Lucky us, Hsuu and Andrew have contacted me and ask if we could do their post wedding session with New York City in the background. They got married on 10.10.10 (can you think of better day to get married?
) in Thailand, but since they live in Jersey City with amazing view on NYC from their apartment, they wanted to have session with Big Apple in the background. I had only once concern about the session – weather… Hsuu and Andrew didn’t want to wait for spring for the session – and I cannot blame them for that – so we all agreed on beginning of December. It was like 40 °F in Chicago, and I knew that NYC is a little bit warmer (lived in NJ for over 2yrs), but I also knew it will be chilly especially close to the river, and especially for Hsuu, wearing no sleeves… After all everything turned out to be great – Hsuu and Andrew are troopers, and did such an amazing job!
Warning: Photo Geek stuff (if you are not a photographer – skip it and enjoy the photos )
So we showed up at the location all layered up couple of hours before just to scout the location and see what can we expect from light and surroundings. While packing for location – there will be separate post on that – I wanted to make sure we take only the necessary stuff. Our latest purchase – Elinchrom Quadra RX
along with Deep Octa
was our main source of light. It turned out that my VAL – Kamila resists to wind pretty well and points the light exactly when I want. We did it McNally style – Elinchrom with Deep Octa on Easy Reach Extension Pole
with Kacey Pole Adapter – very mobile and quick to assemble solution. Also used Skyport Universal Trigger Set
for remote triggering – and loved it – because I could control power settings right from my camera hot shoe. I heard only nice things about Deep Octa modifier before, but now I can say it myself – it’s the best light modifier I’ve used so far – it gives great quality soft light. So we started with the City in the background and Deep Octa high camera left.
Then we moved to another location (location scouting rocks!) and I used my Carl Zeiss 80mm lens with Titl Adapter for that specific shot. It took a while to figure out the position where should we put the light source so it won’t show on the glass window as an ugly reflection. Fortunately Hsuu and Andrew stayed warm inside the train station while we were working on it.
And here comes the money shot set – we got lucky with the available light – underexposed the background, throw some nice soft light from Deep Octa – and there you have it
Here, Hsuu showing off her one of 3 (three) pairs of shoes she brought for the session
We were loosing available light pretty fast, I had 2 more locations near the train station that I wanted to shoot, but Hsuu and Andrew wanted to have some pictures with Statue of Liberty in the background, so we decided to move on. I can take pictures in the old train station almost everywhere across America, but there is only one Statue of Liberty – so this was our priority numero unoWhile we were driving to the next location I swapped my lens from 85mm 1.2 to 70-200 2.8 IS – I wanted to shoot close to 200mm to compress the background and make the Statue pop, cranked up the ISO to 1000 (still acceptable for 5d mk II), took couple of test shots, and here is the result:
Ha, if you think that we stopped there – you’re sooo wrong! There will be another post from inside the apartment building Hsuu and Andrew live and from the next day with the wedding rings – if you follow us on facebook you know what I’m talking about.
Thanks Hsuu and Andrew for having us, letting us capture such an adorable couple and for freezing your butts off with us
by bizior
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