Catchlight Studios Photography

Sonya and Kai's Wedding Day

Last Saturday, we had the great pleasure of photographing Sonya and Kai's wedding at the beautiful Bella Collina. Fortunately, we had great weather for this fabulous outdoor wedding and the entire event went off perfectly. 

Thanks to Heather of Weddings Unique for creating such a spectacular event. Floral design was by Floral No. 5, and The BuzzCatz provided great music throughout the reception. Transportation in the form of a gorgeous classic Cadillac was provided by Cole's Classic Cars.  

Finally, we would like to thank our assistant for the day, Stacy Pierce, and of course, Sonya and Kai for being such an awesome couple to photograph. We wish them both many years of wonderful happiness together.

Stefanie and Jon's Engagement

A couple of weeks ago, we had the pleasure of shooting Stefanie and Jon's Engagement session at Baldwin Park in Orlando. We are also looking forward to photographing their wedding in August, not just because they are a really nice couple, but also because they are getting married at the same venue that Susan and I did - BiCE Restaurant at the Portofino Hotel in Orlando.

Congratulations guys!

Studio Lighting Class Redux

At Harmon's School of Photography, we offer a Studio Lighting class about 4 times a year. It is almost always fully subscribed and unfailingly fun for all concerned. We try to get through a lot of information in this 4-week class, and all the participants get quite a bit of time behind the camera - and some in front of it also!

The first evening is devoted to the equipment used and much of the the theory behing studio lighting. In the second week, we take the students through a number of different lighting patterns - Loop, Closed Loop, Rembrandt and Butterfly - where they get the opportunity to be the photographer AND the model,as well as set the lights in position, take flash meter readings and hold reflectors. This is always a lot of fun, and the students gain a new appreciation for life on the other side of the camera.

In the 3rd and 4th weeks the students get a chance to shoot with models using a variety of different lighting setups that Susan and I arrange to demonstrate as many different 'looks' as we can in the time available. In general, we devote one of these weeks to low-key lighting styles and the other to the opposite (high-key) look.

The last two classes in this series were held in The Studio on Park, a really nice 2nd floor space in downtown Sandford, FL, courtesy of the owners, Reg Garner and Terre Lee Arrigoni. We started with a low key look using just a medium size softbox fitted with an egg crate grid, These images of Dennis and Stacy, two of the participants, typifiy the moody look we were going for.

Kyle was our model for week 3, and we started with this simple one light setup to create some nice portraits of a lovely young lady.

One of our favorite lighting setups is to use a Beauty Dish high and in front of the subject to create Butterfly lighting, and then to add a pair of accent lights in gridded stripboxes placed behind and either side of the subject at about 45 degree angles. This provides great highlights on the face and shoulders of the model, good separation from the background, and can give quite an 'edgy' look that works perticularly well with young men and very athletic subjects. We also used an Eyelighter reflector to fill in the shadows underneath Kylie's eyes and chin.

We finished Week 3 with a lighting setup made classic by local master portrait Photographer, Tim Kelly.

In this setup, the main and fill lights are positioned to camera left in large Larson softboxes. Additional fill is provided by the large reflector to camera right. This produced a very pleasing portrait of Kylie, although in retrospect, I wish we had added a hairlight to provide a little more separation.

For week 4, we switched to a lighter and brighter feel for our lighting. We started with a 4-light setup. The main light (an Einstein strobe) was placed to camera right and fired through a 7-foot Wescott White Diffusion Parabolic umbrella. Another Einstein in a large Larson sofbox provided fill from camera left, while the background was lit by a pair of Alien Bee 800 strobes in reflective umbrellas.

These large light sources made getting clean, crisp images of the lovely Madison, our model for the evening, very simple.

 

We then switched to a 2-light solution to get that classic white background look, by using the large Larson softbox as the background, while retaining the big Wescott shoot-through umbrella as the main light source. In this image, you can also see the iPad that we were shooting wirelessly to using the CamRanger. This incredibly useful device allowed the students to see exactly what we were shooting as we set up and finessed each lighting scenario. Stay tuned for a separate post on this great little gadget!

For a completely different look, we switched out the big Wescott shoot-through umbrella for a 64" PLM sliver parabolic umbrella from Paul C Buff. This gives a punchier light which is more focused than the larger shoot-through umbrella, and gives a nice fall-off of light down Madison's body. We did not use the background lights for this image, so as the background is not separately lit, it turns grey.

