After we had shot their portraits and after the wedding ceremony was over, Matthew and Taylor wanted a few shots in one of their favorite spots in town, the Nashville walking bridge. This location was tough to shoot at because it was freezing cold (24 degrees out!), has cool light on the bridge, but no lights on our couple, AND had the potential to look less than dramatic if not shot right. So we made sure to bring our Elinchrom Quadra lighting rig (our gear list can be downloaded HERE) with our new Elinchrom Deep Octa 39 to rock this out!

This is the before..

Here, in this natural lit photo above, you can see just how awful the existing light was. The lighting is flat, has no (good) contrast on it, and their eyes are dark from the direction of the light. This image was also shot at ISO 6400 at 1/60th of second, and the noise is getting pretty bad. The color tone of these lights cast a purple hue, and the light on their faces is not super flattering or awesome looking! But, the great thing about bringing your own light, is you can add it anywhere that you want to make it look awesome!

The other problem that we ran into, was as we rushed out to get set-up so the bride would not freeze, we forgot our light meter! Without the light meter, we have no way to tell how bright our strobe is, so we had to improvise and make it happen on the spot!

Here is how we did it.

We positioned our light to camera right about 30 degrees which gave us a really nice highlight and shadow on each side of our clients faces. Any further than 30 degrees or so, and we would run the risk of having a shadow cast from the bride’s face onto the groom’s face, which is not pleasant. So when doing your own shoots, watch when you have the light off to one side with two people so that the light does not cast a nasty shadow on the person further away from the light.

Since I did not have a light meter, what I did was use the in-camera meter as a starting point and set my ISO, F-Stop and shutter speed so that if I took an image, everything in the background of my subject would be exactly one stop under-exposed (or a little bit too dark) by having my in-camera meter read minus 1.  We set our camera like this because ultimately we want the background a bit darker than our subject once we have the strobe on. In this particular case, with this very low light situation, that reading (the background being one stop under-exposed) came out to be:

ISO 400

f/1.8

1/100th of a second

When I took an image at these settings, the background lights were all visible, but not overly bright. Perfect! I also checked my histogram after determining my under-exposure of the background lights, and the histogram confirmed that everything was a little too dark. It looked like this (the dark side of the histogram on Canon is to the left).

So you can see that by using the in-camera meter to start, then checking it on the histogram, we get the result we want which is simply a background that is slightly too dark.

Now, all we have to do is fill in the gap with the strobe! We need the strobe to fire at the same brightness as our under-exposed background which would give a perfect exposure on our subjects. If we had the light meter, all we would need to do is power the light up or down until the meter read what our camera reads (ISO 400, f/1.8 at 1/100th of a second). But since we did not have the light meter, and the in-camera meter can’t read manual flash, the only thing left to do was use the histogram as our guide.

So, we powered the strobe down very low (to about 15 watt seconds) since the ambient light was very low, and simply took a shot, then checked to see if the histogram went up or stayed the same. If it had stayed the same, we would know that the flash is not bright enough to make the correct exposure, then we would simply power the strobe up. If we took the shot, checked the histogram and the histogram looked like this:

We would immediately know that the flash was too bright. As long as the ambient light has not changed and the only thing we are adding is the flash, we know that the flash (and what it is hitting) is what is changing the histogram and in this case, there is too much flash and the subject will be over-exposed. So we can then power the strobe down until the histogram just barely hits the side wall of over-exposure (on Canon, this is the right wall) and then we have a perfectly exposed shot.

So we then powered the strobe down slightly until the histogram looked like the one above. This histogram is just to the edge of the right side (on Canon, that is the bright side) which means our flash is lighting up our subject and they are just to the edge of being over-exposed, but are perfectly lit the way we want. Bam! We are ready to shoot away!!

Final image shot at ISO 400, f/1.8, 1/100th of a second. Minor editing of the RAW image in Lightroom 3 (turned back into a JPG).

That is how we did this shot with no light meter on the fly! Set up time was maybe 30 seconds! :)

Ready to come out with us and do this on-location with real models and learn how to master this system yourself?? Click HERE to sign up for our IN-CAMERA workshops spring tour!

