Archives for posts with tag: Lighting

Jul,05

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Lighting

Nepal

Nepal Street Photography

Street Photography

Strobes

Strobist

Thamel

Travel Lighting

Thamel

Street Photography in the Thamel District of Nepal

Thamel is one of my favorite places in Nepal. Thamel is a network of streets in downtown Kathmandu that is one continuous winding bazaar of sorts. Though it’s crowded with tourists and upper-class hippies desperately trying not to make eye contact with each other for fear of looking unoriginal , spending the time talking to any of the locals will give you sense of the uniqueness of these streets.

The night before I flew out of Nepal to Hong Kong I had the chance to quickly go out with my strobes and grab a few shots around the district. It was a blast, but was cut short by a sudden onslaught of food poisoning and low batteries.

Enjoy.

Jul,07

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Mobile Lighting for Travel Photography

Light, durable, and inexpensive mobile lighting setups for travel photographers

Todays Tech Tuesday is all about lighting.

Let me start by saying that there are some travel photographers that won’t go near artificial lighting – I am not one of those. I’m not discriminating between those who use artificial light and those who don’t. I don’t really draw a strong distinction between the two, other than to say I love natural light just as much as I love lighting setups in many ways – it just happens to be the lighting setups that get my blood rushing and make me excited about being a photographer. If you are one of the strictly natural light guys, no worries – unfortunately you might not get much out of this post other than maybe some information you can store away for when you do pick up a strobe,.

Moving on…

Over the last month I’ve been asked several times about what lighting setups I use while I’m on the field.

Here is my typical field setup.

Just a quick list of what you see above

2x Westcott 43″ convertible umbrellas (here)
2x multiclamps w/ shoe mounts (here)
2x Nikon sb-24’s (here)
2x Manfrotto Nano Portable light stands (here)
1x Paul C. Buff CyberSync Trigger Controller (here)
2x Paul C. Buff CyberSync Trigger Receiver (here)
1/8th gridspot (here)
Lightsphere, rechargeable batteries, red bungie things, tape

The real beauty of this setup is in the fact that it takes up very little space in my bag and it was super cheap compared to most setups. I’ve taken this exact setup all over SE Asia without thinking twice. If you’re setup is too big or you have the mental conversation about “should I take it or not” , you probably wont take it, and in my opinion, the setup is too big for you to easily get out, set up, and capture a killer shot if the situation arises. Food for thought: It took me less than 3 minutes to get this shot from having nothing setup – here’s what I got. The setup can be seen here.

A closer look after the break…

Mar,02

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Reasons to do a self portrait series.

And how to let it improve your photography.

So I love portraits.

Since I’ve moved into a new complex and the locals are getting used to us, the culturally relevant and respectful portrait opps have been sparse. So what do you do when there is no one to shoot and your creative juices are flowing? In my case, the self portrait.

I love the self portrait.

Around 3 months ago I had the idea to do a 30 day self portrait series with a certain amount of creative resctrictions. The restrictions were as following:

I could use two strobes, but they must be in the same position and power settings.
I had to take the shot at the same time of day
At that time, I had to stop what I was doing and incorporate what I was doing into the shot
If I wasn’t home, then no worries
I had three exposures to play with
Same focal length, camera settings, etc

The setup

35mm 1.8 Nikkor
Taped off: Tripod Location, Camera mount on RRS head & L Plate, taped off tripod head settings, Taped off my position
Wireless Remote Shutter release
Shot against a white, concrete, bland, cold, Chinese plastered wall

So take a look at these next 14(hardly 30, we will address that) images from a 30 day self portrait series and then we will discuss what you can learn about photography, lighting, and yourself after these images.

Feb,24

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Lighting

Opportunity

Soap Box

Travel

Vision

Whiny Photog

What you want w/ what you have

And how to avoid The Whiny Photographer...

This is a topic that has been on my mind almost daily for the last three months in one form or another. What’s the question exactly? If I had to sum it up, it would be this:

How do you shoot what you love and actualize your vision in an environment that encourages something else?

Some necessary back story. I live in far Western China as a photographer, photo business owner, and teacher. A travel photographers dream, right? Travel photography I like, but I don’t absolutely love it. I don’t hate it by any means and in fact I really enjoy it. See the difference there? I walk down the street every day and pass highly interesting subjects from 6 different minority and ethnic groups. Monks, Muslims, Chinese, Mongolians, and a few that 99.9% of the world wouldn’t recognize. It’s a truly awesome place to live and run a business. Photographically I’ve had to dig to find my gold.