The Last Speedlinks of 2008, Evar

Before you hit the party circuit for New Year's Eve, a batch of speedlinks that you will never regret reading the next morning. Drive safe, get the hangover remedies ready before you actually need them, and we'll see you in 2009...
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Speedinks: 12/31/2008

• Do you brave the winter weather for your art when you are out to get photos of wildlife in snow? Do you go even further and drag lights out to amp the quality a little? Yeah, well, when you get back to the house Moose Peterson would appreciate it if you could not track all that snow in.

And maybe bring him a cup of hot chocolate, too. He'll be in the cushy leather chair in his office.

• Dustin Snipes has a coupla really nice On-Assignment-style posts, one on a hoops portrait and the other a shot of a boxer.

Thanks for the diagrams and setup shots, Dustin!

• My friend John Makely, who knew his way around a camera when we shot together at The Baltimore Sun, now lives in the air conditioning in a soft chair in front of a big-ass monitor and edits a gazillion photos a day for MSNBC. If you want one last look at the visual side of 2008, check out the EOY package he and his colleagues put together.

• Have you ever shot a football game that Sports Illustrated also was covering and wondered exactly what their guy is shooting while you are busy praying for that one nice shot? After watching SI shooter Dave Bergman's 1,304-photo montage of his shoot from the SEC championship game, I am gonna start calling him Hoover. Dude does not miss much.

Also cool to watch that game as a Gator fan, as it propelled Florida into the national championship game against Oklahoma on January 8th. (Go Gators, beat OU.)

• And last but not least: While you are out playing with your new toys this week, Strobist reader Stephen Zeller recently was doing the same thing. Only his new toy is the weapons system on the U.S. Navy's newest Arleigh-Burke class Destroyer, the USS Sterrett, DDG-104. Stephen is a Fire Controlman, and shares a little video and some stills put together from the ship's recent Combat Systems Trials.

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As is Tradition for the Last Week of December

Twenty years ago, Tenney Mason (my first DOP) passed along the wisdom of not taking days off between Christmas and New Year's. No real work gets done, he noted. And you can just put your feet up on your desk and plan out your next year.

That kind of thinking is why he was management and I was a grunt. And I have taken that advice to heart ever since. Even though the week sometimes turned out to be not so quiet.

But this year brings the luxury of stepping back a little and looking at 2008 while planning for 2009. As for the 2009 plans, I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill you. Suffice to say that there are some new things in store that I am pretty excited about.

But the passing year always merits a last look. So I went back through the year's 262 posts to pick out a baker's dozen faves, and pulled up my favorite photos of yours as well.



Favorite Posts from 2008

These include some OA's, a rant and some very cool stuff that the cat dragged in from other part of the web. I have set them to pop up in a new window, so you can just click them closed and pop up another if you want to browse.

• In January, Russell Price, on how not to take our pictures so personally.

• From the same month (and without warning) this testimonial video, created as a surprise by the site's readers.

• At Google they are all about speed. But we like to work fast, too, so we did a lit portrait of engineer Steve in under two minutes from scratch.

• In February, Robert Rodriguez on how to MacGuyver together a feature film out of duct tape, clothes hanger wire and some water pistols.

• From April, how to get insane power out of a shoe-mount flash.

• From the same month, a tutorial on shooting a controlled-daylight, lit portrait in midafternoon.

• For Father's Day, an interview with photographer Jason Lee and a look at his wonderful photos of his daughters.

• In July, testing just how insanely well Pocketwizards work in the field.

• In August, a little sync speed cheating at sunset for a twilight portrait.

• In September, Nick Turpin on a new approach to using speedlights for outdoor portraits.

• In October, a shorthand method for describing (and thinking about) lighting.

• From November, why didn't I figure this out 20 years ago: Run-and-gun, triangle light, totally hand-held, with no stands.

• From this month, plying Rembrandt's tongue with a little alcohol.

Readers Shoot Back: EOY Edition

You guys had a kickass year, as this look at the Strobist Flickr Group faves gallery will attest. Click on any pic to get a link to the Flickr page, which will (okay, should) contain lighting info.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

If this embedded flash presentation is not working for you (it is very slick, but can be a little hinky for some) then click here for a more conventional version in a new window.

Thanks to everyone for another year of unpasteurized peer-to-peer learning. And best wishes for a happy, healthy and creatively lit New Year, too.

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A Visit from The Man

For as long as my kids can remember (and longer than that, in my case) Santa has been paying a visit to our house every Christmas Eve. The evidence is as plain as the nose on your face -- the living room is littered with presents in his wake.

But in 2006, that circumstantial evidence was not good enough for Ben, my (then) six-year-old chief investgator. He wanted hard proof. So he devised a scheme to get a photo of Santa Clause...

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The Plan

Santa would not last five minutes on CSI. He's too sloppy. The man has been a veritable evidence factory in our house. We almost always can find a tiny tuft of red coat fuzz on the fireplace screen. And one year he trampled ashes all over the kitchen and living room. Which is not the way to earn yourself a slot on the Missus' top ten list. Or maybe it is, but not exactly the top ten list you would want to be on.

