It's in Our Teams' Hands Now

(Photo by Phillip Moore.)As the semifinal games begin, a few things to mention:First, the basketball photos are really starting to come in. If yours does not show up in the above search (which will happen for many new members) please leave a URL that points to your photo's Flickr page in the comments section for this post. We do not want to miss you.Second,...

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Elinchrom Skyport Review

If you are a Pocket Wizard/Skyport fence-sitter, BlewBMX.com has posted a review that should help you choose. Or, maybe plunge you even further into indecision.From what I see, the Skyports will not knock off the PW's, but seem to be a very good gap filler between the Gold Standard PW's and the Ghetto Infinity remotes.(Thanks to BlewBMX for the timely...

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Sportsshooters, Talkin' Smack:

UPDATE: In all seriousness, I am very much looking forward to seeing what everyone - from both sites - comes up with. Smack aside, the idea is to take a mundane, simple subject and stretch yourself with it.__________________________The SS guys seem to be oozing confidence today about our little FinalFour challenge.A small sampling of the comments:Knocking the out-of-towners: "I think we my have already won. the Strobist group doesn't seem to know what a basketball is..."Just like Ohio State wrote off UF before the football championship: "One thing...

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Great Find: Umbrella Swivel/PC Adapter

Lessee....All metal: Check.Low profile: Check. Keeps the flash on axis with the umbrella: Check. Built-in PC adapter: Check.Schweet.These things are popping up on eBay, but I sure would like to see this guy - whoever he turns out to be - make a real production run so we could all get one. Or two... Hey, eBay guy, if you are reading this please call...

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Light Stand in a Pinch: Your Shoe

This is exactly why I like doing these little exercises. You always learn something new. Today's smack-my-forehead moment is courtesy of Daniel Berman, who used his sneaker as a makeshift light stand. If you need a quick way to mount a kicker or background flash, and you wear shoes, you're good to go.Two things to consider: You might want to just shove...

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Video: 2-D Art Copy Photography

First of all, is that an awesome quilt or what?Ditto the copy shot. Getting something like this to translate to a digital file is no small feat. It takes even lighting and attention to detail that borders on obsessive-compulsive behavior.Ever wonder what goes into a large-scale, high-quality copy shot? Strobist reader Ben Peoples has posted a time-lapse...

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FinalFour Day 2: Sportsshooter Responds

Even though we are but a tiny blip on the radar for the wildly popular Sportsshooter.com, some of them have noticed our little challenge. Some are mildly amused. Others see it as the fun, skillset-stretching challenge it was intended to be. Still others, I suspect, are busy wondering just how far away you have to get from a basketball to shoot a close-up...

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The name's Jarvis. Chase Jarvis

It's almost right out of Q's workshop in a James Bond flick, but this one is real. And better yet, all of the stuff is off-the-shelf.What is it? It's advertising shooter Chase Jarvis' kickin' laptop "location shoot" case, and it has everything but missile launchers. Chase, you are one high-energy dude. I am feeling pretty slothful by comparison. Time to caffeine up with another Diet Mourtain D...

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Talkin' Smack and Expectin' Some Back

The basketball pix are already starting to come in, and some are already looking pretty good. Like the one at left by Dave Hoffmann, with a setup photo here.I am not going to put mine up until I post the group results on Monday afternoon, (note the extra two days) before that night's NCAA championship game. But I will say that I already shot one I...

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To All Readers:

Please disregard this accidental post in the Flickr Strobist discussion threads.(I love this grou...

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Adobe Photoshop CS3 Pricing: If You Have to Ask...

Amazon has apparently leaked the pricing scheme for the Adobe CS3 family of ne-plus-ultra graphics programs.I cannot even bring myself to type the numbers on a site dedicated to cheapskate low financial impact lighting. But Gizmodo has the gory detai...

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Group Assignment: Shoot Some Basketball

As the defending NCAA basketball champion (*cough* and football champion *cough*) University of Florida Gators play their way into their rightful spot in the Final Four this weekend, I am offering the following group project.If you have a basketball - and please, do not go out and buy a basketball for this - I challenge you to see what you can do with it as a subject using just one or two small flashes.Here's the deal. Find a clean background, like a wall in your house. Set the ball on a table and shoot it. Nothing else, just the ball. What we...

