Laffler Photography Blog

I happen to think that watching TV isn’t such a bad thing, as long as it’s done in moderation. So, why not try watching a little TV while you are shooting a wedding too!? I have used televisions in a few of my wedding photographs, and usually wind up liking the result. Now, more often than not, I am avoiding something as potentially distracting as a TV at all costs, but sometimes you just have to roll with what’s in front of you, and not ignore the 800 pound high definition gorilla in the room! The exciting part of doing this, I find, is that you really don’t know what you are going to get. The idea, for me at least, is to somehow connect what’s happening on the TV with whatever else that is “real” in the room. Achieving this sometimes just comes down to dumb luck, or if you prefer, serendipity. Let’s see some of that “serendipity” in action!

This one REALLY was dumb luck, but you have to be prepared for dumb luck to happen to you though! The bridesmaids were watching TV, and I had set the dress up next to it. Pretty straight forward. Then I just stood back, took a test shot or two to make sure that what was on the TV would show up in the final shot, and then just waited for something “interesting” to come on. Seriously, after about a minute or two, this ad for a Soap Opera came on. “CLICK”….done! So, here is an obvious and almost literal “connection” from what’s on the TV to our reality. Let’s look at a not so literal connection in the second image…

On this shot, I set the bride up so that she was in the path of the window light and so that she contrasted from the white blown out area of the window itself. I then framed up my shot, including the TV. I turned the TV on, but had to surf the channels a little to find a something I thought might work. What I liked about this particular frame was how the bride and chef are both wearing all white, and how they are both facing the same direction, and also placed in the frame in about the same position, the bride off center to the right of the frame (the overall frame of the entire photograph), and the chef off center to the right of his frame (the black frame of the TV itself). So, here the connection between TV and reality isn’t so literal, but more a play on mimicking one another.

Pretty much the same deal on this shot, set it up, test shots for exposure, then wait for something to come up. What I liked about this frame is how the close up of the cartoon girl on the TV appears to be looking wide eyed over at the dress hanging in the window. I also like that she seems to be around the age of a teenager, and perhaps fantasizing of her own wedding day/dress. Once again, here is our connection. Without which I don’t think any of these images would have worked.

So, hopefully that was somewhat helpful to you photographers out there. Go ahead and try it, you might be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Don’t be shy now, chime in with comments or questions. Also, if you think this might be useful for someone else you know, please send them a link to it: http://lafflerphotography.com/blog/?p=4505

Ok, just one TV “fun fact” for you: “American children and adolescents spend 22 to 28 hours per week viewing television, more than any other activity except sleeping. By the age of 70 they will have spent 7 to 10 years of their lives watching TV.”
– The Kaiser Family Foundation

Thanks guys.

Here is a quick post about capitalizing on potential opportunities. I will also explain a little about exploring your subject in more depth, even from a static shooting position. I will be using some photographs I took yesterday morning after it had snowed all night to illustrate my thoughts. Now, these are certainly not the best photographs I have ever taken, but just think of this as an exercise for the mind and eyes. I believe a lot of what I am going to get into here is in fact transferable to wedding photography as well.

Here is the set up: The other night I was stacking some firewood, just as it had started to snow. I knew that we were expecting a fairly significant (for NJ at least) amount of snow. In the past I have thought about placing “interesting” objects in the grass before it started to snow so that I could photograph them afterward. For one reason or another I just never followed through with the idea. So, last night, since I was already outside, and it had only just begun to snow I decided to seize the day, or more appropriately, the night! I didn’t have too much at my disposal as I wasn’t truly prepared to do this. Time to improvise, (kind of like a wedding huh?) I saw a bunch of our outdoor chairs sitting upside down on our table, grammar school style. I knew that these chairs would become my “subject”. I am a big fan of line, shape and pattern in my photography, so I started thinking of how I could use all of these chairs in an interesting way. I had to previsualize the photograph before I made it. This is another device I use when photographing the bride and groom. In my head I am sorting out where the light will fall, how I can use that to my advantage, how am I going to compose it, what focal length and aperture to use, where is the best angle to shoot from etc. Keep in mind that this is usually just a starting point, and sometimes it doesn’t work, or you need to tweak things, or even rethink one of those components for whatever reason.