Ben (and his sister Emily) are pretty good at ferreting out the clues each year. My eyes are too old and tired to pick them up, but they see them right away. After viewing all of the tangential evidence, a couple of years ago Ben came up with what I thought was a pretty ingenious forensics solution: Leave my wife's digital point-and-shoot out next to the cookies (Santa always finds those) with a note asking him to do a self portrait. Hey, it never hurts to ask, right?

I would not have had the nerve, myself. But Ben is a risk taker. Last year he pared the Christmas list down to just one item in hopes of concentrating his chances. It worked.

This year, he is asking Santa for a laptop. How do you tell an 8-year-old he must be smoking crack if he thinks that is gonna happen? I tried, but it is still on the list. At least there are backup ideas this time. (A laptop? Criminy...)

So Ben leaves the camera out on Christmas Eve in 2006, and I'll be danged if the Santa didn't come through with a photo -- a single, blurry snapshot. Not of his face mind you, but of his left hand grabbing one of my wife's chocolate chip cookies. The camera's EXIF info puts the time of the cookie theft at 1:14 a.m. on Christmas morning.


It ain't pretty, but it appears for all intents and purposes to be a shot of The Man himself. Which is far better than I ever pulled off as a kid. If we do it again, I am gonna fill up the dining room with SB-800's and PW's to the point of f/16 everywhere. Not gonna screw this opportunity up a second time, even if it scares the old man and all of the reindeer off before they get a chance to drop off the loot.


EDITOR'S NOTE: I have just been informed by Ben in no uncertain terms that there will be no reindeer-scaring SB-800's going off in our living room this Christmas Eve. There might be a laptop at stake. (Yeah, and Detroit might be in the Super Bowl this year, too...)


Okay, so no follow-up Santa photo in 2008. But Christmas came a little early for me this year (with a little help from yours truly) so I had nothing to lose.


Merry Christmas to Me

After agonizing over which "big light" brand to go with, I finally have made the decision to stick with my old White Lightnings for the time being and build up a set of AB monoblocs and light mods that can handle whatever I might throw at them. I am still figuring out the specifics, so more on that later.

Right now, I am patching a couple of obvious lighting holes in my big lights for the end of year tax-spending season. I will be expanding the set more fully soon enough, though. I would love to have the D3x I played with at last week's NPS clean and check. (Thanks, Mark!) But there are about 8,000 reasons I can't right now.

For my EOY purchase I bought an ABR800 ring light, which means I officially have more ring lights than anyone should be allowed. That said, I will soon be comparing the Ray Flash, Orbis and ABR800 (in its multiple differently modified iterations) and posting the results.

But the more immediate need was for a large, controllable light source. So I also picked up a foldable large Octabox. Or, as I call it, my "Annie Light." I got the grid for it, too -- what the heck.

For the money ($169) it is a no-brainer, fantastic deal. The light is gorgeous, and it is built like a tank. Apparently, this is the second design version. Whatever they had wrong with the first one, I am pleased as punch with the current version.


I got it a little early to make a Christmas photo of Ben and Em. (For the grandparents, natch, and not for any reasons of impatience whatsoever.)

Earlier this week we had an overcast day, which made it easy to get a nebulous, background-friendly aperture for a portrait of the curtain climbers. I took the camera to 1/250th and dropped the ISO to get the most wide-open aperture possible. It worked -- at ISO 100, I could underexpose the trees in the background and get a nice, out-of-focus look with my 70-200 wide open at f/2.8.


I was working fast (the kids were freezing their butts off) so I did not think to grab a setup shot. But here is a shot where the flash had not recycled, so it is easy to see the ambient component of the photo. The ambient light level was moving around, and I think this one was at ~f/4, but you still get the idea. Always be aware of that ambient component -- it sets the mood of the photo before you add your first strobe light, and affects everything the flash doesn't light.

The key light was my old White LIghtning Ultra 600, dialed down to about 1/8 power, in the Octabox. (The Octabox is a 47" octagonal soft box.) It is a couple of feet out of the frame at camera right, about five feet away from the kids and up at about 30 degrees or so. Not that the exact angle matters -- that thing just floods the area with beautiful, forgiving light. In fact, someone could make an entire career out of shooting famous people with a light like this. Ahem.

The light is so forgiving, in fact, that the photo really does not have very much edge, for lack of a better word. I did stick an SU-4'd SB-800 with a spaghetti snoot at 1/16th power at back camera left as a separation light. And in the end I added a little high-pass filter on this one to add some crispness to the look of the main light.

I am still working on that technique, and trying to get it away from the Dave Hill look and more toward the natural-looking end of the spectrum. As with most things, less is more IMO. I'll be writing more about that when I get it a little more honed down. But I like it a lot, and am at least looking at it with every portrait.

I don't always end up going with it, but a little high-pass usually adds a nice layer. No pun intended. Kinda like MSG for photos -- works in moderation, but too much will give you a headache.


So, What'd Santa Bring You?

Do you have anything lighting related on your list? If not, did you already buy a li'l sump'm sump'm for yourself?

Hit us with your favorite lighting-related Christmas booty (uh, not literally -- this is a family blog) in the comments. And have a wonderful holiday week with family and friends as we wind down into the start of 2009.
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(Photo at top from the 1983 Warner Brothers movie, "A Christmas Story." Original publicity still photos available here.)

