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It's May. Which always means two things for me: dealing with heavy allergies and beginning my next batch of portraits for the Howard County Arts Council. The drudgery of allergies is offset by the pure pleasure that is getting to work with a group of insanely talented young people. Doing the portraiture for the Rising Stars program is one of my favorite projects of the year. One of the first this year was soprano Rebecca Hargrove, who we photographed in the venerable Garaj Mahal Studios… Read more » show less

For leaf-shutter flash geeks only: high-speed Phantom v1610 video of a Fuji X100s shutter not-quite-really syncing at 1/4000th of a sec. Sorry, I know many of you will be bored to tears by this. But the full technical article photographer Kevin Housen developed around this video (and others, at different shutter speeds) will really peel the onion for you if you want to know about the demonstrable quirkiness of this camera and ultra-high speed sync. -30- show less

Next month, for first time in two years, I'll be teaching a class in the U.S. But it won't be about lighting, or even photography. During the Flash Bus dates in 2011, we spent about 15 minutes of my session going into an organic approach to blogging and social media. In particular, we discussed how to create positive feedback loops between your online and real-world ecosystems. This small aside created a surprising amount of feedback and interest. That led to a full class each year since on the subject at GPP in Dubai. On June 7th and 8th, we're bringing a current version of this class in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area. Who is this appropriate for? A wider range than you might think. Read more » show less

See this umbrella? It's very different than the typical reflector in one very specific way. And it's being touted as being way better for digital sensors. Can you tell what's different about it? Probably not without looking at it close-up… Read more » show less

Right about now I feel like Alice in Wonderland, holding the "drink me" cup. Having a leaf shutter, a built-in 3-stop neutral density filter and a real chip in a compact camera is opening up a whole new world of possibilities. But with these possibilities come some quirks, some compromises and a few technical things to be mindful of. What you need to know about leaf-shutter compacts and daylight flash, below. Read more » show less

UPDATE: Too late, it's over. If you are just seeing this now, you snoozed and you losed. You missed it for free, but you can still purchase the archive from CL if you want. Just a quick heads-up: for three full days, photographer Joey L. is teaching all day live on Creative Live. And it's free. So far it looks like really good stuff, and definitely worth your time. :: CreativeLive.com :: -30- show less

We have a bluebird nest in our backyard. There are two fledglings, and this is their dad. To me, bluebirds have always had a specific connotation (i.e., the "bluebird of happiness," or more lately, "Twitter"). But this guy is a fearless badass. He'll fight off other birds, cats, squirrels—and photographers—if they get too close to his nest. And for two afternoons this week, this particular bluebird led me down a photographic rabbit hole. Read more » show less

I've just returned from a week in Havana, Cuba. Without an official assignment of any kind I found myself wandering the streets with absolute minimal gear, looking for and studying light. Consciously paying more attention to light is something I have been working on, and I can't imagine a better place to indulge that effort than in this amazing city. Read more » show less

Having traveled more in the last five years than in all of the previous forty three, I finally feel like I have found a comfort zone as a traveling photographer. Though lugging far less gear, I'm still protected with backups for critical items. Looking back just four years, there is now a huge difference in the way I approach my gear pack. A walk-thru and my reasoning, below. Read more » show less

This video marks the last of Profoto's Greg Heisler BTS series. In today's BTS, Heisler does some pretty cool problem-solving before the fact only to get blind-sided with the bison head on the day of the lightning-paced shoot. Yeah, I said bison head. No, actually Heisler said that… Read more » show less

Remember when we talked about gelling your light mods, and how some almost aren't worth the trouble? If you frequently light people with large soft boxes, you can choose to warm your light up right at the source. Read more » show less

One of my favorite things about being a photographer is that if you pay attention, stories are everywhere. But the trick is paying attention—even if that story is presenting itself after you have had a drink or two at a New Year's Eve party. That's where I met Judith Schardt-Shure, a cafeteria manager at a local public middle school. We asked each other the typical "So, what do you do?" party questions, and the 30-minute discussion about cafeteria food that followed left me wanting to know more—and wanting to make sure other local parents knew, too. Which is exactly why I have developed HoCo360 over the last three years. It has now turned into what I had for 20 years as a newspaper photographer: a license to be curious. Read more » show less

We have a rule in the Hobby household. If the kids can get ready for bed quickly enough, we get to watch an episode of Doctor Who together. It is one of those rare shows that is equally enjoyed by every member of our family—including two middle-aged parents, a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-girl. That alone is remarkable. And as good as the show is, I've lately found myself watching it for the lighting as much as the imaginative story lines. A look at perhaps the most Strobist-y show on the TV dial, below. Read more » show less