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Right Back Atcha

Nice, huh?Click on the pic to see some of the hot shots submitted by members of the Strobist Flickr group in the last few days. Amazingly, only about two percent of the people who read the site are members of the Flickr group. To you other ninety-eight percent: Register and show us your stu...

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Why Pocket Wizards are Worth the Money

Sure, they are rock solid on the flash-synching thing. But being able to do remotes is another bennie that gives you photos that are impossible to get otherwise.SportShooter Academy has a set of Quicktime videos by Getty's Donald Miralle on some great stuff you (well, he) can do with remote cameras and PW...

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Flashback: When are You Gonna Learn?

One of my earlier posts (from May 06) has again been making the rounds on the internet, so I thought I would exhume it for the benefit of the new folks. If it makes you think a little bit, I'd love to hear about it in that post's comments secti...

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Cool Little Sports/Lighting Site

Cincinnati-based sports photographer Thomas E. Witte has put together a website that goes far beyond the typical portfolio-and-phone-number stuff.He has a nice tips page with all kinds of ideas. This includes sports lighting, both with the high-powered stuff and with speedligh...

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Flashy Videographers, Take Note

Calling all YouTube hounds out there - if you are doing videos of any of your off-camera lighting shoots or DIY flash stuff, please stick a YouTube URL in the comments section of this post. If it rocks, we all wanna see it. Photographers, obviously, are very visual people. And monkey-see-monkey-do is the way we learn the fastest.On a related note,...

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And He Doesn't Have to Mow the Yard Any More, Either.

Patrick "I Need a Bigger Trophy Case" Smith, who has lately been kicking butt in some of the college PJ awards, has apparently destroyed a perfectly good lawn mower in the quest for a good remote camera and/or low-angle flash mount.Looks pretty cool, but I don't wanna be around when the grass starts growing in April...

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London Updates Now On Flickr Threads

From here forward, the London seminar updates will be on the Flickr threads, here. Note the "Latest Info" link near the top of the sidebar, at right. If you are attending in London, you should periodically check in for any new info (or to ask any questions.)Thanks to the other 999,936 of you who were so patient through these last few days...

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My Mom Would Be So Impressed

Well, she would if she knew about YouTube:Luv the music, too. (Thanks, Johan!)I swear, of all of the things I have written about, I never knew the DIY Macro Box would be the thing to go viral.FWIW, I am wall-to-wall for The Sun again today. So it looks like it'll be another laaaate night processing the remaining London/Sunday folks. If you are high up on the wait list, it looks like there may be a couple of slots opening up.Must be your good karma.I will have all of the Mountain Of Email answered before bedtime, too. Hang on, Sloo...

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London Roster Firms Up

First, for the non-London folks, thanks much for your patience as I plowed through the surprisingly time-consuming administrative work surrounding booking the London attendees. We will be back to lighting, soon. I promise.Here's where we are on London:Saturday is sold out, and registration URL's have been sent to the earliest people on the Sunday wait...

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Reader Photos Link Now on Sidebar

First off, check out this portrait, by Strobist reader Jure Verc. His lighting gear? A slide projector on the right and a Nikon SB-80dx in a shoebox-softbox. Awesome.I threw it up as an excuse to tell you that I am now using a link on the sidebar to point to my Faves Page on Flickr, which I am basically turning into a rotating reader gallery.Please...

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London Registration Update

UPDATE: The London seminars are sold out, and the waiting list is, well, very lengthy. No plans on future dates yet, but I will be back to London again at some point in the future.If you have signed up on the waiting list, I have your contact info. The waiting list is pretty long - far longer than will likely be able to be accomodated. But you never know. Maybe 20 or 30 attendees will come down with strep throat or something.I will go to the list, in order of signup, should any cancellations be made. I will post the first portion of the list when...

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London Seminar Registration

The classes are to be held on Saturday, May 12th and Sunday, May 13th in Room 3-D at the University of London Union, which is on Malet Street in the Bloomsbury section of London. (See map.) As the map shows, the location is an easy walk from the Russell Square tube station. The Sunday seminar will be a repeat of Saturday's session, to accommodate those...

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You Had Me at 'Cardboard'

I am a sucker for lighting solutions that involve aluminum foil, cardboard or trashbags. As this baby uses all three, you know it's getting posted.From Lactose, and Other Unavoidable Evils, (luv that name) the Hobo DIY Softbox. (Luv that name, to...

