I saw some photographers using nylon bags to cover their flashes while they try to get some images done.

in case you want to use your flashes in the water, there are some DIY ways to do it , basically what I did is a dual layer water isolation:

How to protect you flash in the water:

(Thats how I do it, there are millions other ways – its your gear do what you want)

1. After setting the flashes, I covered them with a plastic sandwich bags. You can use more than one, they won’t eat much of you light power.
2. Putting them into a plastic canister – you can use Coca Cola bottles or any other type of transparent canisters.

I know this isn’t 100% water proof, but in most cases , unless your gear “drowns” in the pool, you’ll be safe.

How to take swimming action images:

I’ll cover here the basics of the bts in the video bellow and how I do it when I’m in a wet situation:

1. lighting – there are two flashes used here, as this movie was taken about 2 years ago with strobist gear, they used a two YN560II lights. The YN560II is the best flash per $$$ you can ever imagine. Both flashes were triggered by a YN602RF. As you may already know you can get the newer YN560III (reviewed here) and skip the RF602/3.
2. Lights are put in a canister and hold in some DIY connection to  a tripod and into the water!!! If you are shooting in a small pool like the one in the tut bellow, you don’t have to put the flashes in the water. I use the DIY flash Holder to attach the flashes to the tripod
3. Settings  - both flashes are at 1/8th full power, camera is about 1/125th sec, get the ISO as low as you can to avoid ambient light.

Here is a nice video I found on the how to

Do you think you can do it too, You are welcomed to share you best images here!

Dave uses here some Wescott green screen kits, that comes with the screen and the software, who I must say I didn’t heard about, but seem to do a very fast and good work when it comes to green screen effects.

Here is the video, I think you might like it!

I here is a video about how to use a cookie metal box and upgrading it to a small flash softbox.

Advantages:

As its made of metal, the inner panel is already a great silver reflector.

Disadvantage:

I’m don’t like to cut those thin metal boxes, leaving the edges sharp might be problematic…

EnJoy

My house is currently full with small little lego part, as my son is now into the lego phase, which is fun, because lego has much more figures and themes compared to the variety I had as a kid. It realy develops the kids coordination and if a kid is into it , it helps build his patience too.

As holidays are over now, we (me and my boy`-) ) got some Lego ninjago packs as presents and we spent some quality time together putting them together, as someone said, you don’t exactly know who got the present me or my boy. One day after noon we decided to setup a photography scene in which some ninja lego fighters fight a big ninja robot (or whatever) ,so lets see how it goes.

Miniature Lego photography setup + Behind the secens

Eitan was in charge for the creative, it was very funny to see him building the scenario, I only had to help him putting the “flying” ninjas together, lets see how we did it together:

• The Lego Setup – Eitan built the scenario. I helped him putting the flying ningas. We used some skewers to “lift” the ninjas up, one end of the skewer held the lego miniature’s hand and the other end of the skewer attached with a spring clamp. Those spring clamps are great use for those kind of tasks , I even used the big clamp as a DIY flash clamp holder (tut + howto can be found here).
  
• Lighting  - only one light used here – the YN560III is a great pick for the job. You can adjust its power as you wish, I used it at 1/2 full power cause I set the aperture to f/13. YN560III put into a 60*90 umbrella softbox, I payed for the softbox  about 25$ and its a huge worth of your money.
• Photoshop – This is the time consuming part of this project. improving levels (Ctrl+L in PS) and color is easy, but removing the skewers is what takes time. I not a photoshop artists, but managed to do it… Keep in mind that it takes some time to do it right…

Lego Miniature photography setp by step behind the scenes:

What can I improve for my second attempt at Lego photography?

• If you have any tips, I’ll be happy to hear about it.
• Using a white bristol background and not getting so lazzy and using just a white perspex and the wall behind it…`-)
• Using colored backgrounds.
• Saving the final result in PSD and changin the backgroud from white to some scene.

If you liked it SHARE IT!!!

Michael is a sot of a guru when it comes to strobist boudoir photography and he has a nice eBook and an Apple pretty nice magazine published every 3 months, full with tips and ideas.

