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It was not an easy decision for any of the judges. With 50 submissions to the contest, it was amazing to see how each one of you portrayed the concept of home.

When I thought of how to describe the subject of the contest, my wife said "keep it as open as possible", and as I usually do, I followed her advice.

And what a great advice it was, submissions took the subject of "Home" to many directions, and played on the home theme in many different ways. As you can see below, there was a lot of debate and diversion amongst the judges as well.

Without much more ado, I give you the winners of the "At My Home Photo Contest", each won a personalized copy of the great America At Home Photo Album. Click to continue ›

Setting up lighting for a portrait can be quite a complex task. If you, like me, are using small strobes which have mo modeling light it is hard to predict what will be the outcome of each lighting array.

There are however some basic lighting schemes, kind of a starting ground for new portraits. Of course, once you lay out the initial lighting you can change it, move it around and use modifiers to soften or restrict the light.

Wouldn't it be nice, though if you have a magic card that will show you what will be the final lighting of almost every lighting scheme? I think it can be pretty darn cool.

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The past three weeks has been truly wonderful and submissions started to accumulate to "At My Home" Photo Contest. It is amazing to see how many of us feel differently about our home.

Indeed submissions span multiple subjects like family, couples, occasions, every day homely routines, just plain family fun and even pets. Each picture heart warming in its own way. Thanks for everyone who shared their home and family with us.

All the pictures below got tagged with "DIYP" and "atmyhome" and pushed into the DIYP flickr group, but for some reason, not all the images were available to all participants. Why, I don't know. I guess it is a Flickr glitch. So you can either watch a (partial) slideshow here, or scroll below and watch the submission as my search dug them up. Click to continue ›

A while back I posted a great lighting project by Alex Campagna called the DIY Spiderlight.

The project successfully aimed at building the Wescott TD5 Lighting fixture (AKA Spiderlite).

Alex even threw in a DIY softbox to complete the design.

If you've wondered what's so good about them spiderlites, Scott Kelby from Photoshop insider shares a great video that has all the good reasons to buy on (or better yet, to build one). See the video on the full article.

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I have just finished reading Light: Science & Magic (for the second time) and (again) I can not calm down. It took me a week and I spent every almost every waking hour reading it. Let me share the joy I had with you.

In general, Light: Science & Magic tells you everything you need to know about photography lighting. And the stuff it doesn't tell you, it tells you how to figure out yourself.

Just before I go into an in-depth review of the book, I'll say that reading this book in one week was both good and bad for me. Good, because I got an intense dose of photography lighting, obtaining critical mass of lighting know how. But, because reading so fast did not allow me to perform any of the exercises on the book, this is why I plan yet another slower reading of Light: Science & Magic where I will try out and test the techniques portrayed in the book.

Have you read this book? Let me know what you think in the comments. Now for the review:

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It's been another great month here on DIYP and in my life in general. The At My Home contest is gaining momentum, if you did not submit until now, there is just a little over a week left. There was some great reading over the internet during this time. I'd love to share some of my favorite readings.

Introducing Your Little One to Photography
Photodoto
As a parent it is a great joy to share photography hobby with family and with your kids in particular. Photodoto shares some great advice on helping your little one see the joy of photography
Nude Controversy
Dilvie
Eric shared his motivation for shooting nude. An excellent post on nude photography and feminism
Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo
Scientific American
Did you ever get the photo of the guy standing on the twins with one of the jets behind him? In the days of Photoshop and other image manipulation software it is easy to fake a picture. Here are 5 ways to stop a fake.
10 Travel Photography Quick Tips
Boots n' all
We've all been there. The postcards look way better then our trip pictures. Here are 10 ways to mend this. Not enough? Zeke Kamm, the nice guy, has some more tips on How to Take Vacation Photos That Don’t Suck
Off-camera Flash Demo
Bert Stephani
Bert Stephani always has something good in store. Aside from shooting beautiful models, he gives great tips and videos. In this post he shoes great pictures taken with off camera flash. Also, make sure you don't miss his latest video
Are photographers really a threat?
The Guardian
We are all aware if the latest trend to see photographers as terrorists. Bruce Schneier shares his view on the reason behind it. Bruce coins the movie-plot threat as term that describes the gear behind photographers. make sure you browse through the link in the beginning of the post. the amount of reported cases is staggering. This is exactly why you need to be aware of The Photographer’s Rights

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Related Links:
- Speed Links for 05-09-2008
- Speed Links for 4-20-2008
- Speed Links for 2-23-2008
- Speed Links for 12-20-2007
- Speed Links for 12-11-2007

Click to continue ›

Pro Photo Life is a site to adore. Jim features videos, business articles and Lighting and studio techniques and plain fun.

His latest installment is a video showing three basic lighting techniques using just one light. Rembrandt lighting, Butterfly lighting and Edge lighting. All really easy to set up and will give three very distinct and diverse looks. Read on and watch the video.

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Just a quick reminder to everyone that DIYP "At My Home" Photo Contest is running on the Flickr group.

In the first week of the contest, you have made 24 great submissions and the number of topics and techniques is almost as vast as the number of pictures submitted. You can view a slideshow of the images submitted here.

If you plan to make a submission and still don't have a Flickr account you can get it here, and join the DIYP group here. I have noticed that new Flickr members takes a while to get update in the system and getting a flickr account now (even if submitting in two weeks) will verify that your entry is there for the final cut. Yep, it is the final cut in two week from today.

If you have questions, please add them as comments to this post.

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The following tutorial on building an Ariel Monopod is a guest post by Adam Hajnos.

Recently I was carrying around my camera and tripod at a music festival when I got the idea to do an aerial shot. I extended the tripod out all the way and put the camera on a timer. Only problem is, my tripod weighs upwards of 50lbs. So here is a simple solution to make a lightweight, portable monopod for "aerial" photography.

Click to continue ›

Craig Colvin (Flickr) came up with a great design for a gel holder on a flash. The design includes an L shaped plexiglass.

Now, if you ever followed the strobist way of mounting gels on your flash, you know the great value those little pieces of colored tape can provide.

You probably also know that it can very annoying to apply the gel strips on the flash or to remove them. Not to mention stacking them together - this becomes a Velcro hell.

The nice design by Craig solves this problem by providing a Velcro free gel chassis. Sometimes you need nothing more than some bended plexiglass. See Craig's full design and instructions here.

If you can not bend plexiglass yourself you may want to consider using an Acrylic stand. I could only find big ones but I know that there is a smaller version from my local coffee bar.

This got me thinking on alternatives to gel holders and the thing that popped to mind was name tag pockets. Those are pretty cheap and once you place on over your flash, you can freely insert and remove colorful gels.

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More Gels:

- Homemade Gridspot

- Painting With Light

- The Optimizer

- The DIY Speed Strap - Accessories And Samples Click to continue ›