Nicole & J.B. at Legend Oaks

I had the pleasure of being a part of something really special last weekend! Nicole & JB were referrals to us from Brittany & Mitch, two of my FAVORITE clients in the whole world! And I’m sure Nicole & JB will become the same. 🙂

They are both so fun and full of energy. Nicole was absolutely beautiful on her wedding day. She had this radiant smile that is either indicative of a wonderful day at the salon…or true love! (I don’t think she spent the day at the salon…HA!) JB is such a great guy. We had an absolute BLAST together. Though he’s been in the US many year, he’s originally from France. And since I’d grown up in the Congo, where once upon a time I was pretty fluent in French…I had a great time slipping into his mother tongue every now and then.

Their ceremony was held at the scenic Legend Oaks Golf Club. And we all went to historic Middleton Place for pictures before heading to her parent’s fantastic spread for the reception. Though his family couldn’t make the journey, his Host Parents were absolutely wonderful…as were Nicole’s parents and brothers. I specifically selected the song for their slideshow to lend a European flare to their images. So enjoy the show! Then head over to http://www.chrisandcami.zenfolio.com/ to see the rest of their pictures. Alors, FELICITATION Nicole & J.B. !!!

Blue Sky Magic

I’ve had a lot of folks asking me how I get my dramatic “BLUE SKY” effect. It’s a technique I learned from the legendary Sports Illustrated photographer, Dave Black. And I recently saw a couple shots by Joe McNally with this technique as well.

Take this scene for instance. It was a dreary, overcast, hazy, UGLY GRAY evening sky. Who wants a BLAH background like that, right? So to make it POP, you have to set your camera’s White Balance Setting to a cooler tone. You can set it on the Tungsten setting if you like. I prefer to use the Kelvin Scale since it gives me more control. I often use 4,000K, which is a little warmer than full Tungsten. Now changing this in the camera means it’s a GLOBAL change…everything in your scene will be blue, including my subject.

So to get the right color back on my subject I place a WARMING gel over my flash and light him separately. I underexpose the sky by about a stop and a half to make this easier and to give the background more saturation. I have an SB-800 just out of camera frame on the left, zoomed to 105mm, with a full CTO (Color Temperature Orange) gel, at about 1/4 power. I’m controlling this flash through Nikon’s CLS system (I didn’t have my Radio Poppers on me at the time). The flash on my D3 is an SB-900, pointed strait at the sensor on the remote flash. All it’s doing is telling the SB-800 what to do and when to do it. I was shooting from across the street with the 70-200 to frame the subject with just enough of the beautiful Spanish Moss covered oak tree overhead. This was shot last week at Legend Oaks Golf Course.

As you can see, legendary golfer Bill Kalback now has a nice warm shaft of setting sunlight on him, while the gray sky in the background shifts to a complimenting blue twilight tone. Next time you’re faced with an ugly sky, give this a try!