Simple light, simple concept, perfect model

Once again I got the chance to get into the studio with the stunningly beautiful Marion B.

As always the communication during the shooting was totally fluently and I got that deep & warm look in her eyes that I was expecting... pictures talk by themselves !

Marion is also a great singer and some of her music can be listen at: www.myspace.com/marionbmusique

The 123 of the Wedding Season 2010 !

Starting on May 2010, and probably up to October (as I did last two years) I will be doing what I like to do on summer, shooting brides and grooms !.

There is a lot of excitement and new stuff coming up this year, a new and permanent assistant (I hope so ), new gear, new lighting techniques, and the most important thing, a well deserved experience in the field and my personal signature. So let's talk about tree things in my mind when I'm shooting weddings:

First: weddings are an extension of my studio work so I like to control every single aspect of the shooting, and, unless I have no choice, I always try to put my lights in the right place, I just do not believe in that idea of working ONLY with available light.... so as much as I can, I use a mix of available light and flash and usually side-light all my images except for the ones at the church where I have to reduce my gear to the minimum to avoid any obstructions at the event. Using a flash not only give me control of the position of my main light, it also provide vivid colors and help if no totally avoid the need of high ISO producing sharpen and clean images.

Second: Connecting with the couple. If the couple trust me and cooperate when doing the pictures it will be a win-win situation. It will totally show on the pictures how happy they are and the work will be smooth during all day. The key, feedback ! I just get so excited when I see a great image that I naturally show them want I doing at the camera preview, they like the images, they get in the mood and the synergy starts... of course I have to give some ideas and directions, otherwise they will not have and starting point, but always, always I try to give them the most of the possible space, I try to show them as they are, to experiment their owns ideas and make them do everything I say into their very own way.

Third: The right technique, the use of the right gear. Traditional photographers usually work with fix lenses in order to produce sharper images and catch more available light when shooting wide open, but.... weddings happen to be events and there is nothing worse than switching lens every few minutes during the action or having several heavy digital bodies attached to the photographers neck, so I NEVER shoot the action in this way, instead, I use stabilized zoom which allow me to quickly change my focal distance and have different perspectives of the same scene at the same time and with the same gear. I understand the concern of the photographers 10 years ago when the available zoom didn't achieve the desired quality, but now a days I really cannot tell the difference between an image shot on location with a zoom or a fix lens... so no questions about it, zooms are more versatile and suitable for wedding than fix lenses and , BTW, shooting a subject in motion wide open at f/1.4 or so and have sharpen and clean images is close to impossible.

There are a few more things in my mind but I will post and update next year based on the upcoming 2010 experiences.

Thank you for reading !

Saul

Taking pictures of kids

School is almost over, so time to write again ! I have done a lot of shootings lately and I really want to share some stuff. This time is about kids, if you have them or thing to shoot them photograph them on location you really have to check this out:

1-The golden rule, be fast. Kids are not there forever, and you have to have the finger ready to press and your camera in your faster possible setting, no matter if your camera is able to take handheld pictures at 1/8 of second because you have stabilized lenses, you are going to have motion blur for the kids movements, so I will definitely go with something above 1/125sec or why not 1/250sec which is my max sync speed for flash without using this terrible feature called "high speed sync".. I will explain this is another post.

2- Chose the right aperture: Everybody likes the dreamy blurry backgrounds product from shooting wide open, but it's come for a price a very shallow depth of field (DOF) that very often will make your subject out of focus, so is a balance between DOF vs. a crispy image in the foreground. I never go under f/5.6, even if my lenses are very sharpen at f/2.8 the failure rating is too high below medium apertures. You can still have a nice blurry background by getting closer to your subject and increasing the distance subject-background vs. subject-camera.

3- Use a flash if you are indoors. Purist will kill me for this but there is nothing better to photograph a moving subject indoors than a fast short powerful light.. or not ? Also for some reason kids are so likely to be backlight, try to direct them and it won't be spontaneous anymore. Also by using a flash you will keep you ISO to a reasonable level between 200 and 400 otherwise shooting at f/5.6 1/250sec chances are you are going to need something like 1600 to 3200 ISO.... terrible granny for nothing. If you don't like this terrible flash feeling in your images just find a flash able to till the head ad bouncing the light somewhere, like a wall and/or ceiling, but be sure your walls does not have strong colors like red or blue to avoid any color cast.

4- Last but not leas use auto focus. DSRLs are not intended to be manually focus as fast as SLRs use to be, there are not those nice triangles at the viewfinder that use to be aligned in properly focus images anymore.. so at this point I will trust to technology.
Thanks for reading, any comments just post it here.

