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Posted on September 28, 2010
Had a great day at Winters Barns wedding fayre in Canterbury on Sunday. It's a unique venue run by some great people. Here's a quick slideshow of some of the pictures that went down a storm: Posted on September 22, 2010 Our training plans for the autumn contain some exciting new things including studio, location lighting and weddings. Budget-wise it starts at £10 for the usual Camera Cafe, £25 for Camera Cafe Supersize and then £175+ for the full day workshops. Full details after the advert! November 7th – Camera Cafe Supersize: Location-”Lite”-Faversham- £25 This is all about speedlites and modifiers that are portable – how to mix them with available light or deliberately make them the dominant key-lights. This is a 2-hour Camera Cafe at Creek Creative. BOOK ONLINE Camera Skills 2 – November 28th – Whitstable – “Why drive an automatic when manual is more fun?” Camera controls; ISO; exposure; aperture; shutter speed; working with natural light; composition tips. Get the technical stuff nailed and release yourself to get on being creative.Book NOW October 24th, Canterbury :The Complete Wedding Course – please email for the next one. From bridal prep to portraits we cover it all – natural light with artificial light; interiors and exterior shots; low light. Advice on business aspects and dealing with customers. You’ll be learning with two photographers and be able to take pictures of a model bride and groom for your portfolio. October 31st: Studio & Location Lighting – Waterham – Please email for the next one. Working from Waterham Studios between Faversham & Whitstable, Tim Stubbings & John Burgess will take you through a series of professional studio shoots – both fashion & editorial – using a range of modifiers and lighting techniques, including location off-camera flash. This is a unique opportunity to learn inside a professional studio. Posted on September 20, 2010 Teokath is a fantastic bridal wear boutique that opened this summer in the historic Cathedral City of Canterbury, Kent, showcasing a stunning collection of designer bridal gowns.I was shooting some interior pictures for use on their website and other promotional material. The fit-out is amazing, but from a photographer’s point of view contains a few challenges. It’s large, it contains lots of mirrors and has contrasts sitting at the far ends of the spectrum – deep, dark greys and blacks and whites and creams of the wedding dresses. Wedding silk and other fabrics are reflective and can easily burn out. The lighting in the shop is fantastic for creating mood which means that it is low in places and must not be overpowered by pumping flash everywhere. I had just under two hours and have 2 speedlites. In an ideal world I would have used gels to balance the lighting – but we’ve got florescent and tungsten bouncing around and I’m relying on the fact that the mixture of colours actually might work in my favour if I can create pools or shafts of white / daylight balanced light to make things look as 3D as possible. The bottom line is not to kill the ambient to death and not to blow the highlights on the dresses – but I must use shafts of light where I can to create lines / definition. I put a brolly on one light stand to make a larger light source and also a second light (no brolly but with a Stofen) on another stand. The brolly light is positioned to make large corridor shapes in lieu of a window or doorway, placed behind walls. The Stofen is used for directional light because I can’t use bounce flash (it will pick up colours from the walls or be absorbed into the grey/black furnishings). I think most of the time I’,m at between ISO 200 and 400, F8 and shutter speeds no longer than 1/25. Tripod, mirror lock up and timer. At ISO 200-400 we’re in control of the noise which can creep in on longer exposures. I think lower ISO produces better contrast but that’s just my opinion. Now at these settings and with speedlites we’re not going to light the whole room – but we don’t want to. There are times when with portable lights to completely relight a scene, with ratios and areas of shadow just like you would a film set – but not today! Problems? Well, the 5D Mk1 still drives me mad with the limited 9 focus points, the outer points always struggling in less than perfect light. That’s my fault for selling my 1Ds to have something lighter in weight. It’s the only reason I haven’t bought a 5D Mkii because the autofocus system is the same as the Mki. The only other thing was reflection of the lights in the mirrors or myself or the tripod. There were a couple of places where I just could not light the scene I wanted. There were a few times I overlit a dress or two but we got there. I also did some close-ups and had a finished