San Diego Wedding Photographer | Evan Bishop Photography | Southern California & Destination Wedding Photojournalist » Evan Bishop Photography is a Southern California wedding photographer based in San Diego. Specializing in wedding photojournalism and destination events.

I recently had the pleasure of seeing Dane Sanders speak at the San Diego PUG meeting.  One of Dane’s challenges was to make a declaration and challenge yourself with something that might seem impossible to accomplish.  This weekend I made the declaration to Kristy that I wanted to make one studio image a day for the rest of the year.  I started this project with our Vinturi aerator.  Using a black seamless backdrop, and two studio strobes I combined three separate images to come up with the final and first image.  I’m excited and anxious to see how my studio approach changes throughout the year.  The biggest thing I want to accomplish with this commitment is to challenge myself; what I know, and how I think about lighting.

I once again had the fabulous opportunity to be a photography leader at the latest San Diego Photographers Shoot-Out.  Six photography leaders from San Diego and Orange County got together, for a full day of sharing what we know with sixty photographers from all around Southern California.  It was a blast, and exhausting, but also inspiring to be around so many other creative minds.

This time we all got together at the San Diego Heritage Museum in Encinitas with the theme of ‘Rockabilly Pin-up’.  I got lucky with my set and was stationed at the old Texaco gas station that used to be a movie set backdrop (I never found out what movie it was in, so if anyone knows I’m really curious).  We also had cars brought in by the awesome people at Hire Old Cars and this just totally finished the look for the gas station.

Because this was the third opportunity I have had at being a group leader, I decided I would try to share some of my experience, and knowledge of lighting and light modification.  It couldn’t have been a better day for this topic since after nearly a week of pouring down rain the sky was crystaline blue without a cloud to be seen all day.  Bring out the scrims and cutters! I also had the luck of my station being right next to a power source, and brought my studio strobes … just in case.

As I said, I had lots of luck this day … the weather was perfect for the shoot and talking about light modification and controlling light, I had an awesome set and … Lindsey and JK.  I had met Lindsey at the first shoot-out in San Diego, and love the way she models. She’s great with direction and is able to provide direction and ideas of her own.  JK I met at the second shootout, and I didn’t get as much time to work with him then, but there was an immediate chemistry between he and Lindsey.  I couldn’t have asked for a better couple of models for the day!

Here’s a few of the images I made throughout the day my goal was to use the lighting, and light modifiers to create scenes that accentuated the natural light, but controlled the harsh shadows that midday sun causes.  I’ll provide some descriptions of the light setups I used for each image.

The first setup of the day. Look at that sky!!!! Two panel reflectors on stands were used to camera left to block out the direct sun from the models faces. 800WS strobe with 40° honeycomb set high and camera left as fill to to replicate direct light. The combination allows balance between the foreground and background exposure.

This series of three images share the same lighting setup. One panel diffuser used in addition to natural shade provided by the trailer that was onsite to control the direct sunlight from camera left. One gold reflector to camera right used to bounce and warm natural light back into the scene, and one large studio softbox camera left for fill light.

One of my favorite setups from the day this is inside the old Chevy Bel Air. One light setup. With 60 photographers wandering around, I had to constantly be watching the background in the images. In most of my images, my lighting design was to add detail to the background while retaining balanced exposures on the models. In this image, I intended to blow out the background to get rid of any distractions. In order to blowout the background, and create interesting wrap around lighting, I dropped one Nikon SB strobe connected by a Pocket Wizard in the trunk aimed at the ceiling to bounce off the roof of the car, and allow the light to wrap around the models. One strip of daylight was coming in through the right side window, so again, a panel reflector was used as a cutter to create even light throughout the car interior.

One reflector panel camera right to block unwanted direct sun. Gold reflector panel low right to reflect natural light back up into models faces. The use of the reflector allows the foreground and background exposure to come together and allow some of the blue sky instead of a blown out white sky.

Open shade under the awning of the Texaco station. One panel reflector used again as a cutter at camera left, and softbox strobe used to create slight sense of directional light as opposed to the flat light created by open shade. (are you starting to get the chemistry between these two? they met in the parking lot 10 minutes before we started shooting!)

