Lighting Technique

Get Your Video Light Off the Camera: How the Platypod Bracket Fixes Run-and-Gun Lighting
Video Tutorials

Get Your Video Light Off the Camera: How the Platypod Bracket Fixes Run-and-Gun Lighting

Run-and-gun video has always been the awkward cousin of controlled studio work. In the studio, I label every light with masking tape, sketch every setup in my lighting journal, and test every modifier before a client ever walks in. On location, chasing a moving subject? That whole system collapses. You can’t place a light on a stand when you’re following a couple down an alley or moving through a reception hall.

Your Glossy Products Are Mirrors. Start Lighting Them That Way.
Video Tutorials

Your Glossy Products Are Mirrors. Start Lighting Them That Way.

Every commercial photographer has a version of this story. A client sends over a cosmetics product, something small and impossibly shiny, and you set up what feels like a reasonable light position and fire a test shot. The result looks like a snapshot from a drugstore circular. The surface is either blowing out in a hot white blob or reading as a flat, lifeless panel with no dimension whatsoever. I have a lighting journal where I sketch every setup from every shoot, and I can flip back through dozens of pages where a note in the margin reads some version of “glossy surfaces are the enemy.

Flash Photography: Stop Relying on Camera Settings and Start Understanding Light
Flash & Artificial Lighting

Flash Photography: Stop Relying on Camera Settings and Start Understanding Light

Flash Photography: Stop Relying on Camera Settings and Start Understanding Light I’m going to say something that will upset some people: your camera settings don’t matter nearly as much as you think they do. What matters is understanding how flash behaves, then building your lighting around that behavior. After twenty years of shooting with flash—from cramped hotel rooms to purpose-built studios—I’ve learned that photographers spend too much time fiddling with shutter speed and ISO, and far too little time understanding the actual light in front of their subject.

Master Portable Strobe Photography: The One-Light Setup That Replaces a Studio
Video Tutorials

Master Portable Strobe Photography: The One-Light Setup That Replaces a Studio

I shoot commercial work in controlled environments most weeks. Coved walls, modifiers on stands I’ve labeled with masking tape, a lighting diagram already drafted before the talent walks in. So when a client calls asking for “something more editorial, more outdoor, more alive,” I have to shift gears fast. The problem isn’t creative willingness. The problem is translating the precision I rely on in the studio into a single-strobe location kit that still delivers consistent, professional results across multiple setups in the same session.

Lighting Glasses: How to Avoid Glare and Reflections
Technique

Lighting Glasses: How to Avoid Glare and Reflections

Glasses are a portrait photographer’s recurring challenge. Those curved glass surfaces act as mirrors, reflecting your lights, your softbox shape, and sometimes your entire studio back at the camera. Every solution involves either preventing the reflection from forming, redirecting it away from the camera, or positioning the lights so the reflection falls outside the lens area. Why Glasses Create Reflections Glass reflects light at the same angle it receives it — the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection.