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Coming in November: Annie's 'On Assignment' Book

Mix equal parts talent, ego, resources and schtick and you'll end up with A-List people shooter Annie Leibovitz. You'll remember her from the annotated Queen Elizabeth shoot video, among many other high-profile sessions.

Her upcoming book, Annie Leibovitz: At Work, looks to be a behind-the-scenes study of some of her more famous shoots, including the royal shoot referenced above.

I have always had a "love-eyeroll" thing for her, having heard too many stories from people she has worked with to avoid the latter. But I very much enjoy her work and absolutely learn something every time I get the opportunity to study her photos more closely.

Amazon has it available for pre-order at $26.40 (list is $40.00) with price protection between now and when it ships.

"On Assignment: Annie Leibovitz" for that kind of coin?

Heck yeah, I'm in.

(Thanks to Charles P. for the heads-up.)


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Art on the Wing: Bradford Fuller's Fly-In Studio

I am probably not the only one who has noticed Bradford Fuller's beautifully lit bird photos in the Strobist pool. His artful mix of flash and ambient against a 2-D background gives the photos a lyrical feel. And the red stamps added in post at the bottom make them seem as if they came from faraway lands.

If you pull back the curtains, and you'll see that Bradford is doing all of this with a Nikon D200, a single SB-800 and a piece of mat board.

That, and a lot of imagination...




The photos look as if they are paintings from another time and place -- a look Bradford achieves via his artful mix of flash and a shutter speed designed to either freeze his subject or to allow its movement to paint through the flash exposure. But his "exotic location" is in Maine in the northeastern US, right next to his house.

Using flash for bird photography is easier than you might think. The key to getting photos like this is to realize that if you can control the light and the backdrop, you can control the overall look of the final photo. Add to this the beauty of a natural subject -- and the unpredictability of the flash/blur combo -- and wonderful things can happen.

Bradford's "studio" is much more spartan than the final photos would suggest. He uses a feeder, of course. So he knows where the birds are going to be. That makes everything else an exercise in geometry.


As for the backdrop, it is simply a piece of mat board, made all the more interesting by the many rains it has endured. He places it on an easel, knowing the birds will pass in front of it on their approach to the feeder. This controls his background, and give the photos the look of a 2-d painting rather than a photo of a 3-D scene.

The light is from an SB-800, placed outside of the frame to one side. From the photo at left, he appears to be using a Cactus PT-04 remote trigger, or some other equivalent "eBay" remote.

The mixture of flash and ambient is of course controlled by how he balances the two sources -- usually choosing to lead with flash and fill with ambient. At close range (and with bare flash) his SB-800 easily puts out enough power. He then works on them in varying degrees in post processing.

Bradford says that his work, like many other things, is about 90% "showing up," as per the popular Woody Allen saying. And for him, showing up means shooting through a hole in the screen of his window.

After all, why suffer for your art if it is not required?


His photos have intrigued me to the point that I will trying some of my own this winter. I am already thinking of what the photos would look like with the birds cross-lit on the 45's from top and bottom.

The possibilities for a fly-in studio like this are endless. Given that you are only going to be shooting an a small area (defined by the location of the background) you could choose to develop as complex a lighting scheme as you wanted.

But the simplicity and beauty of Bradford's bird shots will keep me coming back to his portfolios again and again.

You can see more of his work in his Flickr set, and on his daily blog. If you try this on your own, and get a great shot, please share it with us in the Strobist Flickr pool.

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Learn SEO While You Help to Feed People

UPDATE: Someone unloaded a can of whup-ass on me in the comments, to which I responded and uploaded yesterday's inbound search-related metrics. So if you would like some background info, it is there. But let's keep it civil, if at all possible...
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If you are in the Baltimore/Washington area and are interested in learning more about Search Engine Optimization, I will be speaking on SEO as it pertains to photographers at a "Photo Nights for Charity" event on 9/17.

If you are a shooter who is on the web, SEO is key to increasing your online footprint. This is not technical stuff, either. Anyone can do it.

One hundred percent of the money raised will benefit the Maryland Food Bank, which can really use our support right now. And there is a cool photo-related perk for attendees, too. I hope you will join us.

More details here.

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Keep a Lighting File, Version 2.0

Back in Lighting 101 I wrote about the importance of keeping a lighting file. And having made the jump to the iPhone, keeping a lighting file is now way easier -- and more accessible.

Hit the jump for more on this -- and two iPhone apps that are great for location shooters.

Now that the 3G is out and I have (finally) taken the plunge, I will no longer have to put up with every other photographer I know telling me to get one of these things.

Alright, already, you guys were right -- it is made for photographers. I considered the idea of putting my portfolio on the phone, then ditched it in favor of uploading several different versions of my portfolio. That way, I can immediately choose which set of photos are best suited for the person who is about to see them.

In addition, I have merged the lighting file into something I have labeled as an "inspiration folder". It's filled with my favorite shots from guys like Dan Winters, Gregory Heisler and Peter Yang, along with a few dozen of my absolute favorites from the Strobist reader gallery.

I come across ideas that I want to save all of the time. Recently, I have started shooting them right into the iPhone with the built-in camera. This, of course, sticks them right into your camera roll along with all of the blurred photos of the cat snapped by your kids between games of JawBreaker. (Okay, I am addicted to that one, too.)

As smooth as he iPhone interface is, iTunes won't let you treat the camera roll as an accessible image folder as far as I can tell. But if you launch iPhoto (which I normally hate) while the phone is attached, it'll let you import the photos directly.

Then just export them to your designated iPhone-synching photo folder on your computer and they will pop up wherever you wish to put them.

Even more than the idea of a physical lighting file, I love the that, (a) I can snap a cool magazine page whenever I see it, and (b) I always have the photos with me. I have had an inspiration folder on my laptop for a couple of years now. Now I keep the photos with me everywhere I go. Way better.

The photo up top, BTW, is from this month's Fast Company magazine and was shot by Brent Humphreys. You may remember him as having shot the WIRED Magazine cover that was blogged with lighting diagrams.

I just spent fifteen minutes looking through his portfolio, and I think I just found some more inspiration.

Do you have an inspiration folder? Who is in it?


Photo-Friendly Apps

I spend a lot of time on email and Google reader, which lets me easily follow a couple dozen blogs very efficiently. One button and the are all queued up, ready to read.

But two other apps stand out as being particularly useful to location shooters: Weather Bug and Photocalc.

Why Weather Bug? Because, unlike the standard weather app, Weather Bug gives you the ability to see local weather radar. So you know how much time you have left before you are gonna have to bail from an outdoor shoot during transitional weather. And it is free, too.