The sun is starting to come down and give us nice rim lighting, but controlling unwanted flare from such a low angle is the job of my trusty reflector again! Cutter high above model to block out lens flare. Softbox camera right to give direction and shape to backlit model.

As the sun continues to lower, and get softer, balancing foreground and background exposures gets easier. I still want to control the light though. Here, a diffusion panel is used behind camera to soften the direct light and maintain attractive catchlight in models eyes. Gold reflector slightly behind and to the left of the models to bounce warm light back onto their faces.

At this point, we've lost the awesome rim light that we were getting from the sun behind the models. No worry, one strobe behind the models to camera right creates the same effect. Strobe zoomed to 105mm in order to create very direct light and less flare in camera. Could also use a reflector panel here as a cutter between the light and camera to reduce flare further. (note small amount of flare in right portion of frame)

At this point the sun has totally dropped behind the hills in the background. Lighting gets considerably easier when dealing with non-directional light. I get to create my own shadows instead of trying to eliminate the ones I don't want! One softbox used to camera left to create directional light, and eliminate background distractions.

OK, I'll admit it, I don't usually bring this much equipment to an engagement or wedding shoot, and sometimes, natural light is the best light. It makes you be creative with what you've got and here's one of my favorite images from the day, without the use of any lights, gobos, cutters, flags, scrims. strobes, honeycombs, softboxes, etc. Natural warm sunlit flare just before the sun dropped behind the hills for the day.

Thanks so much to everyone for coming out.  Even if you didn’t get to shoot as much at my location as at others, I hope I was able to give some insight into creative lighting for portraits, as well as how to think about light critically.  Below is a list of the equipment I brought for the shoot in case anyone’s curious, or looking to pick up some new toys!

White Lightning 800WS strobe

Photoflex Q39 Medium Softbox

Photoflex HalfDome strip softbox with Nylon Fabric Grid

Honeycomb Grid Set

Panel Reflector with Stand

Nikon SB-28 … Ok I’m 100% Canon except for these guys.  I picked them up on ebay for under $100.00 they work great with pocket wizards compared to the difficulties I was having with my $500.00 Canon 580EX IIs with Pocket Wizard.  For the price they do a great job as a small secondary off camera light.  I still keep my 580s on camera … where they’re great, so don’t kick me out of the Canon club ok!?

That’s it! I hope everyone had a great time and can’t wait to see you again at the next shootout or maybe WPPI!

Oh! I forgot my sandbag you can pick one of these up virtually anywhere!

So for the past 16 years now Kristy has been throwing a holiday party and inviting friends, family members and co-workers to her home.  She’s an awesome host, and really knows how to throw a party! I have been lucky enough to be involved in the past three years of party happenin’ and this year we had the added bonus of being invited to host the Pictage PUG holiday party at our home as well!  Jeff and Erin Youngren are the awesome PUG leaders in San Diego, and they helped organize the event on their end including providing most of the libations for everyone to enjoy throughout the evening.

For the past two years we have set up a photobooth and provided props (and alchohol) … after that sit back and watch the magic happen! We had a blast and couldn’t have been happier to have everyone come out! All in all we filled the house with well over 50 people including Kristy’s co-workers, a bunch of awesome San Diego photographers, neighbors and even some of my upcoming 2010 brides came out!

Check out a few images from the night below … these are the ‘fit for general release’ images!

Now, I know you want more … I couldn’t possibly post all the images we shot throughout the night on the blog, so check out the slideshow of images below.

There are weekends when I have a million things to do, errands to run, places to go, house to clean, etc. There are weekends when there are tons of fun social things to do, but by Sunday evening I feel like I need another weekend to recover from my weekend. There are, of course, the weekends where there are no plans, no people to see, nothing exciting going on, and when I go back to work on Monday morning, I’ve got nothing of particular interest to report.

