Russian photographers Dmitriy Christoprudov and Nikolay Kykov decided to take a very different tact with a recent photoshoot of the Chevy Cruze. To light the car for the photograph, they took it on the yard thick ice of Baikal lake—but drilled a hole in the lake to light the ice itself from below.

As you could probably guess, a plan as amibitious as this wasn’t quite as straightforward as you might hope. The photographers detailed the process in Russian on their livejournal, and it was translated on English Russia. The initial attempts to drill a hole using a borer weren’t large enough, so the photographers had to flag down passing fisherman, and pay them to widen the hole. Then, the crampons everyone was wearing had carved up the ice so much, it took another hour to it cleaned and ready to shoot.

To be fair, the final images seem a bit underwhelming considering how cool the idea is and how much work they put into it—but that’s a fault in execution, not a fault in concept. The lighting itself is fantastic, and creates a look unlike almost anything else we’ve seen. The glowing cracks through the ice look utterly unreal, and immensely impressive.

[via Jalopnik]

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Photographer Frank Donnino has come up with a dead simple way of figuring out how the catchlights will look in any photographic setup you could possibly imagine. If you’re having trouble visualizing how the incoming light will look on your subject’s eyes, just use a black marble to see where the reflections are coming from.

Just watch the brief video below, but it’s really a very intuitive idea. The shiny, opaque marble acts like a more dramatic version of an eye, easily showing where the lights are coming from. And then it’s just a matter of posing your subject properly—which is a whole different set of challenges.

[via ISO1200]

Can’t see the light? Don’t lose your marbles! from Frank Donnino on Vimeo.

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Thanks to an electronic flash’s ability to produce instantaneous bursts of light lasting about 1/15,000 sec or shorter, most photographers can capture a moving subject with absolute sharpness in ways that the human eye can’t see. Tom Smith, a 15-year-old from Lytham, England, did just that when he set up two off-camera accessory flashes in his Lancashire kitchen to capture this orange plunging into a fish tank.

While Smith timed the flash firings using his own reflexes (and lots of trial and error), electronic flash trigger kits make it much easier to photograph balloon pops, BB pellets flying through apples, or whatever else you can dream up. These kits work with sound cues (like a balloon’s pop) or infrared beams with controllers that let you fine tune flash firings to the millisecond in order to capture action at its most perfect peak.

STEP 1: 
Pick a subject

It could be a splash, like Tom Smith’s orange, a liquid droplet, or a water balloon in mid-pop. And once you get the lighting and trigger technique down, you can apply it to anything that moves fast.

STEP 2: 
Collect your gear

For a shot like this, you will need a camera that lets you manually set long (or Bulb) shutter speeds, a tripod, wireless radio flash triggers, a mid-range telephoto lens, remote shutter release, accessory flash units (two, with feet), a fishtank, black backdrop, and plenty of towels. For more consistent and predictable results, consider an electronic flash triggering kit like those from Cognisys.

STEP 3: 
Build your set

Work in a room that allows total darkness. Use your flashes in manual mode, at the lowest power for the shortest flash duration—
usually 1/32 or 1/64 power. Place the flashes as close to your subject as possible, arranged so they light the subject evenly. Dial in a mid-range aperture (Smith used f/11) and the lowest ISO that you can.

STEP 4: 
Fire away

Turn off the room lights, open your camera’s shutter, and set your subject in motion. If firing the flashes yourself (with radio triggers), perform test drops to fine-tune the timing. Smith was rewarded with a handful of keepers across hundreds of exposures. With a flash trigger such as the IR-based StopShot, you can up your success rate—set it up according to the manufacturer’s instructions. If you’re working with water, protect your flash units with plastic wrap.

