One tempting thing when shooting portraits around sunset is to have your subjects basking in that beautiful golden sunlight. One thing that I just love to do with portraits is turn the couple around and shoot right into the sun using it as a backlight. Then there are a few different things you can do to get a very different feel to the shot. Sometimes if I want to keep that rich color of the background and have my subjects more defined i’ll set my exposure for the background and light the couple with a off camera light (or two or three). You can see a good example from this article (off camera lighting and sunset). But sometimes I want something a little more soft and romantic, I want the glow of the sun to just radiate in the image and don’t mind if my subjects are a little soft also. Then I won’t use any flash at all and let the sun really be a strong backlight that gets a little blown out. Here is an example from a recent wedding:

The most important part about getting a image like this is your exposure. If you just let your camera average out the exposure the subjects will be very dark because the camera see’s the very bright background as a predominant part of the image. The easiest way to get a accurate exposure is to zoom in on your subject skin and see what settings your camera gives you. Then set your camera to manual and dial in those settings. Now you will be properly exposing for your subject. The exact angle of the sun and where you are will play a pretty big factor in the look of the shot. The lower the sun and more your camera is facing towards it the more lens flare you will get. Experiment a little bit with your angle to see how that effects the shot, the best way to get a shot like this is try, try, try. The more you experiment the more you will know where to position yourself for the shot you are looking for!

If you have any backlit shots from the sun leave us a link in the comments!

For everyone going to WPPI I thought I would put together a little list of the top parties/speakers/events to go to. It’s always a whirlwind show for us, running around trying to meet new people, hang out with old friends, listen to a few programs and catch up with some of our vendors. This year I am only going to be in town for 3 quick days (monday thru wednesday) so am trying to maximize the time. To keep myself organized this is the first year I am writing down a plan of attack. Anyone that wants to get together for coffee or a quick bite one day send me a tweet (@digitalphotobuz or @markstagi)

Here is my list of must see things at WPPI 2010 (there are many other speakers that might fit your needs better, check out the WPPI site for a full class list)

Sunday
The official WPPI & Canon welcome party starts at 7:30. It’s a great way to meet some new people and have a little bite to eat and drink. It’s also a great way to warm up before the crazy parties start a little later in the evening.

Go-Bee party
Last year they had a great party in their suite at the MGM, it was packed but fun times.

Airhorns and Lasers party
I think the title of this party says it all. It’s an off site party and should be normal WPPI crazyness.
You do need tickets for this one that cost $50, but it sounds like there is a lot going into this so you might want
to check it out.
http://www.airhornsandlasers.com/

Monday

8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. / RM# 312-317
Jerry Ghionis — Reinventing the Wedding Album
AMAZING photographer!

10:45am – 11:30am Bob Davis at the Canon Main Stage
(Bob is going to be speaking in many booths this year, check
his website for all listings:
http://www.davisworkshops.com/index.html#/wppi/)

Jared Bauman — Your Business
3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m. / RM# 306-307

Vegas Tweetup @ MGM Centrifuge
Organized by Pay it Forward photo (PIFPhoto.com)
this should be a fun get together of photo tweeters
http://twtvite.com/thflwy

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. / RM# 319-320
Jasmine Star — Ghetto Fabulous Marketing

WPPI pool party – 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
The 30th anniversary WPPI pool party at the MGM pool!

Tuesday

8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. / RM# 312 + 317
John Michael Cooper — An Almost Backwards Workflow

8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. / RM# 313-316
Marcus Bell — A Wedding with Marcus Bell
One of my favorite wedding photographers in the world. I have heard him speak before
so probably won’t make this one, but a definite must see if you haven’t seen his work
before.

12:00 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. Alex Garza at the SMUG MUG booth. (@alexgarza )

1:30pm-2:30pm – Pictage Booth (Bob Davis speaking)

5:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Graphi Studio pool party

6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. / RM# 306-307
Andy & Angie Wood — 10 Steps to an Amazing Web Presence

7:00 p.m. – 7:00 a.m. SmugMugPro/BayPhoto Slumber Party
Get more info at their booths

8:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. Pictage party at Studio 54
Join pictage and dance the night away at Studio 54! Tickets required, pick them
up quick at the pictage booth.

