gloda.net

Category: Photography

  • Wedding: Julie & Savio


    I met Savio while I worked in P&T’s Téléboutique in Luxembourg city – my summer job for the last couple of years. I think he saw the slideshow from Martine and Mike’s wedding and showed them to Julie. They asked if I could take photos at their wedding, and once my schedule for my MA last summer had taken shape I could confirm that I’d be able to cover one last wedding during my time as a student – theirs.
    Once more I asked Olivier to help me out as assistant and second shooter, and he did a great job. We started the day at Julie’s parents’ in Thionville. From there it was but a short drive to the lovely neo-apostolic church where they got married. This was the first non-catholic wedding that I’ve covered so I checked with the priest to make sure I’d be aware of the differences. After the moving service, a limousine picked up the newly-weds. We drove to Mondorf-les-Bains: the reception and the dinner were held at the Orangerie in the park. Having everything in one place like that made logistics a bit easier and meant that we could spend a bit more time for the couple photos.
    [singlepic id=129 w=200 h=133 float=left] In terms of lighting, I made use of the technique I first tried at the Southlands Beach Fashion Shoot, namely pushing three Speedlights to full power, and using the PocketWizards to sync at 1/500,double the 5DMkII sync speed. That way I got enough light to work in bright daylight (we had wonderful weather) without being at the sun’s mercy. The PocketWizards also came in handy for one of my favourite photos from the shoot (the one next to the river), where I was about 40 metres away from Savio and Julie, and the PWs together with the 3 flashes gave me both enough working distance (for composition) and brightness from the softbox which was about 4 metres away from them.

    [singlepic id=130 w=200 h=133 float=right]During the evening I gave Olivier one of the transceivers so that we could both trigger the flashes that we had set up in the Orangerie to support the ambient light. The reception and dinner were very entertaining. I’m glad that I was at the right place at the right time when Savio’s friends spontaneously decided to lift him off the ground :) During the dances I used a technique I learned from David Ziser: get one slaved flash behind the couple to create both a nice rim and some cool lighting on the floor. Olivier had to put some effort into that, since he had to be in the frame without showing up on the pictures.

    I had a really great time at the wedding, and I hope I captured the ambience in the photographs! That was probably the last wedding I’ll cover. My time as a student is up and I’m moving on.

  • Dancing on Ice


    I’ve pretty much finished work on my dissertation now, so I could take a day off when Coralie and Oliver came down to visit us in Canterbury. Together with David and Alison we drove to the Ice Bowl in Gillingham.

  • Southlands Beach Fashion Shoot

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    [Update: Some people have asked about the editing of the ‘splash’ photo, so I’ve uploaded the original for comparison.]

    I really liked Southlands Beach which Alison showed me when we were in Bermuda. I had a Fashion photography competition that I wanted to participate in while we were there, so I asked Alison to play the ‘local’ card and get in touch with one of the models she’s worked with before, Stephanie Wilkinson.

    For most of the photographs I used three flashes. Two were used together with a shoot-through umbrella which Alison held on to to avoid it falling over. The third flash was used on its own as a kicker or sidelight and was safe on a tripod. Or so I thought.

    The shoot went really great – until we got to the final location. The wind blew over the tripod with one of my flashes and a PocketWizard. The hotshoe foot of the latter snapped off, so tomorrow I’ll have to head over to the Flash Centre in London to get a replacement foot (they said they can fix it in time for my Eurostar to Luxembourg in the evening if I drop it off in the afternoon).

    Sod’s law. I think I got quite lucky for the rest of the shoot anyway. The forecast had announced rain but it stayed dry, I got way too close to stepping on a Portuguese Man o’ War, and the light levels were just on the sweet spot for me to make use of the flashes at full power and a 1/500 sync speed whilst keeping a shallow depth of field.