Pocket Wizard Compatible Remotes Are Invading from The East | UPDATED: Steve from Phottix (CEO) checks in with some answers to our questions, inside...
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 With the announcement of the "Atlas," Hong Kong -based Phottix has just gone from an unremarkable, third-party accessory manufacturer to a company who is raising serious eyebrows.
This upcoming PW-compatible remote is getting lots of attention -- and with good reason.
Details inside.
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Charles Verghese, a friend from the UAE (and the person from whom I nicked these product photos -- thanks, Charles!) has been testing an early set and has been surprised and impressed at the results.
Highlights
• They are transceivers, like the PW II+'s
• AA batts.
• They are PW-compa... | | 6/15/2010 2:45:00 AM - Strobist |
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Stock Photography Rights | | Photography: Photos8.com You’d think that microstock companies have nothing to worry about. This time last year, iStockPhoto was predicting revenues of about $200 million — and that after Getty had bought the company just three years earlier for $50 million. Six months ago, Fotolia announced that it had 8 million images available, and as companies [...] | | 6/14/2010 3:33:00 PM - Photopreneur |
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Softlighter, Too |
While we are on the subject of the Photek Softlighter, I thought it fitting to run a BTS video of Annie Leibovitz shooting Keith Richards in a hotel room for Louis Vuitton with that same light mod.
She uses the Softlighter a lot -- along with a voice-activated light stand that damn-well better know what she is thinking before she says is out loud. (I'd put money on that last part.)
Notes on the video, and the final photo, after the jump.
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First 20 secs: Propping the set. Really wish we had more of this.
0:34 Richards to Annie: "Where do you want it, baby?" (These two go way back -- Annie toured with The Stones in '81 and produced an amazing set of photos.)
0:39 She doesn't tell him how to sit, she shows him how and where to sit. Only has so much time -- and attention span -- to work with. I'll give her this: Every time I watch her, she is remarkably efficient. With respect to subjects' time, at least. Money, not so much.
0:42 "Just show me where to park the carcass." True fact: Jim Fixx, author of The classic The Complete Book of Running, died at age 52 of a heart attack following his daily run. Keith Richards, 66 as of this writing and with way heavier mileage, is still kicking.
0:50 Keith is alrea... | | 6/11/2010 4:00:00 AM - Strobist |
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From Theory to Creativity to Practice | | It’s been a looooooooooooooong time since I posted a new tutorial on YPS. 2010 has been a changing year for me both personally and professionally. I needed to refocus my photography career. Believe it or not, I was getting bored. I was loosing my passion. Yup, you read correctly. And why was that, I asked [...] | | 6/10/2010 3:36:14 PM - Yaniks Photo School |
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Episode 233 | | Matt has a tutorial on adding scribbles to your photos, which is great for kids and wedding pictures. Dave shows viewers how to display large images on the web with Photoshop's zoomify. Also, a tip about the new knowledge panel in Photoshop CS5 and organizing your photos with collection sets in Lightroom. | | 6/9/2010 3:17:08 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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On Assignment: The Soprano |  No, not Tony -- a real soprano.
And not to be underestimated, as soprano Erin Holmes could probably stand in your front yard and let loose a note that'd break all of your front windows. I had heard her in concert the night before, and hers is a voice not to be trifled with.
So to play it safe, we shot in the garage…
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 Okay, maybe it also had something to do with the fact that the headshot area in The Cave can't really handle 3/4 shots. It's pretty much a seated, head-and-shoulders type of place because of the low ceilings.
We were scheduled to shoot for HCAC long in advance, with no rain date. The weather was looking very iffy to be dragging flashes out to a location, so we decided to improvise in and around my garage.
So I dragged my flashes upstairs to the garage, put some Pandora on the iPad and luxuriated in a high-ceiling space. Have to say, I actually like the pullback shot of the garage. When I first saw it big, I really loved the crispness of what the two hard lights on the 45's did with the stuff in the background.
They were meant to light the white paper, of course, with each aimed at t... | | 6/8/2010 4:07:00 PM - Strobist |
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The Most Overlooked Paid Photography Opportunities | | Photography: GlacierTim Start thinking about ways to turn images into cash, and at the top of the minds of most photography enthusiasts will be microstock. With dozens of companies begging for new submissions to keep their inventory fresh and attract buyers, it takes little effort to be in a position to make sales. Just shoot, [...] | | 6/8/2010 3:09:11 PM - Photopreneur |
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Five Ways to Improve Your Graphic Design Business | There are many ways to improve your graphic design business. Some of the most obvious ways include building your portfolio and improving your skill set through practice or courses. However, there are additional improvements you can make to your business that don't involve design work. These include anything from how you dress to how you write. - Dress the Part: Jeans and a t-shirt often won't help you land that next client.
