Hey, I wanted to share with you a very talented photographer, Ben Sant, based in the USA.

Ben has on his blog some very useful behind the scene tutorials for portrait and fashion photography using small of camera flashes, like we all love to use.

I include here two of his videos, one covering some tips on one of his winter fashion shots. en has a very unique way to explain stuff and a fresh approach to photography, so I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy this.

On the winter set he mainly uses only one flash, trigger and a 43 inch studio umbrella (and a boom stand), this type of studio equipment is very affordable and I’m pretty sure most of you reads own this combination.

This video covers two basic concepts:

1. Underexposing the background about 1 stop for getting black and contrasted shadows.It is very important to under expose the background when photographing snow. Snow is one of the trickiest modes the camera’s light meter can face , so Ben tips us to check the images histogram while shooting so we don’t over expose the snow.

2.Lighting up the model with the main flash. Ben uses a Nikon SB-800 and a 43inch fordable umbrella on a book lightstand pointing the model from above.

Bottom line-

I really like Ben’s work and I’m pretty sure I’ll post about him in he future as he has another couple of great videos both outdoor location and indoor.

You can keep track with  Ben’s work on his video channels and blog (I’m listed to all three!)

Blog

Vimeo

YouTube

Big Ben comment and tips to this post: (04/12/2011)

I am quite humbled and honored to have been featured here in DIYphotographystuff.  I started created behind the scene and lighting tutorials several years ago when one day I sat down and reflected on how difficult it was to learn the technicalities and basics of photography.  It is a cutthroat industry where secrets are rarely shared in fear that one day we may become each other’s competition.  With the advent of digital imaging and death of film (in a profitable) photography business, more and more people are picking up ever easy to use DSLR’s and trying their luck at profiting in photography.  While perhaps we may be the death of our own kind; which is a completely different discussion, I decided that a “no secrets” approach in educating novice and amateur photographers would be the decent thing to do.  As a cinematographer, it was really no extra effort to bring my film crew along with me on my conceptual portraits and strobist-oriented shoots.

If there is one concept and point to be gained, it is to get your camera out of manual and “semi” manual modes i.e.: Av, Tv, P, etc. and get into Manual mode.  Learn the basics of exposure and how The Big Three- ISO/ASA, Aperture, and Shutter affect each other.  Learn to capture images using natural light before moving in to off camera and artificial lighting.  Once you are comfortable with getting around in all types of natural light, you may step into strobes and speedlights.  Again, learn to use them in Manual mode, not TTL!

1.  There is no need to buy the newest and most expensive flash on the market.  All you need is a flash with a Manual mode, adjustable power output, and a sync port to connect your radio trigger or other device.  Old Nikon SB-24′s, 25′s, etc. will do just fine and cost less than a 100 USD.

2.  Get the flash off the camera.  On camera lighting or bounce lighting is going to be flat and non dimensional as it is on the  camera axis.  Remember we are capturing images in a 3-dimensional world and changing them in to a 2-dimensional photograph.  Depth and Dimension have to be created by manipulating the direction, quality, and quantity of light.

3.  Get out and shoot!   You can read all the resources and literature out there.  But unless you are out in the field honing your techniques, expressing your artistic creativity, and challenging yourself you won’t go very far.

4.  Set an example and be professional.  My work entails me in shooting a lot of models.  Don’t be the typical “GWC” (guy with a camera).  If your intent is see beautiful people of the opposite sex in the nude or close to it, you’re in the wrong business.  Don’t use photography as a tool to get others to get in exploitative circumstances so you may fulfill your own private fantasies.  There are plenty of these guys ruining our industry as it is.  You’ll notice on my site there is no images of lingerie, oiled-up women in bikinis, or showing off there bits and nether regions. Although I am not against those concepts.- Fine Art Nude Imagery can be amazing…  But as there are so many GWC’s shooting these themes, I want to distinguish myself as someone who is different.  I’ve made my success on shooting what everyone else isn’t.  I find it wise that you do the same.

