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

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.

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)

Model shoot with Bogdana...

We had the pleasure of shooting with Bogdana for the first time last week, and will be shooting with her again today.

The images below are all essentially one light shots. The images shot on the red seat were lit using just a beauty dish (and diffuser sock), the images with the white background did have three lights, but two of them were used to light the white wall behind her and just the beauty dish was used to light Bogdana.

I will post more about how we lit Bogdana along with a video of the shoot either later today or tomorrow.

(click on any image to view larger in a new window)

We have another contest winner...

We can't do this for every contest... but will one more time.

Because Miguel was the first to congratulate our latest contest winner I wanted to reward him for being such a "gracious non-winner".

We will be sending him 4 SlimLine "AA" battery caddy (you read our original battery caddy review here).

Be sure to check out Miguel's Flickr stream here.

Congratulations Miguel!