Next, we moved to using an ABR800 Ring Flash, again courtesy of Paul C Buff. Because the flash is right on the axis of the camera lens, the light is shadowless, although if you position the subject close to a background, you get the classic ringflash halo shadow.

We took this opportunity to do something a little more playful with Madison, and even got Stacy, one of our regular students, to jump in front of our camera for what I suspect might become her Facebook picture! The multiple reflections of the ring flash in Stacy's camera lens are pretty cool.

Our last setup of the night saw us switch off the strobes and turn to constant light in the form of the Wescott Spiderlites. These versatile, daylight-balanced, cool fluorescent lights are a great way to create natural-looking window light in practically any situation. We used two of these units, each in a softbox to create some nice portraits of Madison.

All the images shown above were captured with a Nikon D4, mainly using the 70-200 lens. Most of the images taken with studio strobes used a shutter speed of 1/125 second, ISO 200 and an aperture around f/11. The light from the Spiderlites is much less bright, and the image shown above was taken at 1/250 second, ISO 800 and f/2.8.

All images were processed intially in Lightroom 4. Additional processing was undertaken in Photoshop CS6 using the Portrait Professional and OnOne Perfect Suite plugins.

Thanks again to Reg and Terre for the use of their beautiful studio, and to all the participants for making this a fun class as always!

Kim and Josh's Winter Wonderland Wedding

Last week, Susan and I had the great pleasure of traveling to Keystone, Colorado to photograph Kim and Josh's wedding. I have known Kim for a number of years, and I was delighted when she told me she was getting married - and even more delighted when she asked us if we would photograph her wedding, Kim is a Personal Trainer and has kicked my butt more times then I care to remember. However she has always done it in a spirit of "I'm doing this for your benefit" so I forgave her . . . 

When we left our hotel to start taking pictures of the bride and groom getting dressed at 7:15 in the morning it was about 9 degrees and snowing heavily. In fact, it took us 10 minutes to dig the car out of the 4-6" of snow that had fallen overnight before making the short drive to the bride and groom's respective hotels.

As Susan and I photographed the bride and groom, respectively, the snow continued falling and the prospect of an outdoor wedding (Plan A) was starting to recede. Fortunately, as the time for the ceremony drew near, the blizzard (by our standards anyway) started to abate and we got the 'go' signal.

Although it was pretty darn cold by this Florida boy and girl's standards, we dressed (as advised) in layers and had a great time photographing one of the nicest couples you could ever wish to meet. Kim looked positively radiant in the snowy surroundings - which were, of course, beautiful - and her and Josh happily accommodated our every request.

The ceremony itself was lovely, and was held in the Quaking Aspen Ampitheater, a simple, but gorgeous surrounding. Here, as snow continues to fall lightly, Josh watches his bride as she walks towards him.

Guests huddled under blankets and hoped for some input from the heat lamps, but were warmed by the love radiating from our couple as the ceremony unfolded. 

After the ceremony, we did the formal shots in the same location - starrting with the entire audience.

The coolest part about this whole wedding, from a photographer's perspective, was that Kim and Josh wanted to be photographed at the top of the mountain, AND to ski/snowboard down in full wedding regalia! We were definitely up for that! Thankfully, ski lifts were not the only way up, so after the Reception. the four of us boarded a gondola for a more secure (and warm) ascent.

We met a strange character at the top of the slope.

Our very cool couple planned to ski/snowboard down the mountain - in full wedding dress!

And here they come . . . 

We had a great time in Keystone, and are so grateful to Kim and Josh for trusting us with the photography of their very unique wedding. We wish them a long and happy marriage - it couldn't happen to a nicer couple!

 

European Trip Part 1

Susan and I are currently in Tuscany, Italy, for a wedding and portrait photography workshop with David Ziser and Clay Blacknore. One the way, we visited England to catch up with my mom and sisters before flying on to Forence for the workshop.

We didn't do much photography in England, although we did take the time to re-visit a couple of our favorite spots in North Wales. This old abbey is a perfect candidate for an HDR approach.

St. Winifred's Well is another grear location that we have photographed previously.

Other than that, our England trip was notable for almost losing my brand-new MacBook Air by locking it in the trunk of our rental car after we dropped it off at London Gatwick airport, and blowing up our hairdryer by failing to reset the voltage to 220 V (twice the voltage apparently is not good for electrical devices).

We just arrived in Tuscany. Italy and it is an amazing location!  We plan to post more images from the workshop over the next few days. Stay tuned!