set of 60 pictures to give to the client. Lenses – 17-40L with come correction in PS; 24-105L. Posted on September 13, 2010 James & Ela has booked me after we met at the Abbots Barton wedding fayre earlier in the year and it was a self-contained ceremony – although that didn’t stop me getting a few shots of James in his dressing gown at his flat. If you have time, it’s always good to make sure the groom is out of bed. The ceremony room at the Abbots Barton has no windows, so it was a few speedlites dotted around and Pocketwizards in case the ST-E2 / ETTL was not up to the job. At ISO 800 and shooting at say 1/60 @ F4 you’re still going to have some ambient light traces. If your shutter speed is higher, the background will go dark. The bridal room was lit by natural light at one end, with shaft of light cutting through a window. I therefore had to place both myself and Ela carefully to avoid burnt out highlights but I still wanted the outside light to be slightly overexposed to add some punch. The light levels away from the window fell dramatically, so I’m at ISO 800 already. A bit of fill flash here and there. As we come out after the ceremony the suns dies and we have overcast skies threatening rain – so we switch things to do the guest shots first, leaving the bride and groom shots until later. With dark grey skies you can get some nice skin tones but a fall off on contrast. Shooting at ISO 800 at 2pm in August with no directional light and I couldn’t resist reaching for the Pocketwizards and 580EXIIs to create some contrast and put the sun where we didn’t have it. It meant that I could also kill off the ambient to hide any unsightly architecture. Keeping to time so as to not disrupt the catering, we went inside for the speeches which required ISO 800-1000 with fill in from both off and on(bounce) camera flash. We finished with some slow-sync first dance pictures to round the day off. The next wedding course is in Canterbury on October 24th – please so to the TRAINING section of timstubbings.co.uk or drop me a line at photo@timstubbings.co.uk! Posted on September 10, 2010 I shot a wedding in July in Canterbury that again utilised a lot of off-camera flash because of the changing weather, so here are some brief notes about how the day unfolded at the Dog Inn in Wingham near Canterbury. Kate & Lee are a great couple who I knew would let me try out a few things to make their pictures special, We had already discussed at the final consultation meeting at the venue (I say meeting – it was a nice chat over a pint!) that if time and weather allowed they would like a funny picture in their couple shots. The weather forecast was a mixture of showers and dry spells. Now for the record, overcast is fine because you get great skin tones and you can fix your metering. Not so good is you want skies in the shots somewhere. Sunlight is ok as long as you place people in the shade and use fill light or shoot into the sun so that it becomes a powerful backlight (avoiding lens flare along the way). When you have a mixture of sunshine and showers you have to constantly change (potentially) the exposure settings. This is most obvious when the sun is behind them out of the clouds every minute or so. Sometimes a quick way around this when doing say groups or portraits is to fix your aperture and shutter speed but change the ISO 1 stop as the clouds come and go. The bride’s prep room was very dark but I wanted some natural light pictures – so the available window light becomes my softbox and I “embrace the ISO” at 800 and get out the monopod for the slow shutter speeds. Some harsh directional light appeared as the clouds passed so the ratio between light and dark areas outside went beyond a nice 2:1. In this situation you’re either torn between exposing for highlights or shadows, filling the shadows or waiting for your subject to get out of the sun. The sun didn’t last long so we look the couple across the road and had two speedlights on stands so that the ushers would hold them like poles. The available light was flat in the shade so the speedlights created the contrast, triggers by pocketwizards as I was some distance away across the busy road. We finished with some fun and relaxed family groups pictures in the car park! For more information about Kent weddings photography please see www.timstubbings.co.uk The next wedding course is in Canterbury on October 24th – please so to the TRAINING section of timstubbings.co.uk or drop me a line at photo@timstubbings.co.uk!
This was my last August wedding and yes, you’re going to hear me mention the weather. It’s so important to shoot with confidence whatever the weather is doing. A bride will thank you forever if in her mind the weather was a disaster but the pictures were a wonderful record of her friends, family and special day.
