jerryfergusonphotography's photostream  

I shot this photo of the Mesa Arizona Temple Christmas Lights after a wedding photo session tonight. We tend to get very busy around the holidays with a lot of couples opting to have family come in from out-of-town to the Phoenix area and enjoy the nice weather, play some golf, and attend a wedding.

With all the bustle surrounding Christmas, sometimes it is nice to slow down and think about the things we're most grateful for.

Merry Christmas!

jerryfergusonphotography.com/mesa-arizona-temple-christma...

From a recent wedding at the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, AZ.

Dan and Lisa had an awesome sunset ceremony at the recently renovated Desert Botanical Gardens. The new uplighting at the venue looks really great. for this shot, we hid some off-camera flashes amongst the cactus to light our bride and groom against the really colorful sunset.

Lighting -
Alienbee B1600 at 1/8 power into large softbox, hidden behind the cactus in the middle of the frame.
Lumopro LP160 at 1/32 power from behind the bride and groom in front of the mountain (Photoshopped out).

jerryfergusonphotography.com/desert-botanical-garden-wedding

This is a photo of the Manhattan New York LDS Temple.

Original full-size image can be found at:
jerryfergusonphotography.com/manhattan-new-york-temple

We took this amazing bridal photo just before a wedding in New River, AZ. The whole time, I was thinking that she looked familiar, and then I realized that she looks a lot like Anne Hathaway. What do you think?

The original and blog post are at -
jerryfergusonphotography.com/bridal-photography

Lighting:
A single LumoPro LP160 on a stand at 1/16 power camera-right for just a touch of fill.

Groomsmen Group Photo from a recent wedding.

Update: I don't make explore that often, so I'm grateful for all the favs and comments on this image. Thanks!

Blog Post: Groomsmen Group Photo

Lighting:
- AlienBee B1600 at 1/8 power into large softbox high and just camera-right.
- LumoPro LP160 - bare - at 1/16 power directly behind group, low.

A bit more info about my thoughts on lighting this one -

I was pushing it on my shutter speed, which if you notice my exif data, was set at 1/400 sec. The 'official' maximum flash sync speed on the 7D is 1/250 sec, but I've been lucky in that my particular camera will sync up to 1/320 with just the tiniest vignette at the bottom of the frame. This means that at 1/400 sec, the flash wasn't covering the bottom 1/8th or so of the frame, and I did loose some of the 'starburst' shadows cast by the flash behind them at the bottom of the frame.

Also note that I don't own the nifty new drool-worthy PocketWizards that can 'hypersync' to give you another stop or so at full flash output power.

I could've dropped my shutter speed to 1/250 but that would've required me to stop down even more than f6.3 to compensate, which I just didn't want to do because (1)I didn't want my depth of field to be too deep (which it ended up being anyway), and (2) I didn't want to have to crank up my flash output power even more, this being at the beginning of a long day of shooting where I really needed to conserve battery power and keep the recycle times low to keep the group shots flowing quickly. Compromises - boo.

If money were no option, I'd just slap 8 or 9 580ex II's (or SB900's if I were McNally) on some stands, all synced up with the new PocketWizards at super high-speed sync, open up wide, and not care about my shutter speed.

Or I'd use one of those nifty Singh-Ray ND filters to drop the ambient down to something I could manage at f2.8, and just crank my flashes up to the max to compensate.

But as it stands, I've found a cheap, happy medium by shooting raw at 1/320 sec or 1/400 sec, and opening up as wide as I can while not clipping the sky, then bringing my true vision to life in post. And when I look at the frame, it's probably best that I shot at f6.3 to get all of the Groomsmen in focus.