STEP 5: 
Fix things later

Smith applied a few basic adjustments such as increasing Clarity (for more midtone contrast), adding Vibrance, sharpening, and cropping to a tighter composition. His most time-consuming task was cloning out debris, out-of-focus bubbles, and grit as he retouched in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

A typical strategy for capturing a fruit splash involves a darkened room and a tripod-mounted camera (A) with its shutter held open by a remote shutter release (B). The photographer then drops the fruit into a tank, breaking an infrared beam (C) cast by an infrared transmitter/receiving sensor (D). When the beam is broken, an electronic controller (E) fires two hardwired flash units (F) after a user-set delay measured in milliseconds.** Graphic: Kris Holland/Mafic Studios**

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Think you need thousands of dollars for a great lighting setup? You don’t. Get that gaffer tape ready, it’s time to create your own DIY photo studio.

Make a snoot out of a Pringles can and straws

Much like a theatrical spotlight, a grid spot can draw attention to a small, significant area within a larger scene. This grid spot for shoe-mount flashes, devised by petapixel.com‘s prolific D.I.Y.-er Michael Zwang, is cool because you can adjust the effect of the snoot by changing its grid—plastic straws. Black straws will focus light output to maximum effect, while gray and clear straws produce moderate or minimal focusing, respectively. To produce the snoot, cut the can’s base to the size of your flash head using metal snips. Be careful not to cut yourself while doing this, and file down or tape over any sharp metal edges.

Approximate cost: Less than $8
Materials: A Pringles can ($3), gaffer tape ($3), plastic drinking straws ($2)
Tools required: Metal snips or scissors

Make a DIY light table with a cardboard box

This floor-lit light table costs next to nothing and produces very dramatic lighting effects, especially with bottom-lit glassware. To see some like-in-a-magazine shots of beer bottles made by the table’s creator, Nick Wheeler, do a search under his name at diyphotography.net. One of the best things about this adaptable design? It’s easy to adjust the distance between the light and light table, a very important consideration.

APPROXIMATE COST Less than $10
MATERIALS: Two cardboard boxes (free), glass plate (under $10), tape ($5)
TOOL REQUIRED: Box cutter

We found this shockingly simple, yet very effective, light focusing device from Flickr user Gut Mann via David Hobby of the blog Strobist. Like most grid spots, its main job is to funnel light to a center-frame subject, while allowing the image edges to fade to near black. One of the advantages of this particular design is that its light focusing power can be increased by cutting thicker cardboard wedges, or decreased by making them shallower. You can also give yours a more finished look with a coat of black spray paint, and by rimming its edges with black tape. A popular variation on the idea uses corrugated black plastic instead of cardboard. It’s more rugged and much longer-lasting, though more expensive.

(If video does not load, re-load page)

APPROXIMATE COST: Less than $5
MATERIALS: Cardboard, rubber band, craft glue (under $5)
TOOLS REQUIRED: Box cutter, straight edge

How To: Make a Salad-Bowl Beauty Dish

Softer than a naked strobe, but higher contrast than a softbox, the beauty dish is a popular light modifier among glamour photographers. We found this one, by Todd and Chris Owyoung, on diyphotography.net. It requires basic metal working skills, including drilling, cutting, and grinding. While there are commerically-available dishes for about the same price, the cost of this one drops if you have any of the materials on hand or are willing to use a plastic salad bowl

Click here for step-by-step instructions

APPROXIMATE COST: Less than $60
MATERIALS: A 16-quart stainless-steel salad bowl ($19), 8-inch aluminum pizza pan ($2), bolts ($2), softbox bracket (from $9), spray paint ($10)
TOOLS REQUIRED: Power drill, Dremel cutwheel, grinding stone, sandpaper

Here’s a first: a ring light for smartphones made from a simple camping lantern (they usually hang from tent poles). Devised by the clever Simon Ellingworth—that’s his light saber on the right, too—it can produce the ring light’s hallmark characteristics: shadow-free lighting and circular catchlights in the eyes of portrait subjects. It can also produce the usual ring light disadvantages: its light falls off very quickly, forcing you to work with very tight subject distances. The good news is this D.I.Y. project is very easy to pull off. If you can attach Velcro tape, you’re halfway home. In addition to concocting DIY photo projects, Ellingworth runs a great photo tutorial website, lightism.co.uk.