And Photocalc, which is loaded up with mostly useless navel-gazing photo calculators to justify the $2.99 price tag, has one thing that is very useful: It grabs your location and will display the exact time of sunrise and sunset in your area.

That's a big help when you are doing the sunset backdrop thing and your subject is asking you what time to show up.

It also has a mini-spreadsheet-style guide number calculator, shown above, which will help to train your mind for faster flash power estimation.

If you want to learn more about Photocalc before foregoing 3/4 of a cup of Starbucks to buy it, check out WIRED blogger (and longtime Strobist reader) Charlie Sorrel's review.

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Time to Give Away Some PocketWizards

The votes are in, and the July winner for the PocketWizard / Strobist "Going Wireless" contest is...

Ryan Allan.





Congrats to Ryan who took a skateboarder shoot / lighting demo and turned it into art. Not that art is required to win, but it just stood out from the other entries and was the unanimous choice for July's winner. His was chosen from those videos entered before the end of July.

Several other vids stood out, and they (like all of the other videos) remain in the running for future months. Get those videos in and tagged, folks. We had a total of 24 videos entered in time for this month's judging. Them ain't bad odds for a free set of PocketWizard Plus II's.

Little hint, there are over a hundred Strobist-tagged videos in the system which could be in the running for the coming months. All you have to do is add the tag "pocketwizardstrobist". Don't strain yourself with the extra workload.

Already have some fun stuff coming in this month, too. The earlier you get your videos in, the more chances you have to win.

Full details on the PocketWizard / Strobist video contest here.

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How to Break your SB-800's Little Neck Like a Chicken

UPDATE: Thanks to Eric, in the comments, for the surgery-based workaround (see comment at 11:58 a.m. on 8/13/08). And yes, I know the vid was way too drawn out. Which is why I told you where you could skip to...



Peter Gregg spends two minutes and 40 seconds admonishing you not to do this. Then shows you exactly how he strong-armed his Nikon SB-800 speedlights so that they will now go 135 degrees to the left. (Clarification: When you are looking at the flash from the front.)

The SB-800s of normal photographers only go 90 degrees to the left.

Many CLS-ers lament the inability to turn the signal receiver window to any angle needed when shooting multi-light, off-camera. This (insane) little mod would seem to rectify that.

FAIR WARNING: I am not going to do this to any of my babies. In fact, I get a little squeamish just watching it. But if you are stupid brave enough, it might give you access to every click-stop through the 360-degree range.

Or it might get you a $320.00 paperweight.


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One-Light Real Estate Photography

While down in Florida last month, I found out that my parents' next-door neighbors (and good friends) were selling their house. I was a little bummed, as they are good folks and you hate to see them leave.

But I was even more bummed when I saw the point-and-shoot specials the real estate agent had thrown up on the "for sale" page.

We only had one working flash. But certainly we could do better than that...
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One House, One Strobe, No Problem

Okay, to be clear I did bring two SB-800's down to Florida. But I only brought two sets of AA batts, too. (Hey, trying to travel light here.) And when one set of batts gets liberated by the kids to power yet another few hours of continuous Wii playing, two SB-800's become one SB-800.

And to be fair, I am no Scott Hargis, either. He is a magician at speedlighting a house to within a hair's breadth of Architectural Digest. But one SB-800s is better than no SB-800s, so we gave it a whirl anyway.

The trick, as always when using a small light to light a big thing, is to wait for the ambient to come to you.

We wanted to do four looks, with one strobe, in one evening. Each would be an exercise in flash/ambient balance. And each would need to be shot at a different time -- but all at twilight.

First stop was the interior, seen above. For this, we needed to balance flash with two ambient sources -- one fixed and one declining.

The outside light would be constantly falling, and the lamps inside would be constant. Because the flash would be lighting a large area, we needed a decent ISO speed and a large aperture.

If memory serves, we went with ISO 400 at f/4. Don't quote me, but it was at least close to there for the reasons listed above.

So, the f/4 becomes the anchor for the exposure. Using f/4, you chimp a little on the shutter speed to see where the lamps will look best. You want them bright, but not nuclear.

Remember -- they do not have to light the room. The flash will do that. They just have to look good.

Once you get the f/stop and shutter speed, it's simply a matter of waiting for the outside ambient light to drop down to where the windows look good. At that point, we pulled everything together by throwing a flash into the ceiling to bring up the rest of the room.

We had to nuke it - either 1/2 of full power, if I remember correctly. Always gonna take a lot of power to pull this off. If full power is not enough, you have to walk the ISO up until it is. (You'd walk the shutter down to keep the ambient in balance.)

Bonus: The ceiling-bounced flash is gonna pick up some warmth to accentuate the wood in the room. With more time, we would have lit a fire in the fireplace. But honestly, those are usually just for show in Florida anyway.


Moving fast now, we went out front. The front view is very cluttered, graphically speaking. Lots of trees and bushes. So I wanted to highlight the house with some focused light. We backed the flash up behind the camera and over on the left and zoomed it to 105mm.

Half power was more than enough light to pop the house -- and just the house -- to make it stand out against a twilight sky.

Easy balance here: Pop the flash on the house at a 250th of a sec, adjust the aperture until the house looks best, open up the shutter until the background looks best. Quick and easy.

Since the house is being lit by a low, warm light source it almost looks as if the house is being lit by the sunset. When the sunset is, in fact, happening at back camera left.


Next, we went to the back of the house. The ambient is getting much darker and now those interior lights are starting to sing. Nice and bright, relatively speaking.

So now the interior lights are the focal point and the twilight afterglow is secondary, as far as the ambient is concerned. But the house exterior needs bringing up. Given enough aperture and ISO (we were at 400) this is another easy, one-speedlight job.

The flash for this photo needed to light both the house and the trees I used to frame it. So we placed it out a ways at camera right and pumped it all of the way up to full power. (That throw to the house was an easy hundred feet or so. Maybe more.)

By feathering the light (aiming it between the trees and the house -- more toward the house) we could light both objects evenly, even though the house was much further way.


Now that we were done with the three-source-balancing stuff, we could finish off down at the dock. No hurries now, as we could fix the one ambient source no matter how dark it got. For those keeping score, this is the same dock as the one on the left in the tiki hut photos, if you want to get any context.

At this point, this one-light real estate stuff should be making sense. In a fairly dark ambient environment, I stuck a voice-activated light stand (AKA my dad) up on the dock. I had him aim the SB-800 (at 1/4 power, and synched with a Pocket Wizard) high, across the top of the dock. Actually aiming it a little up into the air. This helped to feather the light and keep the left side of the dock (from the camera's perspective) from getting too hot.

Meanwhile, I am down in the water:

Start on a high shutter (1/250th) to kill the ambient. Firing the flash, chimp the various aperture settings until the dock looks good. Open up the shutter until the ambient (post-sunset sky and reflection) looks good.

