©Carol Weinberg

Peter Kolonia has just published an impressive how-to piece on PopPhoto.com featuring the photography of portrait shooter Carol Weinberg. Wanting to shoot something special for her new site, Weinberg wound up with a dramatic portrait featuring halo lighting.

A Profoto Pro Head was utilized from behind to create the halo effect. The main light was provided by a Profoto Softbox RFi 5′ Octa. A Profoto Pro-7A pack powered both lights.

The story covers how the halo shot came about, and what Weinberg had to deal with to make it work. Kolonia covers other tips on beauty lighting by Weinberg, and provides the most helpful, not to mention coolest lighting diagram (by Kris Holland at Mafic Studios) we’ve seen.

Don’t miss the full article, and don’t forget to check out more of Weinberg’s work at her site.

All images and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Carol Weinberg, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.

If you think it is difficult to make one kid sit still long enough to get some decent shots, try photographing five. Fstoppers staff writer Corey Melton experienced this first hand when he was asked to shoot comedian Jim Gaffigan and his growing family for Jim’s new book Dad Is Fat.

“I figured that this shoot could end up going in any direction,” writes Corey. “I have a 3 year old daughter at home and I know how hard it is just to get her to sit still long enough to get some decent shots, so I couldn’t imagine 5 all at once! Because of this I wanted to keep the lighting simple and straight up, but to light in a way that the kids could move around and still maintain consistent lighting throughout the shoot.”

Corey’s solution incorporated a D1 monolight with an umbrella and an AcuteB2 battery generator with an Acute/D4 Ring flash.

Read the full article at Fstoppers and learn how Corey used these tools to create a series of promotional images for Jim’s book.

All images and quotes in this post are used with permission of ©Fstoppers and Corey Melton, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.

© James Weber

If you’ve been keeping up with Ian Ruhter’s Silver & Light series, you’ll definitely want to check out James Weber. Like Ian, James is using Profoto’s powerful strobes as a way to rejuvenate the wet plate collodion process.

“Wet plate collodion is a chemical process as much as it is a photographic process,” writes James. “It’s getting back to the darkroom which adds a uniqueness to each image. It’s using large format cameras and lenses that are 100+ years old. It’s using crazy, huge aerial lenses from World War II to get amazing large plate portraits. It’s getting back to the roots of the first recorded images. It’s part Breaking Bad, mixing up the chemistry, and part Ansel Adams trekking up mountains with a large format camera to get the shot. The process slows you down so that you take in all of the minute details of your subject before you shoot. Because of this necessary attention to detail, it’s made me a better photographer. To me, it’s the most fun you can have with a camera.” (more…)

©Jean Gonzales

Each month we highlight a certain item in Profoto’s rich assortment of Light Shaping Tools. (Previous articles can be found here.) This month we talk to Belgian photographer Jean Gonzales about an often-overlooked tool: the Hardbox.

As the name suggests, the Hardbox is the opposite of a softbox. In other words, the Hardbox creates a harder light with sharper shadows than any other Light Shaping Tool. Mount it onto your flash head or ProDaylight 200 to eliminate all stray light and create a pinpoint-sized light source that is as close to direct sunlight as you can come in a studio environment.

Antwerp-based fashion and portrait photographer Jean Gonzales is quite familiar with the Hardbox’s unique ability to emulate sunlight. It is also the main reason why it is one of his favorite tools to work with.

“I was browsing the web one day when I came across these gorgeous photographs shot in broad daylight in a desert outside of Los Angeles,” says Jean. “I instantly knew that this was something that I wanted to try myself, but we obviously don’t have that kind of weather here in Belgium, so I had to look for another solution. Pretty soon I came across the Hardbox.” (more…)

Erik Isakson is a sports lifestyle photographer working out of southern California. Along with filmmaker Jason Maughan, he recently produced this behind-the-scenes video of a shoot he did with athletes and dramatic splashes of water.

For the shoot, he used his PocketWizard FlexTT5 to trigger a couple of Profoto 8a strobes, which were placed behind the subject to create a rim light accentuating the mist and water flying through the air.

See more of Erik’s photography at erikisakson.com and erikisakson.tumblr.com.
See more of what Jason does at jmaughan.com and connect with him on Twitter and Instagram.

All videos and quotes in this post are used with permission and ©Erik Isakson and Jason Maughan, all rights reserved; story is ©Profoto. Please respect and support photographers’ rights. Feel free to link to this blog post, but please do not replicate or repost elsewhere without written permission.