Click here for step-by-step instructions

APPROXIMATE COST: Less than $20
MATERIALS: Camping tent lantern ($10), plastic smartphone case ($5), Velcro ($5)
TOOLS REQUIRED: Scissors

Essentially, Tyson Waggener’s reflector is two foamcore boards taped together, with each side spray-painted either black, silver, or gold, and one side left white. While it’s possible to find collapsible four-way reflectors for about the same price, if you already own black, silver, and/or gold spray paint (or have other uses for them), this project can make practical sense. In addition to its simplicity, this four-in-one reflector is infinitely adaptable. And as the boards get nicked and scuffed with use, it’s easy to repaint them.

Click here for step-by-step instructions

APPROXIMATE COST: Less than $40
MATERIALS: Two foamcore boards (price varies by size and thickness), black, silver, and gold spray paint (less than $10 each), duct tape (less than $5)
TOOLS: None

Ed Zawadzki, the Philadelphia-based people and fashion pro trumped numerous D.I.Y. accessory-flash snoots with this one made of a 9×12-inch sheet of craft foam (a.k.a. foamies). Its primary plus is that it’s adjustable. You can narrow its beam to the size of a pencil point, or spread the foam sheet out (as shown) until it’s broad enough to serve as a bounce card. Another plus? Zawadzki claims you can make one in a matter of a few seconds!

Click here for step-by-step instructions

APPROXIMATE COST: Less than $6
MATERIALS: Craft foam ($2), Velcro wrap ($3)
TOOLS REQUIRED: Scissors

Light sabers have been likened to magic wands for lighting. Hand-held, they can add fill light to portraits or product shots. This one requires minimal shop skills. Its inventor, Simon Ellingworth, is known for his “Lollipod” tripod, monopod, and boom (lollipod.co.uk).

Click here for step-by-step instructions

APPROXIMATE COST: Less than $20
MATERIALS: PVC piping ($4), bright LED flash light (from $10), zip tie ($3)
TOOLS REQUIRED: Saw, drill

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Trying to explain the inverse square law is one of those topics that can cause every eye in the room to quickly glaze over. Thanks to its association with complex diagrams and equations, what’s actually a very important factor to take into account when attempting to light a scene isn’t as widely understood as it should be. Luckily photographer Karl Taylor has put together two videos that explain the law simply, and in short order.

All told, both videos add up to just 10 minutes, and once you start to see what he’s talking about, it’s really dead easy. Simply put, that while light power drops dramatically as it moves away from your subject, it also gets far more even. So if you’re lighting more than one person, a lamp in close proximity will mean that they’re illuminated very differently, where a further away one will be far more even. But you can also use this to your advantage to have your subject lit more brightly than the background.

With the pair of videos being so short, you really should be able to find the time to watch them and get a handle on how the Inverse Square Law of Light works, and actually seeing it in action is far more effective than starting at a diagram and formula, trying to wrap your head around how it would behave.

[via Reddit]

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Clear a solid half-hour from your schedule today, because if you have any interest in fashion or beauty photography, you’re going to want to watch this video. Photographer Karl Taylor has put together an astonishingly good and informative video, where he shows the real and qualitative differences between a variety of different lighting reflectors, and how they can influence the overall look of your final image.

If you’re pressed for time, you can skip forward to 16:30 in the video, where he starts breaking down the actual final results, but if you’re not in a rush, try and take some time to watch the entire thing. He does an excellent introduction into how and why the dishes behave like they do, and how to use them. And there’s a lot more to it than just the size of the reflector—there’s all manner of other variables, and many of the dishes have multiple settings which make it yet more intricate.

So for anyone who’s interested in beauty and fashion photography, and wants to know what it takes to get the lighting right in the studio, this is an excellent introduction.

