Home for the Holidays

I am very thankful to not be traveling this Christmas season. And as in years past, I won't be posting between now and the new year, either. What I do hope to be doing is spending as much time as possible with family and friends.In the meantime, hit the jump for our annual attempt at a Year in Review. And this year we have a little twist… Read more...

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Rosco Plusgreen: The Magic Sunset Filter

Druids may get all festive around Winter Solstice, but you can bet your typical cubicle worker is equally pissed off. That's because most of them arrive at work barely after sunrise, and don't leave until after dark. For that same reason, it is also when architectural photographers are most willing to go out and freeze their nu brave the cold weather...

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Drew Gardner's Brown Bag Video Series

Long-time readers of this site are already familiar with London-based commercial and advertising photographer Drew Gardner. Many of you will be happy to know that he has just released a commercial series of walk-thru videos of over a dozen of his more notable shoots, broken into McDonald's lunch-priced segments. I have always enjoyed Drew's lighting, but even more so his creativity and imagination when approaching a shoot. And frequently, that ability to source a location or bootstrap say, an elephant or water buffalo as a prop for a shoot is more...

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First Grope: Nikon SB-700

When Nikon first announced their new SB-700 speedlight three months ago, I went down the feature list and immediately took notice of one thing: The lack of a PC jack. But I recently had a chance to talk to some folks from Nikon. And they're all like, Dave, you're putting the em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-LA-ble. It's an evolution of the SB-600, not the...

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A Pop in Page Views

Congrats to Strobist reader Edward Horsford for making the front page of the internet. Yahoo chose his photo of a water balloon (without the balloon part) as a lede image for their curated gallery of high-speed captures.Cool tidbit: More than a third of the images in the collection were by Strobist readers. It was the first time I have seen Yahoo leveraging...

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Profoto: The Light Shaping Retina Searing Company

Remember the guy who zapped words into German tourists' photos with his DIY flash projector gun?Suffice to say when you swap out the speedlight for 4800 watt-seconds worth of Profoto Pro-7B, things can get a little more interesting.(Tip via Joel)-...

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On Assignment: Brian England

I shot a job last month for a story on the downstream impact of the new Jobs Bill (as in small business, not Steve.) Local auto shop owner Brian England, above, was one of the voices in the story.It's your basic talking head. And just about anything would suffice for this kind of story in the local biz publication. So I always see these kinds of job...

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Greetings, Newbs

Are you just stumbling in after learning about us in the New York Times gift guide for photographers? If so, thanks for dropping by. You'll probably want to start here.-...

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In Which a Commenter Gets His Soapbox

Today, a peek inside the sausage factory that is this blog.Every blogger has to deal with this question at some point: What do you do with commenters who attempt to use your site as a large platform on which to go after a third party?To my view, it is the equivalent of a guest who has had too much to drink standing up in your living room and uncorking...

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Hangin' Eight, with Dave Black

Editor's note: You're gonna wanna watch this one in 720p, full-screen. So do yourself a favor and res-up now, to let it start loading in while you read.__________What do you get when you slap together 8 SB-900's, an SU-800, one RadioPopper transmitter, two receivers, two FourSquares and two sets of Michael Bass fiber optic bundles?Well, you get $5,000.00 lighter in the wallet, for one thing. But you also get a (32) AA-battery-powered monoblock with a 2-second recycle that can reach out and touch someone -- in TTL and/or via high-speed sync -- at...

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It's DIY Thursday

Fancy yourself a bit of a … modder?Well, we gots not one but two DIY tips today, courtesy intrepid readers. Hit the jump to learn both how to add a nipple (not my term, mind you) to your SB-800 and how to make a very cool speedlight-to-AlienBees adapter. Read more...

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Matthew Jordan Smith Gives Tyra a Ring

We normally think of ring flash as having that signature, wrap-around shadow on the background. Or, increasingly, as a fill light. But it takes on a completely different look if you use it as a key and take everything else away -- background and any reflected light.(Oh, and it helps if your subject is Tyra Banks, too.)Matthew Jordan Smith explains in the first of an upcoming BTS series for Profoto. And not to just bang the Profoto drum here, either. We are always looking for the other educational BTS vids that the other flash manufacturers should...

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Moshe and Eddie Brakha: Standardizing Creativity

When most photographers hit "a certain age," they might be tempted to revert to the mean -- to play it a little safer, creatively speaking. Not so Moshe Brakha, who has never been one for safe lighting. These days, his collaboration with his son Eddie combines experience and relative youth in a photographic one-two punch. For the Brakhas, stale is...

