There's an innovative new light technology that's trying to shake up the way people think about "artificial light." In Italian company called CoeLux has developed a new light source that recreates the look of sunlight through a skylight so well that it can trick both human brains and cameras.
Last year, lighting company Profoto teamed up with New England-based wedding photographers Justin and Mary Marantz to create a series of behind-the-scenes videos showing how the duo goes about shooting a wedding from start to finish. The Walk Through a Wedding series started in February 2014 and ended in December of that year with 20 short videos.
Romanian photographer Radu Zaciu has been experimenting recently with photographing fruits and vegetables using internal lighting. He places bulbs inside and uses that as the main light source for his series of glowing images. The project is called "The Light Inside."
The Ice Light is "a portable, dimmable, daylight balanced, continuous LED light source with a built in battery" that costs $450. In this post I will show you how I made a DIY version for less than $30.
They may look like fitness models, but they aren’t.
The Flex is a new light solution that comes in the form of a bendable white mat covered with LED lights. It's designed to be a flexible (literally) light source for photographers and videographers that can illuminate spaces that traditional lights may be too clunky for.
Want a professional lighting solution that you can carry around in your pocket? Check out Relio, a new pint-sized light that aims to put serious lighting potential in the palm of your hand.
There are times when having an extra hand while on a shoot would be a huge help, especially when you’re dealing with multiple lights that are mounted high up in a stand. Thankfully, a clever contraption is in the works that will rid you of these troubles, making it easier than ever to adjust your speedlights’ positioning on-the-fly whether or not you have an assistant nearby.
German electronics manufacturer Metz has officially filed for insolvency. Known by photographers mostly for its lineup of speedlights and other lighting gear, the primarily television manufacturer says production and support will continue, at least for the time being.
Jerry Ghionis is a man who knows how to make the most of almost any environment. Whether he’s in a proper studio setup or is trying to make the most of one of his ‘MacGyvered’ setups, he always seems to find a way to nail the lighting and produce an extraordinary photograph.
As photographers, we're already intimately familiar with the importance of lighting and posture, but just how much of a difference can the proper pose and lighting make? This video by BuzzFeedBlue, titled "How to Fake a Before and After Photo," answers that question by showing the shift in real-time.
Photographer and Nikon Ambassador Joe McNally has released a new video that offers a behind-the-scenes look at a recent shoot. The image is an imaginative fairytale scene that required some tricky lighting and careful attention to detail.
Two months ago we featured the work of Fan Ho, a Chinese photographer who spent much of his life documenting the streets of Hong Kong. His photographs were, to put it lightly, a hit with everybody who saw them. Strong composition and an incredible understanding of light (if you'll allow the pun) shone through in every frame.
In the above video by filmmaker David Sandberg, we see once again how, as with many things in the creative world, simple is quite often better. The behind-the-scenes video shows how he used nothing more than an IKEA lamp, some existing lights in his house, a coffer, and a bit of clever editing to put together a quality short horror film.
What you see above is one of the most unusual pieces of lighting gear we’ve ever chanced across. Looking a bit like a prop from the upcoming Star Wars film, this contraption is actually a macro flash adapter designed by Polish photographers Agnieszka and Ernest Lysak.
Karl Taylor has shared a new video highlighting just how important and impactful proper lighting can be no matter what camera you choose to use. In the anecdotal video, shown above, he pits a Canon 5D Mark III against an Olympus OM-D E-M10 in the studio to show you just how similar the results are when the lighting, not the camera, is the focus of the image.
When it comes to the quantity of lights that one needs, opinions are often heavily polarized and a hotly contested debate often rages. There are those that are staunch supporters of one light while others claim that a handful of lights are needed before anything meaningful can be done. Ultimately neither group is right as there is no definable minimum or maximum number of lights that one should use.
Sometimes we’re left working with inconsistent or otherwise less-than-ideal light sources. And while we can’t always make bad light good, we can certainly control some of the light quality if we get creative. Showing just how to do that is this clever little DIY Diffusion tip by the guys over at Film Riot.
It’s not news that lighting makes or breaks an image, particularly portraits. But in Perception Is Reality by photographer Sebastian Petrovski, we get a better first-hand look at just how influential lighting can be when trying to accurately and most pleasingly capture the face and features of individuals.
DIY methods are usually done for two main reasons: necessity or experimentation. In the above video, Film Riot uses the latter of the two to see just what they can do to spice up their imagery using items you have laying around the house or cheap objects you can purchase at almost any store.
You wouldn't know it if you just watched the video, but filmmaker David F. Sandberg's scary short film Not So Fast is a testament to DIY creativity. Because while it might seem like it was shot in a dark hallway with a weak light source, it was actually shot in his living room... with a lot of help from IKEA.
It’s not about the camera, it’s about the light. Here to prove that is photographer Miguel Quiles. In the above video, Quiles proves you don’t need the best camera or lens to capture amazing results. You only need to understand how important light is and learn how to use it to your advantage.
A group of researchers from MIT want your next lighting rig to be autonomous and airborne. Set to be on display this August at the Symposium on Computational Aesthetics in Graphics, Visualization and Imaging, they've actually developed a drone that automatically and dynamically lights a subject (living or otherwise) for a photographer while he or she focuses on getting the shot.
Photojournalist Ed Kashi has received many accolades over the course of his photojournalistic career, and in this short interview with Marc Silber, he shares some of what he's learned about light and the art of photojournalism.
When capturing a photograph, something many of us meticulously try to account for is the lighting -- more specifically, how much light is coming from what sources.