This stuff is not hard. It's about a three-minute job, and two minutes out of three are spent showing my dad how to hold and aim the flash.
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So, there you have it: A quick-and-dirty twilight real estate package, to replace the point-and-shoot nightmare on the "for sale" page.

Not that we couldn't have done a nice job with a point-and-shoot, too...


GEAR USED:

(Same setup, all photos)

Nikon D3
Nikon 17-35/2.8
Nikon SB-800
Pocket Wizard Plus II

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Speedlinks, Super-Size Edition

I let the speedlinks bucket fill up a little too long since last time. But the result is that we have a whole weekend's worth of good ones, after the jump.

Hope you enjoy them, and have a fun weekend.
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Speedlinks, August 8, 2008

• Peter Yang (See also: On Assignment: Peter Yang Shoots Admiral William Fallon) has posted photos from his recent cowboy shoot for Texas Monthly. Dude can light. Several of the photos went straight to my "Inspiration" folder on the iPhone. He has posted the photos on his website. Earlier, he gave a ballsy interview about the story to Rob Haggart, at APE.

• The Flash Centre (UK-based lighting stores) has lit up a YouTube channel, where they have been uploading lots of lighting tutorials. Older stuff, and specific gear related, but worth watching if you are considering buying Elinchrom gear.

• Scott Kelby has checked in with a coupla cool gear finds lately: The Kwik Stand and a nifty li'l lighting case.

• Do you shoot with a TTL-off-camera cord? Andrew shows you how to "light from the right" with this left-handed camera grip.

• Traveling to a large, internet-blocking country to cover the Olympics? On Sports Shooter, USA Today's Bert Hanashiro shows what how he whittled down his gear bag to -- and how he packed it.

• Speaking of the Olympics, Hot Shot Shooter and Apple Stud Vincent Laforet has started blogging, and it is already a go-to site for good info. (And see what he is bringing to Beijing, here.)

• David Bergman, whom I met at Shoot! The Day in NYC, spends his time either working for SI or shooting rock stars. Not bad work if you can get it. He is starting to include some lighting how-to info on his blog, including a link to his field test article on the RadioPoppers.


Saving the best for last:

• I first saw Scott Strazzante's "Common Ground" project while serving as a judge in this year's Southern Short Course in Charlotte, where we judged it Best in Show. Now Brian and the other folks at MediaStorm have morphed it into a fantastic multimedia presentation.

Highly recommended.

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Chase Jarvis Runs a Three-Minute Mile

Please fasten your seatbelts and place seat backs in the upright position. The On Assignment Bullet Train is leaving the station in 3, 2, 1...



If you like your Chase slower -- and with homemade chill music -- catch his long-form photo career pep talk here. And definitely take a look at his website if you don't already have it set as your home page.


NOTE: If you are watching this via email subscription, you may have to click through on the headline to view the video.

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Behind the Scenes with Martin Schoeller

Are you female?

Can you bench press a Cooper Mini?

Does the volume knob your tanning machine go to eleven?

Are you a lighting geek?

If you answered yes to all of those questions, this is your lucky day.

From a documentary on women bodybuilders, a YouTube video of a shoot of Vicki Nixon by Martin Schoeller. Annotated video, after the jump.
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WONDERFUL NEWS: Martin expresses absolutely no opinion whatsoever on the War in Iraq, which keeps his photographic ideas from being invalidated in the comments. Just saying.


And, as with the Annie Shoots the Queen video, I had to pull out the red pencil on this one.






Follow the Bouncing Ball

0:03 - Tarrytown, NY, home of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow".

0:04 - 0:11 - How many books have Bill Clinton and Marilyn Manson in them? Not many.

0:43 - Bodybuilder tanning machine now available with rotisserie attachment, sold separately.

1:00 -- Note the paper over the door. Schoeller is building bounce surfaces everywhere. He shoots lights into them for fill and specular highlights.

1:02 - How do I light thee? Let me count the ways... Number one: Overhead beauty dish.

1:03 - Eight-by-ten view camera. (Compared to Greenfield-Sanders, this is a "small-chip" camera.) Also at this mark, you can see the fill/specular heads aiming (well, the one on the left, anyway) which fire off of the paper dropped behind and around the camera.

1:05 - Here's the on-axis paper surfaces. This gets a huge light source from all around the lens axis, effectively making a large soft-box-ring-light sort of thing.

1:12 - There's the key light setup for the face: A strip light on each side and a largish reflector above the eyeline.

1:19 - Put aside the light for a moment and listen. He is helping her get past her pre-planned "smile-for-the-camera" face.

1:23 - 1:35 - Bring her to a neutral expression. Explain why that is better than the big-teeth smile. Then bring some measured warmth back in.

1:38 - "I call it a smirk." I love this. A smirk is happy, confident, revealing -- and everyone knows exactly what you mean when you direct them with that word. It's a partial, no-teeth smile. I am so gonna rip this idea off.

1:42 - Biggie: Schoeller is out of eye contact with the subject, but is still keeping the vibe going with a running, three-way conversation. Don't lose the subject while you are screwing around with your lights and camera.

1:43 - Seriously, look at that light reflecting environment he has created. Ever shoot a photo in a shower stall, or small, white bathroom? You can't go wrong. He just makes that environment out of paper.

1:55 - See that quick glance? He does not look comfy on the front side of the lens. He's got a lot running through his mind right now, yet still keeps the subject interaction going.

1:59 - And there's the other fill-off-the-paper light.

2:01 - On the left side of the vid frame: There is the bottom/fill light for her face. That's a lotta lighting for a torso shot, no?

2:22 - I have people in the audience that tell me when I "flatten out," too...

2:28 - There's the best view of the light wall in the back. He can leave the bottom of the doorway, because he is blocking the light that would have come from there with his body and the camera. No need for paper there. It's a lot of gear and setup, to be sure. But the principle works down at the speedlight end of the scale, too.

2:30 - And there's your background light, gelled.

2:33 - She's not just hot -- she's ready to pass out. The modeling lights on those strips look brutal. Are they quartz lights? I can't imagine he'd do that to her. Still, you have to think she appreciates the free tanning session...

2:42 - Best look yet at the overall frontal light. Can't tell if he is using it, but that head at back-upper-center-right would continue the wrap from the overhead beauty dish. Assuming another on the left, too, if it is being used.

2:44 - Bad: "Stop slouching." Good: "Make yourself really tall, with a long neck."

2:53 to End - Dude is a human motor drive. That's pretty coordinated: Ripping off 8x10 frames without an assistant and keeping a conversation going at the same time.


