I performed a few rock songs during Mandy’s ceremony on the beach. What a lovely time! Here are some random shots during the night. All of them were using a bare flash with a CTO gel. The orange gel is to fake that “magic hour” lighting and gives a hard orange light that people like so much in the late afternoon. These shots were too late for that light, but you can see the sun peeking out above the houses in the background.
We recently went to San Francisco for Amy and Hanh’s wedding and it was great fun. I have known Amy for years and she is absolutely one of my favorite people. Hanh is perfect for Amy, mainly because I like him so much, and his dancing entertains me so.
Friday morning, we all went on a bike tour from San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, to Saulsalito, then to Tiburon.
Erin on her bike. This is her natural glamorous pose. We stopped too many times to take pictures of the beautiful day. Here is the picture that made us miss the boat from Tiburon back to San Francisco.
After the scariest cab ride I have ever experienced back to San Francisco (and I am from New York City!), we made it back in time to shower and change for the welcome dinner. Amy and Hanh wore traditional Vietnamese áo dài and áo gấm at the dinner. If you can’t pronounce that, it is because you are not Vietnamese.
They had a delicious assortment of foods including dungeness crabs, which are not native to North Carolina, but are in abundance in San Francisco. The fancy Vietnamese outfits plus crackly messy crabs equals, you guessed it, lobster bibs!
Lobster bibs all around, and that makes for a fun time for all.
The after-party was down the street at an Irish pub, to celebrate Amy’s side of the impending union.
They had an intimate ceremony at the Presidio chapel that perfectly blended their personalities. There was an interesting reading about a hippo or a kangaroo that I can’t exactly remember, but I liked it nonetheless.
Here are some reception and party shots from the officer’s club next door to the chapel.
Congratulations Amy and Hanh!
What a great time in San Francisco. Whew, we took a boatload of pictures out there! We stayed near the Presidio with my friend Shawn. He walked us down to the palace of Fine Arts. Absolutely gorgeous, and next door to a Starbuck’s. I still think that they burn their coffee. Nasty. Eddy agreed that Dunkin’ Donuts makes the best coffee and we avoided a long argument that could have lasted over the whole trip. Thank God. Eddy and shawn also agreed that we thought Google’s search could not have gotten faster. We were wrong. What am I going to do with all my extra free time? Here’s the palace on our morning leisurely walk. Erin took this one. She rocks.
Why does anyone live anywhere else? Anyway, we had a full day on Sunday, with sightseeing and costume shopping and finally a long walk on the beach. There at the beach we were treated with a beautiful sunset, a rare occurrence in San Francisco.
Clearly, I did not take that picture. Neither did Erin. That’s us.
Here’s the setup shot. 
I am the Voice Activated Lightstand in this one. This is what the group looked like after eating crabs everyday. Oh and the french pastry shop that I went to is the best place in the world. Officially. Tartine bakery and cafe. Don’t you dare miss it if you are within an hour of San Francisco. Enjoy the rest of the pictures. 
More to come soon.
Ronni and David were married at PGA national. Congratulations! I am proud of you baby brother. I love you. Enjoy the slideshow and the pictures that follow.
I had the pleasure of setting up the famous photobooth at my little Brother’s wedding. Congratulations Ronni and David! How much fun was that? That’s me on the ground in the front in my sexiest pose. Imagine how bad I look normally.
Yvette had a beautiful wedding outside of Greensboro. Here are some photos from the day.
Congratulations!
Someone recently asked me how to take photos in the dark. I like the challenge of taking a picture in a dark room. It’s difficult, takes practice, and requires that you think and change your settings constantly. I believe that when you are picking a photographer to take photos in a dark setting, you should ask him or her to see examples of photos in a dark setting. This sets the good technical photographers apart from the people who have a good eye, but no technique. Well it’s hard, but here is how you do it. High ISO, Camera on manual, flash lens with a wide aperture, and gelled bounce flash. That’s it.
. . . Actually, that’s not really all of it. It is also tricky, if not impossible, to do after one beer.
High ISO
ISO is the sensitivity of your camera to light. The higher the number, the greater the sensitivity. Nowadays, most modern DSLRs can shoot pretty well up to about 800 ISO. Some can easily go up to 6400. Why not take all your pictures at these high ISOs, you ask? Digital cameras produce noise. On some cameras, the noise makes the image unusable. The trick to get the least noise out of your camera is to always expose to the right. That means you make sure your histogram peak is to the right, not to the left, of center. You are using your histogram, right? Use your histogram to check your exposure.