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Bite Me, Hallmark

UPDATE: Photo now links to Zach's walk-thru on his blog.
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Reader Zach Hodges, whose family was apparently really into the Twilght movie, decided to unload a full can o' Hollywood with his Christmas card this year. The up-to-the-minute spoof guaranteed prime refrigerator placement for every recipient under 30, with an equally resounding "What the...?" from everyone over 40.

The subjects were shot separately and composited together, which made it possible to do the whole thing very easily with just three speedlights. Canon 580 EX in a homemade beauty dish on the main light, with a 580 and 430 on the back/sides as rims.

Only after Zach started the project was he surprised to find out who shot the actual movie poster. Zach's card was done as an homage, and he wishes the original photog all the best and kindly hopes that Joey will not hunt him down and beat him to death with his skateboard.

Check out Zach's site, linked above, to see the cool work he does when not shooting the familial undead. (And click the pic above for the full walk-thru of how Zach did the composite shot.) Also, you can see more of Joey L's work here.

And if you did a killer holiday card this year, hit us with a link to the image in the comments.

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From the Archives: How to Shoot Christmas

It's that time of year again, when you can spend quality time with the family during the holiday season and secretly be working on your light balancing skills.

(Try not to be too obvious.)

At this point, even the most serious procrastinators finally have their lights up. If you get anything really cool, stick it in the Strobist Flickr pool for us to see, flash or not.

Also, from 2007, one way to approach lighting a whole room with two flashes for Christmas morning.

:: How to Photograph Chistmas Lights ::
:: Christmas Morning Lighting Tips ::

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Today's Special: A Cuppa Joe, With a Squeeze of Lime

If you are into in-person, hands-on learning there are a coupla great new options on the radar. Hit the jump for details on new offerings from Joe McNally and Bert Stephani.
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McNally has just announced that he has revived the Dobbs Ferry workshops. If you are anywhere in the northeastern US, you'll want to take a look at the new one-day programs that Joe is now doing direct -- i.e., not as part of a third-party organization.

The classes are very small (just Joe and a dozen mouth breathers) and he has set it up as an intense, one-day program which includes a light (heh) breakfast and lunch. They run from 9:15 a.m. until 6:00 p.m., or until your head explodes, whichever comes first.

More info here.


Something Juicy from Bert, Too

You EU-types will want to take note of Bert Stephani's new gig, "Squeeze the Lime," in which he and partner-in-crime Pieter Van Impe will be doing lighting seminars of several different lengths and formats.

They have uploaded their first "Squeeze the Lime" video, embedded below. It could be a tad NSFW-ish in your typical US cubicle hell. But it'll play just fine in European offices, where you'll probably want to call your boss and coworkers over to watch along with you.


More info here.

:: Other posts/videos from Bert ::

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Speedlinks: December 18th, 2008

In this most eclectic edition of Speedlinks, we feature:

The "Crotch Flash," a "POS," a slideshow without slides, an inside job gone horribly wrong and a little piece of American history...
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• WTJ has a video interview with a shooter who was pretty much assigned to shoot an entire issue of a fashion mag. Of interest to the alternate-style lighting folks, the "crotch flash," which shows up at about the 8:00 mark.

• You know how all of those photo gear review articles in magazines will sometimes tiptoe around the fact that they absolutely hate something? Well, someone forgot to tell The Online Photographer about that rule.

• Well worth a listen: Audio from Platon's presentation at this year's Eddie Adams Workshop. (EAW '89 alum here, representin'.)

• Talk your way into the White House: Check. Get images for assignment with sneaked in amateur camera: Check. Destroy your SD card in an effed-up card reader afterwards: Check. (Now what?)

• Last but not least, Matt Mendelsohn, the photographer who made that wonderful election night photo at the Lincoln Memorial, has released it as a signed, limited edition print.

If you (or someone you know) is going to be particularly stoked on January 20th, this would be an extremely cool way to photographically mark the occasion. And if you are a picture editor putting together your preview coverage for Inauguration Day, it's a heckuva moment -- 45 years in the making.

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November Winner Makes a Splash

Congrats to Haristobald, seen above at upper right, who despite all appearances did not do this photo shoot in the nude. There's a Speedo behind that 70-200.

He shot photos of his local triathlon club's calendar, did a video of the shoot and earned himself the last set of Pocketwizards left to be won in the Going Wireless contest.

This one jumped out at us the very first time we saw it, and it was a unanimous choice for the November winner. More info, including links to two more videos and Martin's site on the PW blog.

Thanks to all who entered, thereby raising the bar for all of the shooters who watched the 70-some-odd videos that were submitted. And if you missed any of the other four winning flicks, hit the jump for a quick recap.
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July Winner: Ryan Allan





August Winner: Jesse Rosten





September Winner: Danish Puthan Valiyandi





October Winner: Jerry Vo




Very cool stuff, all. You can also see all of the entries, here. Thanks to all who entered, and congrats again to the winners.

Definitely keep an eye out for more fun stuff like this stuff in the future.

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Beers With: Rembrandt

EDITOR'S NOTE: With apologies to every single art history class ever taught, this post marks the first in an occasional series of bar conversations with some of the Old Masters. These guys were the first ones to seriously light their work, and always merit a second look from those of us who slept through our humanities classes in college.
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Netherlands-based Rembrandt is a tough guy to track down. He never returns phone calls, doesn't do email and refuses to carry a cell phone. We were lucky enough to catch up with him on a recent trip to Europe, where he took a few minutes out of his schedule to talk about light.

