As an intro, you must know I worked a lot with a Quantum Qflash TRIO, and when I said “a lot” I’m thinking between 5.000 to 10.000 shots. It is a nice work partner, the battery pack let you shot a lot without the worries of AA batteries, and the light diffuser makes a noticeable difference compared to small flashes, but TTL doesn’t work as I expected, so finally all of us ended using it in manual or auto (the flash measures the light using its own sensor, not through the camera lens) modes.

But Canon 430ex II, is another thing. The Canon TTL ecosystem is working as the manufacturer intended, and it worked charmly. So I set the camera manual mode to the higher exposure I found acceptable, ISo 400 (where I notice no noise), F5.6 which had the field deeply enough and shutter of 1/80 which kept me away from blur at 70mm. You need different settings  at different light conditions, but the flash will follow you wherever you need to go.

The trick is set the meter to spot or center weighted, measure on neutral or known color, and then set the flash exposure compensation from camera. You still need to do some chimping, specially when you change lighting conditions. But as general rule, and compared to my experience with Quantum more expensive flashes, a full manufacturer ecosystem works amazingly using E-TTL in changing lighting conditions.

Also I had to do one picture using the flash in manual mode, basically set the flash to maximum power, and start pushing the camera to get as much light as possible (a big dark space). And for that picture canon 430EX II deliver what was needed too.

Finally I had to make it clear that E-TTL work with diffusers, bouncing or direct light.

1. Flickr: I use a yahoo pipe to get big size pictures of my Flickr’s contacts on Google reader. So I get direct updates in good resolution of my Flickr’s friends. When I really like something, or have some contribution to the author, I leave a comment, but I try to avoid comments like “beautiful” or “good”.
2. External sites: sadly the big masters don’t had Flickr, so you have to check other sites, my favorite one is http://www.madeinphoto.fr which happen to have over 6.000 pictures of the XX century masters. But also you must check this contemporaries:
   • http://www.lachapellestudio.com/
   • http://mariotestino.com/section/1
   • http://www.magnumphotos.com/
   • http://www.chemamadoz.com/
   • http://www.jedroot.com/
   • http://www.macushlaburke.net/
   • http://www.guybourdin.org/
   • http://www.christophehuet.com/
3. Documentaries: another excellent way to learn from the masters is watch documentaries of their lives. My favorites are: Helmut by June, Frames from the Edge, Life Through a Lens, War Photographer and Man on Wire.

Did I miss something? leave a comment and I will add it!

Remember that it has took me years to gather and absorb all this media, don’t try to get it all right now. Instead make this page a favorite, and slowly check each web or movie. If this take you a whole year, but you learn something from each one of this photographers, it will be payed back, trust me on that!

The theory is this, every tone has a numerical value, at digital we work just 5 integers popularly refered as -2, -1, 0, +1 and +2. Equivalents to zones 3 to 7 at old negative + paper school. If you are beyond them you get pure white or pure black.

What a modern digital camera does, when you use full automatic mode, is to measure light using a multimatrix which involves measuring a lot of different areas of the frame, sometimes prioritizing faces (if the camera can recognize them) and usually under-evaluating the upper parts (as the sky is brighter). Then, camera set settings (aperture and shouter) to keep the tone value at 0, or 18% gray, which is fine for most of the times, the problem is that not all of your photos, and specially the good ones, are made of most common tones distributed at most commons distributions through the frame. Also, when you confront a frame with different lighting, you could prioritize the exposure according to what you want.

In order to get a perfect exposure what you have to do is really easy, just set the measuring to spot, that means that your light-meter will just evaluate a specific spot on the center of the frame, then point that spot to measure the tone you want properly exposured (like a wall, concrete, tee-shirt, etc) and set settings (aperture and/or shutter) to the value of that tone according to the table on the next image. Hopefully, with time, you will memorize the tones values, and you could apply this technique really fast. I am still carrying around printings of this table on my wallet, mostly to give them away to other photographers.

