Strobe light

What do you do to continually push yourself and develop your work? Often it can be tricky to figure out how best to push ourselves, as well as keep the momentum up to continually do so. The best photographers I know are constantly pushing, challenging themselves a little each day and now one of them has given us the chance to up our game - welcome to the next 10 days of the 'Stay Out There' Lindsay Adler challenge.

I'm not stating opinions here, folks. It's the truth. There aren't many reasons to consider purchasing a magazine in this digital computerized age, but this is one of the few. Since it's debut seven years ago, this issue is consistently one of the most anticipated issues of the year.

Jay P. Morgan of the Slanted Lens has recently created an image for Dynalite that is being used in their advertising. The concept for the image was to showcase a lot of motion, and the Dynalite Baja's motion stopping power. As part of the project Jay has created a behind the scenes instructional video that explains what it takes to properly freeze motion and action when working with studio lighting.

Elinchrom has been renowned for its light shapers for a long time. Many photographers have been using the Rotalux line of softboxes even on other, more expensive strobe brands such as Profoto or Broncolor. The Rotalux system was also known for its quick and simple way of assembling the boxes. A couple of months ago, the Swiss brand announced a new line of light shaping tools: the Litemotiv. They might look very similar to the Rotalux system, but they are very different in many ways. Elinchrom was kind enough to lend me both sizes — a 120 centimeter softbox and a 190 centimeter softbox — and give them a try. Here are my impressions after a month of use.

In the final part of the Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we will look at how I do my Black and White conversion. This image is a dramatic image so it calls for a punchy and high-contrast black and white conversion. In this tutorial, I will show you how I stack blending modes and adjustment layers to get my image exactly where I want it. You can follow these steps in your own images or use the techniques and customize them for your own use. In the video you will also see how to use layer masks to create targeted adjustments for your high-contrast black and white portraits.

In my research to come up with ideas for blog posts, I watch a lot of videos. A few months ago I came across a few videos about the wet plate collodion process and I was hooked! The results are so unique that I just had to participate in it myself.

For those of you who get into situations where you have limited time to set up, manually light and fine tune it to how you would like, well-known photographer Joe McNally shows how quick and easy using TTL can be when pairing an Air Remote with a Profoto B1 strobe unit. This would be great for event shooters, and setting up for quick portraits. Read on for two other videos on high speed sync and lighting ratios.

In my opinion, mastering negative dodge and burn is the key to any beauty retouch. There are many steps and many hours that go into a great retouch, but negative dodge and burn is as essential, if not more so, than any of them. The term "negative dodge and burn" is one that I first heard from fellow retoucher Pratik Naik. It was the concept of having a specific process of removing distractions and smoothing tonal transitions through dodge and burn that was responsible for one of the biggest jumps in my own personal retouching game.

Being an adept problem solver is a key skill found in most successful photographers, and with complex photo shoots, the likelihood of something not going according to plan gets pretty high. On a recent project, Ben Von Wong had everything lined up, only to have things change and be forced to cancel the shoot, or make something else happen in a very short time.

A few weeks ago I introduced you to Elinchrom’s latest offering, the ELB portable strobe kit. Now that I’ve spent a few weeks shooting with it both on location and in the studio, I can finally tell you if it’s actually any good and whether it can compete with the newly released Profoto B2.

Anyone who likes to bring a light or two on-location knows the frustration of wanting soft, controllable light that won't weigh you down or break the bank. The Westcott Apollo Orb is, without a doubt, one of my favorite lighting modifiers. As you'll see below, the Apollo Orb has just about every feature you could ask for in its unique, somewhat-brolly-box-style design, all at a modest price point.

A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to shoot with the Broncolor Siros Monolights for the first time. Until now, my light of choice has been the Profoto D1. I, like many of you, have seen reviews on Broncolor's new monolight, and like many of you as well, have been a bit skeptical about their delve into competing with Profoto's D1 and B1 Series for the high-end monolight market. The Siros is available in two models, a 400W/s monolight and an 800W/s monolight, and for this shoot I used five Siros 800s. In this article I will give you my complete lighting setup, gear list, a retouching preview, and complete review of my experience with the Siros Monolight and BronControl app.

Beauty photography is something that I have become drawn to over time. Setting a mood, imagining a makeup style, and finding or even creating props to fill the frame with my model’s face is something I came to love more than anything else. In any genre of photography, I feel like it is important to develop a style that is recognizable. May that be retouching, posing, lighting, or something else, if people can tell you took the picture it means you have developed a signature style. For my beauty work I wanted to create a signature lighting setup that would be easy to recreate wherever I would go, no matter the condition or the place the shoot would take place in. Here is how I created it and how you can recreate it as well to make it your own.

If you are one of the thousands of professional and amauter photographers in the industry at some point you’ve probably hit a creative rut in your work. It happens to the best of us. Lighting setups can quickly become repetitive and boring after shooting for several months. If you’re looking for some inspiration and instruction on how to kick-start your creative lighting skills I might have the perfect tutorial for you.

The other night I was asked "what is the most frustrating thing about shoot weddings?" I thought about this question for a second and shockingly my answer had nothing to do with bridezillas, wedding planners, hot and humid weather, or even post production. Easily the most frustrating thing about shooting weddings is dealing with unreliable radio triggers during the reception. Perhaps this simple yet unreleased hotshoe adapter could make this problem obsolete if only someone would create it.