10:00 p.m. – 1:00 a.m. Studio A/B MGM Grand Las Vegas NV
Pay it forward party. Hollywood themed party and must pre-register online
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=284702989744&ref=ts

Wednesday

8:00 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. / RM# 313-316
Lori Nordstrom — Get Off Your Big BUT!

2:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Alex Garza at the SMUG MUG booth. (@alexgarza )

For everyone that can’t make it to WPPI I am going to post as much stuff as possible, so keep checking back for lots of recaps and photos
of the entire WPPI.

I have to admit when Google Buzz hit the scenes a few weeks ago I was kind of Social Media’d out. Don’t get me wrong I love social media, it’s a great way to connect with family, lost friends and meet new people that share your passion. I love connecting with other photographers on Twitter and use Facebook a lot to keep in touch with my friends and clients. But those two keep me busy enough and when Google Buzz came out I dismissed it mainly because I didn’t have time to check a third site every day.

For those of you who haven’t heard of Google Buzz yet its Google’s entry into the social media field and similar to Twitter in a few ways. You can follow people and post what you are doing (with photos also) but one of the main differences that I actually do like is people can comment on your status to open up a conversation. To me this is better than Twitters @reply system so people can actually get good conversations going.

A few downsides so far for me are there isn’t any searching like Twitter has. I can’t search photography and see what others are talking about in the photo world. For me the fact that it’s built into Gmail is a downer also, I don’t use Gmail that much and prefer having it as a stand along service that you can access from other devices. Twitter for me is so much more useful because I can access it on my iPhone with some great apps (I love Tweetie!). So whenever I have a few minutes free I pop open my iPhone and check in on the twitterverse (or facebook). Having it accessed through Gmail will make me a little less likely to use it often.

Since it’s new I am still checking it out and haven’t made up my mind if this will be useful or not. If you want to start up a conversation on Buzz check me out at Mark.Stagi.

What do you think about Buzz? Love it or hate it? Leave a comment below.

One of the new features of Lightroom 3 I was eager to try out was the noise reduction. This was said to be improved in Lightroom 3 and a top feature that I was looking for improvement so couldn’t wait to see if was really better. Overall it does look like Adobe definitely improved the noise reduction feature, it reduces the noise but also doesn’t fully degrade the image sharpness and quality like Lightroom 2 did. Here are a few examples both shot at ISO 3200 and adjusted with the same settings for Noise Reduction (set to a medium amount of noise reduction for the first shot and maximum for the 2nd shot). If you have used the noise reduction in Lightroom 3 and love it or hate it let us know in the comments below.

Here is the first shot straight out of the camera. Shot with a 5d @3200:

Then a cropped view processed in Lightroom 2 (only adjustments made for Noise Reduction)

And the Lightroom 3 version

This shot was with a 7d at ISO 3200 and processed with the noise reduction sliders set to 100. Here is the original image:

Processed in Lightroom 2

Processed in Lightroom 3

and also a few views really cropped in to see the differences. The first image from Lightroom 2 and second is Lightroom 3

From the tight detail shot you can really see the edges still retain some sharpness in Lightroom 3 while doing a pretty good job with the noise.

Thanks everyone who filled out one of our last polls on what you use to color correct your images. It seems the huge majority out there use Adobe Lightroom to do your color correcting work (62%). Another 38% use Photoshop, and Aperture and Bridge had about 10%. These polls are really helpful to me and show me what type of articles I should be spending my time on. It looks like Lightroom will get the most attention coming up here with some tutorials.

So I can get a feel for how much time you spend color correcting (an average shoot) please answer the question below:

With the iPad now only one month away I wanted to start a little conversation about how this might impact our photography. I think right as a brand new type of product there might not be a huge need in the photo industry for this product, but I do see really good things in the future.