Fact: most people on the planet—including roughly two-thirds of Americans—do not have a passport. Without a passport, you won't be traveling internationally any time soon. And even if you have no immediate travel plans, just having a passport is kinda like having a muscle car at a red light. You won't always squeal tires when the light turns green, but you know you could. If you have never held a passport before, it's a neat feeling when it arrives in the mail. For perhaps the first time, you feel like a citizen of the world. Merely having the possibility of international travel is better than not having a passport and being guaranteed you can't go. Even better, unlike your crappy driver's license or student I.D. mugshot, your passport photo is something you can control. So if you are gonna be a jet-set traveler, you may as well look good doing it. Read more » show less

On Strobist, I try not to merely echo content seen elsewhere. I just don't think rote aggregation adds much to the conversation. But I am making an exception on this Hassy HD5 BTS vid, which you may have seen recently on other sites. That's because the video itself (which, to be fair, is quite cool) is not the subject of the post. Nope, this post is about a comment on this video from long-time Strobist reader Duncan Bell. Read more » show less

UPDATE: I recorded a ~40-min webcam walk-thru of the cameras best features and how to use them at the bottom of the post. Those of you who follow on other channels—Flickr, Twitter, G Plus—know I have been getting acquainted with the new Fuji X100s for the past few weeks. Seen above, I have purposely gaffed mine up and trashed the shade to make it look not worth stealing (and otherwise less noticeable) when I travel with it. Reader's Digest Version: It's a remarkable, sync-at-any-speed camera with a no-apologies 16mp chip. I'll probably make more pictures with this camera over the next year than all of my other cameras combined. Why, below. Read more » show less

Sure, the Gulf Photo Plus shootout might be fun to watch. But for the photographers competing, it is all about a week of anticipation, stress and nervousness. And come shootout day, all of that is on display live in front of an audience of 350 armchair quarterback photographers. Below, the shootout video, how each photographer handled the stress and a challenge for you. Read more » show less

Having just spent a week with Greg in Dubai at Gulf Photo Plus, I have now heard him express the following thought multiple times: There is light you create that is a photographic reaction to light as it exists in the world, and there is light you create just because it's cool. I think it's safe to say that this photo he made of NBA star Alonzo Mourning, for ESPN Magazine, is the latter. How he did it, below. Read more » show less

I very rarely review gadgets on this site. But this is something that may be new to many of you. When I travel I try to take as little gear as humanly possible. But the Tekkeon MP1580, seen above at bottom right, is on my must-take short list every time I fly with a camera. Here's why. Read more » show less

The Gulf Photo Plus 2013 Shootout just concluded, and boy was it a doozy. The challenge: make a portrait of Greg Freakin' Heisler, soup to nuts, in front of 350 people in 20 mins flat. No pressure there. Major props to John Keatley, who managed to not crack under the pressure and actually make a portrait of Heisler that was consistent with the slightly off-center Keatley style. Completely seriously, I want a 16x20 of this for the Strobist Cave. And here's the thing: Keatley didn't even win it. This year's winner was Zack Arias, who suffice to say has a brass pair for what he did. You'll definitely want to watch the video when it comes out. Whatever you have to do to get to Dubai for GPP, make it happen. -30- show less

Like most photographers—especially lighting photographers—I love me some gaffer's tape. Today, a great way to carry enough gaff on your physical person at all times to fix a light mod, tack a piece of fabric to a wall for a headshot backdrop, hog-tie a captured smuggler or whatever. Get your MacGuyver on, below. Read more » show less

This is what I have wanted from PocketWizard for a long time: a sub-$100 remote. Basically, the new Plus X transceiver has everything you really need—and nothing you don't. Full details below. Read more » show less

There is nothing about flash in this post, except for "pre-flashing," and that is not what you think. Every time I adjust the exposure slider in a raw converter or tweak the tonal curve into a subtle S-shape, I think back to how we used to do some pretty insane stuff—very improbably—with film, little tweaks of light and a witches-brew of chemistry. If you are under 40, most of this is gonna be brand new. If you are older than that and used to shoot night sports for a newspaper, see how your experience matches up... Read more » show less

Reader Samora Chapman asks: I'm new to all this and I dug up my dad's Vivitar 285HV. I just got some Phottix radio triggers. Is it okay to connect them to the old Vivitar? Im scared of frying them! Ah, the trusty old Vivitar 285. The older ones are great flashes, but with one potentially fatal flaw. You don't want to go sticking that flash on just any camera or remote… Read more » show less