Can a photographer find happiness switching from Apple’s Mac OS X to Windows Vista? This photographer is going to find out in a controlled experiment. Yes, at Daylight Photo we still have our eight Mac machines up and running and that’s not going to change, at least not in the short term. But when it came time to buy a laptop from which to run this blog, I decided to give a PC a try. I do have an aging PC desktop at home that runs Ubuntu Linux but my …

I’d also be interested to hear how you got the effect in your Forgotten America photos… - Matthew Botos

This one’s for you, Matthew (and everyone else, of course). I’d like to talk about how the Forgotten America series was created by using this image as an example.
This is a scene in northwestern Ohio, right near the Indiana border, a timeless image photographed on the way to visit family. I like these kinds of timeless scenes and try to photograph what I can without cars or fashions that would …

Process your own black and white film
Today’s video is something really different, we’ll take a break from lighting this week and get back at it next Monday. It’s fun to change things up, it keeps things interesting and it seemed like this video could fill a need.

There are a few different reasons you might want to shoot with film. Maybe you prefer the feel of a vintage, mechanical SLR (EpicEdits has a great post on film vs. digital cameras) . And if you’re going to shoot the old-fashioned way, …

digg_url = ‘http://prophotolife.com/2008/07/03/the-nearly-universal-camera-lens-recommendation-for-all-dslr-photographers-the-fast-50mm/’;

The past few weeks I’ve managed to get a quick video up on Thursday but this week we’ve been pressed for deadlines at the studio. I’m attributing much of the good business fortune at Daylight Photo to the good kharma coming from the website here, so let‘s hope it keeps rolling. Instead of a video today I’ve found a quiet moment at the keyboard to tap out a post I’ve wanted to write for quite some time about a valuable piece of gear.

I really enjoyed reading David …

Have you ever been in a creative rut? The ideas just aren’t coming to you and when they are, the results are disappointing? I’m sure we’ve all been there. This is the story of how I dealt with one particular creative drought.
A couple of years ago my photo studio was doing very well but I was just “going through the motions”. Nothing was particularly exciting and it seemed like every job was repetitive. Thankfully, a photo assistant helped pull me out of the doldrums.
We were on a location shoot for …

In answer to another reader question: what’s better, an umbrella or a softbox? Well, they’re both light modifiers that soften light and in many situations they can give similar results. Here’s a quick video to show some features of each:
Subscribers view video here:

// –>
// –>
// –>
// –>

In the video: on the right, the Calumet Genesis 200 1-Light Kit (the strobe, 8″ reflector, 10′ light stand and umbrella). On the left, the same basic kit minus umbrella and with the Nova Soft Box, White Interior, 36 x 48″ and Elinchrom …

This is it, the final chapter of the digital workflow series. Today we finalize our files and talk about how we deliver them to our client.
When we left off last week, our files had been completed in the working stage, saved as layered psd files. All the retouching and color-correcting had been done to the files at full resolution and they were saved with all psd layers intact. If we ever have to make minor tweaks or output the files for a different purpose, we can return to these working …

Last week we looked at creating portraits with just one light. This week’s video is a natural progression, building upon the foundation of one light portraits. Adding additional lights should serve a purpose and here they help add greater detail and dimension, as explained in the video. There’s also a web gallery of the still photos that helps show the progression.
The most obvious purpose of this video is to further explain portrait lighting. I hope, though, that the video also helps increase your awareness of how light affects a subject, …

This is a really quick video (just around a minute long) aimed at studio beginners. Nick left a comment on the quality of light video asking:
“I know that the ad blurb says it’s compatible with Elinchrom speed rings, but does that mean that any soft box will work, only an Elinchrom, or what?”
Nick, I hope this video explains how the whole softbox / speedring relationship works. If anyone else has a question on studio terminology or how something works I hope you won’t hesitate to ask. Either I or someone …

Last week we processed our selected RAW images into TIFF files. This week we will convert them to Photoshop psd “working files”. If you process RAW images in an Adobe product you may be skipping the TIFF step entirely, going straight from RAW to psd. This week is where the roads converge once again and most everyone gets back on the same page.
This is also where the bit depth debate can go a bit deeper (I wasn’t trying for a pun there, honestly). As Eric S. mentioned in the comments …