Neil September 10th, 2009
20 Fabulous Light Graffiti Artists & Photographers
Written by Urbanist on December 7th, 2008 – Topics: Geek Art, Graffiti, Guerilla Action,Subvertising, Urban Art, Urban Images
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Light graffiti is uniquely ephemeral and inextricably intertwined with the art of photography, sometimes even invisible to the naked eye and apparent only when captured on film. It is impermanent and its manifestations range from comical to sublime. The work of these twenty light graffiti artists spans the spectrum from humorously playful to deeply moving with everything in between.
Neil April 24th, 2009
I’m on my way to Boston in two weeks – register now for these two events:
Register online for two day intensive lighting workshop Boston May 5-6h
Two day workshop Workshop includes:
- Two full days of instruction
- Produce your own Lighting effects catalog
- 1 on 1 portfolio review with Neil
- Hands on instruction by Neil
- Shoe Flash Demos
- Strobe light a huge room
- Model shoot – free GTG May 5th <—see facebook event
- Live PhotoShop demonstration
Get a firm handle on your workflow with Neil in Boston May 7th
Facebook | LIGHTSPEED seminar Boston May 7th
Neil December 23rd, 2008
Carlos Baez “See The Light” trailer and purchase page
Just for fun for you to watch – but what I picked up in the trailer, was the speach Carlos uses in the trailer. Catching it at 1:29 Carlos says enough to show you that it’s NOT ABOUT LIGHTING. Too bad his DVD title is cliche, seems his approach is genuinely creative. At 1:35 – that’s powerful relationship Carlos is using to empower his model, and is what really impressed me. Don’t ever forget that the relationship trumps the lighting and if your subject relationship comes before anything technical you have to do. I also found a talk-through by Carlos on the livebooks site on lighting topics – so you can get a deeper dose of his work:
liveBooks – See the Light: Fashion, Passion, and Inspiration
Neil December 1st, 2008
Motivation audio course
Understand photographic lighting from a new perspective
A perspective that empowers you to create, understand and succeed
Listen to the full 1 hour live presentation by Neil of his introductory lecture for the Make Light Real Workshop. The lecture outline will take you on a thought-path that will not teach you the right answers, but the right questions. Listen through a guided meditation by Neil and move yourself into a higher plane of creativity when you put the principles to work.
Neil November 24th, 2008
Environment is one of your greatest tools as a photographer….
Without flash, as above – or with flash as below….if you’re mind is on the right frequency, you should be tuned into how to use that environment to your compositional advantage.
Flash – or added light – has the opportunity to transform an average shady building – into a night time scene where a fairy is running between the trees….
This is not a complicated setup – the flash is about 10 meters away from the bricks, elevated on stand into the tree leaves. The Nikon sb-something-or-other shoe flash is popping at 1/4 power, I’ve lowered my camera ISO to darken the ambient as much as possible within the shutter range for flash 1/250th of a second.
Exposure Explained:
- Ambient exposure is 1/250th a second @ f2.8 - ISO 200
- Flash altered reality is 11/250th a second @f4 – ISO 100
By dropping my ISO and increasing my aperture, I darkened the overall exposure of the scene by 2 stops. That is enough to allow the light to make it’s mark – however strong you make the power settings on your flash unit will determine the contrast in the scene.
When you work with your flash off of your camera – the exposure values don’t change as you move closer to the subject or farther away. Once you’ve freed yourself – take every advantage to work the envionment fully.
Listen to your shadows!
The shadows set the mood of your image.
Aiming your flash unit through the tree leaves gives you interesting and naturalized shadow shapes in your image. So even though you are using an unnatural light source you have given it natural elements that help with the design and composition of your photo. Draw your inspiration from these natural elements and build yourself a photo that exceed expectations!
As you’re listening to your shadows and you want to add that vintage golden distressed look buy and download the Golden Touch Texture Set from the create cart:
How well you listen and blend the natural elements and capture their essence defines your success:
Neil November 16th, 2008
Soft lighting – it’s not an easy ideal to achieve
Head to toe – full sized window – incandescent lamp – all included in the frame!
Is this a lighting problem that would make your head spin, or cringe away and avoid another approach because you feel you don’t have the gear? Read on, you may be stopping before you start!
…illuminate your understanding with more…
Neil November 12th, 2008
his post is in the Thinking Big series combined with a couple other techniques:
Equals how to cross light a mountain!
One of the repetitive questions I get from people are – why such a big flash – and why take it all over with you? I suppose it would be like asking someone who works online the whole time why they use a broadband internet connection (http://www.o2.co.uk/broadband/mobile/), for them the answer is pretty obvious. And it is for me too, it just makes so many more options available.
Quite frankly – this is EXACTLY why!
In my lighting case that I loaded onto the plane in Rochester New York was:
- 1 Alien Bee 800 Monoblock flash unit
- 1 Paul C. Buff Vagabond portable power unit and power cord
- 1 Black Impact Air Cusioned light stand height 230cm (model #SLS-LS8A)
- 1 Pocketwizard reciever
- Paul C Buff 11 inch parabolic reflector
Here’s one of the resulting peak moment shots that I try to reach for in my wedding photojournalism. The lighting case was loaded in the helicopter’s coffin gear carrier for the trip up the mountain and across the island. But a large mono-light wasn’t all I had in my arsenal…
Of course I want to cover the whole event with variety as well as style so get past the jump and let’s talk details…
…illuminate your understanding with more…
Neil September 28th, 2008
Before flash:
After Flash:
…illuminate your understanding with more…
Neil September 27th, 2008
Free Lightroom Brush Presets by Seim; Brush Preset collection
Did you know that in Lightroom2 You can use a brush to make precise corrections, and even have brush presets ready to go to make those corrections easy.
Well I knew about LR brushes, but I had not given enough attention to them until Matt Kloskowski posted up some darken brushes, and got my mind in gear on a great workflow asset.
Here’s a collection of brush presets I made for… Burn, Dodge, Color Boost, Color Drain, Skin Soft, and Detail Boost. Remember that these don’t work the same as my Develop presets. These are for “Brush” settings. If you need to learn how to install them take a look at my Installing Lightroom Brush Presets article. The download is above. Just download unzip and follow the directions.
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