Lighting A Room
One of the most common situations that the average person may find themselves in when it comes to photography is taking a photo inside the house. It presents a unique challenge especially in daylight, that is fortunately pretty easy to overcome. Imagine you”re the designated photographer at a family gathering. Maybe a kids birthday party [...]
Phottix Strato – An On The Job Test
Last month I previewed a new type of flash trigger from Phottix, the Strato 4-in-1 Wireless trigger. This is the latest wireless flash trigger release from Phottix following on from the Phottix Atlas a couple of months ago. I mentioned then that it appeared to be a remote trigger that would be most useful for [...]
Phottix Atlas Flash Trigger
I recently had the opportunity to do some pre-release testing of the newly released Phottix Atlas Wireless Flash Triggers. Steve Peer, CEO of Phottix, is someone I’d known online for a couple of years, and he approached me about doing some testing for them. My first thought after agreeing was that the testing should be [...]
Direction of Light
After yesterday’s phototip that talked about the quality of light, it’s time to move onto the direction of light. Once again, I’m using the sun as my lightsource. Frontlight Front light is a term that sometimes causes confusion for novice photographers. By front, we mean the subject’s front, that is, behind the photographer. When you [...]
Quality of Light
For this post, I’m discussing outdoor, natural light. No strobes, no candles, no streetlights, no neon. These principles translate to the artificial, but for now, let’s look at what the universe provides. Before we continue, professional photographers as well as those who aspire to be shouldn’t miss out on portfolio consultant Selina Maitreya and her [...]
Light Modifiers
A light modifier is any kind of device that can be utilized to spread, restrict, diffuse, focus or in some way alter the light that reaches the subject. Think of the way light changes when the sun goes behind a cloud and you’ll have a basic idea of what a light modifier can do. Of [...]
Flash Exposure and its Variables
When using some form of strobe lighting, there are five basic elements that go into determining the optimum settings for your exposure. Knowing and understanding these variables is essential for any photographer who wishes to achieve accurate, repeatable flash exposures with a minimum of fuss. If you can master these, everything else becomes a matter [...]
Simple One Light Headshots
With a little experience, a basic one light headshot is something you can set up and shoot in a couple of quick minutes. Of course, if you’re on a job, you probably don’t want to tell the subject that or they might balk at the fees (and that’s why charging an hourly rate isn’t recommended [...]
Home Studio
As long as you’ve got a table of some kind and a spare corner of a living room or basement, you can easily and inexpensively set up a small studio at home. If you can rustle up some gaffer tape, a wall, bed sheets, transparent shower curtains, paper, cardboard boxes, desklamps, string or fishing line, [...]
Sunglasses on Black – A Two Light Setup
With a bit of easy preparation, the right tools and some gaffer tape, any photographer can take good looking product shots in their own living room. This is a handy technique for people who wish to sell goods on eBay, as well as a good exercise for photographers who are first starting out with lights [...]
DIY Golden Light
Golden hour is an often heard term in photography and refers to the time of day around dawn and dusk when the low sun casts a delicious, warm, golden light on everything. It’s a favorite time for photographers everywhere. There are times though when the gray, rainy days seem to stretch on endlessly and this [...]
Grids To Go
It’s extremely common to see photographers mount a dome diffuser of some kind on their hotshoe flash. This is great when you want the light to go everywhere, such as when you’re shooting in a room and can utilize bounced light off the walls and ceiling, or when you’ve got the speedlight attached to a [...]
Still Life Concepts
Setting up a still life concept type shot at home is a great exercise for learning about lighting, designing and executing an idea and producing a final image. Or as something to do when you’re bored on a rainy day. The shot above was very simple to put together. The topic of the shoot was [...]
Light Your World – Taipei
Strobes? Snoots? Grid-spots? Softboxes? Confused by all these terms? Does umbrella mean a thing to keep you dry or a thing to improve the quality of your photos? Have you ever wanted to get a rich, creamy look to your portraits, or add some color to a background, or create a low-key moody atmosphere? Then [...]
Sheri at Tai-Da
Taipei seems to be a popular destination for American models this summer. Fresh from the shoot with Jen a couple of weeks ago, I met up with Sheri. Hailing from New York and represented by Abrams Artists Agency, Sheri is in Taipei for a couple of months and we met up on a rainy Sunday [...]
Sunglasses on Black – A Two Light Setup
A quick two light setup. Before I explain anything, I’ll take a second to remind you that 5 will be back tomorrow, so don’t forget to check back in the morning. Anyway, here’s a shot for today – setup and info after the jump.
Fresh – A Lighting Tutorial
Today we’re going to look at a simple lighting setup that you can easily do at home to add a professional look to your still life shots, eBay ads, product photos and anything else you can think of. I’ve used the vegetables I just bought at the market for this, but the principles will be [...]
An Apple A Day
Camera : Canon 5D Mark II Lens : 50mm f1.8 ISO : 400 Aperture : f11 Shutter : 1/125 Lighting : 540ez @ 1/8 into shoot-through umbrella, camera left triggered by Elinchrom Skyport. 550ex with CTO gel and snoot @ 1/16 camera triggered optically.
Rainbow Smoke
Neil Wade has a pretty sweet lighting tutorial over at his blog that teaches you how to photograph incense smoke and make some cool smoke art. So I thought I’d take it a step further and look at an alternative post-processing method to which results in the below picture. So lets walk through the steps [...]
It’s All About Light
At its simplest, photography is all about capturing light. Whether the light is direct sun, studio strobes, speedlights or candles, the key to great photography is light. Natural light such as the sun requires no great explanation – it’s softer and warmer (hue) during “golden hour” around sunrise and sunset, it’s diffuse during a bright, [...]
Dharma lights.
Some more studio shots, this time of some Buddhist texts, malas and a Guanyin statue. Lighting was a 550ex @ 1/8 camera left into a reflector and a 540ez @ 1/32 camera right direct. RAW files were processed in Lightroom. The dharma text is the 8 Mahayana Precepts in Tibetan.
Light and Fruit
Been playing around at home with some strobist techniques lately. The light is provided by off-camera speedlights – a 550ex and 420ex for the strawberry shots, and a 550ex, 540ez and PE-28s for the strawberry and melon shot. The PE-28s is an optic slave, the other speedlights were triggered with V2 radio frequency flash triggers. [...]
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