• Controlling Your Photo’s Background: Part I and Part II
• How to photograph 7 wine bottles on a white background (a video from learnmyshot.com, with a very good demonstration of studio lighting):
  
• How to photograph one Champagne bottle on a white background (another video from Stephen Hermitage, with another very good demonstration of studio lighting):
  
• Food photography : comment faire saliver vos lecteurs ! un article passablement intéressant sur un blog de fille photographe. Ne vous laissez pas arrêter par le côté rose bonbon ; tout le blog est vraiment bien, y compris les porjets de photo chaque semaine.
• PetaPixel: Secrets of Food Styling and Photography
• Fotogénico, pero no comestible. “Cocina y fotografía son una combinación que a algunos les parecerá sencillamente insuperable” (en Español).
• For the specialists (or the most intense photographers), I want to also suggest some more for very high speed photography (to stop a bullet or an explosion):
  • Bullet Photography At Home
  • DIY High Speed Photography for $20
  • Portrait photography resources brings eight links to web sites specially useful to the studio photographer.
• Ten Tips for Shooting Studio Portraits
• How to Take a Perfect Head Shot with a Single Light
• Light Stalking Ten Tips for Shooting Studio Portraits
• jakegarn: The art of the pose

• High Speed Sync for flash at any shutter speed
• Almost Free DIY Paper Diffuser (Strobist)
• High Speed Photography Studio at Home
• You also have several options to build your own flash accessories from paper:
  • DIY cutout bounce card and its PDF printout
  • Almost Free DIY Paper Diffuser



• Black Straws Snoot Grid: Part 1 and Part 2
• Macro Lighting LED Ring
• Smarten Up Your Dumb Optical Slave By Hooking it Up With Arduino

And finally, why not let yourself be inspired by all this and experiment a little with droplets like Edgerton.

In May of 2009, photographer Dave Mead traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to photograph the contestants of the 2009 World Beard & Mustache Championships. On the day of the contest, over the course of eleven hours, Mead captured the portraits of 130 bearded/mustached subjects. This Summer, 54 of his portraits were on display at Chelsea Market in New York City. The exhibit, titled “Magnificent Specimens“, has since ended but prints can be purchased online by visiting http://davemead.bigcartel.com/.

Of course, the final photos have been edited in Photoshop afterwards, but isn’t it the case for all studio work?

There is something against trying to cram too many pixels into a camera

When Maxim received his Sony Alpha 200, it was in pretty bad shape. Most people would have merely returned it. Maxim Mayorov, as a true photographer would do, took the opportunity for a studio shot with an unusual model.

All the shots are copied on EnglishRussia. But Maxim’s web site is foto.jollypix.com.

As a matter of fact, this tool is simply able to control a digital SLR camera. The big button on the side is a knob to set the focus and it is de-multiplied enough to warrant the name of micro-focus.

Bu the most surprising or the most noticeable is that if you have an iPhone available, you can slide it into the device and it will display the aperture, the focal length or zoom factor and a few other parameters.

Show time! (but not very audible)

Two problems: This gadget will not be available before Summer 2010, and the price will be around 1000 US$ (or more than 800€).

• Build a Closet Photo Studio
• Build a DIY Digital Camera Scanner

Sunshine is a Danny Boyle movie from 2007 which scenrizes the crew of a space ship sent to save a dying sun. The American Cinematographer offers us a long interview with Alwin Küchler who designed the shooting and the light of this film. Even (or preferably) for a studio photographer, it will be quite interesting to understnad the way light, color and their relative organization were used to sustain the psychological intensity of the movie.

Read it.

Via Strobist.

I recently found three demonstrations of what may be a beautiful studio lighting, along with dense explanations and welcome details.

• Anatomy of a photo: Balvenie Scotch
• Professional Studio Lighting – Playing with Mirrors by Peter Kirring
• One simple photo of glasses, by Scott Kelby: from the studio shot to Photoshop.

But, if this is not enough and that yo want to dig deeper into the studio lighting technique, I recommend you start a browser window on Strobist’s Lighting 102 (Introduction). An exceptional source of information.

After that, we only have to try and apply these advices and these examples. Can you reproduce these studio flash lightings?

photo credit: nsaplayer

Who did not dream of making such a great photo as the milk or water drop stopped in mid-air?

But this seems quite difficult. It may be, but there are a few techniques that can simplify things a little. Gavin Hoey, in the following video, shows a few of them, explaining lighting issue and telling us that even without motion-detection equipment it is possible to catch the droplet: Just shoot a zillion photos with your flash and hope for a little luck to bring a good image out of sheer luck. This is not as silly as it looks and digital photography made this actually practical (you will not mind erasing dozens of failed attempts on the path to a great image).

If you want to try your hand at it, remember that the flash is used to light not the droplet itself (it’s transparent), but the background which may be white or colored.

But if you still want to use a little more expensive equipment, you can check a specialist: Hiviz.

I will not detail the technique, but I want to invite you to visit a web site which totally mastered it: Habeas Brulée. They publish quite tasteful recipes, of course, but the work they put in the pictures is impressive and classify them as real pros.

If you want, you could draw some inspiration from the variety and quality of framing and lighting.