Keep reading for the Q&A.


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Rembrandt Q&A

STROBIST (in itals): First of all, thanks for taking the time for the interview. Photographers have been studying your light and composition for many years, and actually getting some Q&A with you is fantastic.

REMBRANDT (in bold): No need to brown nose -- I have seen the Flickr threads. Clearly, Dave Hill would have been your first choice.


Already talked to him, here. But you're doing some cool stuff, too. Besides, after Vermeer sees this post, maybe he'll return my calls.

Doubt it. But you can try.


Let's start with your self portrait. One of many, in fact, this one having been done in 1659. Can you talk a little about it?

I always tried to keep a current self-portrait. You'd be surprised how many people do not have a decent head shot of themselves, for instance. Cobbler's kids have no shoes, as they say.


Speaking of numbers, you have done a ton of work. Some years, it is a new piece every month. What's up with that?

It's either that or hanging out on the message boards. I'd just rather be making pictures. Seriously, how much of your life can you spend complaining about the state of the industry? It's depressing.


I hear ya. Okay, so on the head shot -- one light source, up high and slightly camera right. Beauty dish?

No, straight, 7" reflector on an AlienBees AB800. If you look at the shadow under my nose, you can see it is harder than a beauty dish.


Oh, yeah. What about the fill?

Very little -- just a large, white foamcore at camera left. Almost not even there.


Nice and simple. How'd you get the warmth?

Quarter CTO. I like warmth on the key, but not too much. A lot of what you see in my work is color shifts due to time. The inkjet guy said archival. Bullshit. I started getting shifts after just 175 years. Boy, I miss Kodachrome.


Don't we all. What about the background?

You're gonna laugh. Wallpaper. I order it up special for each project right off of the web. Forty bucks. I cut three or four 2-foot-wide strips and match the pattern. Then I roll it right up into a tube to take to the location. We stick it on the wall with Fun-Tack, and Photoshop out any obvious seams. Keep it in a tube, use it over and over.


No kidding? I never would have known. Light, portable, cheap -- I love it.

You aren't the only one with ghetto DIY tips.


Fair enough. Let's move on to another one -- "Doctor Nicolaes Tulp's Demonstration of the Anatomy of the Arm." That's a mouthful. You couldn't pare that title down any?

Think metadata. It's done great stock sales for the last 378 years. But I have a sneaking suspicion my agency has shorted me, too.




Who is your agency?

I was originally with a great little European boutique agency -- mom and pop job. Great contract. But then they got bought and everything went straight to hell.


Who bought them?

Who buys everybody?


Oh, yeah. Right. So let's talk about the light. What can you tell us about it?

You tell me. What do you see?


Hmm... small-but-softish source. Beauty dish? Lotta watt-seconds to give you a good enough aperture to carry focus all the way through. Very high camera left, far enough away to reach across the frame pretty evenly.

Right so far, go on...


Fill... lessee... small strobe behind the guy second from right?

No, there would be secondary shadows. Those are hard to explain, visually. Try again.


Reflected fill off the collars? Really?

Yep. You get a lot of fill reflection when a white surface is in that close. Filled the patient's forehead nicely. Keep going.


Background lit by the main light?

Okay, now you're just not thinking. The key light is up high -- the top edge of the alcove would be lit, too.


Oh, yeah. Another light source, something soft down low. Softbox on the floor?

Yep. On an AB400 - just a smidge. Key was an AB1600 in a dish. Just two lights total, with a sheet on the ground infront out of the frame for minimal fill. Much more than that and you start to get unexplainable shadows too easily. Motivated light, motivated light.


What about that grody arm -- Photoshop?

Oh, no -- dead guy. It's done all of the time. You ever seen Joel Peter Witkin's stuff?


Please, I just had dinner.

Sorry. That dude is whack.


You're telling me. Can we talk about The Night Watch?

Sure. Everyone always goes for my production group stuff. Tell you one thing -- I get pissed every time I see one of those three-panel Annie Leibovitz Hollywood photos in Vanity Fair. Homage, my ass. And Neal Slavin? Don't even get me started.



You're an Old Master. People are going to go back to your themes over and over. They have a classic familiarity that stands the test of time. Why do you think we even go to art school? Because we want to learn to rip off the very best class of artist.

Yeah, well. Royalties would be nice. Maybe a little credit once in a while?


Alright, alright. So, who are your influences?

For this kind of stuff? I'm digging Drew Gardner lately. Have you seen his death of Admiral Nelson? Kickass.


Totally. He told me he wouldn't even drop the POV to lose the buildings in the background in the final shot. Retoucher's nightmare. Dude can stage a scene. He had a special "Nelson light" he sneaked in there, too.

That's what I'm sayin'. You have to tell a story with it, guide the eye with composition and light.


Okay, let's talk about that light. Your top light is eluding me. More than one?

Not so fast. Start with the fill, build from there. We hung a king-sized sheet behind camera and stuck two AB800's behind that for a huge, soft frontal light that would not call attention to itself.


Right. So how far did you drop the exposure on the fill?

Almost three stops. It was Night Watch, after all.


Okay then, how about the top light, which I still can't figure out. Where is it coming from? Way up high camera left?