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A Thanksgiving Weekend Class for the Strobist Flickr Group

While you were busy digesting turkey and watching football this weekend, you may have missed Brad Trent* (at left, photo by Kazuhito Sakuma) dropping into the Strobist Flickr group to answer lighting Q's about controlling contrast. Definitely worth a read. As mentioned before, Brad not only includes lighting setup shots in his portfolio, but blogs...

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Giving Thanks, Giving Back

It's Thanksgiving Day here in the US. Which means that in addition to trotting out the traditional Strobist before-and-after turkey shot (courtesy the tryptophan-laced Paul Morton) we pause to think about giving thanks and helping others.This year, a quick look at how some local photographers in Howard County, MD are using their cameras to give back...

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… Or, a Soft Box Will Work, Too

After reading Sunday's post on improvisational ring lights, Haristobald Photography shot me a link to this BTS video.Camera on axis with a soft box, and everything on an overhead boom gets him a different perspective for these calendar shots of a local track club -- with very cool results. More info and final pics are on his dual-language blog post.If he sounds familiar, it is because he was one of the winners in the PocketWizard/Strobist video competition a ways back. If you are a new reader (since November '08) you'll want to check those out...

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Substituting an Umbrella for a Ring Light

Just a quick-hit post today on when and how to use your umbrella as a faux ring light -- and when it may be even better than the real thing.Save some bucks, and/or get a completely different look, inside. Read more...

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Subject For a Day

Photo ©Mark HeaynI had the tables turned on me a few weeks ago when Baltimore photographer Mark Heayn shot my family. It was for a marketing campaign for the company that converted our house to solar energy.As much as we tend to dislike it, staring down the barrel of a camera occasionally is a very good perspective swap for a photographer. I learned...

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Your Gratuitous Pool Boy Awaits

Yes, I know that 94% of the people who read this site are male. But that does not mean I am not looking out for the other six percent. Or, [6%+(94%/10)-(6%/10)] if you want to get really mathematical about it.To that end I offer this BTS video of a Harper's Bazaar shoot by Melissa Rodwell, whom I met last March in Dubai. There's actually some lighting stuff wedged in, so you can call it educational.Melissa gets a little more into the overpowering-the-sun stuff and shows all of the final images in her blog post. But the blog itself is mostly about...

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On Assignment: Frickin' Lasers

Update: I've answered several reader questions in the comments.__________Being both a photo geek and a garden-variety tech geek, I love it when my two worlds collide. Shooting people who roll with cutting-edge tech is one of my very favorite things to do.I photographed Shirley Collier, CEO of Optemax, for the Maryland Entrepreneur Quarterly. Her company...

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Mola Dishes Out Lighting Tips

Turns out Mola, the funky-looking beauty dish manufacturer, actually has a pretty cool blog. Lots of neat examples and more than a few lighting diagrams. All featuring Mola beauty dishes, natch.I saw it this week when they profiled Brad "My Lighting Volume Knob Goes to Eleven" Trent, who is a frequent user of the ridged reflectors. Definitely worth...

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Readers Shoot Back: Your Background Stand Hacks

Lots of cool upstreams in the comments of Monday's Hack your Background Stand post. Given that many people read the site via RSS, I thought some of the better ideas merited a quick recap -- inside. Read more...

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Hack Your Background Stand

Normally used for seamless paper, background stand systems can pretty useful items for other stuff, too. Especially when you consider how little they cost.Four more ideas on how to use your background supports, inside. Read more...

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Stereo Sweetener for a 1/8" Sync Mod

A Strobist reader who cryptically goes by "bleeblubleeblah" last year posted may what well be the nicest walk-thru to date of hacking a Nikon SB-600 speedlight to get a remote 1/8" sync jack. And as sweet as that looks, someone has hacked the idea to make it significantly better. How to improve your 1/8" DIY jacks, inside. Read more...

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On Assignment: HoCoPoLitSo

Sometimes you happen upon beautiful window light for a portrait, and there is no sense even unpacking a speedlight -- just frame, and snap away. Alas, this portrait of Ellen Kennedy was not one of those times.I photographed Ellen, founder of the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society, in her home office for the Columbia Archives last week. The...

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Chris Crisman Finds Inspiration at Home

Paging through a recent issue of Fast Company, I came across a Chris Crisman photo similar to the one above. I loved the light, and got in touch with him to talk about it.As it turns out, the light wasn't even the interesting part. Read more...

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And Now, Your Lighting Case Pr0n

I am a big fan the ThinkTank Logistics Manager case. If you think Airport International Security on steroids, you won't be far off. It can swallow up a ton of lighting gear, too. Four Profoto Acute packs and 4 heads is no problem. And because it is about the size of a Tokyo apartment, you can configure it just about any way you want. Which is the point of this spot-on video and the many config pictures on the product page.And then there's that music. Chicka-chicka wow-wow…-...