This is my short tutorial about digital zone system. If you want to learn more deeply about the subject, my recommendation is to watch the 90 minutes tutorial of Photoshop Cafe.

He passed away on February 2, 2005 after 3 years of fighting cancer. But he’s approach to lighting is timeless, film or digital it is still a great method.

The core instruments of this approach are fabric panels. White panels to diffuse the light, black ones to absorb the light, and some times panels of acrylic mirrors.

He used to use Bogen Lightform Panels, but they are discontinued as most photographers use softboxes and umbrellas, instead of panels. But you can check this light panel DIY tutorial that I found.

In a preview post, I explained how to set the lights for the Life Style Studio, a studio with “burned” white backgroud using 5 or ideally 6 lights. In the example at the left you can get the same result, but using just 1 light. Of course you will need more time with the model, and adjust light when changing model and camera height (stand up, sit down, and on the floor).

In this example we use a “naked” strobe on the left, diffuse the light using a panel, and the panel on the right reflect the light that trans-pass the first panel.  We are set in diagonal to the background in such a way that keep the same distance from all background to light (if we don’t do this, one side will be white and the other gray). And finally (optional) an assistant points a small mirror (top left) to the model’s hair, in order to get separation from background.

You can also replace the reflecting panel on the left with a black panel or remove it at all, this will give you a bigger amount of drama, as you’ll get a harder lighting, brighter left and darker right. The acrylic mirror could be flexed, so you can concentrate or diffuse the reflected light.

The same tactic can be used outdoors, but Dean Collins suggests to use a different fabric, one with simple wind pockets, small cuts and patches on the fabric allowing wind to flow, please consider this if you have serious liabilities on your business.

Also, Collins uses a big mirror outdoors when sun light doesn’t directly strike where he wants the model. Using this mirror, he reflects sun light from other zones to the main diffuser panel.

My recommendation to all you interested, is to check Dean Collins at youtube, and work with lightmeter. With this technique lightmeter is a must. Good luck, and when I get samples, I’ll publish them here.

1. “Expression sell pictures”: is a kind of motto for the photographers @ image. Sounds silly, but it’s true. People want and buy pictures where they are communicating good emotions. Vibring, joking and rapport with the modeling client, is vital to get “salable” pictures.
2. The kiosk concept: A friendly computer, where the guest can check all their pictures just swapping his room key, order prints, stock pictures and other products. The concept is great, the implementation is a topic for the post What does image group do wrong.
3. Print everything: Some times I found totally black prints, that was an extreme, but the policy was to print everything. If the picture was embarrassing or politically incorrect, where placed in “undisplayable” folder, everything else goes to the walls. I sold pictures even out of focus, I’m not proud of it, but the issue behind that is that it is actually hard to predict what the client would buy, and offering everything printed in big size and quality, leaves all the power of decision to the client.
   Also, the emotional value of being able to actually “touch” your picture, seeing it at 600 dpi in photo paper, is a huge sales advantage. I’m not 100% sure, but heard that costs of printing were around ¢3 (using a mini-lab), which is almost not considerable. If you don’t have a mini-lab, you should work into getting your print costs really lower.
4. Using cheap cameras and expensive lighting: Nikon D300s with broncolor lighting. Is a DX digital camera, shooting at medium size and jpg, but with one of the lighting brands that gives you consistent tones and potency. For 8×10 prints you don’t need high quality cameras, but the quality of lighting will allow you to shoot a lot of people and fast, will assure you that all pictures will have the right white balance, and that skin will look perfect.
5. Cayman island based: If you operate in global market, and mainly on international waters, paying taxes is not a clever idea. So invoices, taxes and utilities are done in Cayman Islands, and logistics are handled at Miami. Very smart.

I have always followed two markets with love, gourmet and photography. But obviously gourmet  is a lot more developed market, if you turn on the TV (with cable) in most countries, you’ll find 1 or 2 channels 24hrs teaching you how to cook, how to select ingredients, where to buy them, etc. I would love that photography were at that level, can you imagine 2 channels teaching you photography 24/7?

