There's a lot of photographers obsessed with gear. A lot. This can apply to anything, including having an arsenal of lighting equipment on hand to craft some amazing images. While having loads of options is always nice to have, sometimes all of that hassle isn't even necessary. Don't get me wrong, I too have an arsenal of lighting gear with a constant thirst for more. Sometimes, though, people can let their gear lust hold them back from creating something beautiful just because they "don't have enough lights". Sometimes this may well true, but I want to show you a way to simulate the look of having a multi-light setup using a single, creatively placed light...

   As I'm prone to do, I was messing around while trying to find a new technique I could add to my photography repertoire. The thought occurred to me while I was shooting through some colored lights that I could alter this slightly and fake the look of something like expired film. So I set out to figure out how to do that and make it look believable. I don't know if it's believable or not, I'll let you be the judge of that, but I did find a way to accomplish simulating the look without using any filters, photoshop or any kind of post processing whatsoever...

   This is going to be a long read. Grab a cup of your beverage of choice and relax as I explain how I shot 30 photos with different lighting setups. I've got lighting diagrams, ideas for alternatives and some food for thought that will hopefully get you thinking about lighting in ways that you may not have thought of in the past. I really wanted to hone in on the lighting with these photos, so no fancy concepts (usually) and just a simple black backdrop to make the lighting the main focus. I limited myself to no more than three lights max so you don't need a huge studio with a million lights to try these out for yourselves. So without further ado, let's get started with photo number one...

   Clamshell lighting is one of those lighting techniques that should be a staple in every photographer's lighting repertoire. It's a classic lighting setup that offers gorgeous lighting for all kinds of portraits from beauty to corporate headshots. It's actually very simple to do as well. All you need is a soft light pointed down on your subject for your main light and some kind of bounce to fill in the shadows from below...

   I've been feeling kind of stuck recently with how I how subjects. I guess stuck isn't necessarily the right word. You know how people usually have a few go-to food choices and they rarely ever stray from those? That's how I've been feeling with my portrait lighting. Every photographer has a few lighting setups that they use which they know will work if all else fails. I feel like I've been relying on these choices like a crutch. It's not that I don't know other lighting techniques, I know more than I'd ever need, it's more a feeling of a lack of creativity...

   I wanted to share something with you guys about a recent realization I had. Did you know that learning photography could actually make you better at other art forms? It wasn't something I've ever really considered in the past, but it makes total sense to me now. I've recently picked drawing back up again after having stopped for some reason a few years ago. I'm not quite sure why I ever did stop. In fact, I'm not even sure what made me want to pick up a pencil again in the first place, but I'm glad that I have...

   I know what you're thinking already, "D.J., what does an office chair have to do with photography?". Well here's the thing, it actually has a lot to do with photographers (along with other creative types) who sit at a desk for a big portion of their day. As a photographer, you spend a lot of time editing and emailing clients at your desk. It would be beneficial for you to have a nice chair to sit on. I actually ended up going with a yoga ball as my new office chair for a couple of reasons that I think pertain to the creative type specifically...

   Fourth of July is coming up, depending on when you read this I suppose, and one of the mainstays of this holiday is the fireworks display. Even if you're reading this and July 4th has already come to pass, there's probably another holiday or event coming up where fireworks are involved. I've had various people in the past ask me how to take kick ass fireworks photos, so I figured I'd make a video tutorial showing you how. Don't worry, if you don't feel like watching the video, then keep on reading :) ...

   So a while ago, I was on a quest to find an alternative to gels that I could use for my constant lights. Gels are such a great way to add a little creativity in the form of special effects to your photo shoots. The problem with these lights I have is, while they work amazingly, there's not really an easy way to attach a gel to them. The easiest way that I could find is to attach them to the actual modifier I'm using. The thing is though, getting gels to fit a 3 foot plus soft box is crazy expensive. So I decided to find a way to create a gelled effect without breaking the bank...

   Have you ever wanted to delete a photo from inside of Lightroom, but accidentally "remove" the photo instead? It's actually much easier to slip up on than you might imagine. When you go to delete a photo from your Lightroom library, theres a prompt that pops up asking if you want to delete the photo from disk (in other words your hard drive) or just remove it from your Lightroom catalog. The problem is that the default option here is to remove it from your catalog, so if you're button happy like me, then you end up removing things constantly while they just sit on your hard drive wasting space...

   Continuing my “adventures in” series of model shoot posts, this one is going to be about using a mesh like fabric called tulle in portraits. So what is tulle? Well I’m glad you asked person I just made up so that I could give you an answer to that question. Tulle is a fabric that is usually found in things like tutus or wedding dresses to extend and add volume to them. It’s actually surprisingly cheap compared to similar fabrics out there, only $1.50 per yard at Joann’s Fabric stores. So I ended up getting a bunch of colors as well as black and white to mess around with...