But then there are those rare occasions when the stars align and I have the perfect weekend. Our trip to Temecula was just that weekend.  We started out with beautiful weather, which I guess isn’t a stretch here in San Diego, but coming from Baltimore, 75 degrees and clear is not easy to come by, especially in August!  I was with wonderful company; Evan, and two friends from work, Mark and Kim, who love wine and love life!

We started our tasting at Maurice Car´rie where, the wine is good, don’t get me wrong, but the wheel of brie embedded in a buttery garlicky toasty bread boule is RI-DIC-U-LOUS!!! A must try, and don’t even say you don’t like brie, because if you say it… well we’re just not friends anymore!  We then made our way over to the sister winery, La Cereza.  Evan’s favorite was the Viognier. It’s award winning, and when you taste it, you’ll know why.  We sat in big comfy chairs at La Cereza and drank wine, listened to live music, and really had a chance to relax and enjoy ourselves.

Wiens Family Cellars was next, and all I can say is W-O-W! Holy cow! and Like, Oh my God!  The sparkling Amour De L’Orange is a must try! It’s true I’m a sucker for the bubbly, and most champagnes/ sparkling wines have this effect on me, but I just felt giddy when I was drinking it! So giddy in fact, that, well, since I am a member of Wiens anyway… anyway, I took advantage of the case for 30% off deal! I mean, who wouldn’t? Really?  Okay, I’m getting side tracked I know but, I can’t help it, it’s just so good!

Next stop, and the final wine tasting for the day was Masia de Yabar. This is one of Mark’s favorites. He loves Malbecs and this lovely, picturesque winery just so happens to have a delicious Malbec. We headed to check in at Temecula Creek Inn, where we had an awesome dinner and a great night’s stay. I even got to hear coyotes yipping in the distance.  I’m an East Coast city girl so hearing coyotes for the first time was a pretty major event for me!

Day two started off with mimosas, and then off for more wine tasting.  I loved Leonesse Cellars! The port served with a dark chocolate truffle was heavenly! We all loved it there… so we became wine club members! Our last stop as a group was Keyways. Kim’s membership there allowed us to have a really unique wine tasting experience. We sat in the members room and enjoyed, well, I’m going to be honest, pretty much every wine on the list.  It was great fun.

Mark and Kim headed back to San Diego, and Evan and I decided to grab a bite to eat before getting on the road full of wine!  We went back to Leonesse Cellars, and had delicious “small bytes”.  We watched the sun start to dip behind the mountains, bringing our perfect weekend to a close. For those of you who enjoy wine, and just want to escape for a day or two, go to Temecula. You won’t be disappointed! And who knows, maybe we’ll run into you there!

“If food is the body of good living, wine is its soul” ~Clifton Fadiman

Great wineries to check out and if you’re looking for a beautiful place to have your wedding or reception I’ll run down the list of our favorites from this visit! (Don’t worry we’re heading back soon to do some more … ummm … scouting with a ton more great locations to check out!)

La Cereza: Great location with open air reception area and great indoor/outdoor seating area for mingling

Leonesse Cellars: Outstanding location, beautiful scenery and great food to boot! You can’t go wrong holding both your wedding and reception at this place!

Wilson Creek: This place was made for weddings!  Beautiful grounds, incredible architecture! Inside and out it’s an outstanding location

Wiens Family Cellars: This is an awesome place for a smaller reception.  There’s definitely room for a large event here, but the barrel room is beautiful a great location for a smaller more intimate gathering of friends and family members!

And demons too!  I had another great shoot with Rudy at Chrome Salons back in Maryland and have just started editing the demons.  Back in April we shot a second set of Angels for his submission to NAHA.  We shot the first round of Angels before his salon was officially opened and it was awesome.  We started with an idea, a concept really that I had in my head but had never shot and had no clue how it would turn out.  Amazingly it turned out just as we had all hoped it would.  Then I had a concept of how I wanted to shoot the demons … FAIL! big time!!!  Back to the drawing board, reconsider what was important in the photos, and Rudy and I came up with a completely new concept for the demons and I think it worked.  I’m really happy with the second set, and I’m just dropping a teaser image in today.  I’ll be posting more of both the Angels as well as this second set of Demons photos soon.

Enjoy!