____________

You can see the results of this series of photos (though not this particular subject) here. I have to say, I am not particularly into this lighting style for torso. Nor an I into the female bodybuilding thing, either.

But I love his close-up studies (hard to just call them "head shots") that follow if you keep clicking through the series. And this video gives us a behind-the-scenes look at the way Schoeller designs his light -- including at least half a dozen things I found very useful.

If you are into annotated lighting vids, the Annie/Queen one is here. And if you want the strip lights without laying out the cash, we have you covered there, too.

So, did you learn anything from this vid? Sound off in the comments.

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Strobe-On-A-Rope, Episode Three

Way back in the day, when old-skool lighting guru Jon Falk (Adventures in Location Lighting) talked about "strobe on a rope" he meant severing the flash tube and using it with an extension cord for extreme flexibility.

When I talked about it, I meant using off-camera TTL cords, which can even be stacked if needed.

When Wizwow talks about strobe on a rope, he means, uh, tying your flash to an actual piece of string. Seriously.

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On Assignment: 50 Years

When I travel with the family, I try to strike a balance between having enough gear with me to make nice photos and not feeling like a pack mule. I frequently guess wrong on the "how much to bring" question, but it usually comes down to a tight SLR bag (with an off-camera light kit) or a Canon G9.

Earlier this summer, I drove down to Florida with Susan and the kids to visit my parents. I brought along a camera, a coupla small flashes and an idea for a photo I wanted to make for the upcoming 50th anniversary of my parents' first date. It was to be a family photo, but I wanted to approach it just as seriously as if I had gotten the job from a national magazine.

Mom and dad have retired to the shores of Lake Billy Boohoo, just north of the sprawling metropolis of Umatilla, Florida. (Population: Not very many.)

No, I am not making that lake name up, either. Some kid, presumably named Billy, drowned there in the 1950's and the name stuck. The sunset above is typical of the beautiful, subtropical displays they get in the evening.

Note to self: If I ever buy lakefront property in Florida, buy on the east side for the view. I only see sunrises when I am up too late from the night before.

Personally, I could probably go twenty years without getting the idea to build a private "tiki hut." But then, I am not my parents, living on this lake, with some serious time to kill. So that's what they did.

When they told me about it last winter, I knew I wanted to photo them in the hut against a sunset. When I learned that they were coming up on the 50th anniversary of their first date (in the 8th grade) I figured this summer's trip would be a perfect time to shoot them.


If you are a long-time reader of this site, I hope the gears are already turning. Pop some nice flash against that sunset (maybe in an umbrella, warming gel, etc.) and Bob's your uncle. Problem is, Westcott double-fold shoot-thru's do not normally live on beaches. And while the light might look nice, it would not really make sense.

Motivated light is one of the keys to getting believability and logic in your lit photos. Where would the light come from? What would the light look like?

Those are questions you should be asking yourself before you design the light in your photos if you want to hold a visual narrative.

So, I decided not to light for soft, flattering and warm but rather to emulate the light that would likely be in the tiki hut had dad run some electricity out there. (Give him enough time and he probably will, along with a computer terminal to check the weather a few hundred times a day...)

So my light was a single SB-800, sporting a CTO gel and a diffusion dome, mounted in the top of the hut with a Super Clamp.

Presto: One bare tungsten light bulb, albeit much more controllable.

The first test, above, shows where the light is mounted. I decided to just flood them from overhead with some "tungsten" light, and balance the flash with the sunset. A quick pop shows that I can get a clean 5.6 at half power, which is pretty good considering the diffuser and the gel both eat a lot of light.

So that gives me my working aperture. But the sky is too bright at my sync speed to look good at this point.

How do you fix that? You wait. Or you cheat.


This shot was taken at a 500th of a second -- a full stop past the normal top sync speed. Sure, I could go with focal plane high speed sync. But that robs power from the flash, and I needed power.

So, how to sync at a 500th? No problem if you do not need the whole frame to be flashed. My SB-800 was just lighting the bottom part of the frame, so no big whup cheating the sync for this shot.

Since the "black stripe" creeps in from the bottom of my photo, I did turn the camera upside down to cheat this one. If the flash would have needed to light the whole frame, you would have seen that it was dark in the upper half, due to incorrect synching.

So now I waited for the ambient level to come to me. But while I waited, I decided to shoot the final photo at 1/320th of a second, to use that small, "no-synch" bar to seal off the flash from the bottom of my photo. (Camera right-side up for that one.)

It feathered the flash nicely, and kept the bright part from leading your eye out of the frame.


Here is the final shot, after the sunset came down to a level where 1/320th looked good against the correct (flashed) aperture. I love this photo, and will be making a nice print of it soon. (Click the pic to see it bigger.)

And given that you can vary the flash by fiddling with the aperture, and the sky by tweaking the shutter speed, I could have placed either tone anywhere I wanted. In this way, you get much more control through the shooting window than if there had been a real, continuous light bulb up in there.

Mom and dad wanted a shot from the side while I was at it, where you could see their faces better. Who am I to argue, except for the fact that I do not have an umbrella with me to diffuse the light. And besides, it is directly over their heads. Yuck.


My solution was to re-aim the light slightly, and take the diffuser off. I moved it to the front rail, aimed it a little forward and (mostly) balanced it off of the sand for a little over/under light.

It was the best I could do on short notice. But I think it looks kinda cool, considering. A little ham-fisted Photoshop session later and I was even able to clone the edges of the clamp out of the shot. (Couldn't really hide it from the side.)

It's amazing what you can do with one little flash if you wait for the ambient to come to you. Even more so the other small-flash job we did down there, which was to shoot a series of real estate photos of the luxury log cabin next door -- with one SB-800.

As McNally says, more tk...

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Will Shoot For Food

On Friday, one hundred people left The Baltimore Sun -- 60 from the newsroom alone.

One of them was yours truly, having returned early from my one-year leave to take a buyout. There was a hard staff reduction quota in effect, and given the way the blog has gone I thought it would be best if I counted toward it when they started lopping off heads...

Over the next few months I will be working hard to shape my second career as a photographer. I have shot as a staffer for newspapers for twenty years, which gives me a wonderful breadth of experience. But in many ways, I am dating again after having been married for two decades.

I know that many people who read this site are amateurs who are at least toying with the idea of going pro in one way or another. I also know that there are PJ readers who either are -- or will be -- facing hard cuts in the newsroom. In that sense, we now have much in common.

So I will be going through the growth process fishbowl-style, in the hopes that the shared experience might be helpful to those of you who are toying with the idea of going pro and wondering how to approach it.

Fortunately, the headline is, for me, somewhat tongue-in-cheek. I am not worried about whether or not I'll have a job. The website -- many thanks to all of you -- offers some breathing room on the financial side of things. But I have always been a photographer, and that is what I want to continue to be.