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Where Even PocketWizard Dare Not Tread

And now, your Moment of Zen.Many thanks to Strobist reader Chano Reus for the heads-up on a Spanish-language blog post detailing the light-painting … of an entire city. No fewer than fifty photographers in the Asociación Fotográfica de Toledo participated in the making of this complex and highly choreographed image of Toledo, Spain. NOTE: The post...

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LumiQuest Softbox-III Gets a Big Brother

Shown at left is one of my most used light mods, the LumiQuest SoftBox-III. It has just been supersized from 8x9" to 10x14" and released as the LumiQuest SoftBox LTp. (Not to worry -- you can still get the SB III, too. Otherwise I would not be posting this until I had stocked up on SB-IIIs…)So yeah, bigger -- sure. But why 10x14 inches? There's actually...

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On Assignment: Standing Behind Their Work

Ever see a thriller movie where someone (usually Matt Damon) is talking to the bad CIA guys while they sit in their office even as Damon has them zeroed in from across the street?That'll soon be implausible if Dianna and Wayne Wilhelm any say about it. They are building (and retrofitting) government buildings with normal-looking, 1/2" glass that will...

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Are You Local to Baltimore or Washington, DC?

SECOND UPDATE: Results are here.__________UPDATE:1:49pm -- Boy, THAT was fast. There were a ton of people who wrote in to join up for the shoot day on November 2nd. I am going through the list now, prioritizing toward people who are local and most available. I will write back to everyone who left an email address (whether in or not) by the end of the...

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Are You Just Dying to Get Into a New Studio?

UPDATE: The original I.P.S. site has since been taken down because they were "overwhelmed by orders and had to take the site down." (Natch.) Oh, and there were also a "few issues with the site that needed repair," too.To their credit, they at least ran the new version through a spell check.__________I swear, I could not make this stuff up. The "Important"...

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Shoot the Bloggers: David Tejada

While in Denver late this summer I got to hang out with David Tejada, a corporate photographer from the area and frequent blogger/teacher. (Dave needs no introduction for long-time readers of this site.)So I couldn't pass up shooting him -- and using his own cool DIY beauty dish to do so. Read more...

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On Assignment: Newspaper Man

Sometimes I miss working at a newspaper. And when I say "I miss," I mean that I miss it in the rose-colored glasses sense. Because some of the most fun I have had in the last 20+ years has been while shooting for small, community newspapers. So a few months ago I started stringing for a local business monthly as a way to keep touch with what I used...

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Rosco will Help You Correct for Those Screwy Fluorescents

Time was, things were simpler and fluorescent lights only required a 30CC magenta filter in front of your film-based camera lens to bring them into line. Green your flash and you were done. Then the hippies took over and now we have CFLs pretty much everywhere. And they are not all the same color, either.Today, Joel Svendsen (who is not a professional actor but merely an ordinary person much like yourself) will walk you through how to correct for the various types of fluorescent lights.It is geared towards video but you can translate pretty easily....

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Available Light. As in, Every. Available. Light.

UPDATE: In addition to abs, this one also has legs. It has made the rounds to Jezebel(!), Billboard and Blair's blog, too. I am heading out to get some ab spray now.__________Do you live in Phoenix? Were your lights flickering for a while a few weeks back?That could have been Blair Bunting's cover shoot for Billboard Magazine. He used 7 Profoto packs, 14 light sources and just under 20 Kilowatt-seconds of power every time the shutter tripped. For a 3/4-length portrait.Oh, and the subject was naked. So I am sticking it behind the "read more" jump....

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Finn O'Hara's Time Lapse Rises From the Dead

Last November, we ran a cool time-lapse BTS from photographer Finn O'Hara of a huge-scale Toronto Maple Leafs shoot. It was up for a few hours, then had to be pulled over some confusion over who owned the rights to the video. It was replaced with a watered-down, neutered version which didn't get anyone's panties in a bunch -- or show much of anything.But the campaign has run its course and the original video is okay to run now. If you missed it, you can see it updated on the original post. It's a neat look into what goes into a 35-NHL player cattle...

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How to: Track Ambient Automatically While Using Manual Flash

Here's a cool tip that some of you might not know about. If you are using manual flash (for consistency) you can still work in a quasi-auto mode in an environment where the ambient light level may be moving around on you.It works great for using manual flash against fast-dropping light after sunset, for instance. And you can control the flash and ambient very easily from your camera. Read more...

