While it is much easier to selectively blur in Photoshop, it does not look nearly the same. Below I’ve posted three images: One shot without any tilt, one shot with tilt, and one with artificial blur added during the post-processing stage.

Note that in the first image, nearly everything is sharp. This is because I’m shooting from a distance with a fairly wide lens (45mm).

In the second image, you can see certain qualities in the bokeh (out of focus qualities) that you cannot see in the third image.

Notice that at the top of image 2, you can see two bright circles on either side of the stained glass. These are the out of focus representations of the lamps which you can see in image one. You can’t make them out at all in image 3. Blurring in Photoshop is averaging the pixels in your image, causing you to lose information and detail. Blurring with a tilt-shift, may also blend some things together, but the bokeh looks completely different. In this case, irregularly shaped lamps become sharp circles.

That’s the unique thing, that through the lens can you get out of focus objects that are sharp.

Also, with a tilt-shift, one portion of the image is sharp and as you move your eyes away from that portion, the image gets gradually blurrier. It’s very hard to make a gradient blur in Photoshop and make it look real (not edited).

For more info on bokeh, check out Wikipedia’s definition here.

Hope this helps,
Amina

Share This

Here are some of my favourite shots of the day.
-Amina

Share This

So what did we get?
Emotions plus… even more emotions! Combine that with hot mulled cider served right after ceremony, and the cold became warmth.

The wedding took place at Graydon Hall Manor. Some of you may remember it from the Andrea + Derek highlights that we posted a few weeks ago. You may notice that it looks a little different in the winter though. The ceremony room, being more intimate and romantic, challenged us to take a different approach with where we could place our cameras and ourselves. We generally like challenges, as they make us think outside the box (we don’t like boxes…). When a “problem” arises, we always try to turn it into a unique opportunity. And often we get to produce our best pieces when it happens.

With this SDE we were rather pressed with time having only 8 hours to shoot, edit, color, and prepare for the show. Add to that breaking one of our steadicams (yep - breaking it!), we stayed focused on telling a very touching story of Lisa and Jeff.

The reaction started with giggling and laughing, going through crying, ending at crying from laughing.

It’s tough to edit with watery eyes…

-Konrad

Lisa + Jeff SDE from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Share This

While we don’t often post wedding highlights online (we have to save some of our stuffs for the couples visiting us at the studio!!!), I’m going to share with you Ted + Mya’s wedding highlights.

Those of you who attended our Evolution Experience workshops, may recognize the couple as I used Ted + Mya’s Main-Feature to illustrate + dissect the MANY story-telling + editing principles that the Cinema team here lives and breathes by.

My apologies for not having an incredibly informative shoe-shot tutorial, I’m simply not as good of an educator as Amina!

*EDIT* I was joking re my last comment. For those interested, we have been sharing technical insights + trying to keep up with all the questions from the video community on Vimeo. Simply click the Vimeo link that the video resides on if the language of film has any interest to you!

Hope you feel the energy and fun in this clip (find the shoe shot!).

-MYW.

ps. Jeff + Lisa, we have not forgotten about you! =)

Ted+Mya Highlights from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Share This

This is one of my favourite shoe shots, and I think I was pretty clever when I thought of it (hey, it’s my blog, and I can toot my own horn if I want to!).

This type of photo is particularly difficult to execute. Shot using a tilt-shift lens, external flash, and movment (of the shoes), this photo combines three elements of photography that are difficult to shoot when even on their own.

What does a tilt-shift lens do?

Well, let’s start with a normal lens. When you focus on something, normally, things in the foreground and things in the background are blurry. In other words, the blur is front and back (the plane of focus is parellel with the image sensor of the camera).

But with a tilt-shift lens, you can alter the plane of focus. This means that you can make things go blurry side to side, up and down, or even on an angle. This is how I got the focus to go right down the middle of the image - Antonia is sharp, and her shoes are sharp, but the further you look to the sides of the image, the blurrier they get.

While I’m making sure that the focus is perfect (it’s a manual focus lens), Jaime (from blueprint events) is holding an external flash with a RadioPopper for me. It’s broad daylight, but I feel that adding some extra light adds a certain mood to the photo and also brings the viewer’s attention to the shoes a lot faster. This is what is illuminating the top part of the image and casting a shadow of the door. The door would be a lot harder to see without the light too.

And then there’s the movement. So you can imagine that when you have a very narrow line of focus AND you are shining a light in a particular spot, you have to track the movement of your subject really well, or, the subject has to move in a very specific way. Enter Antonia.