Yep. But we cut it with a cookie -- think of a gobo with holes in it. Lets the light come through, but in a splotchy way. You get direction and hot spots.

So, you get a certain level overall. And since the holes in the cookie are "out of focus," if you will, you get a couple of brighter areas. Brings your eye exactly where I want it to go. Just one big AB1600 clamped into the rafters. That was our key.


So, the guy on the front right -- why can I see under his hat so well?

The fill light is stronger when you are closer to the camera. It's a great little cheat.


Of course! You decide how far the fill reaches in by how close you put it to the scene. All about the lighting distance, even for fill light. The closer you move it in, the faster it falls off as you work your way back into the scene.

Now you're thinking.
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Very cool. Thanks for hanging -- the beers are on us.

Yes, they are. Catch you later. And if you happen to see Annie, give her my best.

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RadioPopper Introduces Gen 2 Products

Lots of announcements hitting the blog over at RadioPopper tonight -- new designs, 1500-foot TTL range, remote control of AlienBees and WL, the debut of the long awaited "juniors," etc. Way too much to quickly digest into one post.

Prices start at $59/$69 for the JrX receiver and transmitter, respectively, and go to $249 for the full-blown PX units.

RadioPopper has put a lot of the info into a video, embedded above. Full-line brochure is here with more photos and specs. Lotsa yakking about it going on here.

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Back From The Twilight Zone

I think that even if I were Joey L, I probably would have OD'd on seeing my own Twilight movie photos everywhere in London last week.

Okay, maybe that is just sour grapes on my part. The Boy Wonder's work was plastered on pretty much every flat vertical surface in the entire city.

Undeterred by teenage photographers with mega-movie photo assignments, we made some photos of our own, too...


Don't Make Me Take This Hat Off...

First up was from Saturday's session, wherein we photographed Sean McCormack who travelled through the night only to arrive with a near-fatal case of bedhead. He kept it in check with an industrial strength hat, and thus were we all safe.

Just to be ornery in an all-white room, we used the white walls as backdrops and tamed them to make a low-key photo.

We shot him with a Lumiquest SB-III as key light, hand-held riiiight in front of his head and pointed straight down. As you might imagine, this makes for some pretty gnarly eye-socket shadows. (Hey, at least it detracts from the bedhead!)

Not to worry, as we filled with a new Orbis ring flash adapter, which allowed us to fill those shadows exactly as much as we wanted without ruining the character of the downlight key. This is a very cool combo, as it creates a little drama that you can control to any exact degree.

The background light was courtesy Masood the VAL, and I thought it fitting to leave the flash in the frame, all things considered.

(Setup shot here, courtesy Huy, who also won a CSB Micro Mini on Saturday...)

The Orbis handled our various test drives with flying colors, creating a really nice quality of light. It is not quite as efficient as the Ray Flash, so use as an outdoor key light is best left to shady situations. (As opposed to shady subjects, as seen above...)

Having seen about a thousand too many shots with ring flash as the only light source, I'd personally rather eat a whole box of Chocolate Kimberlies (don't ask) without any milk to drink than use the Orbis that way. But it shines as a fill -- and with it brings infinite possibilities of hard-light-taming goodness.


Lust at The Brunswick Centre

Next was Richard, who posed reading an Elinchrom brochure outside of The Flash Centre.

We had an ad-hoc Monday meetup of sorts, pulling off a quick couple of outdoor portraits in the winter chill. (I chose not to wear shorts on Monday out of respect for Londoners everywhere. Plus, all of my shorts were dirty by then.)

"Could you just stand here and look at the flash brochure for a few minutes?" we said. Nice work if you can get it.

There were three lights on this one, two of which were subtle enough to make them not so easily seen. Ambient is down a stop and a half, maybe two stops. Main light is a VAL'd SB-800 in a Honl shorty from camera right aimed at Richard's face.

Second is another VAL'd SB-800, zoomed to 105mm and aimed at the TFC sign to pop it a little in the dropped ambient. And the third is an on-camera flash for a little frontal fill on Richard.


I Could Buy and Sell You Ten Times Over

We moved over to a second floor terrace for the second photo at TFC, just because we could not feel the full effect of the wind at street level. There we stuck Nick in front of a vine-covered wall to do a quick, three-speedlight portrait.

We dropped the ambient down a couple stops before bringing Nick back with a Lumiquest SB-III as a key light. From this working distance, the effect is not hard or soft, really -- sort of "direct flash with the edge sanded off." We warmed that light up with a 1/4 CTO gel to offset the winter chill in Nick's face.

About half way through I thought, what the heck, let's go ahead and make this a decent CV portrait. So, Nick, what do you do for a living?

Turns out Nick is the head of art at a large, internationally known advertising agency.

Oh.

At that point, I needed about a full-cut CTO to put the color back in my face. No pressure, no pressure...

So we filled Nick with a speedlight in an Orbis (about two stops off of the key light) and raked a flash across that back wall to bring up the area behind Nick and give it some texture in the overcast light. Setup shot here, courtesy background VAL RC Hill.


A Little Light Fare

Having lost part of my trip to a bug which had driving the porcelain bus for two days, I lucked out by feeling well enough to join Neil Turner, of DG28, for dinner on Monday night.

Don't know what it was that helped me to get better so fast. Could've been the unpasteurized IPA's they had me drinking after Sunday's session. (Can't hurt, right?)