While I was working at Cruises Ship, some times guests came to the gallery, with $2.000 or $3.000 DSLR, and ask us how to operate, or how to set a specific setting. As a hotel policy you can’t answer “no” to a guest, and also we love photography, so if anybody ask me how to operate their camera I’ll teach them happily. But we where giving photographic value for free to people that already expended thousands of dollars in photography.

Next day, the same guest pay $100 or $200 for a tour on land, a group of 40+ people with one guide (a gentle person that speaks English). What if, for $100 extra, they could take the same tour in group of maximum 10 people, with a professional photographer as a guide and 100 prints of 8” x 10” (at a cost of $3 dollars total). Would they buy it? Especially when you already expended 2k or 3k dollars in photography.

So, what are the new spaces in the photography market? I don’t know all of them, we photographers (and photography entrepreneurs) have to search for it, but here is a fast draft list:

• teaching
• equipment and accessories
• services
• software
• printing and displaying (digital and ink)

The back lights are simple, just put the soft-boxes vertically and close to the backdrop, make sure the backdrop is even at both sides and try to go around +2 EV over proper exposure.

Front lateral lights should bounce the floor (white), the height would allow to burn the floor (keep it around +2 EV), and also would give proper exposure for the model when is layed down on the floor (through bouncing on floor).

Finally the front center light goes on top, just as high as you need to have clear sight to shot. When setting up this light, keep in mind that it is for enlighting faces when your subject is standor sited on the floor. (You could also do it with 2 lights, one on each side, but I think  it is too many extra job on setting exposures, and no so much difference)

Keep in mind that you need to mark the place for the subject (or where you’ll measure light) and every time that you change one light, you alter the whole studio, so you have to check all of your measuring points; in this case, stand up subject, layed down subject, and backdrop.

Some photos @ this studio:

1. First world rules! Seriously, paying rates are higher but things are cheaper. You work more, but probably in less time and in a smarter way. Technology is seriously cheaper than in the third world.
2. First world companies aren’t so smart, but they do a few key activities properly. If I used to said that Chilean companies are 1% smart and 99% dumb on their activities, American do 10% smart and 90% dumb. The issue is that it has to be the right 10% of activities (mainly core money generation).
3. The master is the faster. ¿how do you distinguish an expert on any subject? Simple: experts actually play for some time so they look good, but they are able to the work within an instant. If you want to be master of something, you have to get fast on it.
4. People is willing to spend money in photos. Actually most photo buyers are women. Anyway, at $25 each picture, you will have some clients saying that is too expensive, but a lot of people will just pay it, and many times they bought 3, 4 or 12 photos at $25 each.
5. Nikon’s dslr sucks; when I first got my D300s, Raimundo (good friend and Nikon user), explained me that “the advantage” of Nikon interface is that almost every setting is at a reach of just one button. At that time I thought that was good idea, but never get used to that. When the time to work with the camera came, it was a hell. Any rubbing or accidental touching of the camera result in an unwanted settings change. For me was a white balance that leave 200 pictures green (luckily some correction was possible at lab, but I got a warning anyway), my friend Daniel got ~300 pictures so over exposed, that they were no useful at all. After a few weeks, all photographers where using paper tape at the camera controls, so they weren’t accidentally moved (at studios).
6. The value of the print; Digital is great, but for the client, the print experience is irreplaceable. At the vessel we printed all pictures, no exceptions. Printing make the process of “selling” the picture so much easy. Is a so important issue that perhaps I’ll dedicate a post to it.
7. Posing no-models people. Posing a model is easy, most positions will look good. Posing normal people, fat people, old people and groups, is another thing, is kind an art by it self. It is a lot to talk about it, but if you are in a hurry just go to Hanson Fong, despite his web could look not much professional, trust me, for posing imperfect people, he is the man.