I’m currently working on a wedding video for Jason Mudd and Tara Underwood. The couple married in July 2010 during an evening ceremony at Gingerwoods in Prospect, Ky. The reception was held on-site. Brad Luttrell shot stills.

Light stands and the wind do not mix, especially with umbrella wind sails on top. While helping Brad Luttrell shoot a recent wedding, I hauled up some of my Strobist-inspired dumbbell weights. I used bungee cords to attach the weights near the bottom of the light stands.

Despite the 20 mph winds that were slamming the rooftop of Glassworks in downtown Louisville, the stands weren’t going anywhere, but it didn’t keep my umbrellas from flipping inside out. That’s a whole other problem entirely. 

The rain clouds held off, though, and the rooftop ceremony went off with the bride and groom happily married. Congratulations to Jeanie Bradley and Michael Lawrence!

See more pictures at Photoshelter.

I have been torn a lot lately on whether certain images look better in black and white or color. In the case of my toddler playing in his baby pool, I think both are appropriate at different times.

Link La Rocca Wedding at Locust Grove. Photos by Derek Poore.

On June 12 I helped photographer Brad Luttrell shoot the wedding of Robert Link and Alessandra La Rocca in the blistering Louisville heat. The ceremony was held at St. Francis of Rome and the reception followed outside at Locust Grove.

The historic land and home dates to the 1700s and was the last residence of George Rogers Clark, founder of Louisville. Keepers of the site say Meriwether Lewis and William Clark stopped there on the way back from exploring the West.

The reception setting made for a nice environment and several nice backgrounds, but I felt like I’d been swimming in my clothes by 6 p.m. The wedding party toughed it out for us, though.

See the full gallery at PhotoShelter.

In July I will have the pleasure of teaching a weeklong multimedia reporting class at the Maine Media Workshops. The class is entitled "Stills and Video for Multimedia" and will explore how to capture content with cameras and edit it into a multimedia story.

We will focus on reporting multimedia stories with stills, video and sound. The class will shoot with DSLRs and will edit in Final Cut Pro.

The 2010 catalog is now online and more information on the workshops are there too. My class is July 11-17. Tuition is $1,050.

Maine has a boatload of workshops for every facet of photography, multimedia and filmmaking. If you want to learn from the best, check them out.

One of the biggest advantages to using a 5D Mark II over a traditional video camera is its superb low-light capability. I recently built a website for the Louisville jazz band Fattlabb and shot stills and video for the site.

I used two lenses, a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 L and a manual Nikkor 50mm f/1.4. Pushing the camera's ISO at times to 4000-6400 I was able to capture great footage in what was a very dark stage at Louisville's Zanzabar.

Picture: A student at the West End School studies in his room. By Derek Poore

In March and April I produced a video story for The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal on a small boarding school called the West End School. Video was shot on four separate days. All that shooting generated a first cut that was nearly five minutes long.

Needless to say there was some repetition in the interviews and the cutaways and b-roll weren't always necessary. But with critiques from Bob Sacha, a former producer at MediaStorm, and David Stephenson at the University of Kentucky, I managed to trim it down to three minutes. The pace is quicker, there are more visuals and interview voice overs breathe a bit better.

That's not to suggest it wasn't hard. All that cutting. Storytelling, especially in journalism, is most effective when the audience is entertained and educated all at the same time. Mark Twain supposedly said "if I see an adjective, I kill it." Editing video can be similar. "I feel like great films show, don't tell," Sacha told me.

The best print journalists visualize their stories before they do any reporting. This helps them assemble a narrative after interview subjects and the end result is a story, not an article.

Removing that one greatly-composed piece of b-roll to quicken the pace of a transition or cutting a wordy 15-second explanation from an interview session to a snappier five-second sound bite may be tough, but ultimately will help the audience enjoy and understand your piece.

By Derek Poore

But Tejada said the digital conversion in photography during the past decade has breathed new life into his photography.

Tejada conducted his Small Strobes, Big Results workshop in March in Indianapolis, Ind.

I was one of a dozen students who broke out softboxes, umbrellas, speedlights and Pocket Wizards to photographed in Indy's historic Stutz Building.

As you might guess from the workshop title, Tejada — who along with me will be teaching at the Maine Media Workshops this summer — is big on small strobes. He said he has exclusively used Speedlights on location for about five years.

He travels with portable, but effective softboxes, umbrellas, grids, snoots and other light shapers that allow him to produce beautiful light using small strobes.

Tejada also loves bouncing light. He’ll bounce into and back out of umbrellas and panels. He will use gelled Speedlights to throw light at a wall and create a massive softbox to project light back onto his subject.

Positioning light, whether hard or soft, narrow or wide, and understanding how it will wrap around the subject is more important than what power the strobe is at, Tejada said, and that if it looks good, go with it.

“My power is adequate,” he joked on more than one occasion when a participant would ask how much power his strobe was pushing.

David Tejada photographs a model during his workshop (with an assist by Indy photographer Chris Bucher) in March 2010 in Indianapolis, Ind. - By Derek Poore

While his work takes Tejada to exotic locations throughout the year, he said at the workshop he loves the change of pace the instruction work gives him.

He has held workshops in his home state of Colorado and as far away as Saudi Arabia. He is also teaches his class regularly at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops.

The workshop was a tremendous learning experience for me. The backdrop of the industrial, grungy Stutz Building — with its museum of cars and vacant spaces — was a pleasure to work in. You can’t help but see light differently after listening to Tejada’s instruction and watching him set up a shoot in person.

David Tejada

The topic on This Week in Photography is Haiti and how photojournalists are coping with the conditions there.

The group gives advice on the podcast that is basic, but would be helpful to anyone traveling to a second- or third-world country to shoot.

Also discussed is: when to put the camera down and help. I remember listening to a talk given by Los Angeles Times photographer Rick Loomis last year at the Mountain Workshops where he showed video of the U.S. military unit he was traveling with taking heavy fire in Iraq. Loomis said at one point he stopped shooting and helped other troops carry a wounded American soldier out of the firestorm. In that situation, he said, your instinct tells you to drop the camera and do what's right.

This is one of two web shows Zacuto produces, along with Critics, and offers great roundtable discussions on all aspects of filmmaking, from shooting weddings to major motion pictures. It’s well produced and the topics and guests are usually fascinating if you’re interested in cinematography. 

FilmFellas Cast 6: "Cinematography" Webisode 27 ~ Cultivating Trust
The round table of DPs (Jens Bogehegn, Robert Primes ASC, Trent Opaloch and Philip Bloom), discuss the DP/Director relationship. They elaborate on ways to handle a problem director, the art of collaboration and staying true to your craft. Next, they exchange views on artistic vision and bonding with the director on a more personal level to build trust.

FilmFellas Cast 6 Filmmakers:
Jens Bogehegn zacuto.com
Robert Primes, ASC http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0697543/
Trent Opaloch http://www.trentwashere.com
Philip Bloom http://philipbloom.co.uk/