- Customer Service: Think of the type of experience you would like when you call a customer service number, and apply that to your own business.
- Write Well: Avoid grammar mistakes and typos, but also look to impress clients with well-written copy in all of your materials.
- Network: Word-of-mouth is a powerful business tool, and networking will lead to it.
- Create Partnerships: You can both take on work you couldn't before, offer additional services and build your portfolios.
Read More... Five Ways to Improve Your Graphic Design Business originally appeared on About.com Graphic Design on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 20:18:38. 6/7/2010 3:18:38 PM - Graphics |
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A Little Monday Morning Light Carnage |
Being an old newspaper guy, I like to have my publishing schedule set a coupla weeks in advance. But when something cool, timely and/or viral comes along, you gotta rejigger on the fly.
For example, today was to feature an On Assignment of a soprano. But she can wait until tomorrow, because this is some epic light painting with an order of speedlights on the side, courtesy Freddie Wong.
We, of course, start with the BTS vid above. For the final product, hit the jump.
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The Results
Oh, yeah, I thought most of you would like that one. (Six percent of you likely have higher standards for your Monday time-wasters.)
You can see more from Freddie on his blog.<... | | 6/7/2010 2:50:00 PM - Strobist |
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Upgrade Your Rims |  Rim lights and key lights might start out the same, but they end up behaving very differently.
That's because the key light hits your subject and bounces back in a scattered, diffuse way. Not so with a rim light, which typically caroms off of your subject at a very efficient angle. Which means a little bit of light, used as a rim, goes a very, very long way.
Have you every dropped your rim intensity down -- waaaay down -- to see what happens?
You might like the results.
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Here is a detail of the relevant area of the photo above, or you can see it larger, here (photo opens in a new window or tab).
See how the rim is not so much blasting off of Monty's (pictured) skin as it is creating cool, three-dimensional detail? That is because it is dialed way down from where we typically set them.
![]() 6/4/2010 4:00:00 AM - Strobist |
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Episode 232 | | Scott shares a tip for placing a logo onto a t-shirt. Corey talks about the 3D capabilities of Photoshop and the new Configurator 2. Special guest Richard Harrington has a tutorial about using Photoshop to make black and white adjustments to video clips. | | 6/2/2010 7:57:47 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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LumoPro LP160: Quad Sync v.2.0 | 
Moishe Appelbaum and the folks at MPEX were never ones to leave well enough alone. Building on the sold-out LP120, the original quad-sync flash, LumoPro today announced the arrival of the more powerful LumoPro LP160 -- a second version borne of user feedback from the original model.
It's a lotta flash, for notta lotta cash. Details after the jump.
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This is the reason those LumoPro LP120's have been out of stock the last couple of months. They were not re-upped in anticipation of the impending arrival of the LP160.
I am told that for those of you who had previously unfilled LP120 orders (for instance, in Strobist kits) they are simply gonna swap you out for the LP160. You're welcome, internet.
| | 6/1/2010 5:00:00 PM - Strobist |
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The Most Surprising Amateur Photography Success Stories | | Image: Twitpic When a picture sells, it’s traditionally the result of plenty of planning, lots of practice and years of professional training. The low cost of professional quality digital cameras, the ability to show the results on the Internet, and the rise of microstock have now made it more common for buyers to license pictures [...] | | 6/1/2010 1:39:45 PM - Photopreneur |
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Edinburgh: Heavy Metal and Haggis |  Alex Ray and I are back in London, having just wrapped up a 1,000-mile UK road trip with The Flash Centre.
We got to see some cool things and meet lots of interesting people. None more so perhaps, than Elaine Davidson, seen at left.
After all, it's not every day that you run across a Guinness World Record holder...
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Picture this: You are on a lunch break while teaching a one-day lighting seminar in Edinburgh (amazing city -- more on that later.) And while walking down the Royal Mile in search of food, you come across Elaine Davidson, who just happens to hold the world record for most piercings by a human.
At last count she claims a total of 6,275.
First reaction: We gotta shoot her in the demo portion of the class in the afternoon.
Rather than approach her immediately on the street, we got back to the hotel and mapped out a plan. I would shoot the normal portraits of attendees while Alex would head over to Elaine during our afternoon session and try to talk her into dropping by for a portrait. It took a bit of convincing -- and maybe a few Pounds Sterling did cross Ms. Davidson's palm -- but she was game and promised to show up at 4pm.
For the record, our "Plan B" would have been to quickly secure a decent-sized rare-earth magnet and position Alex between Elaine and the conference room, confident that she would feel strangely compelled to come on her own. Fortunately, it didn't come to that.