Resources:

I find the following site as avenues for inspiration and education:

http://www.fstoppers.com

http://www.strobist.com

http://www.deviantart.com

http://www.photovision.com

http://www.500px.com

And lastly check out Framed.  The have content for each day of the week.  The main episodes each Tuesday are something you don’t want to miss.  Check out my Monday segment titled “Equip Tips” to go into the geeky side of gear and hardware  http://www.framedshow.com

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Hey, wondering the web I found this nice site (I don’t remember how I  got there, probably from one of the forums). It has some great content and very nice video tutorials (although they start with some annoying commercials, but I guess we have to make your living somehow…). One of those great video tutorials is about a subject that we all like – portrait photography setups. In this one you will get 5 setups to learn from and you may see how the pros (video taken by Nick Carter- photographer and Kamara Innis – model ) are doing their work.

The Video:

So what can see and learn from this video? Here is a quick review:

1. Head shot – Very easy to do setup. Actually is based on only two lights: main light and umbrella(simple 33″ Black & Silver Black umbrella)  to the models right and a softbox to brighten her white background. Very easy and very popular portrait setup for professional head shots. Nick is using here a Canon 50mm f/1.2 on a Canon 20D (an awkward combination  ;-)  ), that gives a very good combination for studio head shots.
2. Half body shot -For this setup Nick simply changes the light setup, the umbrella (simple 33″ Black & Silver Black umbrella) will light the background and the soft box will light the model.
3. Full body shot – Nick changes the lens on his “amazing” Canon 20D to the better lens for the full body shot Canon 24-70L, While the lighting setup remains the same.
4. BW picture – For more dramatic look, Nick changed the background to a black one and now using only one light.
5. Natural light – Natural light, is what you thing it is. In this shot Nick posed the model near to a big bright window and let the creativity do the work. You can try to under expose the light and get on effect or overexpose the light and get a completely different look.

The bottom line:

great video Nick!!!

You don’t have to over lght a scene to get great  looks!

Go and try it with you own flashes and strobes, I will post my shots soon, you are wolcome to do it too!!!

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Hey

Just wanted to share with you guys another Flickr gallery. This technique is generally based on really long exposure time (mainly using bulb mode for over 30secs exposure) and some colorful light objects like flash lights with color gels, small sparkerls or any other light source that you might thinnk of.  mxing✪m’s flickr photostream includes some stunning images and two simple to understand vidoes on how to take those very special effects. So feel free to visit his gellery and thank him for his videos, cause this type of phootgraphy art is what keeps as motivated and with fresh ideas. Here are his two videos:

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Hey, haven’t been writing for the last couple of weeks as we have a new baby girl in our family, thats Naama who keeps as busy !!!

For a while I want to build myself a portable multiple flash holder, it isn’t a very hard project to do, and after the videos you’ll below I must say that you’ll do one too…

Why you need to use more that one flash?

• In case you are shooting in daylight and the back of your scene is very bright (relatively to your photographed subject) you’ll need some flash power to correctly expose the front subject while getting the desired background. Another reason why to use multiple flashes is, to get faster recycle times.
• If you one flash at full power’ you’ll get a slow recycle time, but if you use two flash at 1/2 power you’ll get the same flash power but significantly shorter recycle times.

So why I’m writing about that? Well I know a website for a long time, thats Dave Black’s site, Dave is a very known sports photographer and he show on his site how to use speedlights for this kind of shooting. But while I was surfing on YouTube I found out about some videos he published. I must say I was very sceptical with the first video i saw, the surfers video, he uses a gigantic 8 speedlight  holder(!!!) and photographs surfers as the flash combo is placed about 100 feet  away from the surfers, I said to my self  ”hey that’s never gonna work”… but he shows some results of his this shootout for cases where the flashes fired and when he didn’t use the flash, so I can’t argue with those  ;-) …The results are nothing but amazing!!!

Then I continued watching his other films (the motorcycles).You must watch those videos!!!

