic reflector is going to spill light everywhere.  That’s its job, send light out in this big circle, as much as possible.  So what’s the problem with using just that?  Well, look at the patterns.  The problem is that it’s going to dump an assload of light where you don’t want it and in quantities you definitely don’t want.  It’s going to dump a good amount of light to the sides very close to the light position.  So what’s wrong with that?  You’re going to go nuclear on those people nearest the light, and in order to compensate for that, you’re going to severely underexpose 1/2 to 3/4 of the people closest to the camera, maybe even lose them completely.  It’d be an “ok” shot, but just “ok” and who want’s that?

How do you light this narrow group of people as evenly as possible?  Add lights?  That’s certainly possible, but overly complicated, and probably not all that practical given time constraints.  The answer is to limit your light using a grid on your reflector and then use the dramatic falloff from that grid to your advantage.  So what does a grid afford us in this situation?  A 20º grid is going to fall off very rapidly, and this is a huge advantage to us in this situation for maintaining as consistent an exposure from front to back as we can get given the situation we have to work with.  The red arrows roughly show the degree of falloff we are utilizing to make this happen.

It’s the perfect source of light for this.  No burning or dodging had to be done to make this image ready.  Nobody is blown out, and we even have the bonus of Sarah’s dress acting as a bounce light source to kick some fill back into some of the group.  We are using limited lighting here to draw the eye or focus on what’s really important and leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination.  The back lighting shows a lot more shape and shadow, and the flowers being thrown are much more visible in this kind of light.

Effective lighting is simply a solution to a problem, so think about what you are trying to achieve and what the simplest solution would be before you just have a knee-jerk reaction and just throw light all over the place, hoping for the best.  With the constraints we are forced to work in, it can feel like we are handcuffed by our equipment, but when you learn to use those limitations to your advantage, you’ll feel that much more empowered to walk into any situation and bring back those stellar images you want to be known for.

Seshu (pronounced say-shoo for you Anglos) is a super fantastic, genuine family guy and all around great photographer.  You really should check out his work and follow him on Twitter!  He is a literal font of industry knowledge and happenings.  I have no idea where he finds the energy, much less the time!

These are all my images from tagging along on his wedding.  The goal really was to see how two different photographers approach the same wedding, compare images, and pick up some tips and techniques they might not use that will help them out in the future.  Enjoy!

One of my contributions to the Henna party.  Not a very exciting building, so sometimes you just have to bust out and try something different.  I was able to get the performer and the couple isolated using window and door openings.

I love little moments like them looking at each other like this, and I watch for them at every one of these.  They are bound to happen, but can be difficult to get when there’s 87,294 things going on at the same time.

Using a wide to frame a shot!  The camera was literally on the ground.

Embrace motion blur.  It can be so fantastic and telling!

A really wide lens can take an average room and make it a powerful graphic statement.

Shake it up with off camera lighting!

Approach to lighting should be about control and what you do or do not want to emphasize.  It’s merely a solution to a problem.  We discussed getting maximum efficiency for a given situation from minimal gear.  I swear it’s more exciting than it sounds, LOL!

Get to know Seshu.  He’s a great guy, and we can all use more sterling friends!  :)