One thing that seems to baffle a lot of new photographers is understanding the term "stop" as it pertains to a measurement of light. We see this word used over and over with regards to shutter speed, aperture, film speed, filters, lighting, and other ways that light is used. You may hear a phrase like "you should expose one side of face 1-2 stops under the lit side of the face and expose the background 1 stop under the main subject". For ... Read More

For photographers that shoot in RAW one of the biggest problems is not being able to see thumbnails of the images in Windows Explorer or do quick checks of RAW images without having to open them in Lightroom or Photoshop. I have been using dpMagic for over three years now and had thought that the project had completely stalled out. To my surprise they were just getting ready to launch a new version and it's finally been released. Since dpMagic has been ... Read More

 

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This week we sat down with our friend David from Esquire Photography to discuss different aspects of wedding photography. What we thought was going to be a quick discussion turned into almost 90 minutes of everything from technique, to contracts, to workflow, and much more. Because of the length, I decided to cut it in half and do one half this week and the second part next week. Enjoy! This podcast is part of our series that is available on iTunes. You can also ... Read More

It's the height of the wedding season now and people that are shooting their first weddings or considering shooting a wedding should know a few tips to make sure the day goes as smooth as possible. Since weddings are our primary income at L7 Studios we figured we would pass along a number of our favorite tips and tricks. Read More

For the most part I come home from a shoot and dump the images from the CF cards onto the computer and then do my backups. Once in a while I am gone for a weekend without the benefit of a laptop and I want to make sure I have my CF cards backed up every night. For this reason I picked up a Wolverine Flashpac several years ago and have been using it ever since. Since you should always make backups ... Read More

As you develop a good digital workflow and learn the power of tools like Adobe's Lightroom, one of the tendencies is to take less time to perfect your exposure and white balance in the camera because it is so easy to correct these things during post production. However, when you think about it, if you spend 15 seconds per image and you do a wedding with 2,000 images, that's 8 hours of fixing white balance and exposure. On the other hand, if ... Read More

I have had the opportunity to shoot with a number of other people as both the "second" photographer as well as being the primary photographer. Today I want to talk about my feelings about shooting with other people as my own experience has covered the gamut from extremely enjoyable to absolutely horrible. So while this is not a technical article by any means, it is my own opinion as to how shooting with someone else can be both a rewarding, educational, and ... Read More

The home studio has been making amazing progress lately and we did some major work on it today to get it ready for it's first test shoot. The final width comes in at twelve feet and the shooting area is fifteen feet from the main shooting wall. The back wall was painted with gloss white for high key background that will mostly be used during product shots. For other types of shots a background support is in place with a ten foot ... Read More

The transformation of the garage is nearing completion and the L7 Studio is coming together nicely. Unfortunately its not going to be as nice as this shot of 8443 Warner, but hay, someday right? So where are we and what have we had to do so far? Besides tons of trash, lots of craiglist sales, and multiple car loads of stuff to Goodwill, there is only one pile of trash left. Continue reading to find out what it has cost to get ... Read More

Long time readers will note that I have been using a room in the house as my photo studio, alas I feel I have outgrown my humble beginnings, but what to do? My wife won't let me kick any of the kids out of their bedrooms and she won't let me take over the larger living room. This left two options, 1) Rent a space somewhere, 2) Build a new studio in the garage. Given budgetary contraints, I opted for number 2, ... Read More