   Smart filters are a great way to nondestructively edit your photos in Photoshop. They’re also a fantastic way to keep all of your adjustments and filters organized neatly without having to resort to the chaos that is hundreds of layers laid out in a specific order. In this video I’ll not only show you how to use smart filters, but also compare it to other ways to edit in photoshop and why smart filters are so much better. I go over everything in depth in the video, but if you’re more of the reading type, here’s a simplified version...

   This is a question I see a lot amongst photographers starting out. How do I make eyes pop? There's a decent amount of information out there although a lot of it revolves around not just making the eyes "pop", but making them pop unrealistically. It's a common problem I see where a photograph will have some flat lighting, but then eyes that SCREAM out at you and the dichotomy is quite drastic. I wanted to create a tutorial showing a way to make the eyes match the photo they reside in. I used a dramatic photo in the tutorial, so the eyes are very dramatic. This photo below is a much more common portrait setting and you can see how using all of the techniques I used in the video below can also be applied to something a little more normal just by toning down the settings a bit...

   Have you ever seen an awesome landscape scene at night, only to notice that the sky is just a boring black abyss? It seems like everytime I shoot landscapes at night that there's never anything of interest happening in the skies. Not only that, but if its an urban landscape, you'll never see any kind of stars whatsoever due to the light pollution from the city lights. One of the coolest things you can see in the night sky is the Milky Way galaxy. Taking a shot with the Milky Way in it requires a lot of planning and knowledge of how to get it right. Sometimes it's not even going to be possible to get a nice view of the galaxy based on the position of the subjects in the scene...

   I'm sure everyone has seen one of these photos at least once. Double exposures can be such a fun and interesting creative technique. As the name implies, double exposure photography is all about combining two photos and overlaying them with one another to create a single image. Some digital cameras, and most film cameras, have the ability to take multiple exposures and create the effect in camera without needing any photoshop or post production at all. Personally, I like the ability to control the outcome in a more meaningful way without letting my camera take care of business for me. With photoshop you have many more options on the placement of the two photos, how they're blended together and which elements are showing and which aren't...

   If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen a clone photo I put up right before christmas. It wasn't meant to be the most amazingly intricate and well composed photo in the world, just something fun to do while I was bored during the holidays. When I was making it, I forgot how fun they are to shoot. I used to make them all of the time years ago and the concept of cloning myself kind of fell to the wayside while I was working on learning new techniques. After I posted it online though, I remembered another thing about multiplicity photos. There's a lot of people who love them and a lot of people who still aren't sure how to make them for themselves. So, I decided to make a tutorial explaining how to not only set up the shots to make your life easier, but also how to composite them in post to get the final image...

   I'm often asked questions on how to do certain techniques or how I do my post processing. One of the simpler things I'm asked often is how to change the color of something in a photo in photoshop. It's fairly easy to accomplish and it's also my most received request, so I decided to make a video tutorial on how anyone can do it themselves. I'm a fan of having multiple options available to me for any given task. I've always resented the idea that there is only one "correct" way of doing something. So instead of telling you how it's "supposed" to be done, I show you three different ways you can achieve the exact same result. Everyone has different workflows and techniques that are more intuitive for them, so having the option of learning multiple techniques is something that I feel strongly about...

   I've been in a creative mood lately and I've been messing around with different techniques like freelensing for example, which I'm going to be writing about soon. Today though, I wanted to focus on light trails from car lights. Instead of taking the average long exposure shot of car head and tail lights, I changed up my perspective and went INSIDE of the car. I actually was inspired to take this shot based on a photo I took up in the mountains with a friend of mine. I was messing around with a long exposure while he was driving and I came out with a photo I thought was pretty cool. Looking back though, I knew I could do much better. I didn't have my tripod, so I had to hand hold my camera and a tripod is crucial to making this shot work. So a couple of days ago I set out to retake the shot, but this time with urban lights instead of the forest from the original...

   Ah yes, Humans of New York. Who hasn't heard of HONY before? In the few short years that it's been around, the blog has gotten millions of viewers and the momentum just seems to be getting bigger. I actually picked up this book in preparation for some very convenient synergy between this and Brandon Stanton's newest book, Little Humans. I was initially excited for that book, but then I found out that it was a "children's book" as in, made for children and not just filled with children. It's also very short as well, so that kind of turned me off from it, although I'd most likely buy it if I had kids of my own. All of that aside, I still had this book to read and decided I to share some of my thoughts about the book...

   Oh yes, the illustrious Bokeh Panorama. It's a very cool technique that took the world by storm in the not-too-distant past. In case you don't know what it is, I've created a video tutorial explaining how you would go about creating this cool effect, which you can find at the end of this post. It's fairly simple to do once you figure it out the first time. First though, let me give you a bit of backstory. The bokeh panorama became famous a couple of years ago when a wedding photographer by the name of Ryan Brenizer created this technique which is now called the Brenizer Method. The idea is to create a wide field of view like what you would see from an ultra wide angle lens, like say a 14mm, and combine that with the shallow depth of field of a fast telephoto lens, like a 85mm f1.2 for example. So in essence, you'll need a fast telephoto that you'll use to take a series of shots which you'll stitch together later in a editing program like photoshop (or similar) much like a standard panorama...