Field Trip to Keatley's Place

I am working on an On Assignment post for later this week, but photographer John Keatley has an OA post up right now. In it, he details his portrait of writer/director Josh Hornbeck. It's a nice walk-thru on building depth and character with light -- in a small room with light walls. Lord knows we see enough of those. At least the guy was not assigned...

Read More

FYI: DIY RPCube PDQ

Do you have one of those new RadioPopper JrX "Studio" model receivers? Tired of waiting for the upcoming RPCube, so you can remotely control Nikon flash power levels?There is a lively discussion on how to roll your own (pretty easily and cheaply) happening in the Strobist Flickr group discussion board.All you need is an SC-17 or a multi-flash sync...

Read More

Boot Camp 2, Assignment 4: Results

Greetings from the final assignment of Boot Camp 2, in which you were asked to examine a transportation theme in the assignment, "What Moves You."Some really nice stuff came in on this one, and I left notes on about two dozen pictures among the entries. Now comes the hard part -- getting them down to the finalists -- and one winner.__________But First,...

Read More

Bounceman: A Hero For Our TIme.

Editing through the results for Boot Camp 2, Assignment 4, which will be up on Monday. (Some nice stuff in there!)In the meantime, this is one of the video entries in LIME's ongoing "Bounce Competition," which you can learn more about here. And, um, thanks for not making those pants any tighter.[UPDATE: At some point, the guy who played Bounceman is gonna be walking down the street in Belgium somewhere and someone is gonna come up to him and ask, "Are you Bounceman?"Bonus points if he stares at them for a moment, turns his head sharply and gallops...

Read More

Light is Not Your Problem.

Here's a little news flash for the majority of the people reading this site right now -- yours truly included: Your lighting is probably not what is holding you back. A trained monkey can learn how to light. It is the stuff which your lighting is supposed to be secondary to that is holding you back.It is your ideas -- or lack of them -- that is holding you back. Ditto, your ability to create a moment within the environment of all of that nifty light you have set up. Who or what are you going to shoot? How are you going to approach it? Why? How...

Read More

Debuting Today: Best Camera

Ed. Note: Today's post has nothing to do with flash. But if you are a photographer who uses an iPhone, I'm pretty sure you're gonna like it.Hit the jump for more on Chase Jarvis' new app: "The Best Camera" ...__________As if continually bouncing from one advertising campaign to the next weren't enough, Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis and his folks...

Read More

Back in The Day...

We used to have to walk five miles to school and back. Barefoot. In the snow. Uphill. Both ways.I'm just kidding -- we had shoes.But while you are finishing up your Boot Camp shots (which, by the way, are due today) howzabout a little inspiration from back in the '80's, when we didn't have no hotshot digital cameras?Take this pan shot of a Yamaha bike,...

Read More

Night Shuttle

Florida-based photographer Jon. M. Fletcher took advantage of a recent shuttle launch to make a unique family portrait. Obviously, you only get one shot in a situation like this. But Jon had a few tricks up his sleeve to make his odds a little better.Jon's walk-thru, inside.__________Sez Jon:It was really a spur of the moment shoot. My wife (at...

Read More

World Debut: Hypernova Music Vid, Shot with Flash at 10 FPS

At 10 FPS, the burst rate of the Canon 1D Mk III takes on almost a Tim Burton-like quality when shown as a movie -- a technique any sports shooter has seen while scanning through multi-frame bursts in Photo Mechanic. Iranian crunch band Hypernova and director Richard Patterson married the fast motor drive of the camera with the Profoto Pro-8a Air, the Uzi-inspired studio strobe which can keep up with just about anything out there. (Actually, they used a whole slew of Pro8a's. Must be nice.)First the behind-the-scenes video above, which gives a...

Read More

Robert Seale: Life in the Fast Lane

Sports portrait specialist Robert Seale had four whole minutes to shoot this portrait of cycling deity Lance Armstrong in the basement of an Austin, TX bike shop.Which begs the question: "What's he gonna do with all of that spare time when he finishes early?"Why, shoot three more setups, of course.Check out Robert's very RSS-worthy blog for the speed-lighting...

Read More

Hot off the Presses: Strobist OCF Magnets

With apologies to the Obsessive Compulsive Foundation, the Oregon Country Fair, the Ohio Football Club and the Olympic Credit Fund (among many others) the Strobist "OCF" magnets are now available. The OCF stands for Off Camera Flash. Yeah, it's a little Dan Brown-ish. But we thought a rather fitting three-letter airport code thingie, all things considered.They...

Read More

On Assignment: Haloti Ngata

After a long summer, NFL Football finally lights up again this weekend. And one of my favorite players is Baltimore defensive tackle Haloti Ngata. I got to photograph him as a rookie shortly before his first-ever start as a Raven in 2006. It was for a feature, and ran lead on A-1 the day he made his NFL debut. I had a few minutes to shoot him in full...

Read More

OLDC: More Fun than Diagramming Sentences

Not everyone has access to their own in-house team of professional illustrators to create stunningly beautiful lighting diagrams. For those of you who have not been following the Flickr threads, Strobist reader Quoc Huy Nguyen Dinh has been developing an online lighting diagram creator, and it is ready for prime time. You can either do it on-the-fly...

Read More

Boot Camp 2, Assignment #4: What Moves You

Summer may have unofficially ended yesterday (no more white belts or manscaping for me) but we still have one more assignment to get through for Boot Camp 2.Being strong believers in delayed gratification, I think I can safely speak for the entire staff here at Strobist International HQ when I say we tried to save the best assignment for last.__________Your...

Read More

DVDs are Back In

After being out of stock, the fifth printing of the Strobist Lighting DVDs (more here) is in and now shipping. I am happy to report that, in addition to the US and UK/EU outlets, they are now available from Dubai in the UAE. This reduces shipping charges for those of you in the Middle East, Asia and AU/NZ.-...

Read More

"But I Just Work at a Small Newspaper…"

Twenty one plus years ago I arrived in Columbia, MD, to start work as a staff PJ at Patuxent Publishing, a chain of community tabloid newspapers. Like most of the rest of the staff, I was young and full of piss and vinegar. One thing I loved about working there is that we never let our size be a ceiling to what we wanted to do creatively. Staff shooter...

Read More

Annie / Mad Men BTS Video

[UPDATE: Even though the "autoStart" tag in the embedded video is set to "false," the vid seems to be auto-starting anyway. Apologies to the clandestine viewers locked in their cubicles. I am placing the video and the rest of the post behind a "read more" jump to give you a chance to turn the sound down.Any further flash coding tech help mucho appreciated!]__________If you saw Vanity Fair's Mad Men spread in the current issue, here's a quick behind-the-scenes video of Annie Leibovitz shooting it. (After the obligatory pre-roll ad, of course.)Just...

Read More

Lord of the Ring Flash

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Okay, so maybe that's a stretch. This guy doesn't even use ring flash. But I had Headline Writer's Block and it was the only thing I could come up with. Best me in the comments.]__________"I immediately knew I wanted to look into the dark barn and not work against the huge, open bay door. The light outside that door was, like, ƒ/32,000,...

Read More

Q&A: Popping a Cold One

From the comments on Monday's OA post, Gavin asks:"I love the macro shots and your explanation, but since everyone is going to talk about those, I'll throw out a different question.

The shot through the window is also very successful. Did you do any gelling there, or is that all existing room light?"Thank you, Gavin. And actually that shot is lit...

Read More