<... | | 5/31/2010 4:00:00 AM - Strobist |
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Microstock Photographers to Earn for Approved Images | | Image courtesy: Veer Veer Marketplace, a microstock element within stock site Veer, is currently paying photographers for every contribution that they approve. The rates vary according to the number of images accepted, whether the photographer is a new member or an existing contributor, and the size of their current portfolio, but can be 35 cents, [...] | | 5/27/2010 1:33:50 PM - Photopreneur |
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Episode 231 | | Matt has a tutorial about a popular bronze toning effect. Dave shares a trick for fixing the eyes of your subject. Scott has an interview with wedding photographer Cliff Mautner and Matt has a quick tip on sharpening in Lightroom. 
| | 5/25/2010 3:30:01 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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The Easiest Ways to Generate Regular Photo Sales | | Photography: unifiedphoto There are no “easy” ways to generate regular photo sales. Selling photography always requires a knowledge of craft, the talent to use it creatively and the willingness to push those images ahead of competitors’ works and into the hands of buyers. There are however a few methods that are easier than others, not [...] | | 5/20/2010 2:36:04 PM - Photopreneur |
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The Best and Worst Times to Raise Your Prices | | Choosing your rates is one of the hardest challenges for any photographer, professional or enthusiast. But wrong prices can be corrected. The challenge isn’t just to choose the right amount though; it’s to pick the right moment to make the change. The worst time to demand more money is also the most tempting. As photographers [...] | | 5/19/2010 11:07:33 AM - Photopreneur |
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Episode 230 | | Scott is back in the studio after a relaxing vacation and he has a mega-tutorial on stitching together a pano. Dave has a tip for working with .AI or .EPS file types in Photoshop. Richard Harrington is back with a tip on color correcting a video clip using the LAB color space. | | 5/18/2010 7:42:40 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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Filming Parkour – an Insiders Guide | | Scott Bass is a practitioner of Parkour, a Photographer and Cinematographer. To those of you who have followed his work, you’ll recognise his videos “Live On” and “Constant Motion“, considered by many to be outstanding examples of Parkour Videography. His work often features well-known parkour athletes Daniel Ilabaca and Phil Doyle among others, and his [...] | | 5/14/2010 2:57:02 PM - BeyondPhotoTips |
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Photography Gigs That Pay You to Travel | | Photography: Nic McPhee In 2004, Steve Levine was about to show his photographs in public for the first time. Three New York galleries had invited him to exhibit his work in a series of back-to-back shows that would last a total of four weeks. As he prepared for the exhibitions, meeting the gallery owners and [...] | | 5/12/2010 12:24:22 PM - Photopreneur |
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Episode 229 | | Dave shows viewers how to create a versatile, editable background using smart objects and defined patterns. Special guest David Cuerdon has a tutorial on how to combine two images into one background and drop a subject in front of it. Matt has a tip for correcting lens distortion by using the warp tool. | | 5/11/2010 3:12:01 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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The Biggest Obstacles to Your Photo Sales | | Photography: The U.S. Army/Sgt. Travis Zielinski It’s now possible for any talented photographer armed with some basic technical knowledge, a consumer DSLR and a reasonable amount of talent, to sell their pictures. But not everyone is doing it. Not all photographers are making their pictures available to buyers and not all of them are making [...] | | 5/6/2010 2:21:36 PM - Photopreneur |
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Travel Photography for Stock Photo Buyers | | Photography: WisDoc The usual order for shooting travel photos is to go somewhere far away then take some beautiful pictures. A competition currently under way at Shutterstock is trying to reverse the order: submit your best travel image and they’ll send the winner (plus one) to South Africa. They’ll enjoy three nights on safari and [...] | | 5/4/2010 12:28:11 PM - Photopreneur |
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Episode 228 | | Matt adds a texture effect to a photo. Dave demonstrates how to take a photo and create a line drawing of the original. Special guest Richard Harrington talks about Photoshop's ability to clone and heal video clips. Plus, a tip quickly adding copyright info to your images. | | 5/3/2010 6:20:03 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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Creating an Effective Photography Newsletter | | Photography: xposurecreative.co.uk If clients had better memories, a lot of photographers would be out of business. Couples wouldn’t need wedding albums to remind them of the most important day of their lives and families wouldn’t need portraits to show them what their children looked like aged three, seven or thirteen. They could shut their eyes [...] | | 4/29/2010 2:37:52 PM - Photopreneur |
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Episode 227 | | Dave has a work around for adding a square-edged stroke to the outside of a photo without cutting into the image. Special guest Richard Harrington talks about sizing and formatting a still image to fit into a video clip. Matt shows users how to move presets between Lightroom and Photoshop via Camera Raw.