Neil, (who himself will be teaching in the UK in March) told me several of the funniest PJ-related stories I have ever heard, including the absolute funniest photo tale I have ever listened to in my life.

The poor chap in the story has forever become etched into my mind as "Officer Hans Blix," and I will not ruin it by trying to retell it here. Suffice to say that Neil has promised to post it one day. And when he does I will cancel whatever I have scheduled and link to that instead.

There is nothing off color about it at all, but it will have to be labeled "NSFW" merely because you might get fired for laughing your butt off uncontrollably at work for the rest of the day.

I thought I was gonna get us kicked out of the restaurant when I heard it. Which would have been a bad thing, because there were vampires friggin' everywhere out there.

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I'm Speechless.

With just one day to go before the big, cryptic December 12th RadioPopper announcement, the following pops up on Pixsylated:

Twelve Canon 580 EX II's, all equipped with RP1's in high-noon, high-sync, sunlight-killing formation.

I am pretty sure this is the first sign of the Apocalypse.
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UPDATE: What that bad boy looks like from the business end...
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Other items from the archives which straddle the line between genius and insanity:

:: DIY Off-Camera TTL Cord ::
:: The 'Umbrella Helmet' ::

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Nikon CLS Video: The Lost Footage

Joe "Mexican" McNally and Bob "One-Take" Krist scotch-taped together some of the good parts from the cutting room floor of the new Nikon CLS video, for your viewing pleasure.

Hit Joe's blog for more, including a look at Bob's new travel photography book which I currently am studying in advance of next month's trip to Central America.

Congrats to Bob and Joe on the video, which is finally in stock and shipping from Amazon -- complete with well-deserved five-star reviews. So if you are a Nikon shooter and are busy shopping for everyone else at Amazon this month, don't forget to grab a little stocking stuffer for yourself...

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Cheap, Soft, 360-Degree Light

I was up in New York recently, and saw a video production unit filming in the lobby of my hotel. They were using cheap paper lanterns as light modifiers for their point-source continuous lights. Very cool thinking, IMO.

They are so cheap as to be nearly disposable, and take a point light and turn it into a 360-degree soft box. Adapting this idea to speedlights would be a piece of cake, too...


Prep Your Flash First

You'll need to get your speedlight into bare bulb mode first, because you want that light radiating in all directions to get the benefit.

But the beauty of this is that because everything is so light you can do it without a stand or boom. You can easily use this as a soft, wide, overhead light by using a small piece of cord to suspend a slaved (or PW'd, etc.) speedlight from an overhead fixture.

By using a tiny A-clamp (or piece of tape) you could suspend the flash right down into the lantern, and have everything in turn suspended by the cord that is holding up the flash.

My friend Drew Gardner uses a much more expensive commercial version of this kind of light, and tells me that to make them really useful, you'll want to have a "skirt" at your disposal. This can gobo the light in any direction right at the source. Two dollars worth of black, rip-stop nylon cut to shape ought to fit the bill nicely.


Where to Get Them

I know the lanterns are available very cheaply at Ikea. But you can also get them for next to nothing online, here. Bear in mind that the "natural" colored lanterns (as opposed to white) are going to warm the daylight balance of your flash some -- at least a 1/4 CTO equivalent.

But that could be a good thing for shooting people. My guess is that even the white ones will warm it up a tad, too.

Is anyone already using these things? If so, how's it working out for ya? What about Euro sources? Hit us in the comments.

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Four Reasons to Consider Working for Free

The U.S. stock market has been cut in half. And some countries have it worse than we do. Companies are shedding jobs like there is no tomorrow. And heaven help you if you work for a newspaper or a magazine.

The US auto industry is on the verge of imploding. People are losing their homes to foreclosure. And, on the off chance that you had the nerve to try to buy something, credit is almost impossible to come by.

It is against that backdrop that I would like to talk about working for free.

Why? Because I think it is one of the fastest ways to make yourself a better photographer, whether you are a pro or an amateur. If you are wondering if I have completely lost my mind, make the jump to judge for yourself.


A Little Framework

I want to put the flashes down today and talk about something that I hope can help you grow as a photographer. I know it is helping me, and I suspect that some people could use a little professional bright spot right now.

For the purposes of this post, we are talking about photography. But there is no reason that this discussion cannot morph into other areas. If you are a blogger and riff on this in another direction, please leave a linkback in the comments. I really want to see where this goes.

As a point of reference, I am going to broadly assume that many of you fall at least loosely into one of the following areas:

One, if you are a pro, you are probably not being hired to shoot full-time, wall-to-wall. You might have some down time right about now. Maybe even a little too much.

Two, if you are an amateur, you probably spend some time on a regular basis shooting for yourself when you are not working the soul-sucking day job.

After 20 years as a pro, I find myself with a foot in both ponds. I still thnk of myself as a professional shooter -- and I am shooting assignments, after all. But I also have a non-shooting "day job," which you are reading right now.

As such, over the last few months I have been thinking about my shooting in a different different way. I have had long conversations with other photographers about it, too. Some were rank amateurs, some are big-shot pros, and some in the muddy middle.


Money Equals Control

Well, duh. But maybe not in the way that you think. If you are a professional, it is the client with the check who determines what you shoot and how you do it.

