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.

With several hundred entries we sure were glad that we had tons of things to give away. Just to explain briefly how the names where chosen. The entries were numbered in reverse order of how they came in, then for each prize we used the random number generator at http://random.org and asked if you return a number between 1 and 302 (number of valid entries). Then we matched the number with the info of the winner and viola!

Kerry and David look back over the year of podcasts, talk about some of their favorite moments and guests, and then give away $6,000 in prizes to lucky listeners. Thanks you all you listeners for being with us this past year and a big thanks to all the people and companies that put up some really nice prizes!

I am a huge fan of my Westcott Spiderlite TD-5 studio lights with their nice soft output, low energy use, and cool operation. While they have always been great for product photography I never really liked using them for portraits because they just didn’t put out enough light. Westcott has released some new high wattage bulbs for the TD-5’s to address the needs of these types of situations.

Kerry and David take more letters from listeners and talk about “full figure” brides, lens choices, and blog hosting and then discuss some more tales of When Things Go Bad.

What’s better than a Photo Basics StrobeLite? A StrobeLite Plus of course! With more and more companies trying to attract the beginner to semi-pro market Westcott is pushing hard with the Photo Basics line to get good quality components into the marketplace. The difference with the Photo Basics line is that they are complete educational packages complete with floor mats to help with placement and instructional DVD’s.

As excited as we are that major lighting companies are bringing out lines of affordable lighting systems, we are really impressed that some of these systems go beyond just being a light and are complete educational packages. Wescott’s line products that fall under the Photo Basics brand are a perfect example of this new product positioning.

Announcing a new program that will award 100 photographers worldwide a Westcott accreditation of being named Top 100 Westcott Endorsed Pros.

Be recognized as the professional that you are.

Today is one of those days that I wanted to take a step back to some basics again. This time I want to talk about the three primary properties of light, and since what we are doing as photographers is recording light, it is important to know how these properties play into getting a good image. While I had studied this before, attending a recent seminar from Ed Pierce made me realize that many reader may never have seen these concepts before.