• Controlling Your Photo’s Background: Part I and Part II
• How to photograph 7 wine bottles on a white background (a video from learnmyshot.com, with a very good demonstration of studio lighting):
  
• How to photograph one Champagne bottle on a white background (another video from Stephen Hermitage, with another very good demonstration of studio lighting):
  
• Food photography : comment faire saliver vos lecteurs ! un article passablement intéressant sur un blog de fille photographe. Ne vous laissez pas arrêter par le côté rose bonbon ; tout le blog est vraiment bien, y compris les porjets de photo chaque semaine.
• PetaPixel: Secrets of Food Styling and Photography
• Fotogénico, pero no comestible. “Cocina y fotografía son una combinación que a algunos les parecerá sencillamente insuperable” (en Español).
• For the specialists (or the most intense photographers), I want to also suggest some more for very high speed photography (to stop a bullet or an explosion):
  • Bullet Photography At Home
  • DIY High Speed Photography for $20
  • Portrait photography resources brings eight links to web sites specially useful to the studio photographer.
• Ten Tips for Shooting Studio Portraits
• How to Take a Perfect Head Shot with a Single Light
• Light Stalking Ten Tips for Shooting Studio Portraits
• jakegarn: The art of the pose

• High Speed Sync for flash at any shutter speed
• Almost Free DIY Paper Diffuser (Strobist)
• High Speed Photography Studio at Home
• You also have several options to build your own flash accessories from paper:
  • DIY cutout bounce card and its PDF printout
  • Almost Free DIY Paper Diffuser



• Black Straws Snoot Grid: Part 1 and Part 2
• Macro Lighting LED Ring
• Smarten Up Your Dumb Optical Slave By Hooking it Up With Arduino

And finally, why not let yourself be inspired by all this and experiment a little with droplets like Edgerton.

Of course, the final photos have been edited in Photoshop afterwards, but isn’t it the case for all studio work?

I recently found three demonstrations of what may be a beautiful studio lighting, along with dense explanations and welcome details.

• Anatomy of a photo: Balvenie Scotch
• Professional Studio Lighting – Playing with Mirrors by Peter Kirring
• One simple photo of glasses, by Scott Kelby: from the studio shot to Photoshop.

But, if this is not enough and that yo want to dig deeper into the studio lighting technique, I recommend you start a browser window on Strobist’s Lighting 102 (Introduction). An exceptional source of information.

After that, we only have to try and apply these advices and these examples. Can you reproduce these studio flash lightings?

photo credit: nsaplayer

Who did not dream of making such a great photo as the milk or water drop stopped in mid-air?

But this seems quite difficult. It may be, but there are a few techniques that can simplify things a little. Gavin Hoey, in the following video, shows a few of them, explaining lighting issue and telling us that even without motion-detection equipment it is possible to catch the droplet: Just shoot a zillion photos with your flash and hope for a little luck to bring a good image out of sheer luck. This is not as silly as it looks and digital photography made this actually practical (you will not mind erasing dozens of failed attempts on the path to a great image).

If you want to try your hand at it, remember that the flash is used to light not the droplet itself (it’s transparent), but the background which may be white or colored.

But if you still want to use a little more expensive equipment, you can check a specialist: Hiviz.

I will not detail the technique, but I want to invite you to visit a web site which totally mastered it: Habeas Brulée. They publish quite tasteful recipes, of course, but the work they put in the pictures is impressive and classify them as real pros.

Home-Cured Salmon with Black Pepper and Coriander

If you want, you could draw some inspiration from the variety and quality of framing and lighting.

Canon EOS 500D / Rebel T1i / Kiss X3

After a second half of 2009 where Nikon has been putting a lot of competitive pressure on Canon, here comes the new Canon dSLR photo camera: Canon EOS 500D (also known as Canon Rebel T1i) and, boy! did they react well.

The Canon EOS 500D is definitely a great step forward where Canon is redefining many features that will be included in entry-level SLR cameras. Essentially, the EOS 500D is including many features that were previously only expected from the models at EOS 50D level or similar mid-range models.

Canon felt the pressure from the Nikon D90; They answer with a camera which has been improved in many different aspects, starting with:

• Video capture up to 1080p
• Improved LCD screen, totally orientable
• More than 15MP sensor, a lot of pixels in a low-cost camera

This is so high an expectation, that you feel surprised not to find such features as per-lens micro-adjustments.

You may not be interested in switching to Canon from your current preferred brand, but all this is good news: All SLR cameras are going to be better just because the Canon EOS 500D is obviously an excellent product.

All the features of the Canon EOS 500D.

Also to be noticed: Canon is simultaneously introducing other related products: two photo printers PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II & PIXMA Pro9000 Mark II printing up to A3+ and a compact flash, Speedlite 270EX.

1. Intro/basics
2. Manual flash
3. TTL wireless
4. Syncing/sync speed

All encompassing, detailled, precise and… useful.