[via Reddit]

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For two solid weeks in 2012, Taka Kawachi, a product specialist who works out of a studio in Nyack, NY, shot nothing but glassware for a major department store chain. Juice, highball, and shot glasses, tumblers, stemware of every size and shape, and, yes, pilsner glasses and beer mugs. If he wasn’t a master of lighting glass at the project’s outset, he certainly was by its end.

To light this frothy stein, Kawachi said his challenges were threefold: He wanted to highlight the mug’s transparency while exaggerating the amber glow of its contents; to capture the concave texturing of the mug’s surface; and to bring out the mug’s outer edges to define its contours. Here’s how this still-life pro handled each of these tasks.

• Highlighting transparency: Kawachi used the classic technique of backlighting the glass. This prevented unwanted reflections from forming on the front of the mug, which would have compromised the transparency of the glass and desaturated the attractive amber glow of the lager.

• Capturing surface detail: While he wanted to minimize surface reflections, Kawachi didn’t want to eliminate them completely. By placing a relatively weak, diffused white light source to the left of his subject, the photographer introduced faint white reflections on the mug’s front surfaces. They subtly convey its indentations.

• Defining contours: To etch the mug’s handle and surface ribbing, Kawachi flanked the glass with black. To the left and right sides he placed large black flags, and he worked in a completely darkened studio. Both strategies created strong black lines that helped exaggerate texture and the mug’s shape.

Taka Kawachi housed two Profoto strobe heads in homemade softboxes (A) to side- and backlight his subject. Both sources were further diffused through sheets of translucent Plexiglas (B). For a stronger, contrastier light for the beer’s foamy white head, Kawachi top-lit the mug with a third, undiffused Profoto head (C). Two black flags (D) outlined select glass surfaces, and a large, white V-card (E) provided subtle fill lighting to the right side of the mug. To support his subject, Kawachi used an expensive panel of “water” glass (F), an unusually pure form of glass whose bubble-, ripple-, and color-free characteristics can make it relatively invisible to the camera. Why DIY softboxes? “Commercially available softboxes are designed for portraits and usually give off very flat, even light,” says Kawachi. “For products, I need something with more contrast.” He gets it by lining the interior of his foamcore softboxes with aluminum foil.

Illustration: Kris Holland/Mafic Studios

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S.I. Dixon, an Australian school teacher by day and part-time portraitist most other times, is drawn to “less-than-mainstream subjects,” he says. Burlesque dancers, roller derby skaters, and, as in the portrait here, ink aficionados are his typical quarry. To document them, he uses a lighting style that smacks of the great Richard Avedon.

“I choose Avedon’s lighting because it’s very clean and simple, with even highlights and shadows across the figure. Drama isn’t evoked by the lighting. The subject brings that to the picture,” says Dixon.

So what’s an Avedon lighting setup? Google the phrase, and the Internet coughs up a dozen different combinations of front, back, and fill lights, often with baffles and reflectors. Avedon himself deployed his light differently, depending on the circumstances. (See the essential book Avedon at Work: In the American West by Laura Wilson; Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, 2003.)

While lighting setups vary, the look doesn’t: you need a bright white background, even illumination across the subject, open shadows, snappy contrast, and absolutely no flare compromising the figure’s edges. So strongly is this style associated with Avedon that among some shooters his name has morphed into a verb, as in “I Avedoned three subjects today.”

Dixon especially likes the look because “the subjects are removed from any context, and the focus is placed entirely on them, their attire, demeanor, and expression,” he tells us.

One of the hallmarks of this lighting style is the soft, often indirect main light. “The key is getting the indirect light as even as possible across the subject,” says Dixon. When the main light is too high, the result is a bright head and face, and lighting that quickly falls off for the rest of the figure. “With practice, it becomes easy to see and fix the problem,” he says. Often, all that’s required is a strategically placed reflector.

Another problem? Flare from the bright white background can lighten subject edges. The fix: Throw less light on the background and/or move your subject forward, away from it.

