Rui M. Leal of
Lighting Mods

Portuguese photographer Rui M. Leal has put together quite a blog that I think is right up your alley. It goes by the name Lighting Mods and is dedicated to showing you fantastic and cheap ways to improve your lighting by putting together your own lighting tools. I’ve been keeping tabs on Rui for some time now, and he has yet to let me down.

The latest lighting mod is a do-it-yourself soft lighting panel made of PVC. I myself have been meaning to put one of these together for quite some time but just haven’t gotten around to it. When I do, it will include the ability to act as a reflector using an emergency Space Blanket.

Check it out for yourself if you want to improve your portrait lighting on the cheap. Rui is now on part two of this three part series.


Got a great tip? Let me know about it and I’ll tell the world! With credit to you of course.

Back from my vacation in Colorado. Man what a beautiful place. I have every intention of finding a house to buy there and moving within the next year. The beauty of nearby Rocky Mountain National Park is unimaginable. So are the photographic opportunities that lie within. I can easily see myself slowly morphing from a portrait guy to a landscape and wildlife guy living there.

But back to the business at hand. Sometimes you slip up when taking photos. Usually those photos end up in the trash, but every once in a while you discover a winner and actually learn a technique that you might like to mimic in the future.

This photo is just such a mistake. It certainly won’t appeal to everyone, but I like it. First, I’m usually the one behind the camera, so I don’t have as many photos of my son and me. Second, I love the way the rays of the sun streak into the frame and flare into the lens. It really accentuates the fact that we’re out hiking in late afternoon at sunset.

My wife took this photo, and the flare was a complete mistake, just a fluke. But you’d better believe we’ll be pulling this technique out once in a while from now on to get similar results.

Do I look tired? This was at the end of a four mile, two thousand foot vertical hike with a 30 pound pile of baby strapped to my back. At 8,000 feet. No, I wasn’t tired. Not me.

Image by tracytoler

Reader and photo pool regular poster Tracy Toler put up a pretty cool photo last week.

This close crop shows how he took a Vivitar 283 flash, stuck it in a softbox, and then put a hand cut gobo over it shaped like a tree. The result is a catch light in the eyes of your subject that looks like…well…a tree.

Tracy’s creativity impresses me. Not just the photo. Heck, I don’t think I even have the artistic ability to make a cutout of a tree in paper. It would probably look like something out of a Tim Burton movie.

I also noticed another little tidbit of information in Tracy’s profile that I like. Tracy is a beer man, and I like anyone who likes beer. Right on Tracy.

Got any cool effects like this of your own? Drop a comment and tell us all about it. And of course don’t forget to add your own photos to the reader photo pool on Flickr. You might end up on the front page too. Woohoo!

I’m still on vacation in Colorado, but I’m going home today, so things will be back to normal. Did you even notice I was gone?