| | 4/28/2010 7:31:47 PM - Photoshop User TV |
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Photographs Don’t Want to Be Free | | Stewart Brand famously declared that information wants to be free. Newspapers have been cursing him ever since. But what about images? If words are crying for freedom, are pictures also aching to be used for no fee and without royalties? Should photographers ever give away their work, and how can they be sure that their [...] | | 4/27/2010 12:08:01 PM - Photopreneur |
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An Easy Way to Sell Your Photo Prints Online | | Image Courtesy: BuyaPhoto.net Prints don’t sell on the Web. You can sell digital downloads through microstock sites. You can turn your photos into books and offer them on online stores. You can even put your pictures on products and offer them as t-shirts, mousepads and even skateboard decorations. But create a gallery and suggest that [...] | | 4/22/2010 2:29:41 PM - Photopreneur |
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Become a Master of Your (Photography) Niche | | Decide that you want to make some money from photography and whether you’re setting up as a professional or just hoping to earn a little extra cash at the weekends, you’re going to be spoiled for choice. You could become a wedding photographer, a specialization with plenty of demand, high prices… and lots of competition. [...] | | 4/19/2010 3:38:13 PM - Photopreneur |
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Lighting Tutorial: Fashion Lighting Made Easy | | I did a shoot back in February for one of my regular clients that was more fashion oriented. It was a 3-day shoot here in Montreal at the Blah Blah Studio. The most important thing was to have consistent lighting throughout the 3 days since the chosen photos would be used for both the cover [...] | | 4/19/2010 11:18:46 AM - Yaniks Photo School |
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Lose Yourself, Find Things to Photograph | | Often people mistakenly believe that they need to go to a strange new land to discover new things to photograph. I discovered otherwise just yesterday. Yesterday, I deliberately got lost in my city, Chennai. I went into a section of Chennai that I’d not been to before, and I discovered a whole new part of [...] | | 4/17/2010 9:22:55 PM - BeyondPhotoTips |
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Entrepreneurial Photographers Become Successful Developers | | Image courtesy: Light Blue Software Become a successful photographer and it won’t be long before other photographers are asking how you did it. They’ll want to know how you take your pictures, what sort of equipment they should use and what tips you can offer about shooting in low light, bright light, no light. If [...] | | 4/15/2010 12:24:39 PM - Photopreneur |
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Turn a Single Photo Shoot Into a Lifelong Business Relationship | | It takes effort to land a photography client. You have to make sure that your website is seen and persuasive, that your images are attractive and inviting, and that your prices are pitched at the right level. You have to talk the lead into hiring you, and you have to build up the experience that [...] | | 4/13/2010 1:28:47 PM - Photopreneur |
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Photographer Becomes Professional Cartoonist | | Courtesy: Emily Horne and Joey Comeau Photographers, especially photojournalists, are often told that their pictures should tell a story. A number of photographers though, are using their pictures to create entire storylines, as well as jokes and books, adding text and speech bubbles to turn their images into comic strips. Posted online, these webcomics are [...] | | 4/8/2010 1:19:44 PM - Photopreneur |
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The Knowledge You Need to Sell Your Photos | | Photography: ShironekoEuro The difference between a professional who makes a living out of photography and an enthusiast looking for his or her first sale isn’t always talent. There’s no shortage of mediocre photographers using their cameras to pay the rent, and there’s no shortage too of photography lovers with a great eye and a portfolio [...] | | 4/6/2010 12:46:06 PM - Photopreneur |
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Different Ways to Teach Photography | | It’s not easy to make money out of photography. Learning how to shoot great pictures is hard enough but you also have to be able to put them in front of buyers, persuade those buyers that they want them and beat off the competition. Traditional stock companies are choosy, galleries are selective, and microstock sites [...] | | 4/1/2010 12:55:57 PM - Photopreneur |
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Stormchasing Photographers Capture Tornados | | Photography: Mark Humpage For most photographers, the weather represents a challenge. It’s one element that they can never control and it affects how they shoot, what they shoot, and how the pictures eventually turn out. For one group of photographers though, the weather is more than a factor that affects the light levels. It’s the [...] | | 3/31/2010 1:52:51 PM - Photopreneur |
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Combining Passion and Imagery in Aviation Photography | | Photography: Philip Stevens A great photograph always brings two kinds of pleasures. There’s the thrill that comes from knowing you got all the technical demands right: the lighting, the composition, the focus, the moment. And there’s the excitement too that comes from looking at a subject you love presented in the most loving way possible. [...] | | 3/25/2010 2:31:01 PM - Photopreneur |
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