Been busy as hell recently so that post on off-camera flash will have to wait till tomorrow. again.
in the meantime I leave you with this photo by NV6V on Flickr which I thought was extremely interesting. Selective coloring backwards, and without Photoshop? Weird.
Lets face it, if you havent seen Lightbox used in a website, then you’ve been living under a (big) rock.
It took a big jump in popularity about a year ago, and since then has has been used in thousands of websites. Alternatives which essentially do the same thing, just a little differently, like Fancybox and ThickBox have been released as well, which have also been used all over the place.
It is, of course, immensely popular for a reason. I wont get into all the specifics, but basically its an extremely easy easy way to display content (Lightbox can only handle images, to display HTML or video you’re going to have to go with Fancybox or another of the relatives) without taking the user to a new page, and it looks good while it does it.
Fancybox:
I tend to think its a bit overused these days, as lightbox and its derivatives are so easily recognizable its hard to implement it in a way where it doesn’t scream at you “IM LIGHTBOX”. Ive never really been one to not use something just because other people do though, so you might notice it (Fancybox) used to display images in my portfolio.
Now I’m going to get back to writing more stuff about off-camera flash for you to read tomorrow.
Ive been going through clientsfromhell.tumblr.com recently and am amazed at how often I come across things that ive heard from clients.
Client: “We’d like to illustrate the power of our new product in the PowerPoint presentation. So we’d like to have a man in a business suit flying through the air with a cape, but we want the cape to be a screenshot of our website”
Me: “…”
That one reminds me of one of my first design jobs with my sister. We had a great laugh at that one.
I stumbled on this link as well which had me staring at my monitor in a cross between terror and amusement.
As a good godly website designer, part of my job is to keep up with current webdesign standards and trends. Websites like The CSS Awards, CSS Drive and CSS Mania, help me to do this by showcasing some of the best website designs around. Naturally as you plod through hundreds of well-designed websites daily, you will start to notice trends right away. Some come and go pretty quickly, and some stick around. Thus, every Sunday, for however long I feel the inspiration. I will make a post about one of these design trends, examples of it, and possibly how you can do it yourself. Since today is Sunday (wow! such luck!) I’ll start it off with…
Pretty self explanatory. Very large text seems to be in vogue, and has been for a while actually. That is, considering that in the world of the internets a month is like decade. Designers seem to be paying more attention to typography as a major design element, using things like leading (line-height) and tracking (letter-spacing) for more control. Something tells me that sIFR and other ways of using non-standard fonts (CSS 3 FTW!) are playing a huge part in this.
examples:
bdsgraphic.com
I pulled these four examples just off the first page of cssmania, which goes to prove that you don’t need to go far to find examples of huge typography on websites.
Something I always reccomend to photographers wondering what gear to buy is a small flash. Even if it’s only used on camera, one flash unit can be an incredible help in many kinds of situations. However an area that I notice people are often hesitant to get into, is using their flash off-camera.
One common misconception is that you need more than one flash unit to get any decent light with off-camera flash. While having additional flash units does help, there are an incredible amount of things you can do with only one. Using some simple workarounds you can often make it look like there are more then one.
Here’s a list the 5 ways that I would most often use my flash back in the days when I only had one. but first you need to get your flash to fire (uh, flash) off the camera. Any relatively new Nikon speedlight and dslr combo will have the ability to fire without any additional hardware. For more information on how to get your flash to work off camera, go here or here or google it. Also, keep in mind that many of these setups can be done with any type of light source, and aren’t strictly limited to small flashes. If you’ve got some extremely powerful normal lights lying around, you can use those as well. Feel free to send me an email or comment if you’ve got questions.
One flash behind and/or slightly to the side of your subject can do wonders. The high contrast, the flare, the halos, I love it all. If I’ve only got one flash with me and I want to spice up an photo a little, this is my go-to. Just spock (put) a flash behind your subject, experiment with power settings, and watch the magic happen.
Examples:
It’s possible do this with on-camera flash as well, but I prefer it off camera for more consistency. I use this often, but its probably the most noticeable at concerts when all the lights are wonky colors and I want the subject to be in a normal colored light. Direct or bounced depending on if I want it soft or hard.
The photo ad below was lit with one flash, an sb-27. I didn’t have a special background, its just pieces of white paper laid out on a table with a piece of desk top glass laid over the paper, and a white wall. Originally I had the flash hitting the background only to make it pure white, and used the ambient light to expose the foreground. However I didn’t like the quality of the light I was getting from the foreground, so I added a reflector in front, to reflect the light that was coming from the background onto the foreground.
If that went over your head I’ll be doing an entire post on achieving this look (with people too, not just products) with only one flash.
Essentially the opposite of the light setup above, this time you try to light the background as little as possible. Bounce the flash off a wall, and keep the subject close to the light source.
I would recommend using a reflector for some fill if you want a little more of a humane look.
Pretty self explanitory, you light one element with the flash to draw attention to it. The power of the flash in relation to the ambient light will determine how powerful the effect is.
So there you go, five ways to use one flash to achieve dramatically different effects. I hope to go into a little more detail on each of them in future posts so stay tuned. If you, like many people, already have a flash unit, I would encourage you to find a way to fire it off camera, and start experimenting. You will be surprised at how much of a difference a little well planned use of light can make. Like mister McNally says, “light is the language of photography, and we need to know how to speak eloquently.”
If dont have an external flash, and youre looking to buy something that will hugely affect the quality of your photos, then that is what I would reccomend. You dont need a high end flash like an sb-900 or 580ex if youre just starting with off-camera flash. For Nikon users I would definitely recommend the Nikon SB-600 Speedlight Flash for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras
I will leave you to ponder.
I’m really going to need to stretch my writing muscles for this to work. I’m consistantly amazed at the ability some people have to write about nearly anything. I sadly haven’t been blessed with much talent in that department, making the transition from a thought to words on a page is excruciatingly hard for me. This is an area where I hope to improve, and this blog is going to help me do so (such faith). So sit back and watch me become a linguistic genius while I talk to you about useful things.
My blog. You can expect lots of images, informational posts about webdesign and photography, some random snippets about my life, and thats about it. If youre interested in either me, websites, or nice photos then bookmark this page.
