One of the things I hear that people really struggle with is how to use gels to make colored backgrounds. Why would we want to do this? Well, because sometimes a basic single color background …

Shooting an awards ceremony usually doesn’t allow you the opportunity to setup much in the way of lighting.
 
At a recent event I only had a few minutes to get whatever I was going to do …

Jason Groupp is one of my favorite photographers when it comes to his use of off-camera lighting using minimal equipment. Jason has just released a new DVD called “25” featuring, as he puts it, 25 …

Since I launched the Blackbelt Lighting Products the most common question I get asked is “How many lights do I need?”. The problem is there is no simple answer to that, except that I always …

This is not some miniature, this is three full sized stores with absolutely no light hitting them. While we probably could have just setup a couple of umbrellas and just blasted the scene with light …

We are somewhere in the middle of nowhere, we haven’t seen a city in what seems like ages. We are only seeing another car about once every 15-20 minutes. Yet again we are …

As the Sun disappeared over the horizon, there was barely a glow over the distance mountains when we came upon this old covered wagon. We knew this was going to be the shot we were …

The Salton Sea is an amazing place to shoot images. From abandoned homes and hotels to rotting cars and dead fish you can easily spend a whole weekend shooting there. If you search …

If you hadn’t heard about it before, Photo Project 24 is a collaborative project between myself and Chris Diset. The goal was to travel about 1,500 miles in 24 hours while stopping once an hour …

Lately I have become addicted to using more and more speedlites on my shoots in order to have complete control of the lighting that I want to achieve. Products like my wireless flash triggers and …

When you are learning how to use lighting it is best to start off with a single light source and really learn how to master what you can get with that. Your next best friend …

Sometimes you just need more light and one speedlite isn’t enough. While playing around with the Westcott Speedliting Kit I figured out some interesting ways of attaching multiple lights to the system. Using this setup, …