One thing that really can make this product great is the Apps. I know for me and my iPhone the Apps are really what have made that into an amazing device. The commercial Apple has “there’s an App for that” is really true. If I am traveling and need to check a flight, there’s an App for that. If I need to process a credit card, there’s an App for that, the list goes on and on. I am sure with the iPad there will be some really great Apps on the horizon that will make our jobs as photographers easier. Imagine being able to do all of your editing on a full touch screen device? Or at least just your culling the images down. I think that going through thousands of images to sort the best could be so much faster and better on a touch screen device. I know it’s limited on the amount of hard drive space so you won’t be able to store multiple shoots, but just being able to download a shoot, do a quick edit with the touchscreen and then copy that edit over to your main editing computer could be a really quick and fun way to do the first edit.

I am sure there will be many more ways we can use this device to help our business. As the hardware gets better and more Apps are created I think it could be a huge part of our workflow. What are some things that you think the iPad will be able to do for the photo industry? Leave your comments below.

Photos of the Northern Lights have always inspired me. It is one thing that I have never shot but definitely on my list of things to do one day! The movement of the light and color are just fascinating and there are so many amazing images out there of this very cool part of nature. Here is a little intro to what the northern lights are from wikipedia:

Auroras, sometimes called the northern and southern (polar) lights or aurorae (singular: aurora), are natural light displays in the sky, usually observed at night, particularly in the polar regions. In northern latitudes, the effect is known as the aurora borealis, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, Aurora, and the Greek name for north wind, Boreas, by Pierre Gassendi in 1621.[1] The aurora borealis is also called the northern polar lights, as it is only visible in the sky from the Northern Hemisphere, with the chance of visibility increasing with proximity to the North Magnetic Pole. Its southern counterpart, the aurora australis or the southern polar lights, has similar properties, but is only visible from high southern latitudes in Antarctica, South America, or Australasia.

Here are 10 awesome shots of the Northern Lights to inspire:

Rusty Old Shack, originally uploaded by orvaratli.

Solar Wind, originally uploaded by orvaratli.

Fancy a walk?, originally uploaded by Kiddi Kristjáns.

night, originally uploaded by Matt Cornell.

Up North, originally uploaded by Kiddi Kristjáns.

aurora boreal – Canadá, originally uploaded by dherikwillyam.

Needles in the sky 9, originally uploaded by MichelangOle.

Aurora Borealis at Kleifarvatn, originally uploaded by Hörður B. Karlsson.

Straumur Aurora, originally uploaded by orvaratli.

Frozen Still, originally uploaded by orvaratli.

Post production in digital photography normally for me consists of some very basic adjustments to fine tune an image. Fine tuning the color balance of an image to get the feel I am going for and changing the tonal values of the photo are the main things that we will do to retouch our images. Normally it’s really simple changes just to fine tune our images a little bit and give them that extra little pop. For anyone new to Lightroom check out this great video with a good walk through of the main color adjustment and tonal adjustments you can make in Adobe Lightroom.

WPPI is coming up quick and this will be our 6th year attending WPPI. For those of you that haven’t made it before, WPPI (Wedding and Portrait Photographers International) is a really great weeklong event filled with Seminars from some of the best in the industry and a huge trade show with hundreds of companies. There are always some inspirational ideas I get from the seminars and some great vendors at the trade show. This year I am going to be not only there for my studio but also to report back here on the events, but I need your input. For all of you that can’t make it what are some things you would like see recaped here. Let me know in the quick survey below what kind of things you would like to see covered. For everyone that will be there tweet me and lets try and meetup for coffee or lunch (or dinner) one day (@markstagi or @digitalphotobuz)

How we organize our images can be such a huge time saver later on. Sometimes we have a client or even a vendor from a wedding call a year later requesting an image. Having a very easy method of storing your images can make such a difference when you need to find an old file. When we store our images there are a few things we do to keep things organized. First every year has a separate folder on our NAS drive and within that folder a separate folder for each type of shoot (commercial, portrait, weddings, etc…) Each client shoot is in a folder with the clients name and date of shoot. Another important thing is the naming of the files, we name all of our files with the date of the shoot and a sequential number. So a wedding shot on March 3rd, 2009 would be titled “03032009_0001.jpg”

Here is a little video from Adobe on how the folder system works in Lightroom: