301 moved permanently

Feb 28, 2008

don't laugh... okay, you can laugh, cause i did

commentator: ed

so, during ospw2, one of my close photography buddy, erwin wijanto, flew over from seattle to hang out for the weekend. it was a shooting fest full of photographers in and around napa. definitely one of the funnest weekends thus far.

anyways, on the last day of ospw2, it was more of a chill and relax - do whatever you want to do day. since erwin has never been in napa before, we decided to show him around to make him jealous of what we have in our very own backyard. =) we visited v sattui, one of our favorite tasting spots AND drove to cornerstone garden, a place where jasmin and jerome had their engagement session done. by the way, if you haven't been to the cornerstone garden, you should definitely go and have a visit. make sure you bring a camera. =)

through out the whole time, we laughed and drank some wine... and the next thing you know, monica and i were having a mini engagement session. thanks E! we FINALLY have some cool images of us.

for those of you who don't know, monica and i barely have anything up on our walls... carzy, huh? i know! so, thanks erwin... because of you, we now have pics we can hang up around the house.

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

go ahead, laugh... cause i did too.

i love you, monica (yeah, i know... i'm a big softy) go on, laugh it up.

our photographer! thanks erwin! you the man!

more awesome images from erwin
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Feb 27, 2008

we've been featured on FLASH FLAVOR!

commentator: ed

woo hoo!!! we've been featured on flash flavor, a website that showcase photographer's creative use of light during weddings. totally awesome!

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

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Flash Flavor Formals

I wanted to follow up with posting another set of images from one of the photographers I am keeping an eye on. Ed Pingol has recently contributed to a FF post on deleting the ambient. One of the things that really stood out about Ed’s photography is the effort he takes to set up some of his formals. I think that a LOT of us can take some serious notes on this one… I often get lazy and claim that formals aren’t my game… well, after looking at this stuff, I’m a little inspired to go out and try a tad harder.

Go to school on shooting some kewl formals….
Ed Pingol writes:
The Importance of a Group Formals

The bridal party which usually consist of family and close friends are typically required to take photos with the bride and groom. Providing the bridal party with the same personal experience as the bride and groom has been a HUGE benefit (even if there’s over 20 of them total) for our business. Why? Because some of the individuals in the party can very will be your next client, plus they make for a nice spread in wedding albums which can add a great value to its worth. By taking a bit more time to set these “group photos”, several benefits can be had:

-you get an awesome portfolio - potential clients like to see these type of images because they see that we do take some time to get creative bridal party pictures. a huge factor when deciding on photographers

-you get referred out by the bridal party if they don’t hire you themselves - this part is pretty cool because several of our clients are great friends. when you shoot a close friend of the bride, you’ve already established a relationship before even clicking a single shot of her wedding. this makes things SO much easier than starting from square one. But the most important thing is that they already trust you

-designing albums are easier - because you have taken a bit of time to set up, chances are the images you’re about to capture is clean and well composed. clean and well composed images demand single spreads for themselves. one image per spread is SO easy to design, a caveman can do it.

-it’s just a lot more fun than traditional poses - of course we do the creative stuff AFTER we’ve done the traditional poses for the moms and pops. most of the bridal party has never experienced anything similar to this during a wedding. show them just one example and chances are they’ll want to take several more. if you make it fun, they’ll remember and referrals are sure to follow.

Of course, when doing this, you should take several images of the same pose but just varying it up just a tad by saying “look anywhere AWAY from the camera (click, click, click), look to your left (click, click, click), look to your right (click, click, click), look at the camera no smile (click, click, click) and look at the camera AND smile (click, click, click)”. We do this all the time to cover all the bases before moving on to the next pose. We include all minor variances of the pose (if the client decides to purchase a dvd) and more times than not, their favorite (and ours) are the ones when people are looking away. Go figure. =)

So setting up a pose is cool and all but this is the time where we add a little FLASH FLAVOR to the mix. Below is an example of a typical “Ed Pingol” group photo (whatever that means) of the bridal party - setting is 100iso 1/180th @ f13 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28’s triggered by a PW mounted on a monopod fired 1/1 @ 24mm beam spread - held high by Monica. See example of actual setup here.

Kindly please take a look at the example below how an image typically looks like without any
flash flavor. There’s alot going on especially in the background that can distract the eye from
your main subject. In order to “delete” that please read up on deleting the ambient.

Other Examples:

100iso 1/180th @ f19 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28’s triggered by a PW
mounted on a monopod fired 1/1 @ 24mm beam spread - held high by Monica.

100iso 1/180th @ f13 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28’s triggered by a PW
mounted on a monopod fired 1/2 @ 24mm beam spread - held high camera right by Monica.

100iso 1/180th @ f13 - lighting set up consist of dual nikon sb-28’s triggered by a PW
mounted on a monopod fired 1/1 @ 24mm beam spread (heads swiveled left and right to
provide wider cover) - held high by Monica.

Ed, how refreshing to see this post! I’m very impressed that you actually take the time to set these up. I know your clients dig them. I love it when you mix bright sunlight in the frame and blast them with the flash, just hotness! Lets hope that we all can take some inspiration from this one and change it up a little next time you set up a group of formals!

