Scott Hargis Interview Tonight: 8 p.m. PT

UPDATE: The interview, very much worth reading, is archived here.Long-time Strobist reader and architectural photographer Scott Hargis, whom we have mentioned before, will be doing a live chat-style interview on Photo Camel tonight, at 8:00 p.m. Pacific Time in the US (which is GMT -8).Scott specializes in efficiently shooting architectural interiors...

Read More

Reader Spotlight: Paul Morton

To pull off this beautiful close-up shot of a guitar, reader Paul Morton, of Phoenix, AZ, had to solve several problems: The guitar was black, the chrome sees everything, and table had to separate from the body of the instrument.Paul used a total of five speedlights, and a healthy dose of ingenuity. Take a moment to reverse engineer it before making...

Read More

More Bert, On Location

It's my birthday today. So I am taking the day off and handing the keys over to "Baritone Bert" Stephani, who is back with another one of his smooth-voiced, small-flash lighting videos from Confessions of a Photographer.For the newbs, note how quickly and easily Bert constantly adjusts his lighting to vary the effect. He just grabs them and goes, whether he is backing the light up to get more even lighting over a larger area or hitting his model with 12:00-high umbrella for an Iggy Pop look. Remember, the more you do this stuff the easier and more...

Read More

Education Roundup

The upcoming Feb 16th and 17th Orlando, Florida lighting seminars are sold out. But there is lots more education stuff on the menu, including more upcoming seminars, after the jump.___________________Education Notes• I am in the process of venue selection for the Mar. 15-16 seminars in Phoenix, AZ. More details coming soon.• Scott Kelby's new tome, The Digital Photography Book, Vol. 2, is out, following the wildly successful Vol. 1. I helped edit the chapter on flash, which, like the rest of the book is vintage, nuts-and-bolts Kelby. It is reviewed...

Read More

On Assignment: Steve at Google

Earlier this month, I was lucky enough to spend several days on the Google campus. For a guy like me, that borders on being a religious experience.I have never been more intimidated than I was while setting up to spend all day teaching to a room full of fifty Google employees. On the one hand, I was absolutely certain that I was the dumbest guy in...

Read More

The Drinks are On Them

This whole free info fountain thing works because a few very cool businesses make it work. Thanks much to Midwest Photo, PhotoShelter, Zenfolio, and ModMaster Flash, David Honl.If you've got what it takes to flaunt your biz in front of 200,000 Strobist readers, I actually have an opening starting this month: 200p x 100p below the fold, at just $1.50 CPM. Click here for more info.-...

Read More

Jill Greenberg, Monkeys and Sharks

(UPDATE: Adds more links, cover shoot video.)Who did I wake up to find under my bowl of Frosted Flakes this morning but the Incredible Being of Lightness herself. Does this mean she has jumped the shark?Maybe, maybe not. More inside.__________________Note to this site's perfectly sensible foreign readers: "Jumped the Shark" is slang for when anything...

Read More

More Fun in Seattle: Full Write-up

All things being equal, I would rather shoot someone than be shot by them. But that wasn't gonna fly last Sunday when I popped in on the Seattle Flickr group meetup while on a trip to see Chase Jarvis. But getting shot at is a small price to pay for getting to see one of these legendary Seattle Strobist meetups first-hand. Darien Chin, the guy who...

Read More

Seattle Strikes Again: Hangar Meetup Video

The Seattle crew has posted their video from the latest weekend meetup, raising the bar yet again on their peer-to-peer lighting meetups. I was able to pop in on this one -- and if I would have known they were this fun, I would have started coming long ago.Just the usual: Fifty photographers, a rented airplane hangar, a ridiculous amount of lighting gear, nine models, a table full of way too realistic-looking weaponry and an "after party" at an insanely cool local studio. There's a full write-up, including photos a vid by Chase's guys, coming shortly....

