29 Jun, 2008
For photographers that shoot in RAW one of the biggest problems is not being able to see thumbnails of the images in Windows Explorer or do quick checks of RAW images without having to open them in Lightroom or Photoshop. I have been using dpMagic for over three years now and had thought that the project had completely stalled out. To my surprise they were just getting ready to launch a new version and it’s finally been released. Since dpMagic has been an indispensable part of my RAW workflow, I couldn’t wait for the new 2.0 version to come out and share it with you.
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30 May, 2008
This week we sat down with our friend David from Esquire Photography to discuss different aspects of wedding photography. What we thought was going to be a quick discussion turned into almost 90 minutes of everything from technique, to contracts, to workflow, and much more. Because of the length, I decided to cut it in half and do one half this week and the second part next week. Enjoy!
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19 May, 2008
It’s the height of the wedding season now and people that are shooting their first weddings or considering shooting a wedding should know a few tips to make sure the day goes as smooth as possible. Since weddings are our primary income at L7 Studios we figured we would pass along a number of our favorite tips and tricks.
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12 Apr, 2008
For the most part I come home from a shoot and dump the images from the CF cards onto the computer and then do my backups. Once in a while I am gone for a weekend without the benefit of a laptop and I want to make sure I have my CF cards backed up every night. For this reason I picked up a Wolverine Flashpac several years ago and have been using it ever since. Since you should always make backups as soon as possible, I can’t recommend some type of device like this enough.
Continue reading to learn more about remote backup devices…
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2 Mar, 2008
As you develop a good digital workflow and learn the power of tools like Adobe’s Lightroom, one of the tendencies is to take less time to perfect your exposure and white balance in the camera because it is so easy to correct these things during post production. However, when you think about it, if you spend 15 seconds per image and you do a wedding with 2,000 images, that’s 8 hours of fixing white balance and exposure. On the other hand, if you spend 15 seconds at each shot location during a wedding to get the exposure and white balance right, that will add up to about 3-4 minutes of time to get the settings right in-camera. If this sounds more like the time you want to spend getting you images right, then you should probably look into a digital calibration target.
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28 Feb, 2008
I have had the opportunity to shoot with a number of other people as both the “second” photographer as well as being the primary photographer. Today I want to talk about my feelings about shooting with other people as my own experience has covered the gamut from extremely enjoyable to absolutely horrible. So while this is not a technical article by any means, it is my own opinion as to how shooting with someone else can be both a rewarding, educational, and enjoyable experience.
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17 Feb, 2008
The home studio has been making amazing progress lately and we did some major work on it today to get it ready for it’s first test shoot. The final width comes in at twelve feet and the shooting area is fifteen feet from the main shooting wall. The back wall was painted with gloss white for high key background that will mostly be used during product shots. For other types of shots a background support is in place with a ten foot wide white seamless paper roll on it.
Was it as simple as cleaning out the garage and painting the walls? Absolutely not, continue reading to see what else we did to put some finishing touches on the studio.
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10 Feb, 2008
The transformation of the garage is nearing completion and the L7 Studio is coming together nicely. Unfortunately its not going to be as nice as this shot of 8443 Warner, but hay, someday right? So where are we and what have we had to do so far? Besides tons of trash, lots of craiglist sales, and multiple car loads of stuff to Goodwill, there is only one pile of trash left. Continue reading to find out what it has cost to get to were we are at now.
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3 Feb, 2008
Long time readers will note that I have been using a room in the house as my photo studio, alas I feel I have outgrown my humble beginnings, but what to do? My wife won’t let me kick any of the kids out of their bedrooms and she won’t let me take over the larger living room. This left two options, 1) Rent a space somewhere, 2) Build a new studio in the garage. Given budgetary contraints, I opted for number 2, and the Project L7 Studio has begun. Today we look at the plan do build my ultimate home studio. Read on for more details.
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22 Jan, 2008
I am out in Miami this week for a trade show but I am going to be out and about getting some great shots and writing up some articles about taking outdoor shots around the beach area. Just wanted to let you know we haven’t fallen off the face of the earth and I will try to post some great shots from the area this week.
