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Search Results for: catchlight

How to build your own giant Roger Deakins style DIY ring light

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Ring lights are a big love-hate thing in the world of photography. Some people are actually quite passionate about the catchlight it can present in a subject’s eyes – believing that there’s only one way to use a ring light. But ring lights can produce some wonderful light on your scene, especially when used off-camera.

And that’s how this giant ring light is intended to be used. Inspired by Oscar-winning DP, Roger Deakins, Todd at Shutterstock shows us how to build our own in this video. It’s fairly straightforward to do if you’re comfortable with basic tools.

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Is personal editing style as important as photographic style?

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Chances are, most of you arriving here are aware of the backstory to this article, but just in case, I’ll quickly catch you up.

A few weeks ago I announced a community competition on my Facebook page; all you had to do to enter was to submit a ‘before’ photo (the raw) and an ‘after’ photo (the final fully retouched photo). There would be two winners; one chosen by a populous vote and one chosen by myself. The winners would then receive their entries fully retouched by myself.

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What is “good light” and how to find it and use it in portrait photography

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How do you know when you’ve found “good light?” In this video, photographer Sean Tucker will try to answer this question. This is the first video in a series that deals with finding and using good natural light in your work. Since photography literally means “writing with light,” Sean’s goal is to help you learn “how to write with it.”

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10 tips to make great dog photography in under 2 minutes

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I love photographing animals. It’s great fun and they often come with a lot of personality, especially dogs. And who doesn’t have a dog or know somebody with a dog you can play with? If you’ve never tried photographing dogs before, though, it can be a bit of a learning curve. But to make life easier, here’s photographer Phil Harris with 10 tips in 100 seconds to get your creative juices flowing.

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Here’s a tutorial on how to get great studio results with just one light

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If you’re new to studio photography, you may want to take it one step at a time. Or literally one light at a time. You can make great studio portraits and create different setups with a single light. In this video, Manny Ortiz will show you how. All you need is one light and an optional reflector – and you’re good to go.

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Spekular is the light that does it all for photographers

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Spekular is spectacular! Hmmm – a little over the top? Not really. I recently had the opportunity to put this new LED lighting system from Spiffy Gear to the test. Spiffy Gear are the folks that brought us the Light Blaster (buy link).

Spekular is a modular lighting system that can take on all kinds of shapes depending on your needs and this can save you money and the time needed to pack and set-up light modifiers especially when you are working on location. Spekular comes as a kit of 4 LED sections. Each section is built with aluminum and ABS plastic. The sections can be configured using the included hinged connectors or with the accessory extension kit.

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Spekular LEDs are like a Swiss army knife for lighting

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Just when you think you’ve seen all LED lighting panels that the world can have, here comes a new LED light that makes you open your wallet again. Spekular is an all-in-one lighting panel that in addition to being a “panel” can also be a ring, a strip, an octa and even a star (how do you like them catch-lights?).

The idea is quite simple and will probably be familiar to anyone that likes playing with LEDs. Each kit holds four super-bright sections that can be connected and manipulated into various shapes.

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5 classic portrait lighting mistakes and how to avoid them

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In this article I am going to highlight 5 key things that I see portrait photographers doing that I consider to be ‘in need of improvement’ and although there are no hard-and-fast rules to photography, try to think of it as being similar to an instrument being slightly out of tune or a meal that’s perhaps a little too salty. These are glaringly obvious errors to the well informed but may not be so obvious to those who are just starting out.

I’ll also just say that photography is a subjective field and just like any other art form there is going to be people who agree and disagree with what I class as ‘mistakes’. History lecturers for example, will teach us that the Berlin wall fell in 1989, mathematicians will tell us that 2 + 2 = 4. These are what we refer to as facts but in our world of the arts we aren’t quite so strictly governed and it isn’t quite as simple.

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How to make a DIY triangle LED “ring” light for less than $100

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The ring lights are useful when you need even light on the subject’s face and the circular catchlights. We’ve featured several DIY ring lights so far, But Caleb Pike of DSLR Video Shooter decided to make something a bit different.

He made a DIY triangular “ring” light, which produces the same even light on the face, but creates interesting, triangular catchlights. The total cost of the components was around $92 (it could get even less), and he explains the process step by step, so I’m sure everyone could make this in no time.

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Use those Christmas lights during the summer to light beautiful portraits

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Chrismas lights are usually in use for maybe six weeks out of the year. The other 44 weeks, they typically reside in a box in the attic or a cupboard under the stairs. It seems a bit of a waste to me. When photographer Joe Edelman‘s wife informed him she was going to a “Christmas in July” sale, it made him think the same thing.

In this video, Joe shows us a bunch of ways to make use of Christmas lights throughout the year. Whether it’s to serve as the main light source for a portrait, or an interesting sparkly background, they have plenty of uses besides just hanging off a tree.

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