Read More

Shorty 2.0: LP632 Swivels Get Updated

UPDATE -- 3/27/08 -- These things are proving very popular, and are now on backorder. They are subbing out a different swivel, which also has the set screw. See here for more info and a pic.___________The $16.99 LumoPro LP632 "shorty" umbrella swivel mounts have been updated. They are now sporting better build quality (bolts for the head instead of...

Read More

I Go Away For a Week, and This is What You Do?

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.In addition to de-jet-lagging and climbing Mount Unanswered Email after a week-long trip to the West Coast, I was also behind on looking through the Strobist Flickr pool to fave pics for the gallery. In one week, one hundred and five pages of new photos had been added. That's over three thousand new pictures. Suffice to say there was some nice stuff in there. I am working up a post from the awesome Seattle meetup on Sunday night. (I crashed it for the free food.) Also, there will be some On Assignments from the...

Read More

Using Speedlights with Landscapes

You might not think a small flash -- or even a flashlight -- could make such a big difference in a landscape photo. But the trick is waiting for the ambient to come to you, and being selective about what you light. More pix, and how they were made, after the jump.__________________________In Elphotoman's light-painted photo of a campsite (above) he...

Read More

Pocket Wizard Multimax: Now USB Enabled

I have been locked away teaching all day, but wanted to note the announcement of a new version of the Pocket Wizard Multimax. RobGalbraith.com has a comprehensive write-up on it. Which is great, because I need me some serious shut-eye.(Thanks, Rob!)-...

Read More

The Weather is Here, Wish You Were Beautiful

Comment moderation is a bit slow and unanswered emails are piling up. But the important thing is I am having a great time in California. Met lots of neat folks at the Googleplex yesterday, ate some gourmet food (lobster tacos, anyone?) drank strawberry mojito smoothies and occasionally talked about lighting for a few minutes.As a user, I have always...

Read More

Lighting 102: 4.3 -- Assignment: Cross, Balance and Sculpt

Now that we have played around with restricted light in a blunt-instrument sort of way, it's time to learn to finesse it to go for something a little more subtle. Just because that beam of light is tight, does not mean it has to be garish. By combining a couple of different lighting controls, you can tweak restricted light to do just about whatever...

Read More

Strobist Perk: Special PhotoShelter Pricing

Grover over at PhotoShelter has put together a light box with some cool work by Strobist readers who also happen to be PhotoShelter members. And he is offering a special deal for the site's readers until the end of January. There are only 50 slots, and this is just for us. So don't go telling people over at Photo.net, OK?-...

Read More

David Honl Lighting Video: Belly Dancer

American photojournalist David Honl, who is based in Istanbul, has posted a video of a belly dancer shoot. In it, he uses his snoots, gobos and gels to create zones of light in a very small room. I like his idea of gobo'ing a flash on the bottom to keep the floor from being too hot in the foreground. Always neat to see other peoples' workflow.David manufactures light modifiers and sells them via his website, with grid spots for speedlights coming soon. More info at his site.-...

Read More

Playing With a New Light: Two Approaches

Thousands of miles apart (and brought together by the magic of Photoshop) readers Tanya Shields and David X. Tejada both made ring flash adapters recently. Then they proceeded to test them out on a nearly identical subject. I found the differences in the way they tested their new lights to be very interesting. More after the jump.________________________Canadian...

Read More

Registration Opens for February Orlando Seminars

NOTE: The Orlando seminars for Saturday, Feb. 16th and Sunday, Feb. 17th, are sold out. If you are attending, continue reading for full info. __________________________Important Note:Seminar Info and Registration DetailsThe class is to be held at the Embassy Suites Orlando - International Drive South. The address is 8978 International Drive, Orlando, FL. You can find a Google map here. With these seminars, my goal is threefold: To refine your approach to creating light, to fill you with as many ideas as possible in a day's time and to have fun...