If the term "inverse square law of light" immediately sets you to hyperventilating as flashbacks of college physics begin playing in your mind's eye, take a few breaths into that paper bag, calm down, and click play on the video above.
Jay P. Morgan of The Slanted Lens was recently invited to shoot at Luke Air Force Base (again) and he didn't want to miss turning this into an educational opportunity. And so, in the behind the scenes video above, he shows you how he was able to dynamically light up a portrait that involved a fighter pilot and an entire fight jet using only four 400 Watt strobes.
If you're new to the world of studio portraiture and you've noticed that the skin tones in your photos are often turning out wrong, it's possible you're getting color contamination from the ambient lights in your studio -- be that a bank of windows or overhead lights.
Butterfly lighting is one of the oldest techniques for lighting a subject. Named for the butterfly-shaped shadow that forms underneath the subject’s nose, this setup is a proven method to ensure your subject is well-lit in a pleasing manner.
With LED lighting systems growing in popularity for both video and photo use, it’s inevitable some interesting variations of such setups are going to come out. Case in point: behold the RagLite, or as its creators prefer to call it, “the first-ever flexible LED light bank.”
What can I say? What has been the best unexpected early birthday present you’ve ever gotten? For me, it happened last July when I got a call from Brad Smith, the Director of Photography at Sports Illustrated, asking me to shoot an assignment.
When it comes to the world of photography lighting education, one name that comes up more than most is Strobist. With the simple tagline, “learn how to light,” photographer David Hobby’s publication has come a long way since its inception in April of 2006... and it went a little further still today.
Is Amazon attempting to patent an age old photography lighting technique? A recently published patent seems to suggest that, and it's getting some photographers up in arms.
When it comes to product photography, the smallest changes in lighting and setup can completely alter the final image, for better or worse. This applies doubly to objects like perfume bottles where you have both transparent and reflective surfaces to deal with.
Joe McNally knows a good bit more about lighting than many photographers out there, and in this short video he shares a great deal of information pertaining to both TTL flash lighting as well as adapting to a situation and using natural light.
Using two Black Armored Hexacopters, a RED Epic and an LED lighting rig, aerial video specialist Simon Sjörén and his team took to the mountains of Åre, Sweden to create a unique nighttime ski video.
There is little doubt that auteur Stanley Kubrick looms large as a director able to distinctively bring his films to life through his vision. He has left his mark across the motion picture landscape.
Nikon USA has just joined the Google+ community, and eager as they are to make a positive impression and not seem like they're arriving empty-handed, the company has simultaneously debuted a new 15-part instructional video series for beginners on up who like their educational content with a side of Nikon advertising.
As part of a new campaign, Profoto has teamed up with photography pair Justin and Mary Marantz to create a twenty-part video series aimed at educating (and promoting) how best to capture the vital moments of a wedding using TTL lighting.
As was inevitable, the more common and generic top level domains (e.g. .com, .net, and even .co) are becoming scarce as more and more domains are registered each day.
A few weeks ago, we shared a video by photographer Karl Taylor that gave you a behind the scenes look at what a day-long fashion shoot in his studio was like. And even though a few of our readers poked fun at the video's obvious product placement, a lot of people learned a thing or two and came back with followup questions regarding the light modifiers that Taylor was using throughout the day.
Most of you have seen this video, of that we have no doubt. In the 5 days since it debuted it has acquired over 9 million views, and so we're not sharing it because we're worried that you're missing out on something, or even because we want to give you an excuse to dance a bit today (although that did factor in).
A few days ago, we stumbled on a new set of short interviews with portrait photography master Gregory Heisler that cover everything from lighting, to relating with your subjects, to getting creative, to (and we know you're all interested in this one) getting hired.
Anyone interested in shooting photos or videos using continuous light without breaking the bank has likely looked at purchasing or building a lighting setup based around CFL bulbs. Earlier in the year, I decided to go this route myself because I film interviews and generally prefer the way that soft continuous light reacts with a subject's pupils and comfort levels for photography.
Back in April, we shared the first of cinematographer Mark Vargo's informative series of videos on different photographic concepts. The videos are meant to educate photographers and videographers alike on these concepts so that they might "unleash their creative potential." …
Researchers at Cornell University recently developed a new piece of software in conjunction with Adobe that could some day help amateurs and professionals alike exert more control over how exactly certain static scenes are lit.
In this tutorial I’d like to demonstrate that you don’t need expensive studio flashes to create a complex scene with subtle lighting. I haven’t yet seen anyone else do this quite the same way and there doesn’t seem to be a name for it, so I named the process “zone lighting”, a form of exposure blending by dividing the scene in different zones. But let’s start with a little bit of background about the project and its concept.
We were introduced to the “Ghetto-Flo” lights after reading the excellent blog of New York-based photographer Brad Trent. He had mounted 4 standard workshop fluorescent light fixtures into light-stand mountable strip lights. “Ghetto-Flo” because they're similar in use to the much more expensive Kino-Flo lights, though there are advantages to the later (variable power and output).
Earlier this summer I was asked to shoot a campaign for Airwick USA to highlight the many uses for their new color changing candles. It was going to be a summery outdoor shoot involving two distinct ‘looks’ for the images; one with the candles being used at night time, and the other where they were being used during sunset or dusk activities.
Back in May, we shared a useful and interesting program called set.a.light 3D STUDIO. The software allowed users to test out lighting setups digitally in a virtual studio, saving them the time and effort of testing them out in real life.