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A Special Note for Multilingual Readers

UPDATE: Okay, it is not perfect. Not even close. But it is helping enough people so that I decided to leave it in. Use at your own risk, and I hope it helps!-DH__________I have added a machine-driven Google translate module to the site, in the drop-down menus on the right. Alas, I have no way of judging how good it is, and it obviously will not be great. And my heavy use of colloquial English will not help matters.Question is, is it serviceable or is it so bad as to be laughable? I would note that you can improve any translation by holding your...

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On Assignment: Radio Silence

Last Friday I went out just before sunset to set up and shoot a lit photo of the Wilkins-Rogers flour mill in Ellicott City, MD. It's a behemoth of a building (at least by our local industrial standards) and I was shooting a exterior for their new website.My plan was to sculpt the building on the rear 45's with flash. And to balance everything (flash,...

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JoeyL is on Ovation TV Tonight

UPDATE: The doc has aired, and Joey has posted a ton of pictures and background info on his blog. Neat stuff, and definitely worth a look.__________Just a quick heads-up to make sure to catch JoeyL's documentary tonight at 10pm on Ovation TV. I saw an early version, and it is definitely worth your time.It's easy to want to poke fun at someone who is...

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Meet the New Neighbors

The area where I live has been overrun by Halyomorpha halys, AKA stink bugs. They are invasive (from Asia) have no predators in this region and are … everywhere. They even became an issue in coaching Ben's soccer game last sunday. "If one lands on you and you have the ball or are closely defending someone, just let it crawl around on you. It won't...

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David E. Jackson's Creepy Circus Salon Shoot

So, if you were looking to shoot a campaign for a local hair salon you'd probably be running down some questions in your mind as you worked up your concept. Here are two of the questions Wisconsin-based photographer David E. Jackson asked:1. Can it be dark and creepy? Yes.2. Can it involve knives? Yes.(His answer: "Hells, yes. Sign me up!")__________This...

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At Photokina? Tweet us Your Best Lighting Finds.

Photokina is celebrating its 20th anniversary, so this year is kinda big. If you are there, please enjoy a bier along with my jealousy. And if you run across something cool in the lighting dept., shoot me a link/Twitpic/etc., on Twitter and I will do my best to retweet the good stuff out to everyone else.One thing right off the bat: California Sunbounce...

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Frio Cold Shoe: Locked and Loaded

From the Department of Better Mousetraps, here’s something pretty cool coming down the pike — A screwless, dual-lock cold shoe.It may look a little different -- because it is. Details inside. Read more...

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Small Flashes for Big Job

Well, this is just neat.What would you do if someone called to ask you to shoot your President's official portrait on a few days' notice? (I'd try to figure out which one of my buds was trying to pwn me, is what I'd do…)But that's exactly what happened to Strobist reader Karel Donk, who lives in the small South American country of Suriname. So Karel...

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Nikon SB-700 Speedlight Misses it By This Much

Nikon just announced a new speedlight designed to complement the flagship SB-900. The Nikon SB-700 Speedlight will cost $329.95, and includes some mouth-watering features.But they have excluded a key feature. Any guesses? Deets, the PR and a new camera, too. After the jump. Read more...

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Lighting in the Dark: Summer Reading

It's still technically summertime in Maryland. But the temps are down, the humidity has eased and -- best of all -- the mosquitos are history. This is prime evening porch time for Emily, my nocturnal bookworm.I walked out to visit, and to my eye the scene looked great. Unfortunately, it would look like crap in the camera. The tonal range would be far...

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Dan Winters: New Website; F/stop Interview

Travis Smith, Dan Winters' first assistant, emailed me last week to say that the website had been completely revamped. Where there were about 100 photos there are now around 500. Suffice to say this is probably more interesting than whatever you would have been working on in your cubicle for the next few minutes. It gets better. Winters also gave a...

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Westcott Does Us a Solid

Kelly Mondora started out with FJ Westcott as a temp in data entry 12 years ago. Now she's VP of the entire photography industry division. Why? Because of stuff like what you see above.Our go-to umbrella, the Westcott Double-Fold, is now crush-proof on the business end of the telescoping staff. A little backstory, a DIY workaround and a cool coupon...

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On Assignment: Armed with Preconceptions

Planning ahead is a good thing, and I always try to pre-think a job before I head out. It gives me ideas to fall back on if nothing jumps out at me at the location.But you can pre-plan things too far. So much that they blind you to better ideas and leave you banging your head against the front windshield even as you drive away from the assignment....

