...Techniques and Secrets

There are certain limits in photography, that need some special know how, fiddling and tinkering to be overcome. An example is the image to the left. We made a custom aquarium with a not really cheap special glass for utmost optical quality. But that´s not the real special deal about this image.

It was shot with a shutter speed of an amazing 1/6400th of a second. Other images in this series were shot with 1/8000th of a second. Even experienced photographers sure now shake their head in disbelief, because this is not something that any "out of the box" equipment can easily do for you. In fact it wasn´t even possible just a short while ago.
Not that these shutter speeds didn´t exist, it was rather the flash sync time that prevented such images from being crisp and look like a frozen piece of time. Very very few cameras have flash snych speeds of 1/250th. The rest is below. Even medium Format cameras can´t deal with synch speeds as fast as we have used them here. If you increase the speed above that limit (the so called synch speed), parts of the image are hidden from the sensor by the shutter of the camera.

Now there are some flashlights from Companies like Canon, Nikon, etc. that offer high speed synch, but the power these offer is wayyy beyond the power that is needed for an image like this.

So what is the secret? Well - at present we don´t yet want to give it away, just to give you a hint: it only works with certain cameras, and only with certain Flashkits (whereas the latter has to be rather "cheap" - so no high end generator and the like and the camera rather expensive).

Another possibility to freeze movement are very very high end flash generators (starting from approx. 15.000€ inc. appropriate head) - these generators use the flash duration for freezing images. The problem is again the power. The image shown was produced with an aperture of 9, others in this series even with 10 at ISO 100 which is beyond the limit of such generators. At a sidenote, freezing with generators only works with very limited available light (at best in complete darkness), while our technique works in direct sunlight. So we are pretty proud of our research and it´s results.

...in a positive way.

Namely isolated on white. If you´ve browsed our gallery you´ve probably realized that one of our specialties is shooting objekts - no matter if big or small - or even large groups of people on white. And when we say white, we mean really white, not just light grey, offwhite, vignetted or graduated.

Most photographers shoot on white background, but on the image the subject appears on grey rather than white. Usually they isolate the object afterwards with their software. But that doesn´t only look unnatural because the background doesn´t blend in nicely with the subject, it´s also pretty time consuming and therefore expensive.

Using trial and error for years and throwing away tons of different material and equipment, we found the parts that fit our needs and offer great results. Small objects like the vintage typewriter to the right though are shot on a professional shooting table from Foba, an prizewinning piece of equipment, that doesn´t only win, but also has it´s price ;-).

And again we face this very large target group.

young at heart, active and full of joy, that´s how the industry likes to see seniors - and btw. that´s how they like to see themselves too. So we went to see the austrian mountains with our senior models. Mountains and a lot of equipment is no fun, it means carrying all the light formers and cameras to remote places, but once you have them all up and running, it´s pure joy to shoot outdoors.

And it was a great journey, four days, four times very different weather, and so four very different results of the shooting days. It couldn´t have been better to present jacket on one day and short arm sleeves on the other.

More images from the shooting in our portrait gallery - I guess we should rather rename that part soon, there are a lot of shots in there that noone would call "portrait" anymore.

...the future of Amriphoto?

Golf is a modern and emerging sport, but photographically not really well covered. The reasons are easily explained:

Because of the movement of golfers from one hole to the other, it´s very difficult to build a set, that´s why most golf photographers shoot with rather uncreative accessory flash on camera.

The antizipation of the movement is very difficult for most photographers - knowing when exactly to realease the shutter. We have our background in sports science - Birgit even finished her studies and is an official Sports Scientist.

The time for good images is pretty limited. Most golf courses are well booked and one "flight" follows the next within minutes, so you hardly get a hole for photography alone.

Nevertheless, or rather because of that we will set our sportive focus on shooting golf in the next few years. Let´s see if we come up with something more creative than is already available.

...in the hat museum.

A wedding that was different to all our others we had this season. In the hat- and winemuseum in Vienna. Ancient customs, ancient walls - a very special experience. Another thing that was very special about this wedding was the - in Europe quite unusual - homecountry of the bride. She was born in Cuba - and finally a long lasting relationship between bride and groom across huuuuge borders ended in their wedding in Vienna.

More than ever we needed Lenses with large aperture for this shooting, because the beautiful light in these walls - often only candles - must not be destroyed by flashlight.

That brings the wedding season 2009 to an end and we will now charge our creative batteries for next year, concentrating on stock photography in winter. We haven´t done some theme shootings for a long time, many of the planned shootings, such as people doing sports in businesssuites weren´t possible this summer due to the lack of time. Now our heads are full with ideas - time to let them out!

In Styria, and once again in a castle.

The wedding was long planned, but then it rained. Nevertheless, the bride planned way ahead and after a few hours of endless activities, the guests didn´t even remember that it was raining outside.

It was also the first time we used our new lens at a wedding. And it was way worth it - the church was pretty dark, due to the bad weather, and so the lightpower of the f1.2 could shine. The big advantage of such a lens is not only that you can use lower ISO and get much better image quality, but you can also work without flash at most occasions and let the available light enhance the background. The resulting photo looks much more smooth and natural. Another advantage is the shallow focus when shooting wide open. The extremely blurred background makes the center point of the image stand out and the image has much more dimension.

Images of your family in more than just one season.

Great friends of ours, true blogreaders know them from a christmas shooting, wanted to have some familyimages in their private garden. Usually the typical familiy portrait is shot in the studio, but those images rather look dull and glaze compared to those shot outside. People usually feel way more comfortable when they are not posing in front of an artificial background, but rather have their space around, like in their private garden, in parks, etc. And the background possibilities are endless, so a 180° turn brings a totally new shot - new light direction, new background, new look - try that in a studio! That way shooting photos is fun, so why not make a whole series of photoshooting at different seasons? Need a christmas present for grandma and grandpa? A calender of the best shots of the last year is always welcome, so is a poster or a canvas print.

So, at best you go ahead and fix a date - btw: if the weather doesn´t fit the season we are more than happy to postpone a shooting - without any cancellation fee - rather than shooting a summerimage on a cold and rainy day. Even more than trying to get filthy rich, we are seeking to shoot great and powerful images ;-).

Wedding photos for business use.

The general managers of Tanzschule Chris married. But they needed the images not only for private use, but also for their dancing school. So they decided to take the images on separate day and rather not let the guests wait too long. That way the wedding shooting is faked to some extent, but it gave us the time to shoot 6 hours on several beauuuutiful places in vienna. No doubt the results have been much better than those of a shooting where time is very limited. Usually we don´t have a full hour for the images of the wedding couple. Another great motive was a pink Cadillac from  CCL.

The shooting itself was great fun, I guess you can see it on the images. The two are a perfect couple and we wish them the best of success not only for their relationship, but also for their business - they run the biggest dancing school here in Vienna. See more images from that particular shooting in our Wedding Gallery .