Yes I know those videos are nothing but amazing and you want to shoot those kind of photographs too, but in case you don’t have 8 speedlights (I have only 3…), you could buy this thing from Amazon:

Interfit Strobies Triple Flash Bracket

If you used multiple flash before or if you did such a DIY project, please let as know on comments section below!

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Hey

After youtube got filled with the “promotional” movies about the upcoming Photoshop CS5, Its my time to make a funny movie about it.

As you already know there are some new brilliant features to the CS5, not kidding, some of the stuff is stunning and might look some of science fiction, if I had not seen it with my own eyes I wouldn’t believe it:

• Content aware fill-brilliant!
• Better edge detection-amazing!
• Path match-great.
• Puppet wrap- animation magic!

But here is diyphotographystuff.info contribution to the CS5 madness : Adobes photoshop’s CS5 Prediction tool.

Just open a picture or print screen a web page, fill in the time you want to predict click Enter and Adobe will predict the future for you!!!

See it:

Send this URL to your friends

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I must say that some of the promotional video published on YouTube regarding the soon new arrival of the Photoshop CS5 , looks to me as if its science fiction! As if those movies are some video effects and not real image retouching capabilities!

You must see this one (or any other movie just search YouTube for photoshop CS5), its really amazing work, done in a couple of seconds. Yes probably with a super duper,state of the art computer, but yet its amazing technology that  I’m eager to test!!!

You are going to enjoy this one, that I promise!

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As I mentioned a couple of posts before, one of  the most common ways to build a DIY grid for small flashes is to use the “glue it straws” way. “The glue it straws” way was cover in this post DIY grid , basically you cut some straws into small tubes and arrange them in a box and glue them together into a box shape, about the size of your flash head, very simple .

There are a couple of advantages to that method –

• It is very cheap to make this diy grid, it will cost you less than a dollar  to make one.
• The materials are very handy, a piece of carton and some straws from the local store and you are of to go.

There are some disadvantages too –

• Its a hard task to get those straws pieces the same length and to glue them all in a fixed and aligned together in the same position/direction.
• You are very much fixed to narrow angle grids and if you want a wide one (40 degrees and more), you’ll find it extremely difficult to do, as you’ll need to cut the straws very short.

As I was looking through Ebay for some gel filter holder solution, I entered this store called the strobist corner (visit link at the bottom), among some good value gel filter kits, there was this diy grid material! simple and good stuff. I got the basic kit , it includes 3 different grid material pieces for different effects 15,25 and 45 degrees, it all costs about 10$ (Honl will cost about 30$ for just one piece…).  Thats all, you don’t have to cut straws any more. The basic kit comes without grid flash holders, so in the video below you’ll the most easy way to “connect” it to your flash head using handy sticky Velcro .

I’ll also post about my first impressions and photography examples using this kit, as I have an impression its a great way to use grids!!!

diy grid flash holder (youtube video)

strobist corner

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Take a look into the new content aware fill option with the new photoshop cs5.Things that took me lots of time to do with older versions of photoshop, are now built-in with the CS5 soon to come .

See that youtube movie to bealive it!

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If you are into home studio photography,a good start be getting an umbrella softbox also known as brolly.

Here are the basics steps to connect your umbrella softbox to a small camera flash.

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The one who know me ,that I love running.

In this set I’ll show you how I took that shoe product photograph.

You’ll have to forgive me that my Adidas shoes aren’t clean and new ,as I bought them two days before the shootout and had to test them for two runs.My bottom line is that they are very very very light.And I don’t recommend you to run with those pair of shoes during the winter,cause it might freeze your toes (mine froze…),but lets talk business.

If you sell shoes you’ll probably want to take some good photographs of  your merchandise to upload to the web and try to sell it online.Whether its for your email use, online store or your Ebay store,You’ll need a good picture to drive the visitors to buy the shoe!

You can get into the video  in the link below,but to make it simple,here are some tips about this shoe photography setup:

Here is my second video,about product photography.You may well see that I took the shot with very simple setup,and it took me less than 10 minutes to make that picture work!

The video is a real one by one timeline of the shootout itself:

Shoe Photography – keep in simple from diyphotography on Vimeo.

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