The question is, what now? Who I will be shooting for? What will I be shooting?

Who knows. I'll be curious to see where the combination of shooting and writing about it takes me.

Newspapers are facing hard times these days. Printing news on dead trees is tough row to hoe in 2008. From here, survival wll be determined by how fast -- and how well -- papers can migrate their readership to the web.

And as for the people who left The Sun this week, rest assured that that they did not go quietly into the night:



Best of luck to all of my friends and colleagues who are entering the next phase of their lives. Please write when you find work.

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Light Fare From Martin Prihoda

A little while back I did some surveying on this site. Among other things, the survey told me that the readership of Strobist skewed male. Overwhelmingly, pathetically, ninety-four-percentingly male.

So I am thinking today that roughly six percent of you will react to Hamish's shotgunned beer burp with an "Ewww, gross," while about 94 percent of you will hold up signs with ratings from one to ten.

Vancouver-based shooter Martin Prihoda is back, squeezing a little end-of-day fun out of some lighting gear rental, and walking through the process of shooting a guy in a monkey suit against a sunset.

And when we say "monkey suit" we are not talking about a tuxedo.

(Thanks, Martin!)
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Related, more serious lighting video:

:: Martin Prihoda Shoots Delerium ::

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Mount Your Mods with Speed Straps

Having spent much of my 20 years as a newspaper shooter with sticky-velcro-covered flashes, I have recently become a big fan of velcro speed straps for mounting all of my light mods to small flashes.

Hit the jump for why you want 'em, where to get 'em, and how to make 'em -- plus a whole mess of archive DIY links.
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At one point in the 1980's, I think my go-to SB-24 had so much velcro stuck to it that it looked like a burnt Chia Pet. The problem with the stick-on velcro is if when it wears out, it doesn't hold worth a crap. And it is a pain in the butt to unpeel and swap. To that, add the fact that you have a limited amount of surface area unless you want your flash to look like mine did.

With all of today's lighting mod options, you really want to have some kind of velcro mounting system on your flash. And the speed strap route is the way to go -- you can easily remove them and/or swap out for a new one if the velcro goes. Plus you get a whole lot more mounting real estate, compared to the typical amount of stuck-on velcro.

Truth be told, these little guys are not expensive. They are less than $10, so many of you may well choose to go store-bought in this instance. You can get them from LumiQuest ($6.95 - smaller size) or from HonlPhoto ($9.95 - bigger, w/more surface area and grip).

They are the basis for most light mods mounting systems, including those from LumiQuest and HonlPhoto. Quest Couch from LumiQuest notes that, for larger light mods, you can use two straps (strobe - strap - light mod - second strap on top) for a super strong hold.

If you just use one or two strobes, it probably makes sense to tap the Visa card. But if you are broke have a whole case of strobes and would be buying straps by the half dozen, you might want to consider making them. They are cheap and easy, especially of you wait until the next time your bike inner tube goes flat.


To make them, you'll be using the inner tube as a base. It's cheap, holds well and is nice and wide.

You can make a strap in less than five minutes, using the inner tube and some sticky velcro (available at craft and hardware stores.)


1. Cut your tube into sections long enough to fully wrap around the head of your flash with a full overlap on the wide dimension. Go a little long, then you can cut it for an exact fit when you are done.

2. Cut a length-wise strip from the tube, making a flat piece of rubber about an inch-and-a-half wide. There will probably be injection mold lines along the tube to make for easy, straight cuts. Mountain (and trail) tubes work better than the smaller road bike tubes. If you use the portion of the tube that would come in contact with the ground (if it were a tire) you'll avoid the curve of the rubber that would otherwise make it harder to fit.

3. Very important: Wash the rubber thoroughly with soap and water, and dry it well. It will have grime on it, and a powder residue on the inside -- both of which will cause problems if it is not clean and dry.

4. Totally cover the inside of the rubber section with two long strips of the "loops" part of the velcro. Trim along the edges to fit if necessary.

5. Cover the other side of the tube (formerly the outside) with "hooks" velcro at one end, to a length equal to the width of your flash head.

6. Wrap the strap around your flash, overlapping on the long end, and trim to length if necessary.


That's all there is to it.


Here's a view of the reverse side, which should make everything self explanatory. It's very important to make sure the tube section is totally clean and dry, or your sticky velco won't hold.

Normally, when I run a DIY post I get a few condescending comments from the deep-walleted DIY haters, which serve to offset the comments I get from the starving artists when I mention, say, Profotos. So, as long as they are gonna be pissed off anyway, here are lots more DIY posts dusted off from the archives:
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Selected DIY Posts

:: DIY Cardboard Snoots and Gobos ::
:: DIY Tupperware Diffuser ::
:: DIY Household Sync Cord Extension ::
:: $10 Macro Studio Box ::
:: Two-Cent Micro Studio ::
:: HD RIng Flash Adapter ::
:: $8 Flat-Fold Ring Light ::
:: Coffee Can Point-and-Shoot Ring Flash ::
:: Engineer Lamp Light Stand ::
:: Ball Bungee Softbox/Speedlight Mount ::
:: PVC Speedlight Aqua Housing ::
:: OMG DIY Off-Camera TTL Cord ::
:: DIY Beauty Dish ::
:: DIY Cardboard Grid Spots ::
:: DIY Macro Strip Lights ::

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DVDs Back in Stock

If you missed out on the Strobist Lighting Seminar DVD set, the second printing is in. All backorders have now been shipped, and remaining DVDs are available here.

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Nikon SB-900 Foot: Size 16 EEEE

The new Nikon SB-900 Speedlights are dropping into stock pretty much everywhere, albeit on allocation.

But before you buy, you might want to check this thread for a running update on what the flash shoes the newly designed foot will -- and won't -- fit. Please feel free to add to this list if you find out anything first hand.

And remember that they do ship with an AS-21 foot, which can be swapped out if your system is 1/4 x 20-based. But mind that plastic thread if you are swapping out frequently.


RELATED:

:: SB-900 Review ::

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Speedlights, South Africa Style

South African photographer (and Strobist reader) Robert Miller, whom you may also know as "Panascape" on Flickr, has been showing up in PIX African Photo Journal so often he should be paying them rent.

Back in the March edition, Miller wrote and photographed a story entitled, "Welcome to Strobist." He got four pages for his story and another four pages about his photography in the form of a monolith/Q&A piece. Not a bad month.

Then he pops up in my mailbox today with a stitched, HDR panorama with embedded lit portrait on the current, triple fold-out cover -- which is basically a PIX magazine geargasm to the new Nikon D700. (It wraps around to the back cover, too. Craziness.)

