There’s a relatively well-known quote attributed to Woody Allen; “If you aren’t failing, you aren’t trying hard enough.” In photography, failure is the norm, embrace it. I made a tutorial video that I hope helps you be OK with failure:
This post is aimed at those of us who are tasked with getting a family photo in crappy light, while being asked to “hurry up we want to eat”, while trying to get a large group to semi-cooperate! In this scenario I had my camera, a Fuji X100S, and one speedlight triggered via wireless transmitter…..and the most important factor…..a white ceiling. It was the ceiling that allowed me to pull this off.
Not to long ago all of my photo gear was stolen. All of it. Out of my car. In my driveway. $6000+ worth of gear that took me years to accumulate. Having been through that experience, and having found out the hard way that my homeowner’s policy only covered 1/3 of the replacement cost, I can make a few suggestions as to how you can protect yourself against theft.
Several people have asked me how to get a pure white background when shooting a product, say, for Etsy, or eBay, or any scenario where the product needs to be displayed against a pure white background. Right off the bat, there are MANY ways to do that, and to a large degree it depends on what gear you have at your disposal. I used 2 studio strobes in the movie below, but I’m pretty sure you can pull this off with a couple of speedlights as well.
It has become a cliche that buying more gear won’t make you a better photographer. This is definitely true. However, once you get to a certain point, which usually occurs around the time you get good at setting exposure manually, you begin to see the possibilities that open up with certain items. Below is a list of my favorite things that have helped me in my photography. The good news is that with one exception (Canon S90), they are all pretty inexpensive….as in less that $50, and in several cases, MUCH less!
