The death grip of colder weather is loosening on the area I call home. Although snow fell from the sky in abundance yesterday the forecasted numbers continue to climb and we look towards the season where shenanigans reign supreme. A whole winter’s stockpile of energy is unleashed upon the outdoors.

Looking forward to mini pipe, rope swings, scooter comps, road trips with the windows down, mountain bikes, kiddie trikes, hikes, BBQ nights.

Winter; gosh i’ll miss you bud, but summer is a bit too much fun to ignore.

Lighting vignettes interact with the textures of the object, and cast shadows showing how objects line up. The inverse square law of light can also help photographers show depth. Lighting vignettes are only similar to ‘regular’ vignettes in the way they make the perimeter of a photo darker. However using light goes far beyond the benefits of a post production (PP) vignette.

PP vignettes affect the image based on pixels already captured, not on the space you are photographing. PP vignettes generally bring down the brightness value of all the information around the perimeter of the photo. Depending on your methods you can add contrast and texture to the vignette, but it’s still only applying to the existing pixels.
In the same way that you can’t recreate beautiful/realistic split lighting in PP from a sunny day portrait taken at noon, you can’t recreate a lighting vignette.

Shooting with the band For the Weekend we crashed the Fall City Fall house, so we could utilize their photogenic wall space. -This was before FCF got evicted for playing loud music and being general dirt bags.

Lighting;
Key Light; shoot through umbrella a bit above the camera, to the right.
Hair Light; bare strobe top left, behind the subject, with a CTO gel. Cramped space made setting it up interesting; the strobe couldn’t drop to a low enough power, and was nuking the side of Colton’s head. Without a different strobe or neutral density in my bag I thought I was SOL. Wait… polarizers cut light, right? Perfect! I cut two stops of light from a strobe using a screw mount lens polarizing filter.
Light for Vignette; the subject is very close to the shoot thru umbrella, so before adding the 3rd light the background was quite dark –Think inverse square law-. I sat a strobe on the exposed furring strips in the ceiling (no drywall here) and zoomed it in. The zoomed in light creates a small pool of light on the wall; a vignette which interacts with, and enhances the texture of the painted brick.

To make a light vignette, use a strobe to illuminate only part of the visible area. The lit area should frame the subject, with light falling off towards edges of the image. Use either light fall off and the inverse square law, or the edge of the area a strobe is illuminating to make the light drop of closer to the edge of the frame.
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Lighting vignettes aren’t limited to portraiture, what about mountain biking with a lighting vignette? Lighting a location with depth, even more texture, and landscape makes light vignettes even more interesting and beautiful.

Key Light; cam left, high off the ground, zoomed in, bare head. The light isn’t hitting the entire frame equally; the bottom corners of the frame are outside of the strobe’s range because it’s so far zoomed in. These darker parts frame the bottom of the image, the black trees in the background make the upper portion of the light vignette.
Fill Light; cam right, bare head. Kept at a low height to avoid conflicting shadows on the ground, and keep out light vignette looking great.

Throughout the year I spent at photography school there was a very common phrase thrown around during critiques; ‘Concepts outweigh technical every time’
Any time I heard this I cringed, to me it felt like chewing sand while scraping your fingernails on a chalkboard. However it wasn’t because the statement is a lie; concepts, content and creativity really do mean more in an image than a mundane idea/subject photographed with technical expertise.

I thoroughly hate that statement because its an excuse, giving yourself permission to be anything less than perfect lowers the standard to which you want to achieve. How are you going to be successful if you are okay letting yourself down technically?
I also hate the phrase because it is limiting. Start going through the names of famous professionals in the craft of photography -from Ansel Adams to Dave Hill to Annie Leibowitz- all of them are very technically proficient. Each one’s expertise in the dark room, lighting, or post production enables them to dream creatively beyond other lesser skilled photographers. When you daydream, and create new ideas do you dream shooting in jpg auto mode? Do you dream in extravagant light setups? how big can you think?

If you don’t understand how to use a strobe in photography, you can’t dream in multiple light setups. If you don’t know how dynamic range works, you can’t dream in HDR/LDR. Excelling technically with your photography will not only make your images better, it will set you free to dream bigger, to explore more, to venture further.

This shoot is from over a year ago, at the time this shot was really pushing the envelope of how big I could try to dream. First shoot using battery pack strobes (alien bees), first time trying to project a batman symbol onto the side of a church (you’d be surprised how often it happens), first time shooting with more than three lights, first time shooting with coloured light, first time getting kicked out of the parking lot of the empress hotel for trying to shoot there (no comment)

“FamiliesTechnical expertise is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.” -George W Bush

The holy grail of DIY is making functional equipment to replace expensive brand name products. So I’ve been working on getting this new DIY wireless Pocket Wizard tutorial. No longer do you need to spend a couple hundred bucks on one of those fancy transmitters when you can make it yourself.

Equipment:

Soldering Gun

Electrical Solder

Circuitry Wire

Schematic (below)

The resistors and whatnots as described in said schematic.

Step 1)

Follow this schematic to build the transmitter. It should be very self explanatory, If you haven’t used an schematic to build circuits ask a friend who has.
Once you are done the circuitry should look like this;

Step 2)

Now that we have the technical stuff down and a working transmitter you’ll need to put the transmitter inside something to protect the circuitry from dirt/dust/grime or being accidentally bumped.
We’ll also need a foot so your new trigger can sit in the shoe of your camera. You can actually order spare pocket wizard feet (feet go in shoes), they are pretty cheap too.

Here is my finished DIY Pocket Wizard on camera.

Hope I got you!
Enjoy your day, tweet/share to get your friends!