DIYPhotography.net Photography and Studio Lighting

How many times have you driven in a car in an African safari, mounted your top-ultra-tele-zoom and waited for that giraffe to come by?

Never? You must be kidding! 

Ok, so how many times have you driver a car with your zoom lens and wanted to take a shot, only to find out that your window is not a good enough tripod to take a shot?

This is the first fun at the pool of 2009 and I feel blessed with the great talent at the DIYP Flickr group. One of the things that makes me particularly happy is the great use you are doing with the flickr DIYP discussion group. A few great questions were asked about building a softbox, creating the shaped bokeh thing and more. Great answers are given by the readers, and it is a great opportunity to let everyone know about this resource.

This is also a great opportunity to mention Something Newer, our latest photography project. Submit an image with the friends theme to DIYP Flickr pool and tag it with somethingnew to get a chance to win a two-week rental of a camera/lens or both.

More Photodumps:
- Thank You Pool
- Pool Portraits - A Splash Of People
- Having Fun @ The Pool #5
- Having Fun @ The Pool #4

December is a personal favorite. With holidays spanning the globe, it is a great time to sped time with family, friends and community.

I am pretty excited about Something Newer the photo contest we are running right now. Connecting with the holidays the theme for the contest is friends. And the prizes are as shiny as those boxes under the tree - two-week rentals of bodies and lenses. If you are taking some days off and looking for something to read, watch or inspire your photography, read on for December's speedlinks.

Welcome to this multi-part series of articles on Exploring Small Strobes by Yanik Chauvin from Yanik’s Photo School.

In part 1 on Exploring Small strobes, I looked at why using flash guns instead of the built-in flash and studio strobes. In part 2, I went through the importance of using your speedlight off camera. In part 3, I covered how to trigger your small strobes off camera. Today, we’ll look at accessories made especially for speedlights.

When searching for a backup solution I was most fascinated with the option of online storage. My major concern was the huge catalog files that Lightroom creates. I even listed the huge catalog files a deadly sin :)

I got a great tip on the comments explaining how to use XMP files to override the huge files issue. Thanks Jigar. (Unfortunately, the comment got deleted as part of my fight with a spam attack. Please post the comment again so I can provide appropriate credit).

My Lightroom workflow is very similar to the workflow Kerry showed on his Lightroom workflow video. That mean my catalog is always changing/evolving/growing. It also means that my backup software will notice that the file has changed and try to back it up after every session. Kinda heavy with a 60 Megs file. This is where XMP comes in to play.

Good news: we are The Something New Project to photo submissions.

Keeping the same sharing theme, only from a different angle we are opening up a new way to submit an entry to the Something New Photography Project.

That means that in addition to the original way of submitting an entry - by sharing a New Gear Experience, you may also enter to the contest by sharing an image that relate to the friends theme.

In the following article Trevis Thomas (Flickr) shows us how to make an L-bracket - A useful Tripod mod that allows you to mount your camera vertically on the tripod.

I was in the market for a new joystick style-ball head and I thought that the design of the head would be limiting if I wanted to shoot with my camera in portrait orientation. Then I remembered watching a pod cast by Scott Bourne where he showed his camera mounted to a fancy L-Bracket. I thought that that would be the perfect solution and went on the hunt for a custom bracket for my Pentax K20D.

About a month ago my computer's Power Supply Unit died on me. While changing that power unit was both cheap and got me banging my head against the computer case technically effortless, it got me thinking that my pictures are not all that secured on my hard drive. Now, I do back up to an external disk, but after hearing some tips from DIYP readers, I realized that I am guilty of seven deadly backup sins. Here is a collection on those sins and matching redemption as suggested by DIYP readers. A lot of the tips were given by more than one reader. 

This is also a great opportunity to mention Brian's excellent series about Photo backup. [Image by Dude Crush]

Don't you just love flashy web galleries? I do.

This is why I am excited to welcome Wix as a new DIYP sponsor.

Wix provide an easy to use web gallery and portfolio solution. The thing that makes Wix special, though, is the fact that they provide a flash based gallery.

But wait, there is more:

• Custom photographer templates that you easily can edit and personalize.
• Easy to use drag-and-drop editor, no need to know flash programming. With a wide set of galleries and slideshows, creating a business site or a portfolio is a breeze.
• Import images from Flickr, your computer or anywhere on the web

Check out the the bottom part of the site to see how other photographers wixed their site.

A few weeks ago I stumbled across Sandra Freeman's photography site. I was captured by her stunning life-like flower images. I then asked Sandra to share her photography ideas with DIYP readers.

Gladly for us, she agreed.

I was surprised to learn that Sandra is using nothing but one window as light source, and nothing but black fabric and some foam core board as studio. Then again, Sandra shows us all that there is no need for fancy studio equipment to take great shots - all you need is good brains. Just like the Spraying Flowers tip, it can not get any simpler.