Another Neat video tutorial by David James explaining how to connect your flash to a light/flash stand via a umbrella/flash mount.

Part 1 of the tutorial is available here

Neat video tutorial by David James explaining how to sync a camera and a remote flash.

Part 2 of the tutorial is available here

Last update: Part III - Selective Control of Exposure (added on 15 June’07)

Steve Barnes, a professional portrait photographer and co-owner of Hayley Barnes Photography in League City, has written great tips on lighting for portrait photography. He writes about Behavior of Light, Controlling Exposure within the Camera, and Selective Control Exposure;

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I. BEHAVIOR OF LIGHT

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Sam Zaydel shows you some basic things to do to very quickly improve your photographs…

If you are an aspiring photographer, or just take snapshots of family on weekends, you often wonder why photographs captured by a Professional Photographer are so much better. I will be the first to say that you will not become a great photographer overnight. It takes more than just an article to all-of-a-sudden turn from a point-and-shooter into someone who’s photographs adorn the walls of a Gallery. But, there are some very basic things that you can do to very quickly improve your photographs. Your approach to photography will have to change eventually, to improve, and I hope to give you some keys through this article to get you well on your way.

Auto is Great, but More Control is Better!

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Sam Zaydel explains how he chooses tripod for travel/nature photography. He starts the article by writing on the basic function of a tripod and finishes by discussing how much money you should spend on your tripod.

Photo by Gary Winstanley

In today’s camera market, you will find an endless supply of gear, some useful, some not so, some quality, and some not. This variety makes it harder to find exactly what you need, especially when you are not sure of exactly which features you need and which you can do without. A tripod is an essential part of an arsenal carried by any Travel and Nature photographer. You already know that for sharpest images you need to use a tripod. What you are wondering no doubt is why there is such a significant price range among the different manufacturers of tripods, and whether or not it makes sense for you to make a significant investment in a tripod.

Basic Function of a Tripod

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If you are new to HDR photography, and wondering how to get started, Sam Zaydel has written an article that will help to get you on your way to great HDR images.

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HDR and Capturing Photos for HDR Processing

High Dynamic Range images are a fairly recent subject matter. It is fair to say that HDR should be an area of Photography all to itself. In case you, the reader are not familiar with HDR, I will be sure to give a recap. While HDR is primarily photography, I consider it to be a mixed medium art, because of the digital processing which takes place after the images have been captured. An HDR image is of course only as good as the sequence of images captured to produce the final image. There are several considerations that have to be made, before capturing any images for HDR post-processing. Let’s jump into it and address all aspects of capturing a successful set of images for HDR.

What is HDR?

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A nice entertaining and informative clip on photography by Kris Krug, a photographer in Vancouver, Canada.

Ever tried to photograph a scene that has a laser in it? Tried to use smoke or some other hazing agent to interfere with the beam just to get poor results? Here’s the photographic tip that’s made for perfect laser beams.

First what we need is some kind of frosted Mylar. You will not need a lot; it only needs to be as wide as a laser beam. I like to keep two sizes, one & half inch wide and another three inches wide. Both pieces are about four to five inches long.

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Have you ever wondered how to create a cool photo this?

Light Painting #63 (“Bumpkin’s on Fire”), originally uploaded by citybumpkin.

T3h_Muffinator has posted a nice step-by-step (basic) tutorial on painting with light at Instructables;

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Learn how you can save and print super-large format images without crashing your computer and photoshop using Rasterbator Online. Great for creating posters and murals.

You can also download the Rasterbator offline version here.