Maybe you want to shoot conceptual portraiture. But if The Money says that it wants you to shoot little Billy's bar mitzvah, guess who is gonna win in the absence of that conceptual portrait assignment?

A check is a good thing. It puts food on the table and keeps the business running. But that same check can also keep you from growing in the direction in which you want to grow.

The trick is getting from what you are now shooting (and how) to what you want to be shooting (and how). And the fastest way to do that is to forego some money.


Tenet One: Free Buys Access

I will start out by saying that I want to be a location people shooter. More specifically, I want to make engaged and technically sophisticated portraits of people who excel at what they do. I want to benefit from both the photos and the experiences of meeting my subjects.

That is my personal photographic compass point. Where the photos get used is secondary. As is how much -- or even if -- I get paid for them. For now, anyway.

That's my mission. If you have not defined your mission as a photographer, I would highly suggest doing so. The simpler, the better. It adds clarity to every decision you make downstream.

My problem is, right now no one is beating down my door to shoot the kinds of people I want to shoot in the ways that I want to shoot them. I am getting plenty of work, but not the kind that furthers what I want to do. So to get closer to my goal, I have decided to take money out of the equation whenever it makes sense to do so.

I do not know how much "free" time I can devote to it yet, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that I will devote whatever free time I can to making those kinds of photos.

So, I am approaching people I want to photograph and offering to do it directly for them, at no charge. And that includes usage, too -- no holding back. That is my offer -- I photograph you, and in exchange for your time you get what I hope will be high-quality images to use.

Now, that usage does not extend to a third party -- for example, the subject's publisher, an advertising campaign, etc. In that case, there would have to be payment involved. And the types of photos (and, to date, subjects) that I am doing would not normally be shot with enough specificity to be useful in those ways. But it is important to take into account to keep yourself from being taken advantage of.

The usual reaction is a mixture of equal parts confusion and suspicion:

Why are you doing this? What is this for? Why free? Do you suck as a photographer or something?

Because I want to grow by photographing extremely interesting people. It is for my portfolio and whatever use you can find for it. Because that is the fastest way to get the photos I want into my portfolio. And you can judge the last question for yourself after seeing my work.

At that point, they are usually interested. And how can they not be, unless they are insanely busy? It is a flattering thing to be chosen on those merits. And what do they have to lose, except for maybe a half hour?

As for me, what am I really giving up? Not money, unless someone would have hired me that day to do something equally interesting. I am giving up time I would have spent shooting something less useful for me.

And hopefully, I am circumventing the photographer's Catch-22 -- that you won't be hired to shoot subject matter that you can't already show in your portfolio.


Tenet Two: Free Removes Boundaries

Assuming they go for the idea, now is where it starts to get interesting. And if they don't, no big deal. I move on to the next person on my hit list.

But if they do, we have everything we need to make a photograph -- a photographer and a subject. No one else to steer things.

The art direction is courtesy the collaboration between you and your subject. The budget is whatever you can scrape together. And I particularly enjoy bootstrapping something from nothing.

Foregoing money buys you that control. Not total control, mind you. You have to work within the framework of what is true to your subject. But all good portraiture has that restraint.

The important thing is that there is no one telling you to shoot color or B&W, no shape to match, no limitation on post processing, no nothing. It is a wide open collaboration.

If you are a corporate shooter, maybe that means you go from guys in ties to shooting artists. Or inventors. Whatever.

If you normally shoot social events, maybe it means you get to shoot what you really want -- architecture. Or beauty.


Tenet Three: Free Buys You Near Total Control

It is your project. You are offering photography for time. You are driving. You decide what you are going to shoot.

You can say no at any point, but you can greenlight anything. You can shoot beneath your normal radar screen. You can stretch to shoot a subject you would never have been hired to shoot.

You may as well be Annie Leibovitz, as far as you're concerned. You answer to no one but yourself. If that is not an ideal shooting environment, I do not know what is.


Tenet Four: Free is Powerful Karma

Big deal, you say. That's just personal work. Everyone does that.

Sort of, but not really. Personal work is shooting ninjas in a warehouse on your own dime to stretch yourself and grow your book and get better jobs. (That one worked in spades, BTW.)

But pure collaboration also takes into account the subject. Who can best use the kinds of photos I want to take? What can I accomplish? How can they use the photos? How much good can I do?

This is where it gets goose pimply. How much good could you do?

What will you do with your total control? Do you love kids? Will you shoot portraits of young burn victims at a burn camp next summer like my friend Ed Bunyan did for so many years?

Do you love animals? Will you practice your lighting skills on dogs and cats at the animal shelter? Do you really think they would refuse a serious commitment on your part to photograph animals each week for a few months and let them do whatever they could think to do with your photos?

Very early in my career, a photographer/friend/mentor of mine, John Ashley, did just that. And the photos ran big in our paper, the Leesburg (FL) Commercial. Because John convinced them to do that each Thursday by his sheer commitment and force of will.

For several years, John had a perfect batting average -- every animal he photographed got adopted. Except one. And then John adopted it.

How much good could you do with your camera? And for many of you, specifically, how much of a difference could you make for someone with your new-found lighting skills?

How much would your portfolio benefit from regularly shooting exactly what you want to shoot?

If you are an amateur, this just might get you past practicing your light on your cat and your superhero figurines. If you are a pro, it is easy to think of some cool projects that could add a new dimension to your portfolio.


