Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The "Sessions with JoeyL" contest starts today...


If you would like a chance to with "Sessions with JoeyL" here's what you have have to do:

1. Join the Weekly Photo Tips Flickr Group (details on how to join can be found here).

2. Upload one (or more) portraits of a person, animal, or car to our Flickr Group.

3. Leave on (or more) comments on any blog post on Weekly Photo Tips.

The contest starts today and ends November 15th, the winner will be randomly drawn from all contest entries and announced on November 16th.

The winner will receive a link from Joey Lawrence to download "Sessions".

The rules are pretty simple, you can enter as many times as you like (one comment + one image upload = one contest entry), ownership of all images remain with you.

The only thing we will use them (the images) for is to show an occasional "sample" of image contest entries and to announce the winner.

Good luck everyone.



Monday, October 11, 2010

MELISSA & BRENT GET MARRIED!!

Viva had so much fun working with Melissa & Brent this past year planning their October 9th 2010 wedding at the NAC. Melissa was a coordinators dream! Always keeping us in the loop, it was a sad week at Viva la wedding when an email from this fabulous bride didn't appear in our inbox. And the constant communication paid off. The end result was an absolutely flawless wedding day for this amazing couple. Here are a few images of the newlyweds captured by Ron of RZ Photo. Viva had never had the pleasure of working with Ron before and can happily say we're looking forward to collaborating on many more weddings in the future. Congratulations Melissa & Brent!!

Invitations: Urban FĂȘte
String Trio: Cadenza Strings
Flowers: Flowers Talk
Linens: Groovy Linen
Cupcakes: Isobel's
Videographer: C'est Bon Productions
Photographer: RZ Photo

PIE POPS! MMM, MMM GOOD!!

In the past Viva's blogged about wedding cakes, cupcakes, cake pops, and even cake shooters so we thought it was only fair to give pie a little love too. And what better way to do it than with these pie pops. Fill them with your favorite jelly or pureed fruit, seal the edges, then brush them with a little egg white before baking for that golden flaky texture. Mmm, mmm good!

Whether you display them with other tasty sweets on the dessert table at your wedding or wrap them up as favors for your guests to take home at the end of the night, they'll be hard to resist.




Photo Credits: Luxirare

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

For a little inspiration this Thanksgiving weekend Viva turns to the one and only Style Me Pretty. This is just a sneak peek of the fabulous Fall shoot recently posted on SMP's blog. To see the rest of the images and read all about the details click here.







Photo Credits:
Allan Zepeda

GOODBYE SUMMER, HELLO FALL

Fall arrived just over two weeks ago and while we usually start the season off with an inspiration post of warm Fall images to get you in the mood, we thought we'd save the inspiration for Thanksgiving weekend and keep this post short and sweet. With the summer behind us, Viva's looking forward to all our upcoming weddings this season! Happy Fall everyone!!



Photo Credit: Caroline Tran

Saturday, October 9, 2010

It's funny...

Not funny ha ha, more like amusing... but I get far more emails sent to me than comments left on the blog.

And the latest batch (of emails) have been asking how I made lighting diagrams like the one in yesterdays (and other) posts.

You have several options:

The first is from Kevin Kertz, he put together a layered .psd file that allows you to add, delete, and modify commonly used lighting components and is really easy to use.

He put it together in 2006 so some newer photography wiz bangs and oohh la la's will not be available to you. If you hit this link the download will start.

The second option is newer, in color, does include some of the newer wiz bangs and oohh la la's and is from QH Photography. Not only is this one newere, you also get the option of a Photoshop and/or a Photoshop Elements version. You can download them both at this link.

Lastly, if you have an iPhone (iPod touch, or iPad) you should consider downloading the Strobox lighting diagram app. This one allows you to document your lighting setup while on location.

All three are free and come in handy for documenting a lighting setup that can be referred back to at some time in the future.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Lighting setup for the model shoot...


We used three lights for this shoot, but really only one was used to lite our model.

For all the shots that had our model standing we used a three light setup, the two lights on either side were large softboxes that were used primarily to lite the white wall behind her (with the intension of blowing it out). We used a beauty dish with a diffusion sock to lite the model herself.

One thing I would do differently is to put something between the side lights and the model as there was a bit more spill than I would have liked. In his 3 day seminar Zack Arias showed how to used some very inexpensive folding doors from Lowes or Home Depot for this exact purpose.

You can still buy
(and download) the video files from this seminar for an incredibly reasonable price ($129) here. You can read here why I think it's one of the two most important things you can buy if you are serious about photography.


All of the images shot in the red "pleather" bench were shot with just a beauty dish and diffusion sock. We used a piece of Rosco Cinefoil as a "visor" on the side of the beauty dish closest to the wall, it acted as a flag (or gobo) to keep light from spilling onto the white wall.

There was a comment on yesterdays post asking about a DIY beauty dish, you can read our post and see sample images of the beauty dish I made here, you can also watch our YouTube DIY beauty dish video here.

Below is an outstanding video Mark shot in between running around as my lighting assistant, he did a great job at both tasks. Watching it will also give you a better look at our lighting setup.

If you are a subscriber you will need to return to the blog to watch it as videos (still) don't get pushed through with your ubscription.

(click on either image above to view larger & in a new window)