Pro commercial and celebrity photographer Michael Grecco takes us on the set of his 2-day shoot for Men’s Health and Procter & Gamble in this high end behind the scenes video. The parts of the video you want to watch move pretty quickly so there will be a lot of pausing if you want to see the lighting setups in any sort of detail. The consistent theme with light here is balance. One of my favorite things about Grecco is [more]
Originally captured back in 2011 the National Geographic show “Naked Science: Lightning Chasers” gave us a never before seen look at the anatomy of a lightning strike in ultra-slow motion. Although the footage is older the video is still amazing, and quite possibly the most detailed of it’s kind (if there are any others). The first actual “bolt” of lightning (called a leader) proceeds in steps that lengthen by about 30 meters at a time. Each step taking about 1 microsecond [more]
WDP 2012: Photographer of the Year Lauri Laukkanen guides us step by step through two images from his World War II inspired photo shoot explaining in detail what he used and why. The entire video is done using a stand-in model so we don’t get to see much of the actual production but Lauri’s explanation of his thought process is really what matters here. In fact the one thing I expect many of you will want to pay attention to is when he addresses feathering your light. [more]
I feel the need to preface this post by saying “don’t try this at home.” Sure, crazier things have been done to get a shot and this is relatively tame by comparison but that doesn’t change the fact that a pothole could seriously ruin your day. That said, I love this video from Korean photographer Manchul Kim. Sure, I would have liked to see a second strobe team to the rear of the subject and off camera, but whatever, it’s still cool. I especially enjoy how [more]
Originally inspired by Indiana Jones for this image, photographer Matthew Drozd almost immediately ran into budgetary constraints. In this video he sits down with us to talk about how he came up with his concept, how he found his team, how he avoided potential equine issues and how he balanced his lighting to make the final composite. There isn’t a lot of technical information to be had here (though the idea of flashes spooking a horse at night is important), but definitely take note of [more]
By far one of the most influential and yet devastating things I ever realized in my career was that Photography alone is not a viable path to become wealthy or even truly financially independent. In fact a few days ago CareerCast.com released a list of 200 jobs, ranked from best to worst, and photographer came in at #172, beaten soundly by garbage collectors. [more]
Counted among legends like Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Christopher Wahl is certainly a photographer that will define a time in image making. Global News 16×9 correspondent Carolyn Jarvis takes us behind the scenes with this portrait master as he shares his insights with us. He has photographed everyone from the Pope to the President and still remains grounded. When a man like that speaks, I think it’s time to listen. [more]
Luka, a boy who suffers from muscular dystrophy, dreams of playing basketball, skateboarding and diving. He dreams of doing all of the things his body won’t allow him to. In a series called “The Little Prince” photographer Matej Peljhan strives to help Luka live out these dreams as best he can through imagery. He does this by creating imagined scenes on the ground for Luka to act out the motions of. The result [more]
When KFC needed new, iconic images for their redesigned website they turned to Photographer Teri Campbell (author of Food Photography and Lighting: A Commercial Photographer’s Guide to Creating Irresistible Images). After fine tuning the details of the production Teri, his 1Ds Mark III and the crew got to work. The project took a total of five days, and Teri takes us behind the scenes [more]
Author Dan Ariely gave an interesting talk on motivation and how to feel good about our work at TEDx Rio de la Plata. Ariely suggests that it isn’t money that truly motivates us, but meaning. Ariely believes this is the difference between those that love what they do and those that don’t. Through a series of experiments Ariely shows how much we actually value meaning in our work. No, the talk doesn’t specifically [more]
How would you react if someone grabbed your camera and started taking photos without asking you? What if that person was a professional athlete? Would that change your opinon? The question comes up due to an event during today’s Bulls game. Bulls power forward Carlos Boozer accidentally kicked a photographer’s DSLR (complete with a pocket wizard on the shoe) onto the court at the same time as [more]
Balancing environmental light with flash is and will probably always be one of my favorite aspects of the lighting process. In this video San Antonio photographer Kurtis Kronk takes us behind the scenes of his recent shoot at Enchanted Rock for Profoto. While the video focuses quite a bit on the AcuteB two-head split cable there are plenty of shots of the setup and resulting images. [more]
An interesting system is in development via Kickstarter for video professionals to get excited about. The LineCam can most easily be compared to a zipline style “track” that can either be operated through gravity (with the Glide) or via remote control (with the Flow). The devices themselves appear to be very well designed and prototypes have already been used in the field by the GoPro Media Team, who had this to say: [more]
Commercial photographer Alex Koloskov takes us through his setup for this relatively simple (although it uses five lights) product shot. While not an incredibly in depth video, there are definitely some often overlooked things it shows that should be committed to memory. The first is that in several cases a basin of dry ice in water can make a much more versatile fog than your standard Halloween store fog machine. [more]
It occurred to me today that the vast majority of modern photographers are completely dependent on the perks of technology to make their images. Of course even in the darkroom there is a certain level of “tweakability” but never before have we been able to do the things we can now. The phrase “fix it in post” is so commonplace today that everyone assumes that we can alter the very fabric of reality in Photoshop…and while that may be true, [more]
