Here’s another one of those shots with Adelene.

I was just thinking of these ‘keywords’ when I was with Jon and Christel last week in Penang. I was out to capture their playfulness. Never mind if the images were a bit out of focus or had motion blur. It just adds to the high energy moment. They were keen to work with me to get these images. Awesome sport, the both of them. Besides, it was the last bit of their pre-weddding shoot so it was a let-the-hair-down time!

I’ll post more pictures in a bit.

I have this fascination with images made in the early 1900s. I can just stare at old images, trying to relive the period it was taken in, imagining myself in that scene. I just had a similar experience in the toilet of Grand Copthorne on Saturday. While peeing, I was staring at images of Singapore in early 1900s. No date was given but talk about entertainment while relieving yourself!

Back in the days of Cartier-Bresson, Eugene Atget, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and other famed photographers, a good image was one which captured a slice of time, ‘the decisive moment’, social issues. We see these iconic images every now and then which may not pass our modern definition of a good image in terms of the basic techniques mentioned earlier. So it’s the purpose of photographing that makes a good image, what goes through your mind, what do you want to say with your images. Stopping at the basic techniques just provide a pretty image, visual satisfaction. Don’t stop there, carry on.

So back to the modern day where rules of composition, lighting, patterns, colour, contrast, etc are presented as essential, I learn to push that boundary. Who says you can’t shoot an image in this particular way or that? The images on top are all shot against the sun which breaks the ‘preferred’ rule of shooting with the sun behind the photographer or at the side of the subject. Who says I can’t shoot against the sun? I like the dramatic lighting shooting this way presents. I don’t quite care about flare…I make it a part of the image. I keep honing the skill of getting the exposure perfect such that the subject comes out the way I want it to, whether as a silhouette or well lit, with the background completely washed out.

The important thing is to shoot the image that excites you. Use the techniques (or break it) and get images that hold people’s attention longer, make them think, make them cry. I had someone cry when she saw the picture of her and her fiance. Good thing it wasn’t because it was bad..but it just evoked so much emotion from her.

Your skill is required to deliver the output, it’s a link between your mind’s eye and the viewer’s eye. Keep shooting to get it right. Learn from other photographers, study film directors’ work, look out for interesting ads when out shopping. Every photographer is constantly absorbing visual input and you should too.

More of such images can be seen in my Wedding Photography webpage or in the Pre-Wedding Photography category of this blog.

Normally, I’ll have an assistant hold up the flash high above the camera and subject, with the infra-red receiver pointing towards the camera with the ST-E2 attached. I used to fire into an umbrella but nowadays, I feel the difference is negligible if the flash is positioned far from the subject. In bright daylight, the range of the ST-E2 drops since it uses infra-red to trigger the flash. If it fails, I replace it with another flash since that will give me more range.

I’ll leave the flash on E-TTL mode but I usually adjust the exposure compensation on my camera (usually set to aperture-priority) to control the amount of ambient light coming in. In most cases I’ll drop to -2EV just to have the effect of the flash more pronounced and give the background a bit more colour. You can play around with this setting to get the feel you want. You need a lot of flash output to shoot outdoors, so I use the 580EX flash with the highest guide number available.

The images below with the triathletes was for promotional material for Tribob.com, while the images of fishermen were taken on a fishing rig (palong) in Aceh. The picture of Khanh in swimsuit was to demonstrate the use of the flash in a brighter environment. Any brighter that this and the flash output will not be enough to balance the sunlight. I would have to depend on more powerful strobes.

So if you want to try creative portraits, both indoors and outdoors, consider getting the ST-E2. It’ll be a worthwhile investment.