Do a search on Google, there are a million articles on how to read your histogram. Ignore most of those and just make sure your histogram doesn’t butt up against either the left or right side. If you take a picture that is mostly white, the histogram peak should be to the right. If it is mostly black, then the peak should be to the left. If your picture is mixed, peak in the center. In the dark, always try to get the peak to the right of center. That’s harder than it should be because, wait for it, . . . it’s dark.
Manual
I like to shoot in manual when I am using flash in the dark. Find the correct setting for the ambient light in the room to register and set your camera there. Maybe underexpose the room by a little bit. That means histogram to the left of where it should be. Then use the flash to get the subject up to the correct exposure. Remember, histogram to the right of center if possible for noise purposes when you add the flash. Bonus: if the flash is the only thing lighting up the subject, your shutter speed can be pretty low. Like 60 or 30. I know you don’t believe me, but it is true. The flash stops the movement of the subject if she is in the dark in relation to the ambient light. Now your backgrounds will be consistent as long as you are in the same area. There is so much more to this, but you will discover it as you play around with your camera.
Lenses
You need a lens with a big opening. That means a small number on the aperture. Erin’s point and shoot has a 2.0. On a DSLR, get the $100 50 mm if your camera supports it. Get the $500 50 mm if your camera does not. Practice focusing precisely because very little is in focus at a large aperture. Use the largest aperture that can get everything you want in focus. That means down to 1.4 if your subject is one person, 4.0 or greater if you are taking a picture of a group. Simple.
Bounce and gel your flash
People look pretty terrible when you point a flash directly at them. But don’t bounce your flash straight above the head of the subject. Nothing looks great lit that way, and the flash is uneven. Find some wall or a door or someone’s shirt, or something to bounce your flash off of so that you get directional light on the subject. Try to think of the bounce surface as your light source. Just try it. You will like it.
Gel your flash to match the ambient light. They sell gels in large sheets for cheap from photography shops. Ask for CTO (color temperature orange) or CTS (color temperature straw). Tape it to your flash.
Booyah!* That’s it. Taking pictures in the dark. Of course the are are little details that I left out, but you can discover those as you go along.
*Does anyone say Booyah! anymore? My life is like an episode of “A Different World.” It really is different than where you come from. Peace.
Wow! What a great time with the photo booth this weekend. Meghan and Brad threw a great event. We enjoyed the gardens and Putt Putt golf. I ended up 16 over. Not too bad considering the tricky corner shot on 10.
The happy couple
I wanted to do something special for Meghan’s portraits here. I originally thought that I would rent a ring light and try to do some fashion-type shots, but the ring lights that I found for rental were too underpowered and would not have worked well in groups. Instead, I set up the lighting to give a standard portrait if you stood a certain distance from the camera. If you leaned in, you got beauty or clamshell lighting and a slight overexposure which gets you here:
Having fun with the bride
A little more glamorous, I think. As you can see, Erin was in the wedding this time, so I didn’t have her much needed help. To set up the shot, I set a 45″ umbrella right above the camera and a large foam core board on a high angled table directly below the camera. The lens is set to 26mm. When a guest leaned in, not only did they get the clamshell lighting, but the slight wide angle distorted their faces just enough to make it interesting. We had a good time with it. More shots below.
You can see the whiteboard in his sunglasses here.
Oh what fun it is to be a guest at a wedding instead of working. I still had an opportunity to take some shots of Annie and Brad. It was good to see old friends. Annie and Brad had a wonderful wedding in Charlotte, NC, where I lived a large part of my adult life. They had a beautiful ceremony and reception.
I have to compliment Annie and Brad on the high quality of the bubbles that they had at the event. These were industrial strength bubbles and worthy of being handed out by my friend Gina. Gina only accepts the best in bubbles.
Gina and Annie - That's what they looked like when I met them. They stare at each other.
We danced to the DJ and then everyone rode out in the stretch Hummer – the ultimate in classy, all terrain, combat vehicles – to the Evening Muse to see Sam Thacker. Sam sang a surprise song at the wedding and stayed for the reception. I had a good time showing him my iPhone chromatic tuner and other interesting apps. I’m not sure what kind of time he had talking to me.
Brad getting down with his bad self - and a dude I didn't get to properly meet.
We had a great time Annie.
We took some shots out at Lake Crabtree on an unusually sunny fall day. Here are some of my favorites from the day.