Read More

Radiopopper Update: Lookin' Pretty Darn Real

Looks like Santa might be coming a little late this Christmas, but coming nonetheless. Hey, about 87% of you thought this whole thing was vaporware anyway. So this is good news, right?Lots of new info up on the fully operational Radiopopper Blog. That's right, young Skywalker. The Radiopopper blog is now fully operational...To recap: Radiopopper claims...

Read More

Now Playing: Continuous Lighting

It's been a bit of a photo-oriented TV season this year, what with the VH-1 reality show The Shot, in which photographers are booted off the show one-by-one as they try to be even more pretentious than the others while trying to score their their Big Break.But rather than give that any ink, there's another show premiering this weekend that may actually...

Read More

Orlando (2/16-2/17) Opens Sunday, Phoenix Coming in March

If you are local to Central Florida, or Phoenix, AZ, hit the jump for upcoming seminar details (including the registration announcement for Orlando for this Sunday). Otherwise, nothing to see here. Move it along, please... Orlando February Seminar Registration Opens Sunday, 1/13/08Registration for the previously announced Orlando seminar, set for the weekend of Feb. 16th and 17th, 2008, will open Sunday, Jan. 13th, at 11:00 a.m. ET. As for format, it will be much like the northern California seminars which are coming up next weekend. Only much...

Read More

Lighting 102: 4.2 -- Film Noir Discussion

It was only 8:00 in the evening, but it was already dark outside. Real dark. As in too-underexposed-to-be-saved-in-Photoshop dark -- even if you were shooting raw.But I was well-lit, thanks to the off-camera flask in my hip pocket. Not that the victim I was presently staring at cared. She had apparently been hit from two different directions with a...

Read More

Joe McNally: New Book, YouTube Channel

The video above was done as an introduction Joe McNally's upcoming book, "The Moment it Clicks," and originally appeared on Nikon's website. But Monday it also popped up on YouTube -- on a new Joe McNally channel. We have seen other pros (i.e., David X. Tejada and Chase Jarvis) creating an online presence and allowing people to plug into their brains....

Read More

ISO PhotoSheltering Strobist Readers

Grover Sanschagrin, the animated guy without the hat (or the hair) in the ad up top at right (not to be confused with the evil genius at left) would like to talk to some of Strobist's readers who also use PhotoShelter. He's got some cool ideas to bounce off of you. Nothing sinister, mind you. Grover can be reached at: grover [at] photoshelter [dot]...

Read More

Control Your World With Ultra-High Sync

UPDATE: The main body of this post now has an expanded list of high-sync cameras and a link to a .pdf tutorial on both Nikon and Canon proprietary high-speed pulsing flash features. -DH___________Anyone can nuke their environment late in the evening, when just a little twilight is left in the dusk sky. In fact, the usual problem is failing to open...

Read More

Hard Work You Do, Then A Master Will You Be

Remember that "Hasselblad Masters, outtakes-and-all" video done by our favorite A-lister, Chase Jarvis, a few months back? Well, this is what the shoots were for: Check out the December "Hasselblad Masters" page to see the results. Interesting note: Chase turned pro only 12 years ago. He's also self-taught. Any of you folks who think you have what...

Read More

You Guys Rock: Thanks So Much.

I woke up Friday morning to find in my email box a 10-minute long reader-created "Strobist commercial," organized and posted to YouTube and Viddler by reader Bill Millios. As embarrassing as it is for me to watch (my wife had a field day) it is also very cool, funny, clearly heartfelt and Web 2.0 in its purpose.Getting past the weirdness of all those props being pointed upstream for a moment, the community that has been developed around this site is far, far better than the site itself. Seriously, thanks much, guys. I would say that I am at a loss...

Read More

Our Photos, Ourselves

Fair Warning: It's been a long time since one of those non-lighting-centered photo rants. And to be fair, it is a Friday (TGIF).___________________________About 25 years ago, upon admiring a photo shot by photojournalist Russell Price, a reporter said to him, "That's a great shot."To which Price responded, "Yes, it is."If the name Russell Price doesn't...

Read More