For Example:

I recently found a great little foodie blog in my county. I can't tell you how many neat little out-if-the-way ethnic joints I have found because of this guy. But as good as his blog is, his photography is very, uh, McDonald's, if you get my drift.

Why couldn't I hook up with him and create a series of portraits of chefs at some of these places? Make his blog look as good as a decent food magazine, create a nice project in my portfolio and hook up more people with great local food?

Answer: There is no reason why I couldn't, if I take money out of the equation. If I wait for money, this little project will never happen. But take the money out, and it could happen in a heartbeat -- and on my schedule.

As I type, I am fleshing a thread for the series out in my head -- why not a portrait of a chef, a nice photo of a typical dish, and the recipe for it? I get a great project, the blog gets moved up three or four visual notches, the restaurants get exposed to many more people and my portfolio gets a new capability to display.

Make it locally-owned only. Chipotle need not apply. Now the county development office and/or the Chamber of Commerce start to get interested. Which might get the project some space in a local venue.

Now, you have just parlayed the project into a potential exhibit in a high-traffic area. People learn about my photography, the HowChow blog, lots of local restaurants, how to cook some killer dishes -- not a bad day's work. And it all works only because it was conceived outside of the framework of shooting for money.


But I Don't Want to be Branded as a Free Photographer.

You wouldn't be. You are not working for free because people asked you to. You are offering to collaborate on a project. And therein lies a huge difference.

When a company or organization asks you to work for free they may be (okay, probably are) taking advantage of you. When you are in control, no one can take advantage of you. You have the ability to offer your work for free, but you retain the ability to decline a request to work for free.

And to be clear, I am not talking about merely showing up at some company with a blanket offering to work for free. That's insane. I am talking about having a photo in your mind that you want to make and pulling together the resources to make it happen. You are the prime beneficiary, but there is gain in it for your subject, too -- which is what makes it very likely to happen.

You may think there is opportunity cost in putting in a shoot for no money. But the cost is much greater, in the long term, if you have a portfolio that was defined only by what people were willing to pay you to create.


Why Now? Isn't the Whole World Caving In?

This makes the most sense right now, for so many reasons. How many people or organizations could use photos -- but have no budget? How many days do you sit waiting for the phone to ring with an assignment?

How often have you looked at your home loan / stock portfolio / shrinking newsroom / etc., and just wanted to feel good about something, personally and/or professionally?

You may not have piles of excess cash to donate, but you have skills. You can leverage your value to someone through your pictures -- and grow as a photographer at the same time.


Are You Still Here?

If you have made it this far, you probably either think I am totally full of it, or are already starting to get ideas of your own.

I know I am not the only photographer for whom this idea is resonating. I have been in too many conversations about this recently and heard too many other photographers' thoughts.

This is a lighting blog, but this approach can be applied to almost anything. Do you cut hair? Are you in IT support? Are you a good cook? What could you do?

And assuming a worst-case scenario, what if money gets incredibly tight for the next few years. How much difference could you make, for yourself and for others, growing yourself by donating a valuable skill?


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Other Perspectives

• Chase Jarvis puts his money where his mouth is.
• Doug Menuez, on turning down the bad jobs and shooting what you love.
• Vincent Laforet: Yeah, but don't go crazy with it. Mebbe once a year. But 'Reverie' worked out pretty well for me...
• Kenneth Jarecke: It has always been thus.
• I suspected this post would give John Harrington an aneurysm. But you still have to give him style points for lining up the commenters to be machine gunned...

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COMMENTS NOTE: The comment meter has been pegged, with only the first 200 being visible below.

To be able to see the others, you'll need to click the "Add Yours" button as if you were going to leave a comment. Then scroll with the "newer" or "newest" buttons at top or bottom.

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Their Secret? I'm Guessing "Free Beer"

I go to London, and look what I miss: The Vancouver Strobist group did a collective double-take when none other than Joe McNally showed up for their monthly meetup.

He was in town for a gig, and probably just needed a little help figuring out that CLS stuff. (The RainCity Strobists are really good at that CLS stuff.)

Joe blogged about it, and you have to know that the group itself is feeling pretty fine. This pretty much pwns the Seattle group in coolness factor.

I'm just sayin'.

(Photo: Wayne Mah)

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DIY Salad Bowl Beauty Dish

This one looks pretty darn OEM for DIY.

Reader Tom Seibert has a detailed post on how to make a large DIY beauty dish for speedlights, including a bracket that takes the strain off of your flash by not using it as part of the structural support.

In a second post, he shows how he was able to adjust the beam pattern of the dish to make for a much smoother light source.

It is an evolution of the Tejada beauty dish design, but pushes the dish size and introduces a more sturdy mounting system.

UPDATE: More on how to adjust the beam, here.
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RadioPoppers Jr. Product Killed Recast; Updates to P1s Coming

RadioPopper has announced that the upcoming RP Jr. project has been killed redesigned(?) in a way that will integrate it into a bigger system. And there is apparently a big update coming to the current P1 design. All very cryptic at this point. Original blog post here.

Syl Arena has seen the new units, (much likee) and is dishing with at least a little detail.
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UPDATE: Lots of yakking on this in the Flickr group. RP's Kevin King stopped by to set the record straight and add some detail, too.

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