Winter Reads: Painting with Light

Batting second in our lineup of fireside books is Eric Curry's wonderfully comprehensive Painting with Light.

If you have ever wanted to get into light painting but did not know where to start, Curry will take you gently by the hand and lead you into the world of creating beautifully complex pictures like the ones below…
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Halloween Today, Super-Cheap Fog Machines Tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow your local pop-up Halloween stores will be deep-discounting seasonal fog machines and bottles o' fog juice. Which are, of course, lots of fun for all kinds of photos...

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Friday Night Lights Follow-Up: Don't Try This at Home. Or Away.

Remember last month's post on lens-axis fill flashing high school football? I promised to get back with you after experimenting with lighting a game with off-camera flash—way off-camera.

I spent a decent amount of time figuring out how to approach it: what flash, what beam throw, light position, dealing with the coaches, remotes, fill light, ambient balance, yada yada.
Here's what happened. Read more »

Q&A: Server Room—With Speedlights?

In the comments of last week's server room portrait, reader MeruWarrior (along with several others) asks:

I love the blow-by-blow account. Could this be achieved with just hotshoe flashes?

Short answer: Yes, sort of. But you're gonna have to be willing to "go with the flow" a little with regard to the ambient room light...Read more »

Annie-Tated Video: Leibovitz Shoots Rihanna for Vogue

Oh hey, it's time for another fully annotated Annie Leibovitz BTS video—this time featuring the lovely and talented Rihanna, shot for Vogue.

Hit the jump and follow the bouncing ball to see what we can learn with a little close examination. Annotations follow, below… Read more »

On Assignment: Gone in 86 Seconds

Two of my favorite admonitions from The Princess Bride are: "Never enter into a land war in southeast Asia," and, "Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line."

To that I can now add, "Never try to schedule a bunch of CEOs for photo shoots in August."

Because that's exactly what I was doing this past August. Which, in turn, led to this portrait being done in a grand total of 86 seconds. Read more »

Dave Honl's BTS is Just What Your Monday Morning Needs

Why can't Nikon's BTS product videos be more like this? (Just sayin'.)

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Winter Reads: Secrets of Great Portrait Photography

UPDATE: Brian Smith gave a *90-minute* talk on the book at B&H Photo in NYC. It's excellent and I have embedded the video at the bottom of the post. -DH

Looking for a good book to curl up with this winter? You're in luck. There is a stream of great choices hitting Amazon this season. I'll be highlighting a few of them as we head into the holidays.

Because, you know, you gotta put something reasonable on your wish list, right? It can't all be $30,000 Hasselblad/Ferrari limited edition cameras.

This week: Secrets of Great Portrait Photography, by Brian Smith.

Short version: Don't let the generic-sounding title put you off. This book is dynamite—chock full of valuable info and experience. Read more »

Freezing Water on the Cheap: Einstein Answers Broncolor

Remember that Broncolor-sponsored "shootout" video a little ways back, in which the high-end pack-and-heads systems competed to freeze water droplets in a concept shot?

A few of you were like, "Yeah, cool, but couldn't you also do that with an Einstein?"

Yeah, turns out you could. And who better to prove that than Jarek Wieczorkiewicz, who specializes in conceptual sculpted-liquid portraiture. His results, along with a (slightly NSFW-ish) vid, inside. Read more »

BTS: Jonathan Snyder's So-Cool-It-Must-Be-Fake Night Portrait

When this photo popped up on Gizmodo last week, several of the site's readers could not quite process how the image could have been made. I tweeted at the time that I hoped the guy who shot it was one of our old DINFOS lighting students.

As it turns out, Strobist reader and USAF SSgt. Jonathan Snyder attended the "one extra" Flash Bus day McNally and I did for the Defense Information School in 2011 at Fort Meade in Maryland.

Milphogs are taught to improvise in the field as a matter of course. And turns out, this image was made with neither a tripod nor a speedlight… Read more »

On Assignment: Shooting what You Can't See

As photographers we are always looking for tangible, photographable things to include as visual cues. But often we are called upon to make a photo that revolves around something invisible, or even intangible.

I tend to view those assignments not as limiting, but rather as assignments in which the physical limits have been removed. That's the case with this shot of Paul Capriolo, CEO of Social Growth Technologies. Read more »