 

Tonya and Cliff's Engagement

We are stoked to be photographing Tonya and Cliff's wedding next month, and last weekend, we got together with them to shoot their engagement photographs in Mount Dora.

We started out just using natural light in open shade. The Nikon D4 with 70-200 mm lens wide open at f/2.8 captured some lovely portraits of our couple, both individually and together.

For the remainder of the shoot, we resorted to our trusty Quantum T5D-r flash in a Lastolite EZBox and triggered with PocketWizards.

For the next image, we added a Nikon SB800 flash as a backlight.

After the session the couple asked if we could take some pictures in the house they are currently renovating prior to their marriage, and of course, we happily obliged. Here they are on the porch of their lovely future home.

One of the shots they requested was on the stairs inside the home, whch created more of a lighting challenge. I wanted to use the bannisters and steps as leading lines but not over-light them. To achieve this, the Quantum flash was left in the EZBox but aimed at the wall to camera left. This provided a nice wash of light over the scene.

 

 

Fola and Dorothy's Engagement

Susan and I had the great pleasure of photographing Fola and Dorothy's engagement session on Friday night. This was actually rescheduled from earlier in the week because of rain from passing Hurricance Isaac. Dorothy was only in town for one more day, so this was our last chance to capture the images they wanted.

Once again, our venue was the beautiful Rollins College campus in Winter Park. Not only does this location provide many great opportunities for photos, it also has ample cover in case Mother Nature decided not to cooperate. Fortunately, she did and we had a great session with a wonderful couple. We even managed to work the Full (Blue) Moon into a few shots!

All images were taken with a Nikon D4 and mostly with the 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens. All shots except the first one were lit with a Quantum T5D-r flash in a Lastolite EZBox and triggered by PocketWizard Plus II/III radios.

 

"Explosive Wedding Photography" Workshop

We just completed quite a weekend with Nicholas Viltrakis and Eric Cameron as they brought their "Explosive Wedding Photography" workshop to Harmon's School of Photography. Susan and I first met Eric when we attended David Ziser's Fall Master Class last year. Eric was one of David's coaches for the class and we immediately recognized him as a natural teacher. Although we didn't meet Nicholas at the same event, he has frequently assisted David Ziser and - more to the point - both he and Eric run successful photography businesses and are very talented photographers in their own right.

We were delighted when Nicholas and Eric agreed to come to Orlando to present their new program - "Explosive Wedding Photography: Growth for the New Economy". We began the workshop on Friday evening and Nicholas and Eric presented a wealth of information about meeting with clients, negotiations, sales and of course, approaches to photographing the wedding day.

We reconvened at the beautiful J.W. Marriott hotel in Orlando early on Saturday morning with three 'brides' and a 'groom'. Participants spent the next 6-7 hours photographing the models in a wide variety of settings similar to those encountered on a real wedding day (albeit more lovely than we often encounter). Both Nicholas and Eric helped everyone get some great images. Here are a few of our own from the day:

The workshop wrapped up on Sunday morning. Following a review and critique of some of the images obtained the day before, Eric and Nicholas reviewed a wealth of information on sales and marketing that was extremely useful for those just getting into the prfessional photography business. Their delivery was always light and often humorous, and peppered with anecdotes from their own experience. The need for backup equipment was amply illustrated by the tale of a wedding guest that ran over a camera bag in his truck . . . 

Overall, everyone greatly enjoyed the workshop. Nicholas and Eric did a great job in covering a great deal of information in a relatively short time. We are sure you will be seeing a lot more of these guys on the speaking circuit! Our thanks to them for taking the time to come down to Orlando to present the workshop, to our models Peyton, Cassandra, Robyn and Shane for working so tirelessly in the heat, to Ron Caimano for securing such excellent locations for the workshop, and to all the participants for supporting it.

 

Courtney and Jason's Engagement

Susan and I will have the honor of photographing Courtney and Jason's wedding this coming May. The couple do not live in Florida, but we had the opportunity to do their engagement photography during a recent visit to Orlando.

They will be getting married at the Orlando Science Center. That should be a really cool venue and we are looking forward to getting some very different wedding images there.

We shot their engagement pictures in Loch Haven Park and the grounds of the Mennello Museum of American Art. We even got a half-decent sunset!

