Admittedly, lighting tutorials are pretty common these days; but when it comes to a subject as vast as proper lighting in the studio, more info can’t hurt. This 10 minute tutorial from The Slanted Lens by Jay P. Morgan runs you through the differences between octaboxes/octadomes and the traditional softbox, when it might be beneficial to use one over the other, and how to choose the proper octabox lighting setup to fit your needs. All pretty useful info if you ask us.
You may remember photographer Benjamin Von Wong from last week’s behind-the-scenes video of his photo shoot with the band The Agonist. In that video he showed you how he put together a very creative, cinematic composite shot that really stood out from other band photos. In this video, Benjamin runs you through the lighting challenges unique to black and white photography, and how he chose to overcome them.
If you have a Canon compact camera running the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK) firmware, you can create a simple shutter release cable using some cheap components. The firmware causes the camera to snap a photograph anytime 5V is sent down a USB cable connected to the camera. You can do this using a USB cable (e.g. the one that comes with your camera), 5V battery, simple push button, and some kind of housing (a metal candy tin, for example). Oh, and you’ll need to be comfortable cutting up and soldering wires. Luo Bo Te over at kisstheasphalt has written up a tutorial on how to put everything together.
Matthew Gore of Light & Matter created this beginner-friendly video tutorial on the three basic elements of exposure: aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. It’s explained with easy to understand illustrations and examples, and features graphics and sounds that are reminiscent of old 8-bit video games. You can also find a text-based version of the tutorial here.
In this video from Master Photo Workshops photographer Jim Zuckerman shows you how he creates his iconic sunrise photography, using a beautiful lighthouse as his subject. He begins with the basics of choosing your subject and exposure well and then continues on to explain the need to move quickly, “work the scene,” and understand that auto white balance works against you in sunrise and sunset scenes.
The information is straightforward, maybe even basic, but it leads to some amazing photos.
This video tutorial, courtesy of Jeff Farmer of XNCreative.com, is a testament to what someone can do with just four still images, Photoshop, Motion, and a whole lot of creativity. The images were shot using a Canon EOS Rebel T2i, and all of the editing and effects work was done in Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended and Apple Motion. Although Jeff makes it seem very easy, words like “meticulously” clue you in to the amount of time this must have taken to make.
Be sure to stick around till the end when Jeff shows you how to turn the whole thing “otherwordly,” putting a sci-fi spin on the fly-thru.
This short video tutorial shows how you can shift the color balance of sunlight to create a blue background that looks like moonlight.
I wanted a night time look to this 20′s scene. Shooting later was not an option. This was a way to give a night time look to the sunlight streaming in the window. This technique can be applied to all types of photography. I saw a wedding photographer using this technique by putting a small amount of warm gel on his strobe which allowed him to let the background behind the bride and groom go slightly blue. This adds depth and interest. I have used it in corporate portraiture to create a cool background out of what was a boring scene. The blue becomes a unifying layer that pulls a background together into one element.
First things first, the most important thing to do is to plan well. Forward planning is vital to any night sky shot, along with a steady tripod and a warm coat. There are quite a few websites and twitter feeds that can help you with your planning. Even though it only takes about an hour and a half for the ISS to complete an orbit of the planet, you could be waiting quite some time under the night skies before the station appears above. The station only appears for a short time (about 1-2 weeks) and then re-appears again many weeks later. This is due to the orbit of the station above earth.
You can check out a collection of ISS photographs he has taken here.
Even if you have a good command of using f-stop numbers and properly exposing photographs, you might not understand the math behind why f-stop numbers are what they are. Here’s a simple (albeit math-filled) explanation by Dylan Bennett of what f-stop is, including a simple trick you can use to memorize the f-stop scale.
