Capturing movement in images is something that many photographers only think to do when they are photographing sports or other fast moving subjects.

While there is an obvious opportunity in sports photography to emphasize the movement of participants - almost every type of photography can benefit from the emphasis of movement in a shot - even when the movement is very small, slow and/or subtle.

(more…)

Let’s establish a few ground rules for what we are going to be doing. First, this isn’t an ETTL, CLS, or any other kind of electronic exposure control in the flash unit. We are talking about manual settings. Manual is where the power is.

(more…)

Sometimes people look at my images and think that the more unusual lighting effects are created in post, but it’s all done in-camera.

I did this with the Hummer shot to get the detail that was missing behind the axle stands that were retouched out in post. I also shot a separate exposure for the crash test dummy background in the Chevy Malibu shot.

(more…)

The fourth time-based manipulation I frequently use is zooming through the exposure. And last month we pulled that technique out of our as.. bag of tricks during the “stone soup” shoot in NYC.

(more…)

There has been some great articles and interest lately on long exposures so I thought I would put together a hodgepodge of techniques and then turn it over to DPS readers to see what they can come up with. I’ve broken this slow shutter shoot-out into 3 categories. When you submit your photograph, do it under one of these styles. I’ve thrown in a few of my own as examples into the article just to give you an idea. Get a tripod, set your cameras to shutter priority and fire away.

(more…)

By now, most of you have read many times as I have walked through the process of balancing my flashes and ambient. I want to get past that.

1. To set you up with a way of quickly understanding and/or communicating how a given photo was balanced, and

(more…)

We’ve mentioned in previous posts how in-camera metering can be very unreliable. It can meter the scene differently even if the subject and lighting do not change. In the series of photos below, I left the camera at evaluative mode and took three shots at different focal lengths. I shot in AV mode with the ISO at 400 at f/5.

(more…)

When going through the more advanced websites about lighting, you’re bound to run into a lot of terms you’re not familiar with. In this article, we’ve compiled some of the most mentioned equipment and techniques photographers today use to modify light coming from a hot-shoe flash or studio light.

(more…)

When ever we use a light source to illuminate an object, that object is being hit with multiple “rays” of light. Some of those rays are hitting the object in the place which is nearest to the light source, and some of the rays are hitting the subject where is furthest from the light source. OK, nothing new until now.

(more…)

Hand Held

This is, without a doubt, the cheapest option. You’ve already got a hand, so why not put it to use? The idea is to hold your camera in one hand and your flash in the other. While this gets the job done, it can sometimes be a more daunting task than one would think.

(more…)