Believe it or not but all you need is an empty box of Pringles and scissors. Take the box and cut out the bottom. Next, all you need to do is to slide it over your speedlight. You’ll probably notice that the round shape of the Pringle’s box is not exactly the shape of the speedlight’s head so it might be necessary for you to adjust the box a bit when you do it the first time. And here it it: almost at no cost, ready in 2 minutes, a home-made speedlight snoot.

If you would like to learn more about light, how to use it to your benefit to get amazing shots, I highly recommend Bert Stephani’s Motivational Light DVD.

I didn’t use a tripod while taking the HDR picture in this article. Instead, I used what was available for me (wall of a bridge) and few settings in my Nikon. Firstly, I put my camera into the bracketing mode (duh!), set up f-stop, got the camera to set up the focus in the auto-focus mode and I turend the autofocus off. I also changed the shooting mode from single into the continuous burst mode - this is very important when you don’t have a tripod because it allows you to take very quickly one shot after another, minimizing the time interval between the shots and therefore limiting any possible camera movement between the shots. Finally, I found a spot on the bridge’s wall where I could position my camera against it, I held the camera firmly and I shot. It was so simple!

To summarize in step what you need to do when you want to shoot an HDR picture without a tripod:

1) Set a camera to the bracketing mode

2) Change the shooting mode to continuous burst mode

3) Set up your f-stop (I suggest as big f-stop as possible for landscapes), let the camera meter focus and lock it by switching into the manual focus mode

4) Find a place where you can put your camera on or against (table, wall, horizontal ground, etc.)

5) While holding the camera firmly, press the shutter button and let the camera do one after another (in continuous burst mode) the bracketed shots

At every location and photo shoot, I like to firstly look around to see how I can make use of the available light and if there are any natural light-modifiers on the set already (I learned this from Bert Stephani). There can be various ‘natural’ light modifiers on location, like reflectors (light bouncing from the walls) or light diffusers. The pictures present the effect of the latter type and how a big window as a light diffuser was my best friend in my recent photo shoot.

I noticed a really big window just next to the entrance when shooting at the Malte Restaurant in Brussels (Belgium) recently. Without much thinking I decided to (gently) drop all my light equipment I had with me and to use only the soft natural light from the big window which acted as a huge light diffuser. Unfortunately, you don’t see the window on the pictures, but you can clearly see the diffused light and the overall effect.

Believe it or not but I didn’t use any additional light sources, reflectors or similar for the shots. I’m particularly happy with the effect that the big window gave me as a light diffuser and it would take quite some time to achieve the same effect and results with artificial light and extra diffusers. That’s why I research the environment for natural light and ‘natural’ light modifiers before shooting on location.

Last but not least, I would like to thank very much the owner of the Malte Restaurant in Brussels for letting us to use their premises for the photo shoot. You should definitely visit the place for the great food and ambient atmosphere, or at least to check out their big window to see how nicely it diffuses the light

I particularly like to use natural light as a hair light for several reasons. Firstly, if I use a speedlight as the main light, then I have much more control over the light, its strength, position and I can apply light modifiers onto the speedlight. Secondly, if I have to shoot at noon when the natural light is not too flattering (yes, sometimes I just had to shoot at noon when it’s the only option for a model, a make-up artist and a stylist), using the natural light as the hair-light is the best option. Thirdly, having the sun behind the model and sometimes having it in the frame and then compensating the exposure with the speedlight can give some nice and creative results.

Using a mirror to frame a subject can be a bit tricky and difficult when you use strobes and/or speedlights because these additional light sources can create reflections in a mirror and light spots. Therefore, you should be careful when using lights for these kind of shots – a quick tip: first get your model or subject in a right position and take a test pictures to see what is visible in a mirror, then position your lights so that they are not visible in a mirror and are out of the mirror’s frame.

Another thing is that any lines (within mirror’s frame or any other lines) can be used to define a picture or a subject. Lines or even patterns can be very helpful in drawing the attention of a viewer to the subject in the picture or separate the subject from the rest of what is in a frame. Next time you’ll be taking pictures, take a close look at any patterns or lines either in the foreground or in the background, try to change your position or reposition your subject to use these lines.

Before I share with you what I have found out when taking my very first intentional abstract photographs, let’s reflect shortly on what is abstract photography because I was wondering (and you might as well) what abstract photography is? My research on abstract photography started with Google quite obviously and surprisingly there is little information on what abstract photography is and on its definition (I always like to know a definition of a thing when possible).

