This month’s “Best Web Video” is actually an entire series — the Genius Of Photography produced by the BBC (site here). If you are trying to figure out how to be a photographer today, I think it’s essential to expose yourself (pun intended) to a bit of the 170 years of our collective history. Consider this 6-part series to be a must watch.

Outside the UK, the Genius Of Photography appears periodically on Ovation (USA), ABC (Australia), Knowledge Network (Canada) and elsewhere. Fortunately for the impatient and impulsive, the entire series has been posted on YouTube in 10 minute installments. To make things easy, I’ve collected all 37 links below.

Enjoy. Learn. Pass it on.
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The line drive at 1/400 = blurry seeds flying everywhere.

GANG LIGHT – Part 2: Just how fast a shutter speed do you need to freeze the seeds flying from a pumpkin that your teenage son is trying to drive over the left field fence? Also, how do you create beautiful light on a dreary, flat light afternoon in a way that let’s you shoot at a really fast shutter speed?

Fortunately, I had a dozen Canon 580EX II Speedlites and an arsenal of RadioPoppers (all on loan from their manufacturers) so that I could try to answer these important questions. As you’ll see below, the answer to the shutter speed question is “really, really fast.” The lighting question takes a bit longer to answer. [Read more →]

GANG LIGHT - Part 1: Shooter with crazy red hair, plays with 12 Canon 580 EX II Speedlites and 8-feet of red oak to build a high-powered “ring” light, then fires it with a dozen RadioPoppers in high-speed sync mode at a best-selling Photoshop author.

I shot Ben Willmore on the street in broad daylight today. There were several innocent bystanders watching. The sun was high in the sky and coming in straight over Ben’s shoulders. I centered my favorite lens right on his eye and BANG! I had him in 1/8000 of a second.

Shortly before the “incident”, Ben and I met up in San Luis Obispo on day 3 of Joe McNally’s location lighting workshop at The Lepp Institute. Joe was kind (or crazy) enough to ask me to come down for a quick talk to the 16 students in his workshop about my experiences with RadioPoppers. [Read more →]

As photographers, we are visual creatures. We need to feed that vision by spending a lot of time looking at the works of other photographers. No, I’m not thinking of Flickr. I’m thinking of photography books -  books OF photographs, not books about the how-to of photography.

There are hundreds of photo books published each year (actually thousands if you count the photo books micro-published through Blurb and the rest). Here’s a round-up of titles that have caught my attention over the past year. [Read more →]

I had the great fortune to catch up with Kevin King - the inventor of the RadioPopper - over the Thanksgiving holiday. If you’re a PixSylarian, you know that I’m a huge fan of the Poppers. Kevin is an amazing guy who was naive enough not to believe the negativity of a legion of engineers. The story of the development of the original Popper is proof that sometimes it’s more important to be creative than to have a head full of knowledge. More on that later…

Kevin gave me a sneak peak at the new generation of RadioPoppers. They are, in a word, amazing. This is not a one-generation step. It’s at least a double-jump. The fiber-optic is gone! The design is compact and elegant. The new system will fire TTL-flash and non-TTL (like studio strobes) simultaneously. Every Popper complaint, workaround and mod will become obsolete with the new generation.

Click here, right now, to read the details of what’s been going on in Popperland. Then, mark your calendars for Friday, December 12, 3:00pm Pacific. That’s when the new models will be unveiled on RadioPopper.com.

The new RadioPoppers will ship in early January. Fear not if you need Poppers for holiday shoots. You can order the original P1 now and get 100% of your purchase price applied towards the new models. Yes, for a month or so, you’ll still have to jury-rig the fiber-optic with black Gaffer tape. Do so with a smile knowing that the future of wireless-TTL is close at hand and very bright indeed.

It’s Thanksgiving Day in the U.S.  This year, I’m giving thanks for the gift of creativity.

Our world needs creatives and the new ideas they create. Creatives live well beyond the realms of art, music and design. I’m convinced that the greatest thoughts in science, medicine, economics and so on are sparked by bursts of creativity. Many discoveries are made through accidents. For me, the creative part is when someone recognizes the value of the unexpected result. 

So, this year I give thanks for creativity. Whether experienced as small flashes in an otherwise mundane job or lived as a lifestyle, the products of creativity are essential for our future.

Witness The Birth Of A New PixSylated Tradition… The Monthly Best Web Video

A month ago, I wrote about how my spirits were lifted from the abyss of the October meltdown by a web video of a guy named Matt who danced his jig with people from around the world. If you’ve not seen it yet, definitely click here.

For Thanksgiving, I’m offering this video up as a testament to the power of thinking beyond the boundaries of the normal. As a photographer, I have never seen anything like this. It’s live-action, graffiti animation. The images were not created in post-production. They were painted and photographed frame by frame. No powerful message. Just raw creativity. Enjoy!

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

You can learn more about the artist and find links to download hi-res versions of MUTO on BluBlu.org. If you really dig it, click on his link to make a donation. Hey, just go there. It’s an incredibly creative website.

Thanks to Ed Z, who commented on my article about RadioPoppers, I came upon the video in Ed’s blog - which is worth checking out.

^ RadioPoppers enable full TTL flash control for Canon and Nikon strobes. Unlike traditional wireless TTL, which relies upon a finicky line-of-sight connection between the Master and the Remote - RadioPoppers can transmit this TTL control through walls, in bright sunlight and over extended distances.

Off-Camera + TTL = Better Flash Photography

The number one opportunity to improve your flash photography is to unbolt your Speedlite from the top of your camera and move it… anywhere. If you rely on your camera to calculate the proper flash exposure or if you want to dial the flash exposure up/down independently of the ambient exposure from your camera, you have to shoot TTL (”Through-The-Lens”) flash. So, how to you combine getting your Speedlite off your camera and still maintain a communication link for TTL-flash? That’s the journey that led me to discover the incredible RadioPoppers.

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High-speed sync enables daylight flash at wide apertures by changing the way the flash fires.

According to the 1931 song, only “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun.” Thanks to high-speed sync, flash photographers can now be added to the list. High-speed sync enables shutter speeds way beyond the norm for flash photography. It also opens up a new realm of creative opportunity.  Many shooters are intimidated by high-speed sync. In reality, it’s really easy to use if you [Read more →]

I carry a bunch of seldom-used gadgets that rumble around the bottom of my gear bags. Some have been around for years. I can’t find the courage to remove them because they might come in handy one day. Last week, it was the Cardellini’s turn to come to the rescue.

I was shooting on location - 30 miles from my studio. [Read more →]

Let’s face it - October’s been a tough month. The world melted down financially. There’s coast-to-coast vitriol over the election. A thief decided that he needed one of my cameras and a favorite lens more than I do. Job prospects are evaporating for everyone I know.

In the midst of all this, the following came to me quite innocently. Amy received the link in an email. Call me tired. Call me emotional. The first time I watched it, goose bumps covered my arms. I’ve watched it a  dozen two dozen times since. Smiles break out whenever I show it to friends.

I’ve been lifted up and reinvigorated. Our world truly is an amazing place filled with people of all shapes, colors and sizes. I believe (again) that our current tribulations will pass. Thanks to a guy named Matt and his friends in 43 countries.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

If you have fast broadband, click here to watch a High-Def version.

Like many great movements, it started as a simple idea and spread like wildfire. Read the story here. If you want to download a legit personal copy for free, click here.

What’s this have to do with being a photographer? Nothing and everything at the same time.