Montreal Santa Claus Parade 2009

I just coming from Santa's Parade 2009, a colorful event at st-Catherine Downtown Montreal.
I think I was missing this kind of pictures in my collection, I'm always doing weddings, rock bands, models and architecture but I was missing something for kids and what could be better that Christmas ! This post is dedicated to my son Eric.

So these are the pictures
The Ukrainian dancers, a great show !

This is one of the most emblematic shoots with the strong perspective an the wonderful background of the city
The colorful Mexican dancers

The Chinese band of Falu Dafa
This is probably the most touching of the pictures with Santa giving a little present (and hope) to this little boy into his hospital bed. I think this is what Christmas is all about, sharing and give with an open heart. Christmas is for children and for everybody able to see the world like them.

And that's it, bye bye Santa , hope to see you next year.. hey I forgot to give you my wish letter, I hope you will be able to read my blog, I will post it soon !

Echoes of Avalon the 10 images Photo story

Echoes of Avalon is the one of the most outstanding underground band in today's Montreal rock scene, so I decide to create this photo story about their last presentation on friday november 13th 2009 at 4536 Bistro de Paris located at Mont-royal. Echos of Avalon lineup: German Pardo rhythm guitar & vocals, Jon Belanger lead guitar, Alex Trepanier on the bass guitard and David Poirier on the drums.

Photography tips: First, I checked available light and MANUALLY set up aperture, speed and WB. As usually the available light in a place like this is kind of nice and dramatic but sooo poor that I would have to pump my ISO up to 6400 even if shooting at 1/30 f/2.8 in order to have a descent exposure, so as usually, I CHEAT : ) . I used two little strobes to reinforce existing light. The first one was installed (and red gelled) into the main key red light in order to turn this poor tungsten light into a nice f/3.5 1/90sec ISO 640 light able to allow hand held shooting which is a must in this case. The second strobe was placed into my stroboframe base partially bouncing in the ceiling and partially pumping some direct light to their faces to remove dark eye sockets. Just for the fun I decided to go TTL for this assignment and I just set up my A-B radios from my on camera master.

Concerning my shooting aesthetics, I made to important decisions here, first to keep the red existing color cast, which is very easy to remove by overpowering available tungsten light with my strobes but it would totally kill the existing atmosphere, so I just reinforce it by adding the gelled strobe. Second, I decide to show the exiting motion and energy of the band by shooting must of my pictures at very low speed from 1/8 to 1/3 of second and adding some rear-sync pops at the end.

So these are the image, thank you for reading and enjoy the show !!!

Setting-up:

At the show:





After the show:
The Music Plus Interview:

You may see more of this band at: http://www.myspace.com/echoesofavalon

Christ Church Cathedral

One of the most emblematic corners of Montreal is the intersection of rue University and Sainte-Catherine O., place of the Christ Church Cathedral. At this corner we can see a perfect blend between traditional construction and modernity. The reflection of the Christ Church Cathedral into the curtain wall of the building behind have been widely photographed and appears in postal cards and calendars, but what probably most of the people have not seen is the interior of the church. Showing the interiors of this little cathedral is the objective of this series of images.... and why not, another picture of the reflection of the church into the building with my personal signature.

In this image, the integration of shapes by using triangles at the new storefront
The altar Central Aisle and pipe organ at the endLateral Aisle

Top view of the arcs

You may see more information about this building by clicking here and you may also see more of my documentary work of architecture and churches in Montreal at the architectural section of my web site http://saulrosales.com/Architecture_main.html

Travel Photography

If you like outdoors activities fall is probably the best time of the year to do it. With fresh air and saturated colors everywhere there is a lot of stuff out there that you just cannot miss. This is a list of tree places to visit:

1- Mont-Tremblant: one of the most beautiful destinations in fall in North America, its offer not only the famous ski center in winter but the beautiful accommodation like this chalet in the middle of the forest, more information at: http://www.tourismemonttremblant.com/en/

2- If you like speed and new experience another activity at Mont-Tremblant Region it can be done at Acrobranche http://www.acrobranche.com/, literally flying between trees and walking above hanging bridges at 50 feets above floor levels

3- Last but not less, for outdoors activities close to Montreal, you can still pick up some apples at Verger Lacroix http://www.vergerlacroix.ca/en_accueil.html located at st-joseph-du-lac. A very nice family place offering not only apples, but a play park, a farm , a boutique gourmande and a cyder house