Sometimes, the work of a photographer attracts my attention for reasons even more personal than usually. This is exactly the case here with the pictures of Dave Mead on facial hair. I loved it.

Copyright (C) Dave Mead

In May of 2009, photographer Dave Mead traveled to Anchorage, Alaska to photograph the contestants of the 2009 World Beard & Mustache Championships. On the day of the contest, over the course of eleven hours, Mead captured the portraits of 130 bearded/mustached subjects. This Summer, 54 of his portraits were on display at Chelsea Market in New York City. The exhibit, titled “Magnificent Specimens“, has since ended but prints can be purchased online by visiting http://davemead.bigcartel.com/.

After that, don’t tell me that the iPhone 3GS is not really a camera.

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

Copyright (C) foto.jollypix.com

There is something against trying to cram too many pixels into a camera

When Maxim received his Sony Alpha 200, it was in pretty bad shape. Most people would have merely returned it. Maxim Mayorov, as a true photographer would do, took the opportunity for a studio shot with an unusual model.

All the shots are copied on EnglishRussia. But Maxim’s web site is foto.jollypix.com.

As a matter of fact, this tool is simply able to control a digital SLR camera. The big button on the side is a knob to set the focus and it is de-multiplied enough to warrant the name of micro-focus.

Bu the most surprising or the most noticeable is that if you have an iPhone available, you can slide it into the device and it will display the aperture, the focal length or zoom factor and a few other parameters.

Show time! (but not very audible)

Two problems: This gadget will not be available before Summer 2010, and the price will be around 1000 US$ (or more than 800€).

Thanks to LifeHacker, there are two simple photography-related DIY projects that you can tackle during a rainy weekend.

• Build a Closet Photo Studio
• Build a DIY Digital Camera Scanner

Sunshine is a Danny Boyle movie from 2007 which scenrizes the crew of a space ship sent to save a dying sun. The American Cinematographer offers us a long interview with Alwin Küchler who designed the shooting and the light of this film. Even (or preferably) for a studio photographer, it will be quite interesting to understnad the way light, color and their relative organization were used to sustain the psychological intensity of the movie.

Read it.

Via Strobist.

Studio photography is clearly a real specialty and I don’t hide my admiration for those photographers able to master its difficult techniques.

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 don’t know about you, but I consider studio photo as one of the most complicated photography techniques (possibly with underwater photos while diving). But in the middle of this general context, photographing dishes to illustrate a book seems to be one of the most difficult specialties.

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.