Here’s a quick look at the most popular articles for September. For a complete listing of articles published this month, check out the September 2007 archive.

• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: 2/3 And 3/4 Facial Portraits – Learn what these poses are and how to light them.
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Split Lighting – Learn what split lighting is and how to make portraits using the technique.
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Low Key Lighting – The popular series on portrait lighting continues with dramatic, low key lighting.
• First Impressions: Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens – I bought a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens in September. Find out what I thought of the “nifty fifty”.
• Will Flash Damage Babies’ Sensitive Young Eyes? – Find out whether the intense light emitted by our flashes and strobes will do an real damage to babies’ young eyes.
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Profile Lighting – Put yet another lighting arrow in your quiver with profile lighting.
• Got Me A Vivitar 285HV Flash – My first impressions of the Vivitar 285HV flash and Wein peanut slave.
• Fire The Interior Designer. Oh Wait…Don’t. – Bouncing flash off of colored walls can be a real problem. Find out how to solve it.
• Shutter Speeds And Capturing Subject Motion – Learn how to use shutter speeds creatively to convey a sense of subject motion.

I’ve been wanting to expand my outdoor, small flash lighting gear for a little while now. At the top of my list of purchases was the Vivitar 285HV shoe mount flash. I went ahead and bought the flash last week from Amazon through the Sublime Light store. It came on Friday and I’m very impressed by what I’ve seen so far.

The Pros

Cost. This flash is only $89 on Amazon.

This flash is all about simplicity. I absolutely LOVE how simple it is. Want to turn the power output up or down? Just turn the dial. No LCD screen. No buttons. Just turn the dial. This is a major peeve of mine with my Canon 430EX. The buttons are hard to push and you really have to work at it to adjust the power output. Not with the Vivitar.

Keeping with the theme of simplicity, zooming the flash head is also manual. No buttons, no LCD. Just grab the head and pull. I like that there’s no motor to break as the unit ages.

Speaking of the flash head, there’s a slot in the front of the head for a diffusion panel (included). In that same slot you could slip your gels. No more using sticky Velcro to attach gels to your flash! I’m really starting to like this flash.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Image by Chakoo

Low key lighting is perhaps my favorite style of studio lighting. There’s just something about the mood and drama that is created when you have a dark background with the subject standing out against it. Combine this lighting with some creative and dramatic posing and you have the power to create images that will be cherished for generations.

The Setup

The idea behind low key lighting is simple: dark tones, minimal lighting, and emphasis on certain areas of the subject. This is the perfect lighting setup for those of you with just one light, because single light portraits look great in this lighting scheme. While I have several lights with me on any given portrait session, when I get going on the low key setup, usually all get turned off but one. If I do use more than one light, it’s usually just to fill in a little bit of shadow detail so that the image isn’t too contrasty.

Image 1
1/60th of a second

Conscious use of the shutter speed setting on your camera gives you the ability to get more creative with your photographs. Use a faster shutter speed and you’ll freeze action and get a sharp picture. Slow things down and you’ll get all or part of your image blurred and convey motion to the person looking at the photograph. This can be a powerful tool to help you tell the story behind the photo. But first, you’ve got to know what shutter speeds will give you the look you want. Read on.

Rule Of Thumb?

Image 2
1/30th of a second

Right about now you’re probably hoping for some sort of table that lists out shutter speeds, right? Well, unfortunately it’s not quite that simple. You see, unlike many other areas of photography where there are rules of thumb, this is one of those areas that requires experience and gut feeling. The reason is that the slower things are moving, the slower your shutter needs to be. Otherwise you won’t capture much motion. The best way I can think of to demonstrate this concept is through some photos. And I’ll use my favorite model for this article, my son.

Fast Motion

Let’s start out with the first image. This one is my boy on his first birthday, and he got to play with balloons for the first time. He was quite excited, and was whipping his arms around pretty wildly with those ribbons in his hands. I wanted to capture a little bit of that excitement, so I chose a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second, which was slow enough to get his arms blurred, but the rest of his body in sharp focus.

Image by Uncle Frank

Have you ever had an umbrella and flash all set up on a light stand out in a park, only to have it blown over and bent or broken? Well I recently found this little tip that is a really great and cheap solution. All you need is a tent stake, a bungee cord, and a hammer.

Talk about simple…and cheap. You take tent stake A and hammer it into the ground with hammer B. Then wrap the bungee cord C around the light stand and hook it to the tent stake. Now when the wind blows your light will stay put. Easy!

Check out the main thread for more pictures and a full description of the tip.

And you Nikon folks are finally gettin’ some love from the Timster. I found this on NikonCafe.com. See, I’m an equal opportunity shooter.

Oh yeah, and in a pinch you could use the hammer to ward off any packs of blood thirsty vampires you might encounter. Or uncooperative models.