Podcast #74 – Back to the Basics – Composition with Roberto Valenzuela
January 19, 2010 – 6:34 pm | Comments

This week we go back to the basics and talk about composition with our good friend Roberto Valenzuela.
Roberto talks about composition and gives the following guidelines:

Choose a selective focusing technique
Placement and composition of your main …

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Shooting and Lighting Tips

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15 Photography Books You Shouldn’t Go Without Reading
August 27, 2009 – 7:47 am | Comments
15 Photography Books You Shouldn’t Go Without Reading

There are hundreds if not thousands of photography books available and choosing one can be a daunting task. I asked around for some suggestions and even made some tweets to ask what other people thought and I came up with this list of 17 (will explain in a moment) books you shouldn’t miss.

Digium Card Photo Shoot Walkthru
August 14, 2009 – 9:46 pm | Comments
Digium Card Photo Shoot Walkthru

Every once in a while a shoot comes up with specific requirements and your job is to figure out how to get the shot that they want. Today I needed to shoot some Digium interface cards for 888VoipStore.com. The challenge was that I wanted to get a vertical shot with a reflection underneath.

DSLR Remote Pro – Revisiting an old friend
July 20, 2009 – 3:00 am | Comments
DSLR Remote Pro – Revisiting an old friend

If you have been a fan of Camera Dojo for a while you will have seen mentions of Breeze Systems’ DSLR Remote Pro. DSLR Remote Pro at its basics is a tool for doing tethered shooting, so what right? The Canon EOS Utility can do that, so why would we want to spend close to $100 for software that comes free with your camera? Let’s take a fresh look at what all DSLR Remote Pro can do for you.

How to properly clean your lenses
July 14, 2009 – 9:21 pm | Comments
How to properly clean your lenses

In the forums Benjamin Trevor asked for an article on how to properly clean your lens so thanks for the suggestion and here we go. First off, the best thing to do is keep your lenses clean in the first place, always keep your front and rear caps on when not in use.

Video: What’s in Kerry’s Bag
July 12, 2009 – 3:14 pm | Comments
Video: What’s in Kerry’s Bag

I get asked all the day what gear I have in my camera bag so today I put together a video of going through my camera bag and seeing everything that is in it. If …

Video: Walking through a typical product shoot
July 9, 2009 – 6:07 am | Comments
Video: Walking through a typical product shoot

In this video Kerry walks through the process of doing a typical product shoot. This tutorial uses the Westcott Spiderlite TD-5 constant lights. Constant lights are great for product shots because you can easily get your lighting setup and see exactly in the viewfinder what you will get when you press the shutter.

Video: Using Live View Mode for Macro Shots
July 2, 2009 – 6:47 am | Comments
Video: Using Live View Mode for Macro Shots

One of my favorite shots at a wedding is the ring shot or close-up shots of specific details. For these shots I love to use a Lensbaby Composer. With many DSLR’s it can be pretty tricky because of the warping action of the Lensbaby lens along with the small viewfinder and when using the super wide angle lens it just compounds the issue on macro shots. In the past, the best I could do was to get the focus as close as possible and then take a series of shots making slight changes to the focus each time.

Video: Hows does aperture affect your shot
June 27, 2009 – 7:36 am | Comments

Adam Mason asked us how aperture can affect your shot. To answer the question Kerry explains what aperture is and then demonstrates how it can be used to alter the look of the image you are trying to create. By learning how to use your aperture to control light and depth of field you can dramatically change the look of your photographs.

Video: How to use a Light Meter
June 25, 2009 – 8:07 pm | Comments

With the recent articles we have done on portrait lighting and the use of light meters we have had a bunch of requests to do an actual demonstration of how to use a meter in an actual real-world environment.

In this video Kerry demonstrates using a simple light meter in a product shoot.

Classic Portrait Lighting Styles Part I
June 13, 2009 – 6:22 pm | Comments
Classic Portrait Lighting Styles Part I

As we continue our series on portrait lighting we now need to look at the different types of classic portrait lighting and see the effect it has on someone so we can decided when to use each type. By choosing the proper lighting for a particular person, we can help them to look their best by making them appear to be thinner or wider or to accent or minimize certain facial features.