Props Ed, thanks for sending me this submission. This is what Flash Flavor is ALL about amigo!

Cheers
matt

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Feb 26, 2008

HDR - High Dynamic Range Capable. Woo Hoo!!!

commentator: ed

what is it and why does it matter you ask?

"Standard 8-bit images use values from 0 through 255 to cover the range from black to white. 16-bit images up the ante by allowing you go from 0 all the way to 65,535. In both though, black is still black, and white is still white. All the extra values that 16-bit provides are slotted in between the standard 8-bit values so we really still have about the same dynamic range for each. We can just represent things more accurately in 16-bit mode.

The main limitation with all RGB systems is that they are geared to describing what color something is, not how bright it is. The CIE L*a*b color model improves things somewhat by separating the color components (the "a" and "b" channels) from the lightness or luminance (the "L" channel), but the range of available brightness values is still rather limited.

To represent the real world, we need a relatively open ended brightness scale, and that's exactly what HDR provides.

Rather than using regular integers (the numbers we count with) to record things, HDR uses floating point numbers. If you've used an ordinary pocket calculator, you are probably already familiar with floating point, but just in case, allow me to explain briefly. Sometimes referred to as exponential notation, floating point employs a fractional number (officially known as the mantissa) which is multiplied by some power of ten (known as the exponent). For instance, if you have a calculator with a nine-digit display that reads 999,999,999 and you add one to it, you get 1e+09, or 1 x 10⁹. Multiply the same number by a million and we'd have 9.99999999e+14. This way, we can keep on counting for a long, long time. Also, no matter how high we get, the precision is retained since the mantissa still has the same number of significant digits. Negative exponents let us get ever closer to zero as well with no loss of precision. For all practical purposes, this gives us essentially limitless dynamic range." - from earthboundlight.com

now that you're more confused than ever, allow me to show you an example... the picture below is a HDR image combined from the 3 thumbnails below.

If we were to look at this in person, we would be able to discern detail both inside and outside the doorway, because our eyes would adjust to changing brightness. The goal of HDR use in this article is to better approximate what we would see with our own eyes through the use of a technique called tonal mapping.

pretty cool, huh?

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

Feb 24, 2008

nxlevel class with peter of mellange studio

commentator: ed

in order to bring our business to the next level, monica and i, with the very talented peter from mellange studio (our preferred videography company), are taking the nxlevel business course. we want to really create a very solid foundation for the business. of course, while we are very serious about the business side of photography, we try to balance everything with "fun." below are photos from our first saturday morning class.

but first...

peter creates a monthly video blog and releases it on the 15th of each month. (check them out here, along with other cool videos! go gabi! =) this month's video features us attending our 2nd night of class:

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

jumping shots are always fun

a little photo session

this was totally monica's idea. i had nothing to do with it.

our awesome classmates who too wants to bring their business to the next level.
but let's see who's paying attention to the lecture and who's not.

studying always makes me hungry. so after class, we headed to YO SUSHI.

networking!

commentator: monica

lately, we've been in touch with so many awesome local wedding vendors this year! it's a real blessing to be surrounded by such great people in the industry who have a passion for all things wedding. it started off with the "lovely details showcase," organized by lisa of bellissima vita and karen of huckleberry karen designs, where we got to meet many fabulous up-and-coming wedding vendors on superbowl sunday.

since eddie's usually the one behind the camera, it's rare that he has his own images. here's a couple photos taken by james of the fanastic duo, photography by lisa + james.

it was at the showcase that we had the pleasure of meeting wedding/event coordinator extraordinaire michelle barrionuevo-mazzini of mb wedding design and events who invited us to a launch party for andrew hsu of studio msv later on that week at dekker studio in sf. not knowing what to expect, we had the opportunity to mingle with the best of the bay's wedding industry at a very shhhhwanky event. sheesh, we were definitely star struck a few times but did our best not to giggle like little school girls and ask for their autographs. seriously.

here's a few photos taken by the very talented, augie chang:

us and the lovely, jennifer skog "as in vogue!"

as we were asked to direct our attention to the projection screen, we couldn't help but pose for the camera. =) we're not the only misfits not paying attention, augie!

for your ladies and gents who are currently planning your wedding, check out the "promises & pearls bridal soiree" by clicking on the banner below:

eddie will be in hawaii but i'll hopefully be attending the show! hope to see you there!!!

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

Lola and Baby Evan

commentator: ed

a few family pics.

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

lola (our weiner dog) posing for the camera

baby evan (our nephew, not our baby) seems to have his mouth open all the time.

Feb 21, 2008

OSPW2 - behind the scenes

commentator: ed

ok. most of the images we show are of our clients and never really show you "us". well, this
particular post will have "us" and our photog friends all over it. you'll get a chance to see how we really are... DORKY. =)

over the weekend, erwin wijanto, awesome seattle-based photographer and stand-up guy, stayed at our place to attend osp2w. tons of fun, plus more photos of us! =)

//ed pingol
707.334.1468
info@edpingolphotography.com
edpingolphotography.com

monica and i being dorky, doing jumps and simply just having fun at cornerstone garden in sonoma