Happy shooting!

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Listen to Melissa share the process that we went through to bring our brand where it is today!

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I’m not sure who is more excited about the new visual identity and website for Zach & Jody – me or them.

I’ve been lucky enough to attend several of their business workshops over the past year. Like many people who have been able to tap into their business experience, I’ve learned tips and tricks from them that have transformed my business, so it’s been a thrill to have the opportunity to help them transform theirs – visually at least!

We started the process by spending time talking about the transition from Gray Photography to the Zach & Jody identity that they wanted to move towards. We agreed that the new identity needed to be fresh, sophisticated and able to showcase the warm personalities of Zach & Jody. In addition, the identity needed to be flexible enough to appeal to both brides and photographers.

I even got the chance to set Zach & Jody some homework. I feel that most design trends are driven by printed media so I sent them off to buy a selection of magazines – bridal, fashion & style – as well as taking a good look at their home & studio surroundings. They spent an entertaining few hours ripping inspirational images and making collections based around colour, texture, typography & style.

After further discussion, I put together a digital mood board which reflected the tone of the inspiration board they had compiled, with the beginnings of ideas for texture, typography and colour.

It didn’t take us long to agree on a logo – sophisticated but dynamic – and a set of textures & typefaces to signify different areas of the business. We settled on elegant text with pretty bokeh circles for the main wedding photography website, a fashion-led font with a lightburst to signify areas for photographers and lastly a dark distressed concrete texture and some custom icons to lead visitors to the blog and social media areas. And of course, there had to be coffee! Everyone knows how much Zach & Jody love Starbucks!

With the identity kit ready to go, building the website was a smooth process. Zach & Jody have been long-time fans of Showit so not only did I get to build their new site using one of my favourite tools, I got the opportunity to try out a new Showit feature that’s coming really soon – mobile HTML5 – which will display a perfect copy of your main website on all mobile devices. Knowing this was on the cards, we made sure to build the site to be responsive to any size or shape of browser. The result – sophisticated, warm, friendly and full of personality.

Zach & Jody – thanks for the opportunity to crash your blog. It’s been a pleasure working with you on this fun transformation and I can’t wait to see you in action on Creative Live!

We’ll be rolling out Zach & Jody’s new identity across all of their sites and to this awesome blog too, in the coming weeks.

Melissa x

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Isn’t that so exciting??  If you’ve enjoyed reading about the design process, there are plenty more stories on Melissa’s design blog as well as a sneak preview of her new online design store which is launching shortly!  SO exciting!

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Enjoy!

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I come from a long line of crazy independents… Asking for help just wasn’t what we did.  Once I became a photographer,  I heard outsourcing preached everywhere.  However here I was … operating a full time business AND being a full time Wife/Mom while also being involved in ministry and a million other random things.  Yes, I was a photographer, but I was so much more than that.  Why was so much of my time being taken over by the business? I wanted to gain my life back and outsource… but I battled heavily with these thoughts.

A) I can’t afford to send every aspect of my business off to be done by someone else.

B) I’m the only one who can do it right so I guess I just have to do everything. YIKES!  The result was this.   I was overwhelmed constantly, short with everyone, and on the verge of tears continually.  Not to mention the horrible effect that my countenance was having on my family.  Eventually it all came to a crashing point where I realized I just could…. not….. do it.  I did not sign up for this.  I started my photography business because I wanted the freedom of owning my own business, I loved taking pictures and I knew I could help out the family with added income.   Wars with my husband, working til 3 am and a life of tears was not what I had envisioned.  In fact, it couldn’t be further from what I had pictured.  Something had to change.