He began by gaffer-taping bright white seamless paper (A) to a west-facing exterior brick wall (B). With the morning sun coming from the east, the wall cast a shadow (C) into which Dixon placed his subject. Because the lighting across the subject would become top-heavy as the sun rose, Dixon worked fairly quickly. He carefully positioned the subject far enough from the background so as not to see flare around the figure, but not so far forward that the subject was closer to direct sunlight and therefore too brightly lit. To prevent skintones from blowing out, he closed down 0.67 stop over the spot-meter reading recommended by his Canon EOS 5D Mark II (D). Dixon likes this setup because, “I’d become sick of lugging lights and gear from shoot to shoot, and rigging complicated setups. This more simple setup lets me focus on my subject.”

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Stephen Carroll, a freelance photographer from Reston, Virginia, specializes in artwork for book covers, with more than 400 (mostly novels) to his credit. They’re not just any book covers, though. His genius lies in creating film noir-like scenes, complete with desperate lovers, soaked T-shirts, smoking guns, and, of course, stormy weather. “I do cinematic stock photography,” he says, “and there’s nothing like the dark of night and pouring rain to remind you of early Hitchcock.”

But it took Carroll a while to nail the cinematic look. Rain’s transparent quality is hard to light. “You can’t frontlight it,” he says. “You can only see falling water when it’s backlit.”

Be careful that your backlights don’t shine directly into the lens, because if they do, you’ll get flare and lose the noir look. Put them off to the side or directly behind and blocked by your subject.

A single backlight will work, as this shot proves. That’s how Hollywood usually does it, because it adds more contrast and drama. For full figures, though, you need two backlights. “And that’s a problem, because a backlight on each side produces two reflections on each drop. You get so many white streaks that you almost can’t see the subjects,” says Carroll.

The light source makes a difference with rain. Off-camera hotshoe flashes produce snow-like points of light because of their quick flash durations. A continuous light source yields straight streaks of light; the longer your shutter is open, the longer the streaks will be. Carroll’s preference? The “tadpole swimming upstream” effect that is produced by a studio strobe. “Its initial pop is very bright, producing the ‘tadpole’s’ head. As the light slowly dies, it produces a progressively thinner ‘tail.’”

But there’s one important fact to keep in mind: Water and electricity don’t mix. If you’re shooting with studio strobes outside, your outlet should be a ground fault circuit interupter (GFI). This will kill the electricity instantly if water causes a short circuit. If you have the choice of shoe-mount or studio strobes, or if you’re just starting out with such techniques, go with the shoe-mount to eliminate the risk of electrocution.

By the way, Carroll did not shoot this photo in actual rain. Instead, he created the scene outside using a garden hose and sprayer. The sidebar and illustration will tell you how.

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If you’ve been on any social media network at all in the past few weeks, you’re almost certainly familiar with the Ice Bucket Challenge. For the unfamiliar, it’s a viral social media campaign that challenges people to raise money to help fund research to cure ALS. You have to make a video while you dump a bucket of ice water on your own head, then call out some friends who have 24 hours to then complete the challenge themselves. If you do it, you’re on the hook for a small donation ($10-$25). If you opt out, you’re on the hook for $100.

I am an extremely handsome man

It’s fun and it serves a great cause, but since I’m a photographer, I thought a portrait might fit my personality better than a video. So, I busted out a few lights and made myself a few portraits, then made a donation. I had a surprising number of people message me to ask how I did it, so I figured a tutorial was in order. While I’m not officially challenging any of you, making a donation certainly would’t hurt. And feel free to share your videos and photos in the comments.

Location
Since we were going to be throwing water all over the place, it was clear that we needed to be outside, so I simply went out into my yard at roughly 6:30 in the evening. You wouldn’t guess by the dark black in the background, but the sun was still well above the horizon when we shot this.