In Part 1 of our Dramatic Beauty Portrait Tutorial, we looked at the lighting setup, gear breakdown, and shooting of our dramatic beauty shoot. In Part 2 of the tutorial we will now look at two different ways of exporting and preparing your image for retouching. The first method involves creating versions in Lightroom and exporting directly to Photoshop. The other method utilizes Adobe Camera Raw and the ability to make variations within Photoshop. I will also discuss the overall goal of our pre-edit stage.

This is Part 1 in what will be an 8 part series for a dramatic beauty portrait. In the series of tutorials, we will go through everything from the gear used, to the lighting setups, and all the way through the complete retouching process. In Part 1, I will breakdown my gear list used for the shoot and I will thoroughly go through my lighting setup. In this video tutorial not only will you see the gear and setup, but also a behind the scenes look as me and my team go through hair, makeup, and shooting. The complete series of videos will be available here on Fstoppers and on my YouTube Channel.

Ryan Brenizer is famous for his shallow depth of field panoramas known as the Brenizer method. In addition to this, he has photographed presidents, singers, athletes, and has more than 350 weddings under his belt. He was named one of the "10 most sought-after wedding photographers in the world” by Rangefinder Magazine, so when he talks, you should listen. In this video, Brenizer goes through five lighting tips that can help you throughout the day of shooting a wedding.

High-speed sync has been around for quite some time now, and has mostly been limited to speedlights. With Profoto’s recent adoption of the technology into its B1 and B2 Series lighting systems, they are signaling a change that has the potential to bring some much needed relief to the strobist community. This signal hopefully means the beginning of the end of flash sync limitations with DSLR cameras.

Photographer Jason Lanier is on a mission to end discrimination against the small business photographer. As seen in the video above, he and his group were confronted multiple times while attempting to do a shoot. In the first location they are asked to leave the premise altogether. In the second they were asked to "make it look less commercial" by getting rid of a strobe. In both instances they weren't interfering with any event around them nor were they disturbing the public and only had a single portable strobe setup. Lanier notes a growing trend to neglect and discriminate against the small business photographer.

If you aren’t familiar with the work of Dave Lehl, it’s about time that you change that. Dave is not only one of the top photographers in the snowboard industry, but he consistently creates work that transcends genres and has landed him gigs shooting for a list of clients that includes the likes of Red Bull, Nike, and Lamborghini. He has been published in nearly every major snowboard magazine including the covers of Pleasure Mag and Transworld Japan’s photo annuals.

Learning how to light your subjects with one light is easy. Learning how to light a subject in a variety of ways using one light and one modifier requires a bit of creativity. When you're using one light, each inch you move your modifier ultimately affects your scene. Lighting at that point becomes very purposeful.

"A Book of Beards" is exactly what it sounds like. Dudes and huge gnarly beards documented in black and white by photographer and art director Justin James Muir. What started out as a simple idea, evolved into something much much bigger.

For the "Preservation" project, widely acclaimed Los Angeles-based photographer Blake Little covered a variety of models in 4,500 pounds of honey. You read that right. The idea for this shoot was originally inspired by a previous session where he depicted a man as a bear eating honey. He was startled by the way that the honey gave the appearance that the man was "preserved in amber" and by how it can "distort and amplify forms."

Post-Production and Retouching is just as much an integral part of creating a great image or series of images as pre-production and the actual shoot, especially when you are shooting for a client and not just for yourself. Each genre of imagery, advertising, beauty, fashion, etc. has a slightly different set of rules and parameters when it comes to retouching. In this tutorial we will look at the complete start to finish of a fashion editorial image. Last week I posted the complete gear list for this exact shoot. This week we will look at the first part of retouching, including cleaning up our white seamless and correcting distractions in our image.

Fstoppers.com owner Lee Morris recently decided to shave his 5 month beard while having a little fun. Lee created 8 different "characters" with different lengths of facial hair and then released his unretouched images to the Fstoppers.com. These photographers took these files and pushed them to the max, creating 8 hilarious final images.

Some of you thought that my post last week about photography accessories brand Photoflex suddenly closing its doors without warning after 30 years of business was a possible April Fools' joke. I wouldn't blame you since it seemed to be annouced late in the day prior to April 1st and they seemed to be a fully-functioning business right up until the final moments. I did email Photoflex to inquire about more information and they did just send back the following press release:

I will soon be releasing a start-to-finish retouching tutorial video here at Fstoppers on my most recent fashion editorial photoshoot. But before I do, I wanted to start warming our readers up with a complete gear list. In this article, I share with you everything I used on my shoot, the breakdown of costs, and where to find all the gear and extras: from the Profoto Strobe all the way down to the gaffer tape.

After 30 years in business, the popular photography and video lighting accessory company Photoflex has suddenly and without warning closed its doors. To this day, I still use and enjoy my Photoflex extra large softboxes, and I am shocked by the news considering they were just at Photokina earlier in March. Read below to learn more.

If you are fan of DIY projects or are on a budget, this tutorial shows you all the steps for creating a simple yet effective globe light modifier for Paul C. Buff (RIP) strobes like AlienBees and Einsteins. Unlike many other DIY modifiers, this globe actually attaches the exact same way the retail modifiers do. Best of all, you can buy everything you need for under $25!