How I see it

When I set up my shots I tend to not think about what I want lit, but where I want my shadows. I build my images by punching holes in darkness, or obliterating it with light. For me it always comes down to darkness and shadows.

I am very organic in my approach to shooting. The client and I will have our pre-shoot meeting and discuss expectations we both have for the session, and what needs to be done to accomplish our goals. I make sure that we also take some time before talking business to get acquainted, especially if the pre-shoot is our first face to face meeting. Pretty straight forward stuff there, but it is the little things that can make a huge difference on the day of the shoot.

On the day of the shoot I do my best to keep the atmosphere as lite and relaxed as possible. When I am photographing children I will always let them check out my camera before I start shooting, and let them touch some of the buttons. Usually once they see a picture of themselves on the back of the camera they get excited and want to take more photos.

Normally when I photograph children I use a small soft box and Nikon's CLS so I can let the shadows take over the background. I hand hold the soft box in my left hand and the camera in my right armed with a 50mm prime lens wide open. With the soft box close in, the aperture at f/1.8, and the shutter speed around 1/8000, you can let the background be swallowed by shadows and have a very shallow depth of field on top of that. I will use this approach often when I need to work around a cluttered background.

Using high speed sync to push the shadows off the face is one of my favorite lighting techniques. My two go to modifiers to help shape my shadows are the Westcott 60” convertible umbrella and the 28” Apollo soft box. Both of which are very versatile light modifiers with High speed sync.

Cactus V5 now works with Nikon flashes

The wait is over for Nikon flash users! The Cactus V5 on sale are now equipped with the new hot shoe plates. The previously mentioned Nikon SpeedLite models are now compatible with the Cactus V5: SB-28, SB-80DX, SB-600 and SB-700.

For current V5 users, we will ship you the new hot shoe next week. An email will also be sent to you confirming the number of hot shoe(s) required. The replacement of the new hot shoe is simple. If in doubt about the installation please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you again to your understanding and patience in this matter. If you have any questions or concerns, be sure to contact our CS at service@gadgetinfinity.com.

Blown out Ash

Meta Data
Camera - Konica Minolta 7D
Lens - Tamron 90mm f/2.8
Exposure - 1/45 @ f/2.8
Focal Length - 90mm

Lighting - Brand X strobe
Light Modifier(s) - 60" Westcott shoot through umbrella, and large diffusion panel.
Trigger - Pocketwizard


For this shot I set up a large diffuser for the background and placed a strobe behind it to blow out the background and also to give some back light through her hair.

For the key light I used another strobe shooting through a Westcott 60" shoot through umbrella.
With her looking down her hair fell forward a bit and i increased the power from the light behind her to let the back light eat up some of her hair.

I wanted to capture a high key image of Ashlee and the honesty in her expression.

Ashlee In Profile.

Ashlee Profile., a photo by Vanished Twin: Photography on Flickr.

This shot was taken in a studio that my friend John Keel and I rented to shoot together and to just play with light and shadows

. In this shot I used a Nikon sb600 in a Westcott 28" Apollo. It was placed camera left and I turned Ashlee straight on into the light.

I placed Ashlee close to the wall to get some of the light to spill onto the wall to create a bit of a vignetted background. Other wise the light was pretty close to straight on for this profile shot.