I made this photo this past summer, and in revisiting it just learned two pretty important lessons: one a dumb luck success, one a total failure.
Maybe take a moment to guess which is which before opening my psychological medicine cabinet to peek inside… Read more »
Strobist
A little ways back, LumoPro approached me about doing photos of their product line. That's a lot of gear, and the whole project was more than I would have time to take on.
But I do enjoy shooting this kinda stuff. So we compromised in that I would shoot some of their more popular items now and the photos could be used as a template for anyone who might be shooting the other items later.
Here's the thing. Shooting shiny black objects is one of those cases where your incident meter may be very accurate, but in practice it's no help at all. Because properly exposed, a black object is, well, black… Read more »
Strobist
Two of my favorite admonitions from The Princess Bride are: "Never enter into a land war in southeast Asia," and, "Never go up against a Sicilian when death is on the line."
To that I can now add, "Never try to schedule a bunch of CEOs for photo shoots in August."
Because that's exactly what I was doing this past August. Which, in turn, led to this portrait being done in a grand total of 86 seconds. Read more »
I am spending lots more time lately trying to recognize and understand color as a component of lighting. It's not easy for me, as I have never had a strong sense of color in design.
So my approach has been a mix of working harder at seeing light in the real world and occasionally just flailing around, throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks.
The photo above, of Irish dancer Joe Duffey, is a good example of both. Read more »
As photographers we are always looking for tangible, photographable things to include as visual cues. But often we are called upon to make a photo that revolves around something invisible, or even intangible.
I tend to view those assignments not as limiting, but rather as assignments in which the physical limits have been removed. That's the case with this shot of Paul Capriolo, CEO of Social Growth Technologies. Read more »
