The Pixels in Pete's World

Photographing a fruit-themed still life against banana leaves In college I never understood the obsession  my photo-Illustration classmates had with surfaces. They practically lived in the studio. They spent hours learning how to light, pick props, arrange those props on a backdrop of some sort. They often reshot again and again each time consulting with [...]

I currently own 4 DSLRs and 2 Point-and-shoot cameras. That’s more cameras than I have hands. Even if I wanted to remotely trigger 3 and use one, I couldn’t. I’d run out of lenses to use on all 4 bodies. On a recent evening, I got this crazy idea that I would ‘borrow’ all my [...]

Do-it-yourself projects for photographers abound on the internet. Many are not worth the time, expense and effort. Occasionally I come across one that is intriguing, easy and cheap that I can’t resist trying it myself. A search for the keywords ‘beauty dish‘ will turn up a slew of tutorials and even videos on how to [...]

Now that I’ve decided on the location of my makeshift studio, a stairwell, it’s time to break out the light stands and speedlights. Before beginning, I set the zoom setting on all my speedlights/ flash units to 105mm so that the light is more focused and not scattered all over.