With the birth of my son Thomas (Monday, August the 30th, 2010), I have started a personal project titled “Thomas, day by day”.

I do (at least) a photo of Thomas each day for a year, varying the possible styles and moods. Every Wednesday I publish on this blog 7 photos of Thomas covering the week.

Photos of Week 1.

Which photo do you like the most this week ?

> See all articles related to this project

Before the birth of my son, my wife asked me to produce an original decoration for my son’s bedroom.

We wanted canvas prints of Grumly in original places. If you don’t know Grumly, it is a teddy bear that was sold in France in the 900′s. It was promoted with creative ads.

I have posted these photos on my Facebook page, as a small personal project, that is ongoing.

One of these photos is interesting concerning the light technique used. This photo has been taken during a summer afternoon. I have used two flashed to do it. Here is the final photo :

And here is what the photo looks like without the flashes:

There is several flaws on the photo that is not using flashed: a strong shadow behind Grumly’s head created by the sun, no depth on the teddy bear due to the only light used (the sun) and the under exposed photo. The under exposition is not a error as I wanted to have a dark background on the final photo.

To resolve all these issues, I have used two flashes and a light modifier:

• a Nikon SB800 flash in a Ezybox from Lastolite (softbox). It is my main light.
• a Nikon SB900 flash with a grid from Honl Photo (HonlPhoto 1/4 Speed Grid for Portable Flash). This is my fill light.
• a diffuser is hold between the sun and Grumly by my “assistant of the day” (my wife) to remove any sun hard shadow.

Here is a photo of the setup:

I’m using:

• A remote control to trigger my D2X with a 12-24 Tokina mounted on it (Yes, a D2X is always a great camera and is able to take great photos!)
• An Ezybox,  number 1, as my main light.
• My fill light is using a grid, number 2. It is standing at camera left.
• Another SB900 is used as master flash, number 3, on my D2X. It is only used to trigger the two other flashed (Nikon CLS). If I had used my D700, with the strong sun light, I would have to use the SB900 instead of the on camera flash. The on camera flash would not have been strong enough to trigger the remote flashes.

In the final photo, the Ezybox stayed in front of Grumly’s face (on the above setup shot, the softbox is behind Grumly’s face). This position controls the shade of the light created by the softbox. Thus, I do not have a strong light on the chair. Furthermore, this position is adding a softbox reflection in the sunglasses. That adds a lot of dynamism to this photo.

So, use remote flashes on your daylight photos! It will helps you to control your shadows and to create a lot of depth to your photos!

Have you ever used a remote flash during the day?

PS : Yes, I have an old MS Office t-shirt what I had during my old life… I certainly grabbed it in an IT conference somewhere… sometime…

With the birth of my son Thomas (Monday, August the 30th, 2010), I have started a personal project titled “Thomas, day by day“.

I’ll do (at least) a photo of Thomas each day for a year, varying the possible styles and moods. Every Wednesday I will publish on this blog 7 photos of Thomas covering the week.

To find all articles about this project, I have created a new category “Personal Project” with a sub-category “Thomas day by day“.

Here is a first photo to make you want to regularly check this blog:

We are pleased to announce that we have a new product: canvas prints !

We are selling them in two sizes: 40x40cm and 55x33cm. Right now, we are not yet selling them on the web site, but we are working on it. Soon, you will see a redesign of the web site and a new “Shop” section.

Meanwhile, you can buy some of our canvas prints at the “Autour du Lac” shop, rue des Boulangers, 74140 Yvoire, France. You can call Christine and Nathalie, the two friendly owners of the shop at +33 4 50 72 19 92.

If you have a shop and you would like to sell our canvas prints, fell free to contact us!

Here are some examples of canvas prints we are selling…

If you have already used Lightroom on Microsoft Windows, you know that you can change the default languages in the preferences panel.

On Mac OS X, you cannot do it, I do not know why… On Mac OS X, Lightroom is using the operating system language as default language. As I have a French Mac OS X installed on my computer, Lightroom is using the French language as default language.

Unfortunately, I am used to work in English with my photography related softwares. I see several advantages doing this: you can find more information on the web in English, keyboard shortcuts sometime are related to the default language (fortunately, Lightroom is not doing that), and a lot of time English words are shorter than French words and that allows to gain some space on your screen

Here is what you have to do to change the default language in Lightroom :

• Open your Applications folder
• Right-Click on Lightroom (or Ctrl-Click) then select «Show Package Contents»
• Open «Contents/Resources»
• Several folders contain available languages. They have all the «.lproj» extension. Lightroom will use the default language of your system (for me, it will use «fr.lproj») then the English language.
• To use the English language, you have to «hide» the Erench language to Lightroom. To achieve this, rename «fr.lproj» to «fr.lproj.nouse» for example.

There is another path to reach the same goal. Each language folder contains a «TranslatedStrings.txt» file: it contains all sentences used by Lightroom in the targeted language. So you have to copy the «TranslatedStrings.txt» file of the targeted language to your OS X default language folder. For me, if I want to use Lightroom in Japanese language, I have to copy the «TranslatedStrings.txt» of the «ja.lproj» to the «fr.lproj» folder (I would have backed up the «TranslatedStrings.txt» file in the «fr.lproj» before to be able to go back to French language afterward).