Look, Ma! We Got A Discussion Board...

Those of you who have not yet moseyed on over to the Flickr Strobist yakkin' board are missing out.The discussion board has pretty much morphed into a quasi-site of its own.As of this posting, there are over 100 discussion threads, including things like the afore-mentioned headshot discussion thread, a thread on those "cheapo" eBay radio synch triggers...

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Headshot Assignment Discussion

First of all, I have to say that I have to say that am floored by the results from the first Boot Camp assignment.You guys clearly gave this one a lot of thought. (Not doing that is the easist way to screw up a headshot assignment and never get called back to work for a publication again, by the way.)You can see (most) all of the entries here.I went...

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Ask Not for Whom the Bell Tolls

Wow.It's headshot heaven over at Flickr's Strobist Group. True to form, the procrastinators are coming through in spades at the 11th hour.Take a look at the group's effort thus far if you haven't, and see what a broad and hard-working bunch you guys are. I am heartened to see such an enthusiastic response and am looking forward to the follow-up discussion and the more challenging assignments.Remember to drop them in before midnight tonight. And don't forget the tags.There are quite a few headshots in there without the necessary tags. I hope these...

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Off The Rack: Bicycling, July 2006

Between assignments I tend to hang out at libraries, bookstores and any place else I might find a decent magazine rack. It's a constantly renewed source of visual stimulation. I live in the suburbs of Baltimore, MD, so I do not have nearly the magazine diversity someone who lives in, say, New York City might get. But there is still a good new crop...

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Lighting 101: Two of My Favorite (if a Little Unusual) Light Mods

Photo by Strobist reader James MadelinWhile we are on the subject of the quality of light, here are two of my favorite light modifiers for creating interesting light for portraits. I use them a lot—both individually and combined with each other.The first is a ring flash adapter. A ring flash is a donut-shaped flash, with your lens sticking into what...

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Still on Vacation, But Watching Those Headshots Roll In...

Seeing some real nice stuff popping up for the Boot Camp headshots. Hard as it is, I am doing my best to stay away from the computer while on vacation. I'll be back in full swing come Tuesday, June 27th - just in time to drop the hammer for the June 28th headshot deadline.That said, I got lots of "eye rolls" for reading the Raw Conversion book instead...

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Confessions of a Jpegger

Once in a blue moon, a product comes along that gives you so much bang for your buck that it becomes a no-brainer to snag it.Usually, it is an inexpensive little item that leverages something you already own to make it perform much better. Such is the case with budget, off-camera lighting. You have this $500/$1,000/$3,000 digital camera and you can...

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Bootcamp Headshot Deadline: One Week From Today

One week to go, my procrastinating friends...But as you can see by the sampling on this post, there are a few brave souls out there already posting their efforts way before deadline. Good for you guys. Still waiting to see if you guys (as a group) are actually going to take up the challenge in real numbers. Or perhaps I have attracted a passive group...

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Developing an Idea, Part 2: Compact Fluorescent Bulb

In Developing an Idea: Part One, we talked about the process of coming up with an idea for a photo and then letting it sit in the back of your mind while you solved the series of problems you would encounter while producing it.In this case the idea was to produce a photo to grab people's attention long enough to learn more about compact fluorescent...

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Flickr's "Strobist" Group Hits 500 Members

Having started less than a month and a half ago, there are now 500 of you in the Flickr Strobist Group, sharing your off-camera flash photos and ideas on a daily basis.This is way cool. If you haven't checked it out, you really should. It's free, easy and lots of f...

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Pro Tip: How to Quick-Change an SLR lens

Professional photographers see you amateurs out there, frequently shooting right along side of us while we are on assignment. You're right there at events like festivals, fireworks displays and high school football games. A few of you even seem to know how to BS your way onto the sidelines next to us a pro football games. (How do you do that, anyway?)We...

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Hey, Where'd the Montage Go?

I am very pleased to welcome the folks at Adorama to the leaderboard position. Please do give them a visit and have a look around their vast online store. They offer darn near anything photographic, and I am proud to be associated with them.If your company is interested in advertising on Strobist, please click here for more in...

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Mo' Bounce to da Ounce

That "Cabbage Patch Doll" of the lighting umbrella world, the Westcott 43" Double-Fold Soft Silver, is starting to show up as back in stock at various retailers. Whether that situation lasts is, of course, a different matter.I say we just mount a hostile takeover of the company (how big can they be?) and start running the production lines 24/7. Double-fold...

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Monsterpod With a Strobist Mod

I am apparently asleep at the wheel. The "Monsterpod" is making the rounds on the photo websites and I only saw it thanks to a heads-up from an Alert Reader.It basically a big, $30 glop of something red and (apparently) very high tech. I won't tell you what it reminded by 5-year-old boy of. But suffice to say I hope it is not made of, uh, anything...

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Developing an Idea, Part One

Even though you guys are off shooting your Boot Camp headshots, I am going to try to shoehorn something else into your brain as an exercise in learning to be a thinking photographer. After all, you have loads of free time on your hands, right?With the On Assignment post on Ant Upton's Paris soccer shot, I included a lot of color about the process he...

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Strobist Boot Camp: Rules, Guidelines and First Assignment

Editor's note: Lots of questions and answers already popping up in the comments section. Click "comments" at the bottom of the post, or pull up the permalink here and scroll down.Welcome to Strobist's first-ever Boot Camp! It starts now. This is where you make the transition from "talking the talk" to "walking the walk." The main point of SBC is to...

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Lighting Boot Camp Archive Page

Here is where you will find, in order of appearance, all of the Boot Camp-related posts. As they will pretty quickly move off of the front page, this archive page will be linked near the top of the sidebar. If you have any Boot Camp-related comments, please post them in the Flickr thread related to the particular assignment. Links to the thread are...

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On Assignment: Shoot Your Kid

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Family members, and especially kids, offer a fantastic opportunity to practice your lighting techniques. Kids work cheap. They love the hyper-attention of a "professional photo shoot." And the photos you get from these sessions will mean more to you than anything else you could be shooting as you improve...

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Don't Fry Your Camera

You get a few thousand photogs hanging out in the same place, and occasionally someone is gonna come up with a cool tidbit.Such is the case here. I'd like to give credit for this one, but it was posted by "Anonymous," deep in the site's comments section. (Folks, please leave a name and fill in the website field, so we can see who ya are, K?)Anyway,...

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General Theory: Strive for Layers of Interest

I could stare at the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson for hours on end. I love them. The more you look at them, the more interesting they get.You might be wondering what the work of a genius like Cartier-Bresson has to do with lighting. After all, he was the consummate hunter, armed with black-and-white film, a Leica and available light.Oh, and...

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Double-Fold Umbrella Blues

The super-handy, 43" Westcott double-fold umbrellas appear to be missing in action at Adorama. If anyone knows where we can get them, please leave a link in the comment section and I will update the umbrella links throughout the site. I sure hope they are not gone for good. I will ping Adorama to see what's up.UPDATE: Well, from asking around (and from the very helpful comments) it appears as though the site could have possibly caused a, uh, wee bit of a run on a few products which normally do not move in great numbers. For those of you who do...

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On Assignment: Soccer Preview Shot

First of all, I would like to note how unfair it is that some people get to have the Eiffel Tower as a backdrop in their dusk shots and I have to settle for nondescript Lake Elkhorn in sleepy little Columbia, MD.That said, many of you saw this when it was posted in the Flickr Strobist group pool by London-based photographer Ant Upton. Ant was kind...

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