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Mission Impossible: Performance Photography

Mission Impossible: Performance Photography
Fade In POV (Camera Left) Theme from Mission Impossible playing in the background. Cut to a pair of hands taking a cassette tape out of an envelope and placing it in a tape deck. (For those of you too young to remember  what a cassette tape is, it was the predecessor of the CD and DVD). Bring down the...

Lessons Learned From A Studio Burglary

Lessons Learned From A Studio Burglary
Sunday, July 11, started off wrong and, then, got worse. I was up early watching the Tour de France. I’m an addict. Smack dab in front of my big screen, one of my heroes, Lance Armstrong, had an accident that would take him out of contention for the Yellow Jersey. And, then, I got the phone call....

Part 2: More On Installing CS5

Part 2: More On Installing CS5
By now, many of us actually have CS5 up and running on our computers. Some have had easy installations. Some have not. Unfortunately, I am in both camps. I had an easy installation. And, I lived through the installation from hell. I trust that most of you will travel the “easy path”. The...

A Protocol for Upgrading to Adobe Photoshop CS5

A Protocol for Upgrading to Adobe Photoshop CS5
Some people measure time on a clock. Others on a calendar. And, there are those of us who measure time in terms of “software life cycles” — the time between major product upgrades. For those of us in the latter category, this is a time to celebrate.

Protecting Our Work: Watermarking Part II — Batch Processing

Protecting Our Work: Watermarking Part II — Batch Processing
In the last post, we created a “brush” to use when signing or placing a copyright notice on our images. Using the brush, one image at a time, works well. But, when we have a big job, a lot of images we want to protect all at once, it’s not the way to get the job done. That’s where...

Protecting Our Work: Watermarking Part I.

Protecting Our Work: Watermarking Part I.
Yes, I know. It’s a crime against art and beauty to put a watermark across model Hai Thi Ngo’s eyes. I had to. The placement was dictated by my site software. But, in some ways, the placement is appropriate;  it shows the quandary in which we find ourselves when

Camera Profiles and the ColorChecker Passport — The What, Why and How

Camera Profiles and the ColorChecker Passport — The What, Why and How
For a while it was a mystery. I just didn’t get it. No matter how I set the white balance in my Nikon cameras — be it preset or custom — when I opened my images in either Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) or Lightroom (which are, in essence, the same thing) the White Balance number would be way...

Busman’s Holiday: Shooting with Hanson Fong and My New Profoto D1 Airs

Busman’s Holiday: Shooting with Hanson Fong and My New Profoto D1 Airs
Webster’s: Busman’s Holiday — a holiday spent following or observing the practice of one’s usual occupation. A couple of weeks ago, my good friend Hanson Fong, fresh off an appearance at the Houston stop on the Beauty and Beast tour, took a day off and hung out with me. So, how...

Q: I’m confused. What are the differences between “hot lights” and “strobes”?

Q: I’m confused. What are the differences between “hot lights” and “strobes”?
Some form of this question has come up in almost every lighting seminar we’ve taught. With the convergence of still and motion photography — with the morphing of DSLR’s into de facto video cameras, this question is quite timely. As I’ve mentioned before, I learned my lighting...

Q: Does it matter which color space I select in my camera?

Q: Does it matter which color space I select in my camera?
Answer: Yes. No. Maybe. Confused? Read on. With all of the attention properly being paid to color management, I’ve been asked whether it matters which color space one uses in the camera — and if so, which one to use. Without going into an in depth discussion of the concept of “color...
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