After taking a hard look at where I had come, I had to ask myself…..So what was it that I envisioned?  What was it that made me sign up for this career in the first place?  I was at a breaking point.  I didn’t care if I lost everything because I didn’t want it anymore.  But what DID I want?  What DID I love to do?   Why wasn’t I doing those things?  After all, I do own the business right?  I realized that every minute I was spending on all of those mundane tasks that I hated was a minute I couldn’t spend doing what I loved.  And life is too short to not do what you love.  So I gave myself 3 slots on a piece of paper.  Three.  And I asked myself, “If I could only do 3 things for the business, what would those things be?  After much thought I came to realize that aside from the act of actually photographing, the things I loved most were writing/storytelling, teaching, and designing.   This meant a few things….  I knew what I wanted.  But I had two choices.  I could run after those 3 as hard as I could and delegate the rest.  Or….. I could make excuses why I still had to pick up everything else that wasn’t on the list and skip back to the land of overwhelmed & depressed.

I chose the former, and now, I had a list.  A black and white filter system of which to organize my life.  If it didn’t line up with one of the 3 things on my list and an opportunity presented itself I just wouldn’t do it.  Simple as that.  It was like someone had given me that publishers clearing house check but I had REALLY won!  I felt like I had gained my life back by just defining what I wanted.  I now had that strength to turn down that family session that I dreaded shooting.    I now had a spark within me that just HAD to figure out how to run my business right.  So that is exactly what I dedicated my time to doing.

After I had my Yes list… I realized I needed a No list as well.   It seems rather simple but most people don’t take the effort to actually write these things down on paper.

I challenge you to do that today.  Write.  It. Down.  When things are staring back at you in the written word it brings about a sense of accountability, and you are much more likely to stick to it.   My list looked something like this…..

I will say No to.. Editing, Album Design, Animoto Videos, Writing Thank you notes, sending packages, checking my Pursuit 31 email, cleaning the house, washing the car, and preparing my photos for my blog.  You are probably thinking, Holy Cow that is a TON!  And yes, it is!!!! Imagine all of the time I was spending doing things I absolutely despised or, just wasn’t good at!  Now, imagine taking all of that time and turning it into things I LOVE!!!   A date night with my hubby, taking the kids to the park, getting a massage, writing, blogging, mentoring another photographer, creating packaging, you know, everything that makes me smile.  Doesn’t that seem just grand?  Can you even imagine doing only what you love in your business so that you can do more of what you love with your family?  Go ahead…think of it!  What would you do with your free time?

Wonderful right?   And it is easier than you think to get there.

I didn’t have the money to outsource everything to big companies so I reinvented the wheel.  I started asking around my church until I found people who were interested in doing what I didn’t want to do.  I found a stay at home Mom who wanted to make extra money cleaning houses… boom… done.. one off my list.  I found a high school girl that was interested in photography and taught her how to create Animoto videos. boom. boom.  I did the same thing with a college girl who now edits all of my weddings.  Are you seeing a pattern? I now get a wedding completely culled & edited and back to me within a week, exactly like I would’ve done it ( because I trained them) and it costs me about $80.  And in turn, I have 6 free hours to do as I please!  I simply found people who had strengths where I was weak.  They are all around you if you just look.  I’m still a work in process and I do not have it all together, but what I can say is that this concept changed my entire life.  Outsourcing wasn’t this huge, complicated thing.  It was simply a matter of choices.  Do I? Don’t I?  And if I Don’t, who can I find that will Do?  Try it.  I think you may just get hooked!

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Great stuff!  Start saying YES to some things and NO to others!

Alright, time to all win something cool! Want to win a $20 Starbucks Gift Card and tell Karen how great this most was to you?

All you have to do is:

1) Comment on this post

2) Tweet about Karen’s post using using @Karen_Stott, this link – http://tinyurl.com/6r5mwxo 8 and make sure to include the hashtag #ZachJodysBlog.

Winner will be chosen next Tuesday from all the Tweets!

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However, it’s the first Tuesday of the month and you know what that means!  Today’s Tips & Tricks only goes out to newsletter subscribers!!  We have quite a few fun things going out in the newsletter (including exclusive access to get first dibs on signing up for a workshop we have announced only in the newsletter!), so make sure you are signed up!

The newsletter will go out 11am CST!

CLICK HERE or on the image below to sign up for our newsletter!

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