This Week’s LIDLIPS
76. Ignoring the manual is no longer manly.
77. Play photography as a team sport.
78. Your ‘Decisive Moment’ is still out there.
79. Spend more time shooting that you do reading web forums and blogs.
80. …
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As a lifelong Canon shooter, I’ve been witness again and again to the power of Nikon’s CLS Speedlight system. In fact, most of the inspiration I found to explore the potential of Canon’s Speedlites came to me while assisting on a variety of shoots for Nikon’s leading CLS demo-man, Joe McNally. [If you're thinking "Joe Who?", let me be the first to welcome you to the planet and suggest that you check out his books on small-flash here and his blog here.]
What types of small-flash inspiration? Let’s see. There was the elephant-with-the-slinky-model in the dry lake bed followed by the silk acrobat hanging from the crane at sunset. There was the ballerina hoisted above the field of sunflowers and the bride in the desert gale. There was the girl holding the pool cue in the smokey bar. There was the leathery guy with the full-sleeve tats. And, of course, the Shining-esque model in the bay windows. Most recently, I spent the better part of two weeks in McNallyland a guest instructor at Joe’s One-Day Lighting Workshops in NY (read my review here and check out Joe’s workshop pix here, here and here.) It’s impossible to be witness to the making of so many great photographs and not be inspired.
Now, don’t get me wrong. For the most-part, I’m a happy Canonista. My first Canon, an A-1 purchased nearly 30 years ago, sits in a place of prominence atop the bookcase next to my bed – meaning it’s one of the first and last things I see every day. I think that the 5D Mark II is an amazing value in the DSLR market and praise the brilliance of adding 1080P video to it. There are a lot of lenses for the Canon system that Nikon has yet to make or only recently introduced. So, as I said, I’m a relatively happy Canonista.
But, there is no doubt, after working on location and in the studio with Joe over several years, that Nikon’s CLS Speedlight system is much more intuitive to use. Why does this matter to me? Well, as a creative, I rely upon my intuition a lot. The more intuitive a process is, the more creative I become. The more creative I am, the more interesting my pictures become.
So here’s my wishlist of features that I hope Canon will incorporate into a new generation of Speedlites. Read the full story »
The summer run of Joe McNally’s One-Day Lighting Workshops has just concluded in Dobbs Ferry, New York (about 15-minutes up the Hudson River from NYC). As a guest instructor, I had a front-row seat and …
As a commercial photographer who lives on a hilltop surrounded by neighbors who grow syrah and zinfandel, I have the good fortune to photograph the wine world frequently – the growing of wine, the making …
How do you convert a painter’s pole into a professional lighting tool that can carry your Speedlite to various heights above your subjects and then collapse it down so that you can maneuver through a …
On Saturday July 18, 2009, thousands of photographers in hundreds of cities and towns around the world will participate in the Second Annual Worldwide PhotoWalk. I’m organizing the local event in Paso Robles and heartily …
How do you capture and process 3,000 to 5,000 shots and hand your client the image disk in a single day? Is a workflow that shoots tethered into Lightroom robust enough for professional work? How …
If you’re in the market for a new Canon lens, Speedlite or DSLR, the Canon Summer Instant Rebate program can save you up to $500. (If you save the $500, call me. I’d like to …
There are times when you fall off the wagon and immediately try to climb back on. April was not one of those times for me. I fell off the wagon and found plenty of reasons …
Cyanotypes, gum prints, carbon prints, and many other photographic processes from the 19th-century are alive and well in the digital era. AlternativePhotography.com is a the clearinghouse to see the latest art and find supplies …
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Paso Robles, California, April 1, 2009
Syl Arena announced today that after years of work, his formula for anti-gravity hairspray has been awarded a patent by the USPTO. Arena, who works as …
You need to take a look at DoubleTruck Magazine. Launched 5 years ago, it is not widely known outside the world of photojournalism. That needs to change. Photographers of all genres should subscribe. DoubleTruck presents …
There is one week left for entries in the PixSylated ‘Exciting Light’ photo contest. The winner will receive a free ticket to any stop on David Ziser’s 58-city ‘Digital WakeUp Call’ tour. Entries will …
Just received word from Amazon that they have shipped my copy of Joe McNally’s new book, ‘The Hot Shoe Diaries‘. Man it’s been a long wait. I first wrote about ‘THSD’ last July (8 months …
What’s the point of having a gillion-dollars of camera gear and a lousy monitor? As a digital photographer, where to you spent most of your time – behind the lens or in front of …
PixSylated 2.0 is here. The site has been redesigned as a web magazine. Click here for a road map to the new layout.
What’s the difference? A complete overhaul of the home page makes it much …
All creatives dream. Photographers, writers, designers, musicians, dancers, chefs… dream of doing something so phenomenal that the whole world suddenly knows about it. We dream. We practice. We work. We think. When we’re lucky, we …
The challenge of shooting any event is to organize, process and distribute the photos with the least amount of effort possible. Lightroom makes easy work of organizing event photos through its keywording and file renaming …
Fate has a funny way of reminding me that someday I will have to figure out what I want to be when I grow up (right now, I’m thinking that I want to be a …
To celebrate (or deny) the fact that I just turned 326 in dog years, I’m setting up shop on Facebook and Twitter. Don’t really know what I’m doing yet… but then I didn’t know …
I truly believe that our world is a better place because of the open exchange of ideas and information that happens through blogs. For me, that’s why the theft of blog content is such an …
The guys at RadioPopper are now officially selling the new PX series. If you’re a PixSylarian, you’ve already read about how great I think ‘Poppers are. [Read: Smashing Pumpkins, I Shot Ben Wilmore, Simple …