Cory here…  OK, so you know things have gotten backed up when I start writing blog posts.  Simply put, I don’t blog.  Don’t get me wrong, I have a blog… and a Facebook page, and a MySpace page, and have even built a couple dozen websites over the years, but I just don’t have the discipline to keep up with any of them   But, Samantha needs a little relief, so today I blog!

A couple of weekends ago Samantha and I took a road trip with the kiddos up to Nashville, Tennessee for a flash photography workshop held by Neil Van Niekerk.  Samantha and I can use flash just fine, but we wanted to take it to the next level and that’s where Neil can help.  He’s absolutely the on-camera flash KING in the wedding photography world if not, in my opinion, the entire photography industry.  Of course he’s also great at off-camera lighting, but that wasn’t the focus of the workshop.

Here are a few images from the workshop.  Of course, these aren’t exactly our style since it’s not a regular thing to go out and hire models to shoot with, but I think you’ll enjoy them anyway…

This is Neil giving some direction to one of the models…

And here are some of the results.  Notice the natural light on her left.  The right side is compensated by flash from my camera to even things out and bring up the contrast…

And this one is natural light from the back with flash in the front.  Notice the angle of the flash looks like it’s coming from the upper left, but it’s actually coming from my camera.

And here we start working with a bonus portion of the workshop which no one expected: video lighting!  This is a technique starting to really get some traction with photographers and our workshop was blessed with the extra treat of having world famous commercial and wedding photographer Chuck Arlund give a demomstration on how he uses it for his shoots.  The following pictures use nothing but a single, hand-held video light.  It’s fairly dark in these rooms and flash is not used in any way…

And then we moved outside to see what we could do with some off-camera lighting.  This was using two wireless flashes in the back of two softboxes.  The guy in black is Neil holding one of the softbox flashes and the guy behind him is Chuck Arlund helping out.  (That’s not me shooting.  I’m starting to get some white hairs from my kiddos, but am not losing any yet, praise God! )

And here are a few results…

This is one shot from when we were learning how to use a light meter.  Too cool…

And last we went back in for a couple more shots to practice what we had learned.  This is just one of them.  The background was very bright natural light through the window.  Without using flash I would’ve only had two options: 1. expose for the subject so you can see them which would result in the background “blowing out” or being too bright to make out any details, or 2. expose for the background and let the subject be a dark shadowed sillouette.  In this case I exposed for the background, but then lit my subject with just the right amount of flash so both the back and foreground were properly exposed.  Much better

That’s it!  I hope you enjoyed them!

I met the lovely lady in gold at Panera Bread one night while I was meeting with our next beach wedding bride. After the bride left, I started talking to Miss. L and we talked about our love for photography. She mentioned she wanted something different for her and her friends for prom pictures. We talked a little more and I gave her my card. I was SO excited to hear from her a few weeks later. We met at Samford and the weather was perfect. Don’t they all look amazing? This was super fun and I totally wish I had prom pictures like THIS!

This little princess is the third girl in this family. We drove down to Tuscaloosa to see her and her sisters at home. She decided she only wanted to be held my mom and who can blame her! I love this age, brand new from the oven!

Today I love…

15th anniversary sessions where they are still very much so in love….

A bride in her wedding dress 15 years later…stunning…

Real, closed eyes, smiles…

when the light falls perfectly on a face…

Beautiful eye lashes, sweet smiles…

Sunflares and family portraits…

and looks at the camera without smiling….

I will never tired of taking pictures of this incredible family. During our session, we figured out our first session was exactly a year ago from this session. Big sister and brother are at the edge of being teenagers and have changed so much i nthe last year. And little brother is no longer a baby. I love that my job is meeting families like this one. I hear updates from mom through faceook and they are just amazing kids! Smart, funny, incredible kids!

Because I know the groom is out of town on business and his bride misses him… I am posting a few from the wedding I am working on…