Archives for posts with tag: Tech Tuesday

Jul,07

Comments: 6

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Hotshoe Flashes

Lighting

Photography

Tech Tuesday

Travel

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…

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May,25

Comments: 1

Links

Why

8 useful plugins for Photog bloggers

Plugins and tips for photobloggers that save us time and keep us behind a camera

Wordpress plugins for photobloggers – that’s what today’s Tech Tuesday is all about.

We are talking about some nuts-and-bolts type plugins that are helpful for photographers using Wordpress and are geared towards making your life easier – and hopefully allow you to spend less time updating your blog and more time behind the camera.

If you are not familiar with WordPress, you maybe literally been living under a rock -not much I can do about that other than to say give it a try, you won’t regret it. I’ve made my living the last 4 years off of Wordpress customization and custom plugins – not to get too “preachy” but its an amazing platform and it’s ability to use plugins has made it all the better. We as photographers should utilize such things, right?!

Here we go. More after the jump…

May,19

Comments: 5

Tech Tuesday: Mac Dictate

Matt Brandon comments on Voice Recognition and his use of Mac Dictate

Welcome to the first edition of Tech Tuesday. Tech Tuesday is where we review a piece of technology – gear, software, gadgetry in general – and see how it fits into our lives as photographers. Being a web designer for years before I got serious about photography, and before that, a *gulp* tech guy, technology is generally somewhere mixed in my thoughts when it comes to photography and how we can more easily do what we do.

So thats tech tuesday in a nutshell.

This week we have Matt Brandon giving us a quick review of a piece of software he uses quite regularly called Mac Dictate. Mac Dictate is produced by Mac Speech and the purpose of the software is to, as they say “…forget about what you are typing, and focus on what you have to say.” I’ve always been skeptical of speech recognition software, mostly because I find that it turns out to be more hassle than it was worth and usually not free on top of that. Nonetheless, I’m incredibly impressed by Mac Dictate and equivalently intrigued by how integrated it is into Matt’s workflow.

Matt wanted me to point out that he used Mac Dictate to answer these questions – He made zero corrections and to be honest, he didn’t even proofread it when he sent it to me. Matt’s by no means lazy and I’m by no means that bad of an editor, he just wanted you guys to get a feel for how accurate and inteligent the software actually is and what better way than to put your money where your mouth is (I’m avoiding an obvious pun here). There are mistakes but for the most part its way more impressive than I would have imagined. Check out some example videos here and here.

Undoubtedly a piece of technolgy that could prove useful for photographers. Check out the interview after the break.