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Dramatic Lighting for Pole Dancing Fitness Instructors

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Allure Fitness is local ladies only gym, but with fitness classes such as Zumba, yoga, suspension yoga, pilates and of course pole dancing for fitness – this isn’t your mom’s aerobics studio (well, actually it could be since they have members of all ages, shapes and sizes).

My wife has been a member there for a while, and she had noticed that the quality of imagery that Allure has been using on their website and promotional material didn’t really match the cool, sexy, modern brand image that the fitness studio is all about – so she managed to talk the owner into some new promotional photography.

Read on to find out how we used dramatic lighting to photograph the Allure pole dancing fitness instructors.

[Read More…]

Using Cheap Wallpaper As Backgrounds For Professional Looking Product Shots

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The backgrounds we use for our shots make a big difference in the final photo. I have covered quite a few options before, all are pretty accessible and today I want to share another quick and budget minded technique – using wall paper or colored paper for your background. (See these if you need some backdrop inspiration: illustration board, white background & gel & DIY wooden table).

I first saw this being done on flickr and wanted to give it a try. Here are a few ideas on using different paper backgrounds plus few tricks on lighting.[Read More…]

3 Ways To Shoot A Ferrari On A Budget

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One of the perks that I have as a photographer is the opportunity to shoot super cars every now and then. Sadly, I don’t have a big ass studio that I can fit a car into, and I need to improvise by lighting cars on whatever location I can get. Those can be inside a garage or in the street, or somewhere else.

Here are 3 different lighting techniques that you can use with cars or when shooting large product or still life shots.[Read More…]

Lighting Techniques: All the Things you can do with One Speedlight

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I have encountered many people that think they are very limited because they only had one light (usually it is one speedlight), and I always tell them that most of my photographs are taken using a single light; From portraits to product shots. To put my money where my mouth is, I am sharing all those photos and tips – all using only using one speedlight.

Why use one light, you ask?  There are many reasons:[Read More…]

Simple And Effective Food Photography Techniques

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One of my photography niches is food photography. It started awhile back when a friend asked me if I could shoot for his restaurant. It seems that many photography businesses started just like that, with a friend asking a shoot, or acknowledging a talent.

We all need to start somewhere, so this article shows a very simple yet effective food photography technique using only one or two lights. While simple, it is very effective and I still use this technique when shooting for clients today.[Read More…]

Things You Can Do With A Piece Of Illustration Board

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I was a reading an article last week about clever ways to mount a foam board in a studio when I thought about sharing one cheap and simple piece of gear that is regularly a part of my shooting routine, especially with product photography – an illustration board.

Normally I can get a 4×2 feet illustration board at about $2-$4 here in the Philippines, it comes in a black and has a white side which is perfect.

Actually, illustration boards are rated second most used items after Granite tiles. What makes them great (aside for the price) is that they are very cheap, disposable, and have many many uses. Here are a few ideas of what you can do with  illustration boards.[Read More…]

How To Shoot a Porsche With Minimal Gear

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Me and some friends were practicing our photography with cars and wanted to shoot his Porsche. We were only shooting the car inside his garage and didn’t have a studio that can fit a whole car so we did what we could. We tried shooting the Porsche with studio strobes and a couple of speedlights but we also wanted to do something different.

Long time ago, when I started playing around with light painting, I light-painted my guitar using a piece of flashlight. I thought it would be really cool if I used the same technique only using a really big subject (say, a Porsche) and a really big light source. The results are spectacular, and this is definitely something you can try at your own garage.[Read More…]

Photographing Ontario’s Largest Indoor Rock Climbing Gym

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When I recently got a call to go photograph Ontario’s largest indoor rock climbing gym, my first though was:

Yes, of course I’ll do it!

My second though was:  How the heck am I going to do it!

Do you know that feeling when you are watching a sit-com on TV and you start thinking…I swear the Simpson’s already did this…?  That is basically what I feel like when I am facing a tough lighting challenge…I swear David Hobby already did this…!

And yep – he did – back in 2010 in the Strobist article “On Assignment: Earth Treks, Pt. 1″.

I totally admit that I basically stole appropriated David Hobby’s approach to lighting a giant indoor rock climbing gym, but I think the approach to lighting a huge, dark indoor space using a combination of studio strobes, small strobes (speedlites) and ambient light is still worth further discussion.

[Read More…]

How To Build A Basic 4 Light Setup

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While I was doing my 365 Project, I wanted to challenge myself with using 4 or more lights and using different colors for a shoot. I came up with a perfect lighting setup to for this experiment. I did want to do the colored background in camera, and not just changing the colors in photoshop, so I opted for using gels.

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