We'd never do the ad / cover / fold-out ad thing like that in the States. But seeing that kind of stuff is one of the reasons I love reading foreign photo mags. Even as an old Chinese Wall newspaper guy, I have to admit it is pretty friggin' cool for PIX to announce a long-awaited camera like that.

Links and a diagram, after the jump.


Top Photo: How it Was Lit

Here's the setup for the top photo. Two umbrellas and a ring light. Click the diagram to read more info in Robert's comment stream, where he talks about how he built the flash and ambient ratio for the shot.
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As far as my photo, which pretty much looks like a little turd compared to Robert's stuff, I stuck an SB-800 at camera left and exposed for the flash at about 1 stop above the ambient. Location: My mail box.

For more info (and a diagram) on Robert's tri-fold, high-dynamic-range panorama cover shot, check out his Flickr page for the photo.

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Hands-On Review: Nikon SB-900 Speedlight

I got a chance to play with a new Nikon SB-900 speedlight over the last few days and I gotta say, it's a pretty sweet flash. Long story short: Nikon has just extended their lead in the flash department.

The only drawback I can see is the "perfectly good" status of the current SB-800. And that $500 price tag, of course.

Should you get one? Swap out all of your SB-800s? Be on the lookout for cheap, used SB-800s and add more?

Hit the jump for the Full Monty review, and a few things you might want to consider.
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First impression: It is much bigger than the SB-800. Didn't really seem any heavier, but definitely takes up more space. This is a consideration for a couple of reasons. One, cubic inches matter when on the road. Not so much on a single flash basis, but if you are packing half a dozen SB-900s, you could probably cram seven SB-800's in the same space.

Also, the head is a totally new design and size. This means that your current light modifiers may or may not fit the SB-900, depending on their size and/or mounting flexibility.


So here's that big ol' honker of a head. First glance, it looks to be pretty much the biggest speedlight head going, save maybe the Vivitar 285 HV. It looks bigger than an old SB-26, and certainly bigger than an SB-24.

If you can get past the size, they have done some really cool things with the extra space. The 200mm zoom rocks. Not because I am gonna direct flash with my 70-200 racked out. But because it will concentrate the beam, of light into a smaller area when used off-camera.

Why would you care? Because it effectively gives you a more powerful flash when large swaths of light are not needed. Like doing a hard-light, multi-flash portrait outdoors, for example. You usually would not want to light their feet anyway.

Rather than eat up that needless beam angle with a snoot or grid, you can zoom it in, and get some extra f-stop with the more concentrated beam. This translates into more control over the ambient light level (you can get a darker working f-stop at 1/250th, for example) for more choices in your ambient tones.

Of course, you can get a Better Beamer to stick on just about any flash to do this, but it is not built-in.

The Big Head Advantages do not stop there. It's the most sophisticated refractor/reflector system I have ever seen on a flash. They actually modulate the tube with respect to both the front fresnel and the polished, rear reflector. This gives you the ability to shape the internal qualities of the beam, too.

You can choose a normal (slightly concentrated) pattern, an even more concentrated pattern (again, yet more energy to the center for situations described above) or a near-perfectly even light distribution depending on your lighting needs.

That's a real breakthrough in speedlight design, and brings to a (relatively) small package more of the capabilities of an interchangeable-reflector studio strobe. Big props to Nikon for that.


Other advantages that argue for switching are the new CLS interface. You'll get back the time you spend wading through the CLS menus on your master flash. This would not be a reason to swap out, say, four flashes. But it might be good reason to get one to use as a master.

It's basically a manual switch and a wheel dial -- a very fast an intuitive combo for switching setting in very little time. It took a little digging to find the SU-4 mode, which we like because it activates an awesome built-in slave, but I can confirm it is included and does work it's manual-power slaved-flash magic.

I actually used that mode to sync all of the flashes used to make the shots in this post. More on that later.


Big on the advantage list: Recycle time absolutely rocks at 2 seconds with no accessory battery back. Better circuitry uses the same power source -- with much faster recycling. This is a dream with Ni-MH batts, and the fifth-wheel option is no longer needed for fast shooting. For some, this will warrant swapping out their main, on-camera flash.

The accessory SD-9 battery pack walks that already fast recycle time down to about a second at full power. And it can hobble along on just four extra batts if needed, according to the Nikon guys I spoke with.

Interesting point: The power plug on the SD-9 has two extra nubs which means it will not fit other flashes. But the design looks as if the current SD-8-type plug may fit the SB-900. This is important if you are going to be migrating other existing battery packs to the SB-900.


Thankfully, the PC jack is still there. Big ups to Nikon for including the old-school synching, in addition to the fancy-pants CLS stuff.

One other noteworthy change is that the SB-900 swings both ways -- you can go reverse 180 in either direction. This is especially useful, in that whichever way you mount a remote flash you can have the receiving window facing the master light source.

Before, there were situations in which you had to cheat that angle and lose wireless range as a result. Every flash should have this feature, IMO.


In Sync:

1. It comes with a gel holder, which totally rocks. No more tape and/or velcro. And the dome diffuser fits right over the gel holder, allowing both to be used at once. The bar-coded Nikon gel thing is a little gimmicky -- it sets your camera's WB to the "appropriate" setting. The special Nikon gels could easily be duped with a template and some liquid paper. You will not need to re-up with the official Nikon gels ($$) if you do not want to.

2. Goofy, but cool: At full power, the discharge sounds like a blaster from Star Wars ("pew, pew, pew"). Recycling is almost silent. And oh-so-fast.

3. My seven year-old boy loved the battery compartment: Individual cylindrical battery holes -- like loading a revolver.

4. Thermal shut-down protection -- which can be disabled if you are completely stupid. Cool detail: A "thermometer" in the rear display shows you if you are starting to red-line it.


Out of Sync:

1. Five. Hundred. Dollars.

2. The hot shoe is a new, thicker size that will not fit many current accessory shoes. McNally dropped one out of a Justin Clamp, which is a staple lighting tool. (The Nikon guys mentioned that about 5 times this weekend, Joe. They might be sending the black helicopters after you shortly...)

3. The new AS-21 foot must be used because of the new shoe size. Which would be fine, except for that the metal female 1/4 x 20 insert in the AS-19 has been replaced by mere molded plastic in the AS-21. This will be a problem for people who repeatedly use the AS-21 on an umbrella swivel. That's a design whiff that should not have happened. (More on that here.)



Decision Time

So, that to do?

My biggest problem is, I absolutely love the SB-800s. IMO, many of the added features are great. But I do not think I can justify switching everything out wholesale. Buying just one might be a very good idea -- I can see many instances when those extra features would make for a more useful single flash.

