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 to be shot working at a computer.

Had a chance to meet and have lunch with John in Seattle last week, where he showed me two of his city's great attractions -- fresh seafood and The Gum Wall.

One was yummy. The other, um, not so much.

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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 cord (or generic equivalents of either) and a stereo miniplug. (And just one $10.50 multi-flash cord will make two "cubes".)

(Photo: azreloaded)

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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.
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But First, a Brief Commercial Message

No, not one of those pre-roll video things Vanity Fair forces you to sit through before you watch an Annie BTS. No, this commercial was shot by our own Ken Brown, for the Blackhawk (Car) Museum near San Francisco. Ken's the guy that did that amazing gull wing pic a ways back:



Pretty neat concept -- and shot on a 5D Mk II.


And Now, the Finalists

Add an extra "n" to lighting and things start to get even more interesting. Reader Carl Williams not only had the nerve to risk getting fried, but knew when to say when on the lighting.

Dark car, dark sky -- it's a low key pic, left that way. I might have popped a little light on the ground behind the car (a ways back) to separate the tires and sides a little.

But when the weather gets like this, I am probably at home hiding in the basement anyway. So what do I know.


This one, by M. W. Scott, is just delicious. It's an antique Polish scooter, with both paint and lighting to die for. Really nice composition, and the light details the bike's shape and texture beautifully.

One SB-80, through a shower curtain, proving that a modicum of creativity will let you do a lot with a little.


Saw a few of these, and BookGuy's was my favorite. It's understated, he let the car lights handle the road, nice sharp face -- a lot going on in a graphically arresting photo.

There are actually two light sources hitting the face. Two Sto-Fen'd SB-600's -- one on the far left dash and another in the passenger's seat. And those dual light sources give it a nice, 3-D shape.


Alex Pounds left significant areas of this photo unlit -- which to me makes the photo from a lighting perspective. Little snoot above the hands to augment the ambient window light coming from camera right, and even a flash under the sheets to paint a little detail from there.

I might have kissed a little more up into the face, but that could also have killed the draw of her overall body attitude, too. Wouldn't know till I saw it.

But in the end, this photo was not about lighting technique. It let the interpretation of the theme shine instead. Very nice, Alex.

(As an aside, you sure as heck won't catch me necked under a sheet with a Yongnuo YN460. After seeing this video, I would not put my nuggies anywhere near one of those demon-possessed things.)


This one is subtle, and I like it.

R.J. Bledsoe used a ground-mounted Vivitar 285 behind the biker to ape a little low, late light. This was essentially a dynamic landscape, but it fit the theme in its own way and stove out in the bunch.

I like that R. J. left the tones low and did not let the light call attention to itself. It is so easy to keep going and make the photo about the light, but adding more lighting pizzazz is not always the path to a better photo.


A little less subtle is this surfer photo by Haristobald, whom you may remember from this very cool swimming pool video.

The flash is actually on the board, in several layers of plastic bags. It made for a beautiful image when that light mixed with the sunset and waves. Please take a moment to check out his set from the shoot, in which he includes a setup shot.


Even less subtle is this shot by Darren Chang, who details cars in Malaysia. He shot two photos -- one with the hood down and one hood up -- and erased the former to the latter using layers in Photoshop.

I tried the same thing with my Scion XA and it's power source, but the two chipmunks under the hood did not photograph so well. (They are pretty dark and greased up by now.)

Seriously, how much money could you make shooting cars for hot rodders and tuners this way?

My 8-year-old described it in one word: Want.


And the Winner Is . . .

I loved every single one of these finalists -- beautiful photos, all. But only one walks home with the starving student light kit, a Speedlight Prokit 6 Reflector kit, the Strobist Gel/LumiQuest FXtra combo kit, a set of Strobist DVDs, the Trade Secret cards.

There was one photo that I kept going back to: This one.

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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 away . . .]

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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 are you going to create the personal intersection between subject and photographer that allows for even the possibility of a great photo to happen? How can you coax a moment of visual candor out of them?

That, for me, is the hard part.





So when I see a video of a photographer whom I really respect talking holistically about what goes into his or her photography, I am gonna watch it. Repeatedly. Even more so when the photographer in question is Dan Winters, my favorite photographer working today.

This video really got me thinking on several levels. But I would be curious to know how it caused you to think about your approach, too. So I want to open the comments up to that.

This interview is from FLYP, a wonderfully diverse multimedia magazine, of which you can see more here. And if you are not familiar with Dan Winters, his website is here.

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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" ...
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As if continually bouncing from one advertising campaign to the next weren't enough, Seattle photographer Chase Jarvis and his folks also have been hard at work creating the sweetest iPhone app yet for photographers.

I have been watching that sneaky little bast guy cranking out all of those cool, artsy photos with his phone and wondering why the hell my phone wouldn't make photos like that. Turns out, he was playing with a juiced ball. (Well, plus he is a better photographer than I am.)

I got to play with it in Seattle this last weekend and it rocks. Long story short, it gives you creative control over your iPhone photos like never before, with lots of stackable filters that you can apply to your images right in the phone.

As if that is not enough, there is also instant, one-button sharing of your images with all of the popular social media platforms -- and a dedicated, real-time site which showcases a stream of all of the tweaked images as they swim up into the web.

Not a bad deal for three clams.

He's even created an art photography book just to show what is possible with an iPhone, the right software and way too many copies of the creativity gene.

My first reaction: Why didn't I think of that?

Congrats to Chase. Best Camera is a fantastic idea, beautifully executed. Full info at Chase's blog.

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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, for instance, the original of which is absolutely perfect despite the crappy video screen grab version seen above.

What if I told you this was done on an 8x10 view camera -- using just four small quartz lights -- and no Photoshop, either.

Hit the jump to watch it happen via two, ten-minute videos.
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Today: A Full, Dean Collins Shoot

I have said before and I will say again that there is no better source for learning how to create sophisticated light than by studying work of Dean Collins. Through the wide range of shoots on his Best of Dean Collins DVDs, he shows you example after example of how seemingly impossible lighting challenges can be broken down into a series of small, solvable problems.

Are you ever gonna be asked to shoot a speeding motorcycle with an 8x10 view camera without Photoshop? Not likely.

But the point is, this is just another problem that can be solved with a thorough understanding of the principles of lighting. And if you understand those principles, you can solve -- or reverse engineer -- just about anything you come across, with ease.

So, how do you perfectly pan a fast-moving bike with an eight-by-frickin'-ten view camera?

Simple: You don't, because the bike is not moving. In fact, the bike is the only thing in the frame that is staying completely still.

The beauty of watching problem-solving at high-end levels is that your challenges start to become ridiculously easy by comparison. Which is one reason I recommend his educational materials so strongly.

And today, a big 'thank you' to the folks at Software Cinema for porting one of the twenty shoots on the 'best of' DVDs to YouTube in its entirety.

Its 20 minutes long, and shows how Collins handles such problems as creating the illusion of speed where none exists, getting highlights on the dull, black tires and creating absolutely perfect specular highlights before Photoshop.

And, IMO, the best things about these types of shoots is not that they teach you how to solve a specific set of problems. It is that they make you realize that you can learn to light anything.

So, without further yakkin':





Part 2:




You can see more -- including another video of a more down-to-earth shoot, at Software Cinema: The Best of Dean Collins on Lighting.

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