lights

Photo and video lighting can get very hot, as evidenced by a near-catastrophic incident on an Airbus A321 that departed from London's Stansted Airport on a chartered flight to Orlando, Florida.

Elinchrom announced the Elinchrom THREE, a new 261 watt-second (Ws) active charging, battery-powered, portable, off-camera monolight that sits in between the model ONE and FIVE systems.

Aputure has announced an updated $219 Light Dome III and $129 Light Dome Mini III quick deploy softboxes that include what the company calls much improved locking mechanisms compared to their predecessors.

Aputure has announced the amaran 150c and 300c point-source LEDs alongside the accompanying Spotlight SE projection lens and Light Dome Mini SE light modifiers for them.

Godox has announced the KNOWLED lineup of RGBWW Pixel Tube LED lights that will be available in three sizes.

Most professional portrait photographers exclusively use strobes for a variety of reasons, but commercial photographer and director Isaac Alvarez explains that in some circumstances, there are still reasons to use constant lights.

SmallRig has been aggressively pushing into the video lighting market with its series of LED RC lights and shows no signs of slowing down with its RC 350 and RC 450 COB LEDs.

Most photographers don’t have an unlimited pool of money or a vast unending studio to collect and hoard gear in. For this reason, it’s especially important to choose gear and accessories that allow them to get the most bang for their buck, like a simple large white backdrop.

Nanlite has introduced a new bi-color LED spotlight called the Forza 150B. It offers flexible color temperature adjustments in a compact form factor and precise fan control to keep the light cool and quiet during all-day shoots.

When it comes to photography, depth refers to the balance of what is in and out of focus. The right depth creates a sense of space and helps draw the viewer in, and adding depth to your product photography will help the product pop.

Sometimes photographers may be in a situation where they only have a single light source at their disposal during a portrait session. The good news is there are many ways you can use a single light to create unique and dramatic looks for portrait work as Dima Metkin demonstrates.

Profoto has announced the new C1 and C1 Plus, the company's first studio lights for smartphone photographers.

NASA has just released a new set of composite satellite photos showing what Earth looks like at night. The gorgeous images feature glowing lights across the planet showing where civilization is found.

It's the holiday season and everyone's favorite photography background prop is Christmas lights. It used to be pretty easy to get these photos to come out perfect, but with the rise in popularity of LED lights, there's some weird stuff that happens if you don't have the right camera settings.

If you're looking for a simple lighting setup for dramatic portraits, look no further. Photographer Aaron Anderson has put together a lighting tutorial that will show you how he uses one light, a black flag, and a white card to capture beautiful, dramatic headshots.

Aputure's latest Light Storm LS 1c is a powerful accessory for any photographer looking to light up their workspace. Today, we're taking a look at how well the system handles, along with some of the unique features it has to offer including built-in wireless control and DMX light controller compatibility.

PRENAV is a company aimed at developing extremely sophisticated automation systems for small aerial drones. Recently, the company announced that they had acquired $1.2 million to help make their drone technology smarter. So, what better to do with a bit of the seed money than fly drones around, create precise light patterns for light painting, and photograph them?

Elinchom have just announced the Litemotiv, a new extension to their lineup of softboxes. The two new modifiers are made up of sixteen sides and come in two distinct sizes. According to the company, theses monster softboxes help to create “close to perfect catchlights.”

After photographing a number of US cities at night through the open door of a helicopter, photographer Vincent Laforet has taken his Air project across the pond to shoot aerial shots of European cities. His first stop: London.

Kevin McGloughlin of Sligo, Ireland created this captivating music video for the song "Never Knew" by Sunken Foal. He tells us his use of "lights and bokeh in an unconventional way" recently got his project selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick.

In honor of the holiday season, Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens decided it would be a wonderful idea to show the world how to photograph Christmas lights. Breaking down the task into an easy-to-follow process, this four-minute video will get you ready to go Christmas light hunting as December wears on.

We’ve featured the incredible visual effects work of Joey Shanks of Shanks FX before when he created homemade holograms . And today we’re back with yet another piece that celebrates the 30th anniversary of the 1984 film Ghostbusters: remaking the iconic proton streams using a clever light-painting technique.

Yesterday evening, Pye Jirsa over on SLR Lounge shared an interesting and informative video about how he’s managed to incorporate a small army of LED camping lights into his photography workflow to great effect.

Of the places I'm hoping to visit throughout my life, Iceland is in the top three. And although I don't need any more motivation, this absolutely beautiful time-lapse by Evosia Studios' Henry Jun Wah Lee manages to tempt me even more.

We're shared a couple of "stacked star trail" time-lapse videos over the past few months (see here and here), but those videos comprised nighttime photographs taken from the ground. Photographer Christoph Malin recently decided to try his hand at the technique, but instead of using his own earthbound photographs, he used NASA photographs shot from the International Space Station. The resulting video, shown above, features the stars drawing trails across the "sky" while the Earth creates light streaks down below.

If you've visited the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada anytime during the past five years at night, you've likely enjoyed the dazzling light show that appears on the side of the tower. The 1,330 uber-bright LED lights (which cost a cool $2.5 million) were installed in the elevator shafts back in 2007, and are turned on from dusk every day until 2 the next morning. What you might not have known, however, is that the seemingly random colors that appear are really not so random after all: they're actually pieces of photographs!

If you've got spent, empty film cassettes lying around collecting dust, Photojojo has a crafty idea for the mindful re-user: make them into rolled invitation or stationery holders.

It's quite simple: cut and decorate 1.375″ x 11″ strip of paper, pop the top off the film cassette (you can use a bottle opener) and tape the inside end of the strip to the film spool. Wind the paper into the cassette and leave a tab for the recipient to unfurl the message.

Korean photographer Lee Eunyeol creates beautiful nighttime scenes by installing lights in various landscapes. His artist statement reads,

Starry night expresses private spaces given by night and various emotions that are not able to be defined and described in the space. I’ve chosen analogue type for the expression which attempts to install electric bulbs in an objet to be expressed using back space of night by taking advantage of huge studio. There are two spaces in photographs. One is a space before electric bulbs of familiar landscape are installed and the other is a space after electric bulbs expressed by dispersing personal emotion are installed. Unified light from these two spaces generates a mysterious landscape.

In each of his photos, it almost looks as if the stars have fallen from the sky onto the ground.