 

2011 in Review

2011 was a pretty good year for both Catchlight Studios Photography and Harmon's School of Photography. There was a good mix of wedding, portrait and commercial work, and we put on some great workshops that were well attended. We attended a few courses and workshops ourselves and enjoyed a great European vacation creating images for our own enjoyment. So in this final post of 2011, I wanted to look back over a few of our favorite images.

The first one was taken at the wedding workshop we ran in April at The Duncan House in Tavares, Florida. Our bride was lit with a PCB Einstein light in a beauty dish and the texture of her veil was enhanced in post-processing using the Tonal Contrast filter in Nik Color Efex Pro. A panoramic crop in Lightroom added to the flowing feel of the image.

In preparation for this workshop, we did a shoot at the same location with Susan's daughter, Robyn, as our 'bride'. We actually got some pretty unique images in the relaxed atmosphere of this 'pre-shoot'. In this image, I shot straight down on Robyn as she adopted a pensive pose. We again enhanced the textures in post-processing.

We did quite a number of engagement shoots, and we always like to shoot late in the day, avoiding the worst of the Florida heat, while hoping to capture a nice sunset. When we did Elizabeth and Phil's session it was cloudy and even raining a little as we loaded the car to travel to the location. We were very convinced that we would not be seeing a sunset, so we were amazed as we neared the end of the shoot to see color starting to appear in the sky. And then suddenly . . . BAM! The most vibrant sunset we have seen in a long while. Our happy couple were lit with an off-camera Quantum flash and this image was subsequently featured on Quantum's Facebook page.

The next image was captured during a Photo Safari organized by local fellow photographer Maurice Rodriguez. Our model was photographed against a cool wall in downtown Sanford (one of favorite spots for shooting seniors). The texture of the wall was enhanced using Topaz Adjust before monochrome conversion in Nik Silver Efex Pro.

Talking of seniors, we had two great sessions with brothers Trent and Shane this year. For the second of these, we went into the studio and played with a bunch of different looks and lighting - they were great sports. This image of Shane was created with three lights - two of which are providing those edgy highlights on the side of his face. The edgy feel was continued into post-processing using Topaz Detail and monochrome conversion with a Lightroom Develop Preset from Kevin Kubota.

We shot some great weddings with beautiful brides and handsome grooms. But no bride was more lovely than Erica. A wedding photographer herself, she knows the value of photography and we were honored when she asked us to capture her special day. I don't usually take my beloved 200 mm f/2.0 lens to weddings as it is large and heavy, but I knew this bride would do this magnificent lens justice and I was not wrong! All natural light for this image.

We did two shoots this year for Flashes of Hope. This wonderful organization provides professional photographs to children with cancer and their families. It is a blessing for us to be involved with them and we always come away with memorable images. Little Tyler, for example, was awesome to work with. He loved the camera, and the camera sure loved him!

In September, we became students ourselves as we attended David Ziser's week-long Master Class. We had an awesome time learning some new tricks and meeting some great people from around the country (who we keep in touch with thanks to Facebook). We captured a number of cool images, but this one stands out, not least because David subsequently featured the image on his very popular blog. We loved the vibrance of our model's dress against the monochromatic feel of the stone steps.

Susan captured the next image - a really beautiful shot of our 'bride' gazing upwards through her veil.

We had a full schedule of classes throughout the year, and we especially enjoy the 4-week Studio Lighting classes. Because we are together for 4 weeks, we get to know the students pretty well and a camaraderie develops between them. We also get some cool images of both models and students!

This image was lit with a Wescott TD5 Spiderlite and captured with the Nikon 200 mm f/2.0 lens. I love the dreamy quality that this lens gives when shot wide open.

Sometimes the students make great portrait subjects - we always make them photograph each other because it helps a lot to know what it feels like.

Not all our classes involve photographing people of course. Another popular one is our Night Photography Field Trip. In November we walked around Sanford and got a few cool shots including this one of the old pier. This was an HDR image with long exposures to get a silky appearance to the lake.

In March, Susan and I attended the huge WPPI convention in Las Vegas. It was a fun experience and we also got an opportunity to walk around this very unique city and grab a few shots.

Finally, we had a great vacation in September visiting England, Belgium and France. We especially enjoyed our couple of days in Brugges where I shot one of my favorite images of the year. This is an HDR image, but part of the post-processing involved adding a 'glow' effect which imparts a rather painterly feeling to the image.

In closing out the year, Susan and I want to wish all our family, friends, clients and students every happiness and success for 2012, and to thank everyone for their wonderful support over the last 12 months!