Setting up the shot
I marked a spot in the grass where the subject needed to stand, that way I didn’t need to move the lights or adjust their power once they were in place. I decided to use my Canon 7D with a 70-200mm lens because it would allow me to get pretty far away from all that splattering water.

Pre-flash exposure
I wanted to make the background as dark as possible, and use a very narrow aperture in order to make sure all the water splashing around the frame would be in focus. So, I started at F/11 with a shutter speed of 1/200th sec, which is the fastest my flashes will go without going into high-speed sync. At ISO 100, this made the background pretty much black, so we were already good to go.

Adding flashes
I positioned a Canon 580 EX slightly to camera right as the main light with no modifier. I left the flash head zoomed out to 24mm so it would cover all of the water in addition to the subject. Then, I placed two flashes (a canon 580 EX and a Canon 420 EX) behind the subject. Each rear flash was between five and six feet behind the subject and about 3.5-feet to either side. That gave us enough room that the flashes wouldn’t get splashed and we wouldn’t need to crank the power level on the flashes too hard.

The rear flash to camera left has a purple gel placed over it, while the less-powerful flash to camera right has a blue gel taped onto it. The gels aren’t necessary, but I really wanted the images to stand-out to people who might be scrolling quickly through their social media feeds. The blast of color helps with that. But, the effect would still be very cool without it.

After a little tweaking, I ended up keeping the power level of each flash at just over half-power. With fresh batteries, it let me get a few pops off during each pour to minimize cold, we do-overs.

Getting the shot
The timing was one of the trickiest things about the whole process. Getting a great splash required precise timing. For the self-dumping shots, it wasn’t that difficult, but coordinating with a dedicated pourer for the kid shots too more finagling. Counting down from three helped, and shooting with both eyes open helped as well. Framing things a little looser and cropping in later also came in handy.

There’s a lot of action happening in the scene, but our subject remains static, which means taking autofocus out of the equation all together is a good idea. You don’t want the AF locking onto an errant water droplet and dragging the focus away from the person taking the challenge. You can lock the AF on the person’s face before they start the water dumping motion, or, use manual focus from the start and just maintain your distance from the subject. Since I was at F/11, I had quite a bit of leeway anyway.

Editing
I was intentionally using hard light because I wanted a lot of contrast and very clearly defined edges and shadows on the water droplets. Because of this, adding even a bit more contrast during processing made the effect even more pronounced. I also added a small amount of clarity in Lightroom for the same reason.

There were still a few visible details left in the background of the image due to spill from the flashes, so I did some simple burning using the Lightroom paintbrush tool.

Other options to explore
Just because I decided to go crazy with the lights doesn’t mean it’s the only way to do it. In fact, there are a lot of other ways to get a great picture with water splatter. Here are a few things to remember when setting up:

• Keep your shutter speed as fast as you can if you don’t plan on using a flash. Even if that means cranking up the ISO. 1/500th even seemed a little slow when I was experimenting with it. Getting up over 1/1000th seems ideal.
• This is one of the rare occasions where using an on-camera flash works totally fine. It will help you freeze the action and because water will be obscuring the face a lot of the time, the shortfalls of the harsh light will actually work in your favor for once.
• Picking a plain background (or using flash and keeping your ambient exposure very dark) will help the water stand out from the background. Leaves and other busy patters make the droplets harder for the eye to pick out.
• Using a light source from behind your subject helps accentuate the water. It doesn’t have to be a flash, either. You can use a lamp, or even the sun if you want to. The trick here is that you’ll need to keep your shutter speed fast even though you’re using a flash, otherwise you’ll get blur.
• Give yourself enough depth for field so you can keep most of the water in focus. The sharp droplets really do draw the eye. When they get blurry, the effect isn’t as pronounced. Of course, you may like that better, so it’s really up to you.
• Remember that water is bad for camera gear so long lenses are your friend. Just be sure to back up enough to leave room in the frame to catch all the splashes.

Oh, and if you’re doing this specifically for the #icebucketchallenge, then be sure to donate!

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