This time he talks a bit about how he decides on how to position the one light in his home studio setup – he uses a big white umbrella and two Phottix Mitros (yes the new flashs…), the background is a black backdrop and he shoots in a relatively long but narrow room, nothing special, and any one can do than. You can take a look at his video below and pay a visit to his eBook if you want to get some  boudoir photography tips.

Juice Bottles photography – One Light Setup

For this setup I used really budget equipment , the stuff any strobist must have in his bag:

• Camera : Canon 5DII – I love it!
• Triggers: YN622 – those triggers are probably the best thing that happened to my photography since I got the Canon 5DII. If you have the flashes and a camera that suports flash via the manu, you must have them!!! There are more expensive types of triggers but those are the first option (about 45$ a piece).
• Flash – Used here my Canon 580EXII, it works with the 622 triggers fantastic!
• Light Stand+softbox – I used here a 60*90 umbrella foldable soft box and a light weight 2m light stand. If you are shooting in house, this pair costs on eBay about 50$-55$ and will do the job for almost every occasion.

Here is how the basic setup looks:

I use for those quick photography “sessions” a white perspex bord, nothing to big, about 40cm*40cm put on a chair or anything like, and close to the wall, which makes it prefect for fast white high key.

I controlled the flash power in the soft box with my YN622 triggers , here is how to do that:

In flash mode – fix it to Manual Flash (not ETTL)

Go to your external speedlite control, in your camera menu

No start moving around and move around the bottles for more interesting views, here are some examples of this very easy one light setup:

If you;d like to make it more interesting you can put some of those bottels in ice cubes and try to add their contrast and cold feel into the shot.

Let as know if you have more ideas and PLS SHaRE if you liked it!!!

Its another video I wanted to share with you. This video by Chase Travis talks about many aspects of professional photography and also describes some behind the scenes of a golf shootout.

I usually don’t share here videos made by commercial site/stores and so on, but this time I want to share this video about how to take better beer images.

Why I think this video is great or different from the others? It teach me two new things, and improved my photography (at least when trying to photography beer `-) ):

1. When pointing the flash from above , you’d normally get a good exposure of the beer froth , but underexposed the beer itself. What Scott did here was placing behind the beer a small reflector shaped in the size of beer bottle!!! Very clever and useful!!!
2. Second tip shared here was the fact that after some time of shooting, the beer froth will dissolve , so adding a little bit of salt to glass  will make it come back to life again.

So if you ever wondered if you can take those images , here is a short 4minutes video to make it easier for you:

If you liked it, I’d be happy if you share it and pay a visit to Unique Photo YouTube Channel with more than 1.6K videos!!!

I’ve recently found about a french wedding photographer (Sebastian Laban) and was pretty impressed by the video on his home page, he gave “life” to his great wedding images (I wanted to do so too) here is the YouTube movie on his site:

I guess you’d like it a lot too… Sebastian uses PS and AE (After Effect) to generate those great images.

How he does it?

In general he separates image’s main objects into separates layers and animates them in After Effects. I guess separating the images into layers is a task most of you can do, but the After Effect phase might be tricky. Luckily Sebastian did a 12min video to show you the process, here it is:

If you liked it, PLEASE share this post and pay a visit to Sebastian’s site and YouTube channel.

TNX!

This is a great video about high speed photography. The video covers some techniques and tips from Chase Jarvis Tech Studio.

How they did it?

1. first took photo of a water balloon cut with a knife.
2. They removed all the unnecessary background and setup marks with PS resulting in a clean water explosion image.
3. The water was combined to a Karate fighter kicking .

Chase’s tips for high speed photography:

1. Lower the ambient light – this will get you a clearer water explosion effect.
2. The flash stops the action – the action will be freeze by the flash, not by the shutter speed.
3. Use trigger to pop the flash – Chase used here a long exposure while he triggered the flash manually (trigger in his hand).
4. Try to use flashes with short flash duration – and advantage studio lights has on small flashes.

ENJOY!!!