My other problem: They may well choose to discontinue the SB-800, which would be a crying shame. It's either that or create a whole new production line for the SB-900. The SB-800 is small, powerful and does everything. Many will continue to prefer it to the SB-900, given price difference and the fact that the core functionality is the same. Seriously, what's so wrong with this current flash?

But of course, that's how my grandmother felt about her rotary-dial ATT phone, too. I am officially old now.

I know one thing -- if they do drop the SB-800, the '900 is gonna sell a crapload of SB-600 flashes. Thats a huge price gap which many amateurs will not be able to rationalize. And the smart move for new CLS'ers might be one '900 and a few '600's. Who knows.

The SB-900s are already pre-selling like crazy. So Nikon is clearly doing something right. My hope: SB-800s go out of vogue with the doctors, dentists, and rich soccer moms and they all wind up in the used dept and on Ebay for $200 a pop.

'Cause if that happened, I'd pimp out my lighting bag like McNally's. (Only, he'd have 72 SB-900s by then...)


Lighting These Photos

For the top photo (shown again here) I set the subject flashes on SU-4 slave mode in manual, at 1/128th power. Since they were only a few inches away from each other this would be my limiting factor, even dialed down to 1/128th. A quick pop-and-chimp, and I was adjusted to the aperture that gave me a good exposure from each other's close-in light.

I shot these with a new Nikon D700, BTW. We were absolutely swimming in new toys this weekend at Shoot! The Day in NYC. Awesome little camera, that '700. D3 guts in a D300 body. Expect iPhone 3G-esque wait times for a while if you want one.

Anyway, once I got the best shooting aperture for the flash-to-flash light from the subject flashes, I manually adjusted the other lights to look good at the chosen aperture, which I believe was f/16. I shot at a 250th, to nuke the ambient away. I put the flashes on a shiny black table and shot low, to maximize the reflection.


Other lights were:


• An SB-800 aimed at the background from under the table, using the frosted diffuser for an even gradient.

• Two SB-800's as rim lights, which edge-lights all of the shiny black surfaces.

• An on-camera flash in a Ray Flash adapter, which gave me the specular highlights on the front surfaces.


You Tell Me

Nikon shooters: Are you gonna get one? Are you gonna swap out your SB-800s? Why? Why not?

I'm on the fence, and looking for feedback...

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One-Light Night Landscape

New in the Strobist Reader Gallery is Jonathan Boeke's night shot of a stand of trees.

It's done with multiple pops, during a time exposure. And it is easier than you might think. Keep reading for a few tips on creating shot like this, next time you are alone in the woods at night...

For this shot, Jonathan walked to a spot behind each tree and fired a Nikon SB-600 with a green gel back at the camera while the shutter was open during a time exposure. (You can click on the pic for the comment thread, and his explanation.)

If you have a camera that supports multiple exposure, you can eliminate a lot of noise (and logistical problems) from the frame by shooting the frame as a sequence of higher-shutter speed multi-exposure shots.

But you'd need a shutter cord and a third remote (or a helper and a tripod) to do that. You can see how to do the channel-hopping relay mode here.

If you wanna go multi exposure, you can do it with no remotes at all. Just open that shutter and start running. I've pulled together a few ideas to help your photo, and save some work in post production.
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• Wear dark clothing. Nice to have a dark hoodie, too, just in case you do not have one of those face-hiding ninja masks lying around.


• Snoot the flash just a teensy bit. You still want a nice, wide beam, so just do a half-inch or so. Black gaffer's tape works great. But that little ridge will help avoid blowback in the exposure, which can light you up if you have limbs visible to the camera.


• Mount a very dim light source close to the vertical axis of the lens at the camera. Maybe an LED flashlight, aimed up, mounted to the hot shoe. This will let you know when the tree is hiding you (and your flash) from the camera very precisely as you walk around in the background.


• Consider varying your distance from behind the trees as you pop each flash shot. You can throw light a long distance, and light up big chunks of your background that way. Be sure to crank up the power some (adjust with a few test shots) to account for the increased flash-to-blocking-tree distance. And multiple pops could be your friend here, too.


• If you aim the flash up a little (or a lot) you'll light the leaves in the trees better. Especially in the background, where more height from the trees will be visible to catch the light. This will also avoid the hot spot being visible at your feet.


• Remember that the light behind the far trees acts as a nice rim for the nearer trees, so take that light-to-subject distance into account when planning how far back to get behind the rear light pops. (Remember L102 Position -- evenness increases with distance.)


• Watch your ambient lights, to keep from tracking. Gaffer tape everything that would give off light while you are busy walking around in your frame. Your flash ready light and info panel backlight need to go dark. Ditto anything else that might be glowing or blinking, like a Pocket Wizard status LED.
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If you are gonna try this on your own, tag your shot "strobist" and "backlitforest" (the latter is all one word) so we can see all of them at once by clicking here. I am thinking of trying one myself, and it might be fun to revisit in a future post.

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Speedlinks, July 18, 2008

I'm up in NYC, gearing up for tomorrow's lighting seminar and Sunday's "Shoot! The Day" classes. But there's still time for a fresh batch of speedlinks!


• Thomas Graves has an excellent real-world review of the RadioPoppers at Light-Shoot-Print.

• Remember Joey Lawrence? He's been in Moldova, shooting cats the King of the Gypsies and has a video which includes the lighting setup. That kid is something. Eighteen frickin' years old and never home.

(Warning: The audio is NSFW, and the video is NSF cat lovers...)

• My friend Kevin Coloton is doing foot race finishes with a quad-speedlight setup, shooting motor sequences on 1/16th power. Knowing some of you are into this, I wanted to point you to his team's blog post -- complete with pix, a diagram and video.

• Chris Claborne has posted a review of the brand new AlienBees CyberSyncs in the Strobist Flickr threads.

• Back in the late 70's and early 80's I spent a lot of times in some, uh, pretty creative darkrooms. And I saw more than one photographer printing on grass. But never like this...

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Rembrandt Lighting? Um, No.

Phoenix-based shooter Blair Bunting must have been asleep the day they taught the classic portrait lighting styles in school. Either that, or he skipped right past "Rembrandt" and went straight to "Badass."

Bunting is part of a movement of a high-def lighting style that is especially well-suited to subjects like athletes, rock musicians, MMA fighters, assassins, orcs, etc.

Keep reading for full lighting diagrams (hint: lots of sources) and some Q&A on Bunting's techniques and lighting philosophy.
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The first thing to consider when sculpting light like this is to leave some shadow. The light's edge is defined by shadow, which is what creates the form. The other thing to remember is that the intensity of the surface of the subject also is revealed by specular highlights. And each light source is going to create a specular of some kind.

Placing lights where you want them -- and keeping them away from where you do not -- is the balance you need to strike to make this kind of photo.