Toni… how many times did you have to throw your shoes in the air? And how scuffed were they after they landed on the pavement every time you threw them?

All in all, it took about 20 minutes to get this shot. Good thing we had a lot of time for the photo session!

-Amina

Share This

… What are you waiting for?

-MYW.

the evolution experience II from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Share This

For me, photographs should carry a story, whether it’s obvious or not. As a wedding photographer, it’s my job to document the events of the Day by capturing moments, and helping people to relive them days, months, years later.

For many, this means taking a series of photographs that combined tell a story. Much like the act of photographing a ceremony - the images when placed together in an album are able to bring back all the emotions that were felt at the time.

But what about a lone image? I feel it is much more challenging to tell a story with just one photograph. This is a challenge that I will be continuing to conquer for the rest of my life.

Above is an image that I particularly love. It is well composed, with good contrast and colour. Its depth of field pulls the viewer into the rings almost instantly. But the part I love most is the secret that it holds.

When I arrived at Erica and Jay’s wedding venue, everyone was a little nervous about the weather. It had been raining off and on all morning. Erica is a very easy going, fun loving girl, and even she was a little bit worried.

While she was having her makeup done, I went outside with the rings for a brief moment. I found a puddle on the deck that surrounded the building she and her family were in.

As time went on, the rain turned to drizzle, and a bit of sun started to peak out. By the time the (outdoor) ceremony was beginning, the rain had completely gone and had left us with nothing but beautiful light. It was perfect. Their ceremony was perfect.

About half an hour later, we began our portrait session together. As Erica and Jay were sitting together enjoying their time in front of the camera, the rain returned - but this time there was no anxiety. In fact, there was opportunity. With caution to the wind, Erica decided that frizz or no frizz, she was going to get wet! Because this was her wedding day and she was going to enjoy every minute of it!

This is what I remember when I look at this photo. I remember the relief that everybody felt when the rain stopped. I remember the joy in Erica’s eyes as she and Jay laughed in the rain. I remember a day that turned out perfectly. And it makes me really happy.

-Amina

Share This

Kimberley + Trevor were married back on October 18th in Toronto. This is one of the clips we kept in the vault so that we had something special to show our couples when they came to visit the studio.

Their SDE is an example of one of our premium same-day edits. We had 3 cinematographers there to shoot both the main feature and SDE (whereas our regular collections have 2 cinematographers).

Sorry for the wait Kimmy.

P.

Kimberley + Trevor’s SDE from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Share This

In hosting the evolution experience here at our studio our intention was to try and re-ignite that passion that so many have lost for the art they produce, to help them learn the tools and techniques to push themselves further, and above all, how to give their work more life, depth, and meaning. What we didn’t prepare ourselves for was how rewarding the entire experience would be for all of us at StillMotion, and for that we want to sincerely thank everybody involved.

Here are two brief lines taken from longer comments we received that we wanted to share:

“To say Thank you really does not seem like enough, please know that this experience truly has changed our-lives for the better.” - Nicole

“I can’t believe it’s over.  I think everyone came out of this with a huge feeling their lives have changed for the better.” - Troy

We’ve shared a lot over the past couple weeks- our approach really was ‘all in all out’. There is a fine line between inspiring others, which can add excitement and depth to your work, and having others copy what we do, which provides neither. Here is the question -who really loses in this situation? Of course we send out letters and ask nicely that clips be taken down and that things aren’t copied in the future, but these instances really don’t hurt us, not nearly as much as a couple receiving something so devoid of meaning and personality, or an artist producing something that is so one-dimensional and un-inspiring.

With that, I would like to share with you two examples of clips that were brought to our attention recently (by inquiring couples none the less). By the time you see these there is a good chance they may already be removed, so I will try and update this post when that happens. The first looks surprisingly similar to Darshan and Raina’s trailer, which we posted a while back on the blog (and is posted again here as a reference).

Here is the link to the clip that looks surprisingly similar (the sound will come on after about 20 seconds). Notice the content, composition, and sequencing of the first 5-6 shots. The bizarre thing is that none of the shots were taken from our blog, they are actually recreated with an almost scary precision.

The second is clip is more than surprisingly similar, it is a YouTube version of Amy + Alex’s highlights that was reposted on another videographer’s website as their own work. You can view that here. Just click on gallery and it is the 2008 demo.

Thanks for letting me share and I would love to hear your thoughts.

P.

Darshan + Raina Columbus, OH Wedding Trailer from StillMotion on Vimeo.

Share This

’nuff said.

[click to enlarge images]

Share This