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Gregory Heisler Whiteboards Giuliani Time Cover

Any time Gregory Heisler gives one of his iconic photos the BTS treatment we pretty much pre-empt the regular programming and turn the joint over to him. And his photo of NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani for the 2001 Time Magazine Person of the Year cover certainly qualifies. I love this photo, and actually carry it around on my iPhone in my inspiration folder....

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Yongnuo "John Snow" ST-E2 Punches Above Its Weight

For those of you who are Canon shooters and use optical remote flash, you may want to look at Yongnuo's version of the ST-E2 transmitter. Highlights:• AA-powered (no more 2CR5s!)• Greater range -- like, a lot• Swivels 135 degrees• Thus, can control flashes behind the camera• About half the price (est. street, China)So what's the deal with the "John...

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On Assignment: Nathaniel Welch for Men's Journal

UPDATE: Adds available-light-only version of the photo, inside.__________New York based photographer Nathaniel Welch shot the above photo to illustrate a story for Men's Journal on the flaws of sunscreen. I thought it really popped, and talked to him about the lighting while he was en route to Boulder Colorado. Read more...

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Q&A - Mini-Boom

Quite a few people asked me about the small boom that was used for the key light in the photos of J.D. Roth.Here's the skinny, in seven words: Cheap, travels well; I really like it.Details, after the jump. Read more...

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A Good Face for Radio

Terminally bored and trapped in your cubicle this afternoon?Ibarionex Perello and I were finally able to mesh our schedules to do a podcast interview for The Candid Frame. It's 45 mins, and covers Strobist's early days, leaving the paper and what's next.If you are so inclined, you can find it here.-...

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Shoot the Bloggers: J.D. Roth

While I was in Portland last month I photographed J.D. Roth, the man behind the blog Get Rich Slowly, for my ongoing project on bloggers.J.D. had earlier escaped the shackles of a big wad of credit card debt, and has since created a career out of teaching others how to manage their money more sensibly. For the shoot, we did some standard headshots...

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Book a Shoot During Your Next Boring Meeting

Why endure yet another "strategic planning session" at work when you can secretly be shooting away in your studio instead?Remember to nod your head occasionally, and make eye contact with the speaker every few minutes as you appear to be inputting important notes from the meeting on your iPhone. Trust me, they don't want to be there any more than you do. They'll never notice.Oh, and for the record: I know this is a capabilities video, but that is way too damn many light sources for shooting a bendy stick figure.__________:: Studio Light Rigger...

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Available Dark

I just got back from perhaps the darkest place I have ever been. We were twenty miles form the nearest city of any size, at over 8,000 feet of elevation with no humidity on a moonless night. That's a straight shot of the night sky, above.I was on a family trip to a dude, er, guest ranch after teaching in Denver two weeks ago. So I had a better-than-average...

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Test Drive: Yongnuo YN-560

UPDATE: AVOID. IT'S A DOG.Six months in, there have been enough reports of dead or dodgy YN-560s that I cannot in good faith recommend this flash. IMO, if they would put $5 more into build quality and tweak the interface, they could have (or, could have had) a real winner. Here is a direct quote, from a retailer who sold them in the UK:"I had piles...

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On Assignment: Caleb Jones

Here's the scene: You're at the shore of a beautiful lake on a summer's evening, with live cello music set against a backdrop of twinkling fireflies. The ground, alas, is covered in goose crap. And that's where you are — on your belly — because that's where the best shooting angle is. Such was the case for our HCAC shoot of cellist Caleb Jones. Read...

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Q&A: Feathering a Soft Box

After the Monday's OA post on Betty Allison, reader Łukasz Kruk asked about feathering the small LumiQuest soft box that was used as a key light:I understand how this works with directional light (e.g., a bare speedlight) - but doesn't the softbox's flat white panel send the light in all the directions more-or-less equally, thus rendering feathering...

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On Assignment: Betty Allison

See that black blob? It's not a mistake. It's the first frame of any consequence on a quick biz portrait of Betty Allison, the woman who runs our local wholesale food market. Her job is to make sure the fresh food supply runs smoothly for the state of Maryland and surrounding areas. And we have to shoot a quick portrait of her for a local business...

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Slave Q&A: Your Questions from Last Week

After the two posts on slaves last week, there were lots of tips being shared in the comments -- and some good questions, too.Answers to the latter, after the jump. Read more...

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Understanding Optical Slaves, Pt. 2

Editor's note: There are enough questions coming in via the comments that I am prepping a slave-related Q&A for later this week. If you have a question that has not yet been asked, please get it into the comments ASAP. Thanks.__________In part one, we talked about the differences in optical slaves, and why internal slaves were usually better solutions.In...

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