In regards to the following photographs, I knew that I wanted a clean and simple snow laden background for the shot I was previsualizing, and to show the chairs in a semi-random pattern. Because my backyard isn’t terribly large and has a fence all the way around it, some trees, and other various objects, I knew the only way for me to achieve a clean background in such a small space was to shoot down on top of my “subject”. So, now I knew that I would be shooting from a window inside the house on the second floor. In my head, I tried to visualize what it looked like from that specific window. From there I began placing the chairs in a semi-random pattern. I also knew that I didn’t want any of the chairs to overlap one another from my shooting angle, so had to space them accordingly.

If you know what someone is likely to do before they do it, you can better prepare yourself for it right? I knew we were expecting a lot of snow and wanted to construct an interesting photograph utilizing that snow. I put everything together to achieve that goal and then executed. The same can be said of a wedding day. While it is true that every wedding is different and unique in its own way, there are a few things throughout a wedding that you can anticipate happening before they actually do happen. So prepare yourself for those moments, think ahead of time about where the light will be, what’s the best focal length and aperture to express your vision for that shot, where is the best angle to photograph it from etc. So, let’s see what I came up with…

Here is the shot pretty much as I had envisioned it the night before. I accomplished my goals; a clean and uncluttered “backdrop”, the chairs set up in a semi-random pattern which shows off their lines, and no chairs are overlapping each other. It’s pretty straight forward and I was relatively happy with the result considering I didn’t actually put too much thought into this.

So, now it’s time to subtly “explore” the “subject”, all from the same exact shooting position. The above shot was my starting point, and was how I had envisioned the shot to begin with, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best “solution”. I then zoomed in a bit to only show 3 complete chairs, and let the others be slightly cropped out.

I then zoomed out, changed to a portrait orientation and included all the chairs in the frame again, just as in the first shot, but this time I included some negative space below them. Also notice that I have gone from a square crop, to a landscape, and now to a portrait orientation.

I liked the look of all that negative space, so I decided to include just one chair in the frame this time.

As I was photographing, I noticed some birds flying to our bird feeder, so I tried to do a few shots with the birds in the frame. Obviously I couldn’t tell the birds where to go in the composition, so I just kept shooting and hoped something interesting would come out. I thought the following shot was the most interesting of the bird photographs. I liked how these two birds were positioned in the frame. I really enjoy this kind of shooting because you don’t really know what you will get, so it’s more exciting.

I kept the idea of including some negative space, but this time just changed back to a landscape orientation. When doing this, I picked up a little bit of our tree swing in the frame, which I kind of liked.

Then I decided to venture away from my “subject” and decided to only include the tree swing with a lot of negative space around it. Part of the framing decision of this was only due to other distracting elements that started creeping into the photograph.

So, you can see, I have not changed my shooting position in any way, and was able to come up with a few different looks of the same subject (except for the lone swing, but you can see how I got there). So, don’t just shoot what you think is the final photograph and pack it up, explore it a bit more and you will more than likely find something you like even better!

Don’t be shy now, chime in with comments or questions. Also, if you think this might be useful for someone else you know, please send them a link to it: http://lafflerphotography.com/blog/?p=4509

This one is pretty simple, and that’s kind of the whole point here. While doing a recent engagement session I walked by this tree with a brick wall behind it. (See original photo below). The first thing that struck me were all those openings between the branches. Easy framing device right there. I also noticed a clean uncluttered brick wall behind the tree as well, and a ledge for my clients to stand on too. So, here’s a quick run down on how I brought all the focus onto my subjects in a scene that was actually both clean (only two elements, the tree branches and the brick wall) yet potentially chaotic. Although I only had two elements to deal with, if handled incorrectly, it could have become a hot mess! The 2 main factors in taming all those lines of the branches and brick wall were due to aperture selection, and tight cropping to eliminate those windows in the background on either side of them. Also notice the use of contrast in the final image, her face is just about the brightest thing in the whole photo. The eye will naturally go to the area of most contrast, and I used this to my advantage. Scroll down to see my complete thought process on this shot.