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Stretching the Canvas

From the outside you might not notice it. But in the newspaper world things are moving toward multimedia at a lightning pace.Photographers at my paper, The Baltimore Sun, are routinely taking expanded edits from shoots and creating A/V packages for the web from their daily assignments. We are not talking Big Special Projects, either. This is day-to-day...

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London Lighting Seminar Registration Opens Weds., March 21st

Just a heads-up for anyone who does not want to miss registration for the May 12th or May 13th London lighting seminar. Registration will open up for either day on this Wednesday morning, London time. Sunday is a repeat of Saturday, so please only register for one session. Each class is limited to 32 participants and a staff assistant. (People already...

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Apply for the Eddie Adams Workshop

Each fall, one hundred promising young photographers from around the world are invited to come to a farm in upstate New York, where they are treated to four days of intense training and shooting. The teachers and staff are some of the best photographers and picture editors in the world. Throughout the four days, the attendees will get almost zero sleep....

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On Assignment: Flavored Vodkas

They run a regular drinks column at The Sun, which means that I get plenty of chances to shoot ... beer. Just in the last few months, I have shot illustrations for Octoberfest, wheat beers, beer glasses, etc.So I was relieved to hear that we would be doing vodka shots this time. And shooting pictures, too! (Ba-dump, ping...) No, no. We didn't drink...

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You Rock.

You wanna know why I can't do "Pictures of the Week" any more?Okay, I'll tell you.It's because as a group you have just blown past my ability to edit down a week's worth of your photos to two or three. Let alone one.You guys are totally kickin'. Every week, brand new people come in and get sucked into this lighting vortex thing and start throwing up...

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Harrington's RI Party Cam

John Harrington has posted an article about the monster photo booth setup he had in his villa hotel suite this past weekend.A few thousand watt-seconds of light, a few hundred bottles of beer, a few dozen well-lubricated photographers and one self-portrait cable release. (GodPleaseLetHimHaveEditedOutTheWorstStuff.):: Harrington's Complete Setup :::: The Results...

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Three Well-Spent Minutes

Looking for a little lot of creative inspiration in three short minutes? I first saw this after it was posted by my buds over at Photojojo.com, and have since showed it to everyone in the photo department at The Sun.It is the flash-based, three-minute portfolio of photos shot by George Lange. (Link is to Lange's website. Direct link to flash portfolio is at the bottom of this post.) Mind you, this is just what he did in 2006. The guy blows through a year's worth of famous people, nobodies and family with equally wonderful skill and vision.As a...

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Reverse Engineering: Flavored Vodkas

Next up in the On Assignment queue is a shot I did last month for The Sun on flavored vodkas.I did lots of setup and process shots, and am working on a long-form piece for later this week. But I thought this might be another good opportunity to throw a photo out for reverse engineering before the article goes up.The story was on the rise in popularity...

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Temptation Getting the Better of Me

It's almost midnite, and I'm the only one awake in the house. Ever notice how gear lust seems to hit late at night? I swear, it's like a seven-year itch for me. Not that I would ever, ever experience the real thing. (Hi, honey!)Anyone here own a Canon G7? (For the unfamiliar, here is DPReview's take.)I played with one up in Rhode Island, right in full...

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Seminar Attendees Shot in Rhode Island

Things are wrapping up here at the Northern Short Course in Rhode Island. Between teaching the lighting seminars, soaking up the other speakers and the two-night event that was Suite 632, I am ready to go back to work to get some rest. But first, I thought I'd throw up a photo from each day's seminar with a quick recap of the way we did it.Leading...

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OT: I Want One of These

Depending on how long you have been shooting as a pro, you may or may not remember how the high-end 35mm film cameras used to have removable prisms. This feature was so helpful for low-angle shots (as in that wideangle-on-the-ground view) and for Hail Mary shots in crowds in media scrums. Sadly, while many amateur digital cameras have this feature,...

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More on the Elinchrom Skyport Remotes

Well heck. It's apparently Gizmodo Day here at Strobist.I am sitting on the floor in a conference room in Rhode Island listening to David Leeson preach the Gospel of Video and New Media for still photojournalists.But ADD'er that I am, I am also cruising the web and just came across Gizmodo's first-hand post on the new Elinchrom Skyports. Definitely...

