Photography Blog DigitalPixels.net

Terry Watson shows his technique for doing Smoke Photography

Taking photos and lighting in hotel rooms :

Camera flashes produce intrusive bursts of light that disturb or dazzle. We present a prototype camera and flash that uses infra-red and ultra-violet light mostly outside the visible range to capture pictures in low-light conditions. This “dark” flash is at least two orders of magnitude dimmer than conventional flashes for a comparable exposure. Building on ideas from flash/no-flash photography, we capture a pair of images, one using the dark flash, other using the dim ambient illumination alone.

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Consider if the subject in the foreground was holding a piece of the white background seamless paper next to their face with only the key and fill lights on. When the exposure for the face was correct the paper would be reproduced as white wouldn't it? Not 255.255.255 blown out white, but something in the range of 240s which makes it look like what it is, a piece of paper not the blazing sun.

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Want full control over the light and shadows in your photography? Understanding how light works is necessary, and this paper will attempt to explain how to affect the lighting, shadow quality, and apparent shininess of your subject.

The light source has 4 properties that affect the lighting of the scene.

1. Apparent size
2. Distance from subject
3. Intensity (brightness)
4. Color temperature

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Metering with your digital camera: Incident v.s. Reflected. Covers metering tricks with these two techniques and shows how to improve exposure in your images.

Kerry Garrison from CameraDojo.com demonstrates how to use a light meter to get good exposures during a quick product shoot.

Light-Test.com brings you uploaded lighting test photos from assistants and photographers

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How to use lighting grids for professional studio photography

Using strip lighting in the studio

This is a clip from a full length video that will show you how to set up and begin to use your studio lighting

The swivel (or umbrella holder) is designed in a way that the umbrella does not go exactly 90 degrees into the shaft. It is tilted upwards a bit - this is done since the flash mounted on the swivel is not 100% aligned with the center of the umbrella. If the insert was angled at 90 degrees, light from the flash would hit only the top of part of the umbrella, creating uneven light.

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