After playing around with my recently purchased Canon 580ex II flash for the past couple months, I have finally bought all a start of the equipment to use it off camera.  I purchased:  10ft air-cushioned light stand, shoot-through or reflective umbrella and a strobe clamp.  The last piece of the puzzle was the wireless triggers.

I was looking at several options for triggering the off camera flashes.  I didn’t want to get a solution that I would not be happy with or need to upgrade in short order.  Here is my list of triggers:

• Alien Bee CyberSyncs
• Elinchrom Skyports
• Gadget Infinity V2S (eBay triggers)
• Recently Released Radio Poppers JrX /PX
• Pocket Wizard Plus II

I reviewed the products based on their advertised features along with anecdotal testimonials from various online photo communities.  There is tons of talk about off camera flash on the Strobist Flickr group.  Click the jump to find out the winner.  (more…)

I had some visitors in my house this past weekend after the ice storm left most of the capital region without power.  My brother’s friend and dog spent the night.  Once Bear got to know me, I took the opportunity to practice taking some pictures with two dogs playing together. I was trying to capture images where the dogs were either looking exactly at each other, or both were looking directly into the camera.

Here is one of the better images I captured from the set. This was shot with my trusty Canon 24-70 F2.8L with a Canon 580EX II flash.

I will post some additional images in the Logan gallery. PS.  Please ignore the dog hair on the rug, it needs a good vacuuming.

I found this courtesy of A Photo Editor’s blog, but it appears that famed Photographer Vincent Laforet is selling some limited edition prints for a special project he has cooked up.  This is the Vincent Laforet that received much fanfare when he released his promo movie short showcasing the 1080p video capabilities of the Canon 5D Mark II.

Vincent is selling some limited edition (and one regular edition) prints to fund a scholarship for interns.  He is promoting a new feature from Photoshelter that allows you to embed photo galleries in web pages.  Nothing earth shattering by any means, but none the less necessary to keep current.  Personally, I think that Photoshelter has some work to do on their end to clean up this gallery feature.  Regardless I already went shopping.  Check out the gallery below.

Original post here.

I have been reading Chase Jarvis’s blog for a while now.  He specializes in sports and location photography.  I love his passion for photography and his willingness to share his knowledge.  He posts several video shorts in a video series he runs off his blog.  Topics can range from photo assignment setups to gear to customized laptop cases.

Chase recently published a photobook detailing pictures of his home mountain, Stevens Pass in Washington.  He put together a video composed of 3,954 still images from various shoots.  Check it out below.  My birthday is coming up soon, maybe I’ll be able to post a book review, hint hint.

The Denver Post has a nice news photo blog called Captured.  I first found this link from a post on A Photo Editor’s site.  The Captured post on November 5th features Damon Winters from the New York Times covering the campaign trail of President-Elect Barack Obama.  Some of the pictures are stunning, in terms of lighting and composition.

I noticed one image of Obama getting into an SUV.  The frame has a photag to the right of the frame with a tapped camera.  He has basically turned his professional DSLR camera (Canon 1Ds III??) into a $10,000 point and shoot camera.  He could have at least used black gaffers tape instead of neon orange.

Basically what the photag has is taped up the settings on the camera so all he has to do is aim and fire away.

Check out the image in question along with the rest of the gallery.