Our "Chasing the Light" book winner is...

Before we announce the winner I want to say thank you to everyone who took the time to participate in this contest, a bunch of people left comments, joined our Flickr group, and uploaded some outstanding images. If you haven't checked out the Flickr images you really, really should.



The winner of our "Street" image contest was randomly selected from all who entered using a program called "The Hat", the person who will get a copy of the book "Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light" by Ibarionex Perello is....



Drum roll please... (Flickr name) Hadleygrass!!!!



Here are a few of the images he uploaded for the contest:









(clicking on any image will open it larger and in a new window for better viewing)

Okay Hadleygrass, the ball is in your court now, just drop us an email with your snail mail address and we'll get the book right out to you.



Congratulations!



Be sure to be here on Monday because we will be announcing our very next contest (not wasting any time), we will be giving away the book "Food Photography" by Nicole Young.

Review of "Food Photography" by Nicole Young...

Before I jump into the review let me say this "please, please, please don't be turned of by the word food!", because "Food Photography: from Snapshots to Great Shots" is a book that is for anyone who owns a camera.



Even if you don't "shoot food" you should read this review (and more importantly the book).



I love Nicole's writing style, it is both disarming and very engaging. Often I read an educational book with anticipation, waiting for the next factoid, the next "learning moment" to present itself, but because of her writing style I just enjoyed reading and would be surprised when each nugget of knowledge fell upon me.



The first 80 pages of the book covers photography fundamentals, gear, and lighting that is useful and informative to any photographer.



Only after thoroughly covering these topics does Nicole move into food, and she covers it more in-depth than anyone else I have seen and does it with authority (I think) because she does it all, she shops for the right ingredients, she cooks it all, then does her own styling, and only after all this she photographs it. So she understands more than most how the ingredient or cooking impacts the final shot.





My mother has the habit of when she shares her recipes with others of "accidently" leaving out one small key ingredient so their final dish is never quite as good as hers, not so in this book. Nicole has held nothing back.



Wanna know how to take old pieces of fence and turn it into an interesting table top, it's in there. Which is better, real ice or fake? Nicole explains (in both words and pictures).



One of the (many) things I love about this book is "pouring over the picture" a segment where Nicole covers every aspect of a shot, gear, food, framing, color coordination, and camera settings... nothing is left unexamined or unexplained.



Only after covering everything under the sun about food does she move into Photoshop, both in general and specifically as it applies to food. And again, this area is thoroughly explained in both word and photo, each editing step shows both the image being edited accompanied by the Photoshop dialog box so each step is easy to follow and understand.



And did I mention she discusses monitor calibration? I love this woman.



;)



The final chapter "Behind The Scenes" takes you through multiple photo shoots (from start to finish) including 50 images (or more) from the food prep, styling, lighting, shoot, tips, and post processing.



From soup to nuts as they say (sorry, I just could not stop that from coming out).



"Food Photography: from Snapshots to Great Shots" is such a good read, I got from cover to cover in just 2 sittings, which if you know me, is really quite an accomplishment and it's so full of useful information you can barely pick it up.

A GREAT book.

Be sure to check out her blog and her tutorial section, it is chock full of great photography information.

A new, free lighting Magazine from Scott Kelby!...

Today Scott Kelby released a new iPad-only digital magazine called Light It: A How-To Magazine for Studio Lighting and Off-Camera Flash through KelbyTraining.com. The debut issue is free and available now on iTunes in the App Store.



Light It is for photographers of all skill-levels who use lighting or want to explore lighting concepts.



The free debut issue of Light It features contributions from executive editor Scott Kelby, with features from editorial photographer Zack Arias and one of today’s most influential hotographers Joe McNally. Regular contributors include Matt Kloskowski and Rafael "RC" Concepcion from The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).

You guys are good!...

I have gone through some of the images you folks have been uploading to our Flickr Group for our latest book giveaway and they are outstanding.



It was hard to whittle it down to just six representative images.



So if you haven't yet, head on over to Flickr and take a look, and there is still time for you to upload your own images as well.



(clicking on any image will open it larger and in a new window)

Bits and pieces... odds and ends...

First:



There is a new survey question for you (on the upper right of the blog page) asking "what is your primary shooting mode", so please take just a moment to plug in your answer.



And from the last survey, the review of the latest David Hobby/Strobist DVD set "Lighting in Layers" will be posted next week and I promise you, you do not want to miss it.



Second:



The response from our latest contest has been pretty impressive, be sure to head over the our Flickr page and check out some of the submissions.



And lastly:



Crazy, crazy week, a rare Wednesday wedding yesterday, a Friday wedding (tomorrow), and a Saturday wedding to cap off the week! So if it seems you have heard less from me this week than usual, you have and weddingpalooza is why.

Would you like the book "Chasing the Light"?...

We are going to give one of our lucky readers a copy of the book we reviewed last week "Chasing the Light: Improving Your Photography with Available Light" by Ibarionex Perello.



All you have to do is two little things:



1. Leave a comment on any blog post or any one of our YouTube videos.



2. Upload a "street" style (photojournalistic) image (no portraits or studio images) to our Flickr group.



The winner will be announced next week here on the blog (Friday August 26th).



You can find more detailed information on joining our Flickr group here.



Good luck to everyone!

The things we do to our children...

Sometimes I really look forward to the weekends, because it's when I can go (way) off topic on the blog and talk about anything I want.



This past Tuesday I was cleaning up some hard drives and came across several images I had forgotten all about.



When my girls were younger I truly "embraced" the magic of childhood, probably a bit bit more than most. Childhood comes but once and I really wanted them to enjoy it.



Forget the big holidays (like Christmas), I would even run with the "minor" ones as well. Everyone knows that leprechauns are mischievous, so on Saint Patrick's Day the girls would wake up to find pictures turned upside down, cupboard doors left open, and once they even turned our milk green.



As the girls got older they really wanted to catch a leprechaun so we would set traps (using shiny fake gold coins) and one year we even put tape on the floor hoping to stick one of them in place. That was the year I had to get very small socks and shoes to leave stuck to the tape, the girls were so excited thinking they had come soooo close to capturing one.



Here is a picture of one of those traps, notice the "come in free food" sign.





Molly (you can read more about her here and here) was convinced unicorns existed and one year while on vacation she was sure that the woods next to our cottage was a perfect place for unicorns to live so she wanted to stay up and to catch a glimpse of one. I told her to put out some "unicorn mix", I would setup a camera, and we would try to capture one on film.



So Molly made the mix, I set the camera up on the porch, and then I had to get up really early the next morning to do some bad Photoshop work getting the unicorn into the picture.



Now that they are older, they fully realize my culpability in these "magic" events and I am sure there is going to be a price to pay.





(click on either image to view larger and in a new window)