Lighting Workshop with Tomomi and Fion | Bok Tower Gardens, Florida | Atlanta Wedding Photographer

Before I get into this blog post, it’s good to be home! Betty and I spent the past weekend (2/9-2/12) in Mexico for Jessica and John’s destination wedding in Playa del Carmen on the Riviera Maya. We left gorgeous 80 degree weather for 20-30 degrees back home in Atlanta, but we really were missing Miles so it’s good to be home =). Preview blog post for that wedding coming soon but for now on to another photo shoot from 2011!

Over the Thanksgiving holiday I traveled from St. Petersburg (where we were visiting family for the holiday) to Lake Wales (just outside of Orlando) to do a mini workshop with Vince, Fion, and Tomomi inside Bok Tower Gardens. We used Vince’s wife, Fion, and Tomomi as our models for the evening as we talked about using natural light, flash, off camera flash, and posing theories.

The photos above were our warm-up photos placing our subjects in the shade and explaining the decisions for this. Then we walked over to another part of the gardens to play with strobes, I brought our newly purchased Elinchrom Ranger RX Speed AS unit and we looked at how a high powered flash strobe affects the image and shadows.

We also looked at how flash affects high speed action with things like jumping and moving objects (the hats flying off in the image on the right). Next, using our surroundings and working the location, we spun immediately around from where we were standing and had Fion and Tomomi go stand in the grass right behind us as well as the immediate area to get as many “looks” as possible from the location.

Photo above has a strobe on Tomomi in the photo on the left, and natural light on the photo on the right. Below, Fion and Vince looking at the results Vince was getting with his camera =)

Finally, we looked at using a Speedlite as a flash instead of the higher-powered strobe and the combinations needed to produce an image. The sun was setting on us which made for idea conditions to see how far we could push the speedlight.

For our final location we wandered over to the house that is there at Bok Tower Gardens and using the very last slivers of light to pose Fion and Tomomi together using the speedlights again. Single speedlight from the front on the image on the left, and then using a second speedlight to add a bit of rim lighting to their hair by placing a second speedlight on the ground behind Fion and Tomomi.

With the light completely gone by this point in Winter, we wrapped up and headed back to the parking lot. We set up the camera on a tripod and got one final group photo of the four of us to celebrate a successful shoot!

If you are not interested in lighting but interested in night photography, I will be speaking at the Southeastern Photographic Society’s Tuesday Learnshop on February 28th to talk about Astrophotography. Be sure to swing by or watch this blog for another post later in the week with more details. Have a great week and stay warm!

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Zachary Long is a wedding photographer based in Downtown Atlanta, Georgia and available for weddings and private workshops worldwide. View our main wedding portfolio at http://www.FengLongPhoto.com/.