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The New Canon Uzi

UPDATE: I just got my grubby little hands on one of these. Wow.Impressions: Light, tight, super fast. HUGE screen on the back. I told the guy they should have a media viewer built in, so you could watch videos on the camera between assignments. Canon shooters will be popping woodies over this thing for a year. But I'll never switch. From Gizmodo, a video clip of Canon's new photo-spraying machine, the EOS-1D Mark III. I am pretty sure my flash recharge rate could not match this.The best part: Chuck Westfall's evil laugh at the end...

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Rhode Island Hijinks and DG28

We're still up in Rhode Island at the Northern Short Course until the end of the weekend. Photo Biz Guru John Harrington, whose next photo book should be entitled, "How the Other Half Lives," turned his hotel room into the equivalent of the vendor's floor at PMA last night to host a little get-together for about a gazillion of his closest friends.He had a full studio set up (Bogen-Autopoled lights, background paper and all) where people of varying degrees of sobriety created self-inflicted photos all night long. Being Harrington, there was of course...

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Detailed "How-To" for eBay Remotes Mod

Over at Instructables, Strobist reader David W. Smith posted a detailed run-through showing how to mod on the cheapie eBay remotes with a much better antenna. I know we have mentioned this before, but this is by far the most detailed tutorial yet.Total cost: Some solder and a small piece of wire.Illegal? Possibly.Effective? Given that it might be illegal, I am not gonna comment on the specifics of David's insanely increased range. Because that would be irresponsible.Those of you who can live with occasionally breaking the law for 1/250th of a second...

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How to Get Dave Hill's Gritty Look

I love the serendipity of this blog thing. As we said in the previous post about photographer Dave Hill, he is clearly using some post production to get from his wraparound light to his overall signature look.A reader stuck a link in the comments section to a quick little Photoshop tutorial that shows how Hill might have gotten that high-pass, gritty feel after the fact. The technique is surprisingly simple.Always one for exhaustive research, I repeatedly studied the tutorial's before-and-after photos of Angelina Jolie very closely before posting...

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Dave Hill Rocks.

Nashville-based photographer Dave Hill kicks serious boottocks in my book. Not just because of his cool lighting. But because he has a website full of behind-the-scenes photos and videos of his shoots. I just love looking at this kind of stuff, whether I like the final effect or not.There's definitely a lot of post-production going on here. But - get this - dude is using White Lighting Zaps (pre Alien Bees) and the new AB ringlight to do these high-profile shoots. I wonder if his clients know his bill for each shoot is probably twice as much as...

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Introducing Photoshelter

Please join me in welcoming Photoshelter as a new sponsor to Strobist.Photoshelter is the backstop for many of the world's top photographers. They offer off-site archiving via the web, integrated e-commerce, automated sales transactions and much more. In short, they free you up to be a photographer. I hope you'll take a moment and check them o...

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Pimp My Light

Read enough psychology, and you will eventually come across the following theory: On an instinctual level, we subconsciously classify each person we come into contact with into one of four categories. We either want to kick their butt, flee from them, nurture them or, uh, grab a cheap hotel room with them.It is in that frame of mind that I have come...

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Out: POTW. In: PML.

We're taking a little hiatus for Picture of The Week. In lieu of that, I wanted give a shout-out to one thing, and tease another.First, the "Strobist Challenge," (which is an extension of last summer's Lighting Boot Camp) has just completed its fourth assignment. This is a reader-run group project in which everyone shoots around a theme. If you are...

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Bridging the Gap Between Pocket Wizard and the eBay Remotes

Just hitting the street: The Elinchrom Skyport, a new mid-price flash remote that will provide a much-needed option for photographers not named Bill Gates (and hopefully get Pocket Wizard to lower their prices a tad.)At least one Strobist reader has gotten his grubby little hands on a set, and is talking about it in the Flickr Strobist threads. If...

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Neat Ad Campaign Built Around Photo Shoot Videos

The WSJ has a pretty cool ad campaign that uses "behind the scenes" videos of the photo shoots that created the stills for the campaign. What surprised me was just how simple the light was for such an expensive series of photos. The shooter is UK-based "Platon," and light could not be simpler. It could be pretty much duplicated with a white wall and...

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Q&A, Speedlighting a Gym

You got questions, we got answers. This post will tackle many of the questions people had after the Speedlighting a Gym post from a few days ago. If you are coming in late, you should read it first.One thing before I start. I will not be answering any questions that are basic Lighting 101 fodder. I am amazed that, given the large and easily accessible...

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