My thoughts:
1.) Dark spindly branches to use as a natural framing device. This helps create a “frame” around my subjects which helps bring focus to them.
2.) Notice how in this part of the scene it is naturally a little brighter. I use this to my full advantage in the final shot as this brighter part is where I have put Gabby’s face, again another way of bringing attention to your subject through contrast of dark and light.
3.) A critical element to the success of this photo is aperture selection. By using a shallow depth of field I was able to decrease the focus on both the tree branches and the brick wall. This softens up all those hard lines and is another way of bringing attention to my subjects. Imagine if both the branches and the brick wall were in perfect focus too? Yuck! Shot settings : ISO 800, Lens: 70-200mm (shot at 140mm) f/2.8 1/400 sec.
4.) This was another very important decision in making this photograph. I had some shots with a little bit of these windows showing and it was an eye sore. The main reason is because they are painted white and therefore created a lot of contrast. In this case, it was undesirable contrast. So I had to make sure I cropped in tighter to eliminate them from the photo.
5.) The ledge. Without the ledge I’m not sure they would have had enough height on their own to be seen in that branch opening.

And here is the final image:

So, hopefully that was somewhat helpful to you photographers out there. Don’t be shy now, chime in with comments or questions. Also, if you think this might be useful for someone else you know, please send them a link to it: http://lafflerphotography.com/blog/?p=3281

I’ve had a few photographers ask me lately if I did any workshops or seminars. I said no, but it did get me thinking about perhaps traveling down that road. So, I have decided to post a glimpse into my thought process while creating a particular photograph. If some of you silent photographer blog stalkers come out from the shadows and show some interest in this, even if it’s a “hey, that was helpful” or even a, “dude, don’t quit your day job” that’s great. If you guys like this sort of thing, I will try to continue with it, and perhaps it will help build the foundation of my future workshops, who knows! And if you have questions about anything regarding the blog post, go ahead and comment, I will try my best to answer them and create a dialogue here on the blog.

While I was out shooting a client’s engagement session the other day I came across a perfect example of how you can turn a less than desirable location into something MUCH better. It’s all about visualizing beyond what’s actually in front of you and figuring out how to accentuate your advantages and down play or even eliminate your disadvantages. I hope to illustrate that here.

So, here is the scene that we walked by. We actually walked by it in the beginning of our session, about 2 hours earlier when the sun was quite a bit higher. This was where the seed was planted in my head. I thought, I bet I could do something with this location later when the sun gets lower. So, I asked my clients if we would be walking back the same way on our return. (I’m not usually a big fan of this as you pretty much see the same stuff you did on the walk out, but I didn’t mind this time, mostly because of this particular location). Anyway, they said yes and I made a mental note to make this the last location of our shoot.

Keep in mind that when I originally walked by this location, the sun was not nearly this low. One of the first things you will notice about this location is that parking lot full of cars. This is a big pet peeve of mine, and I try to avoid ugly parked cars in photos at all times. So, this is certainly one of the negative aspects to overcome. Secondly, there is the nondescript cement walkway here, and then the patch of weeds. When we arrived here the second time in the late afternoon, I quickly noticed one of the biggest positives here, which is the lower sun, just over the ridge there. I love this, as it creates a nice warm light and that cool “halo” effect of rim lighting around the subjects. I also noticed that dark ridge in the background which I knew would act as a nice uncluttered backdrop behind my subjects heads, and would really accentuate that rim lighting. I know I said the patch of weeds was a negative, but it was also a positive too. This enabled me to crop out the cement walk way, after asking my clients to politely jump in the weeds, and I also used them to help me mask out the cars in the background by using a lower camera angle.

Here are 4 quick “bullet points” to my thought process:
1. Yummy warm low sun just above the ridge giving me that rim lighting.
2. Dark ridge in the background which will give a clean backdrop for my subjects heads to pop from, especially with the halo lighting.
3. Patch of weeds to help create some interest and allowing me to get rid of the distracting cars in the background by using a low camera angle. I also found this exact location where the weeds naturally split into a “V” shape, to help create a “frame” around my subjects as well.
4. This is all camera stuff/decisions; Shoot low from this spot to mask out cars, take off the lens hood to help with desired sun flaring, use a shallow depth of field on my 70-200mm to also isolate my subjects, take some test shots and chimping to find a good exposure and setting that in manual mode.

Here are the final photos:

This one (top photo) is a looser crop and I think it really shows the potential of a location when you start maximizing your advantages, while minimizing your disadvantages, and can hopefully help you to start seeing beyond just what’s in front of you.

This one (lower photo) is a tighter crop and more emphasizes the use of the dark background/lighting and “framing” using the weeds.

So, hopefully that was somewhat helpful to you photographers out there. Don’t be shy now, chime in with comments or questions. Also, if you think this might be useful for someone else you know, please send them a link to it: http://lafflerphotography.com/blog/?p=3144

Thanks.