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“When someone reads a beautiful poem they never stop to ask themselves whether the writer used a pen or a pencil”.

 

I find these words to be quite true and I think the same way of thinking applies to the realm of photography. It’s great to have nice gear but it’s better to know how to use it. Nevertheless, it’s always interesting to take a peak into the toolkit of other artists and find out what they’re using to bring forth the desires of the muse. I hope you enjoy taking this tour of mine!!

 My Gear

1. Canon 6D – This is my primary stills camera at the moment. It’s a full frame, 20.2 MP DSLR that takes exceptionally high quality images and it’s held up through every challenging condition I’ve subjected it to. I’ve been shooting on it for about 2 years now and I can pretty much adjust my settings with a blindfold on at this point. Mounted to this camera is the Canon 24-70mm f2.8 which is my workhorse and favorite walk around lens due to its adaptability in every situation. I usually throw this lens on in rapidly changing conditions when I know I’m going to have to be prepared to capture the moment.
2. Canon 85mm 1.8 – This is my favorite portrait lens and I try to shoot with it whenever I know I have the space to pull it off. I find it to be very sharp and its increased focal length gives it a nice amount of compression and dreamy bokeh.
3. Canon 50mm 1.4 – I love this lens and if I had to choose one lens to stay on my camera for the entire day, this would be the one. It’s a nice mid-focal length lens with a wide aperture that helps bring my subject off the page.
4. Canon 50mm 2.5 Macro – This is my specialty lens that really only comes out for ring shots and detail shots. It gets in close for those nice 1:1 details.
5. Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 – This lens is the Ying to my 24-70mm’s Yang. I use this lens during the ceremony to get in tight for those intimate shots while remaining unobtrusive to my clients. Aside from just using it to shoot things that are far away, the main reason I love this lens is that it creates the most compression of any lens in my kit. I can really pull the background into the frame and create a very dreamy perspective which I consider a signature aspect to my style. I like to take a very low perspective and blur the background out as much as I can. It really makes my subjects pop.
6. Canon 580 exii – This is my go to ETTL speed light that I really only use during the reception. Most of the time I have it paired with some type of light modifier like the Gary Fong or a light bender to help soften the effect of direct flash.
7. 16 GB SD cards – I use 16GB class 10 SD cards and I switch them out after every portion of the day to make sure I never miss a moment of the action.
8. Apple iMac Retina 5K 27 inch – This is my new editing computer and it’s an absolute dream come true. I got the specs maxed out although I installed my own RAM aftermarket to save a few clams. So far I think it is living up to its claim of being the best computer to date for a photographers workflow.                               Processor: 4 GHz Intel core i7
   Memory: 24 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
   Graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M295x
   OS X Yosemite
9. Pocket Wizard 801‑129 Flash Transceiver – When I’m doing studio work I like to get my flash off the camera and I use these ultra reliable flash transceivers to allow my camera to speak to my flashes. So far they’ve never let me down.
10. Sekonic Light Meter L-758DR – It’s rare that I’ll pull this bad boy out on a wedding day but I always keep it with me incase the situation arrises when I might need it. I primarily use this handy tool when I’m shooting portrait sessions or working with off camera flash.

 

Thanks for taking the tour and I hope this gave you some insight into my world.