I have found a couple of what seem to be good and interesting definitions of what abstract photography is. It seems that the most comprehensive and detailed is the one found on Bright Hub (click here) (just to prove you my point above that there is little on abstract photography, the first sentence of the definition says “abstract photography is a field that leaves many puzzled as to what exactly it includes”). The second place where I have found some information on abstract photography was on answers.com (click here). Both website seems to present relatively well written explanations and definitions of abstract photography, which I don’t want to copy & paste here but I encourage you to visit the links above.

Now let’s get back to my short walk and my abstract pictures (at least I like to think of them in this way). What I discovered when taking these abstract pictures was mind-blowing for me: you need to know a lot about photography, the role of patterns and lines, light and colors if you want to take good abstract photographs (and of course you need to gain some experience in it as well). If you don’t believe me, try to take abstract pictures yourself and you’ll see how hard it is.

But seriously, the whole fuzz around taking a camera everywhere you go is really about 2 things:

1) you don’t know when & where to expect a great opportunity for a picture and having a camera with you (almost) all the time makes you ready for taking that great and unexpected shot;

2) practice makes perfect – it’s a no brainer; the more pictures you take, the better photographer you become.

I went bowling in Brussels with a group of friends a couple of weeks ago and I took a camera with me (surprise, surprise!). To be honest with you, I didn’t expect to take any pictures but I ended up taking few shots with my trusty Nikkor 35mm F1.8 DX, which is a great lens for low-light situations. Even though Nikkor 35mm F1.8 DX is a very bright lens, I still had to crank up ISO to get more or less sharp shots but I also spent some time on getting blurry & motion-like pictures.

You can’t be prepared for these unexpected circumstances (quite obviously they’re unexpected) and you have to be ready to improvise – being able and ready to improvise during a photo shoot is a must and actually it’s the only thing you can be sure of and control before a photo shoot. Just to make it clear: you can’t go for a photo shoot completely unprepared thinking that you can improvise everything but you need to be ready to improvise when needed, let your creativity unleash and just ‘expect unexpected‘ as I say.

I had a photo shoot, during which I had to improvise, a couple of weeks ago in February 2011. I met with Knight Wise and Niejana of KnightWise.com – I refer to both of them as THE Belgian Geeks . Knight Wise and Niejana are a really awesome couple from Belgium who are not only into technology but also into Starwars, podcasting, videocasting and all the geeky stuff (honestly, I’m not sure what I’m talking here about because I’m not a typical geek… I’m just a photography geek). Anyway, going back to the topic, I met with them in Tongeren (Belgium) (which was also my first time in Tongeren) and I had no idea what to expect – we didn’t have a fixed photo shoot location and their house turned out a bit too small for a photo shoot.

The only option was to improvise, especially when I decided to start off with a photo shoot outside at a countryside. Knight Wise and Niejana took me to a nearby popular park, just outside of a city and I immediately started to look around for interesting places, foregrounds, backgrounds and patterns… anything that would be interesting and supplementary for portrait photography. I don’t think I have to mention that I tried to take the pictures of Knight Wise and Niejana around the theme of the ‘Belgian Geeks’. They mentioned to me during the photo shoot that they even didn’t have their engagement photo shoot before they had the wedding few years ago. So I decided to use this opportunity to shoot few engagement / couple / love pictures. At some point, I just asked them to sit on the ground and I let them interact with each other – it turned out great and I learned one important thing: Geek love is tough love (look at the picture where Niejana hits Knight Wise with a very robust and expensive laptop)

Strobist info for some of the pictures: I used a combination of Nikon’s SB-900 Speedlight on a shoot-through umbrella and sometimes I also used a light-reflector for pictures taken outside (but I also tried to use as much natural light as possible, something just modifying it slightly with a light-reflector. For indoor pictures, I used 2 Lastolite Lumen F400 lamps with shoo-through umbrellas as well.

Yes, pen tablets can be quite expensive but you’ll start to value their functionality very quickly. The time I spend on post-processing has dramatically decreased with a pen table by at least 50% and it’s not an exaggeration by any means. Editing pictures with a pen tablet is not only much faster but it also feels much more natural than using a mouse and it’s much better for your arm and joints than sitting with your hand grabbing that unergonomic mouse all the time (which can also be painful and cause Repetitive Strain Injury [RSI]). If you already have started considering getting a pen tablet, you don’t have to buy a very expensive one, high-end from the top of a shelf. Wacom produces very good pen tablets and even their cheapest and simplest tablets are great to start off with.