To get an idea of what it took to create this look for a portrait of Arizona State running back Keegan Herring, check out the top-view and front-view lighting diagrams, below.


Top View



Looking at this angle, you can see that Herring is lit from just about everywhere except the lens axis. This is what makes the lights define him in such a cool way. Again, you have to leave shadow to get form.

But each of those lights his the subject on a glancing blow, with respect to the lens axis, and that is what creates the cool highlights.

Lotta lights? Yeah. It's pretty much walking into a camera store and asking for two of everything they have. But it is a look. And it's a look that will make a college sports information department do the Happy Dance and call you back year after year. Just like they do for Bunting.


Front View


To look at the top view, you'd think Herring is inside of a cylinder of light, but that does not take into account the varying heights of the light sources, which in this way creates yet more sculpting with shadows.

From this angle, you should really start to see the light coming together.

Height-wise, the strips and small square boxes are doing the heavy lifting, lighting the body and face. But it is the beauty dish (don't call it that in front of Herring) grids and reflector that create the edge everywhere.

"Yeah, yeah," you say. "It's really all done in post. Ten minutes of shooting and two days of Photoshop."


Yeah, well, maybe not so much as you think. In fact, Blair was kind enough to release a raw photo, seen at left, which shows you just how close he gets with light.

From there, it's pretty quick and basic in Photoshop. It always helps to start with the best file possible. And the closer you can get in the camera, they better. That said, Bunting notes that he tends to think of light as expression, rather than as a process. He said he uses light to create opinion and emotion.

He gets the "what light is best?" question a lot, to which he responds:

"Buy what you can afford. The reasoning behind my answer is that I am of firm belief that practice is more significant than any brand name. I have been fortunate enough to use numerous different brands of lights, hot and cold, small and large."

As for tools vs. vision, he says, "I fall into a rhythm where my tools give way to my vision and my eye produces what my mind wants to see. Be it Profotos, Alien Bees, or SB-800's, one can create with all of these."

He particularly worries for the beginning photographer who finds his or her approach inferior to a photographer using more expensive lights. He feels that mindset is a dangerous mental handicap, and wishes it on no one.

Where does he get his inspiration? You might be surprised:

"Often times I find that the music I listen to can determine my lighting approach more than anything else. With my eyes closed, a glass of wine, and a powerful score (or any song that drives you within for that matter) I sit and think of light not as this invisible substance, but a tangible entity."

He goes on:

"Mentally I observe it like wind and smoke and try to imagine how it should form my subject. This is particularly practical when shooting cars as many people hit a road block with the reflectivity of metal."

Bunting also thinks of light as water, using analogies of hard vs. soft, narrow vs. wide beams and hot vs. cold. It's an organic way of describing light that I had never considered, but it has me thinking.

He advises photographers to consider, and learn, the power of a single light source. Know what a single, silver umbrella can do for your subject, and to respect light.

Lest this all get too philosophical, I hit him up with some specific questions:



Q and A

1. The lighting design for the football player is killer. How did you evolve this particular lighting style? Were you influenced by video games? Movies? Other shooters?

Oddly enough, this one was music and visualizing for endless hours. I lived with my Ipod in and would skip lunches to plan (this shoot had 10 shots to be done in 2 hours). For this one in particular I listened to everything from the Gladiator theme (“The Battle” by Hans Zimmer) to death metal.

The idea was to make the scariest person imaginable. So the lighting was based off of discomfort, a lot of lights, a lot of speculars, a lot of chaos. The idea of the lighting came from the countless movies where you can barely see the person, rather an outline; in this case I wanted it carried a bit further with his eyes.


2. Do you find you get hired to do a certain look? Do you feel you still have creative freedom?

I have been especially fortunate in this area. It is often that I get booked by clients that have someone of a concept and want my style to carry it, which in turn lends a great deal of creative freedom my way. Other times I will be booked by a client that maybe wants a less moody image, but still wants my view brought into the shot, either way the freedom is there.

The downside is sometimes all I want to do is think about lighting and would give anything for a set in stone storyboard where I came in, followed directions, lit, shot and went home.


3. That's, um, a lot of light sources. Typically a shooter would not start out with an arsenal like that. What kind of approach were you using when you had fewer lights?

I am a huge fan of shooting one source, and often have usually with one silver umbrella. Another way I saw lighting (when using fewer sources) was making sure that the eye saw a comfortable single direction in the photo, and from there countering that source with a fill to keep the contrast ratio down.


4. Given that many watt-second deployed against a single player, how do you adapt that look to larger subjects -- say, an offensive line?

This is sometimes a task, in all honesty. The football player need a lot of light since the shot was done with a digital medium format system, which requires more than a 35mm.

I will usually try and bring larger packs (preference going to the Profoto D4 4800). However, there are just times when there are not enough lights and the budget isn’t open enough to bring in 20 or 30 heads. (DH note: 20 or 30?!?) In this case I improvise and try to visualize the scene with a single light source and take small steps building off that to a minimalist approach.

5. Is heavy post production an important part of this look? If so, how close do you get with the light and how much needs to be done in post?

In all reality I am not that savvy with Photoshop. Because of this lighting has to be perfect. I have seen guys take snapshots of cars and make them look like a studio shot. I respect this approach, but it’s just not mine and is dangerous if an AD is on set and wants to visualize a shot for placement. Much of the work I do looks extremely close to what is seen in the LCD on set with added contrast, polishing and sharpening. I have included the jpeg for the football player shot for reference as a file that has not seen Photoshop.
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Blair posted a brief video vignette from other parts of this same shoot to YouTube:



Thanks much to Blair for giving us an inside look at both his lighting techniques and philosophy. To see more of Blair's work -- or to hire him -- visit his website.

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Orbis Ring Flash Adapter Details

An email from Enlight Photo dropped into my box tonight with some fresh detail on the upcoming Orbis Ring Flash adapter. It's similar in function (if not design) to the Ray Flash adapter, with some key differences:

• The flash is mounted off-camera, similar to many of the DIY designs we have seen.

• From the light source reflections in some of the test shots on the updated website, it appears to be a little softer (bigger) light source than the Ray Flash.

• Price is said to be "under $200".

• No word on efficiency, relative to direct flash. (Ray Flash is minus just one stop compared to direct flash.)


More info, email list sign up, pre-sale info, etc. -- here.

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Win a Free Set of PocketWizards

UPDATE: I asked for a little clarification on the means of off-camera flash trigger allowed for the contest and got the following answer: ANYTHING. That means, PW's, Ebay remotes, sync cords (ironically), Nikon CLS, Canon eTTL, voice-activated test-button-pusher during a time exposure -- ANYTHING.