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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