It’s no secret that consumer spending has slowed dramatically in America, right on the cusp of the holiday shopping season. Consumers are being more conservative with purchases and credit is tightening. This Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is known as Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year and expectations are always high, despite the conditions.
While I would enjoy seeing a brand new DSLR in the hands of every prophotolife reader this season that seems pretty unlikely. Just for the sake of discussion, I set a photo gift target …

The current financial crisis is the elephant in the room, so let’s acknowledge it and take a look. I’m taking the lead from 1001 Noisy Cameras and their recent post entitled Opinion: The financial markets and photographers.
I like to keep prophotolife relatively on point, targeted on the positive benefits of photography as a hobby and the realities of photography as a profession. Every once in awhile we’ve taken a little trip outside of our favorite topic to look at just how photography fits into the world at large. Right now …

Another week, another installment of the location photography gear saga. This week we’ll look inside our kit of portable strobe units. This kit of 2 strobes and accessories doesn’t get used a ton but it’s invaluable when we need it. It’s rare that we use these as main lights since we rely more on studio strobes (primarily the Travelite 125 Travel-Pak Kit if we have no AC power). We generally use smaller strobes more as “out of the way” lights, tucked inside machines or inside an area where a studio …

Last week I introduced our standard location photography gear setup. We’ll be looking at different bags week by week and today it’s the heart of the business, the camera bag.
You won’t find the latest, trendiest equipment necessarily. This is what we’ve amassed over years in the business and what has produced a good return on investment for our commercial studio. We generally make equipment purchases at year end based on profitability and the guidance of our accountant.

Let’s take a look inside:

In the main compartment:

Cameras:
Canon 5D
Canon 20D (backup – it has …

Surrounded by nine computers, fifteen strobes and more light stands than you can shake a tripod at, I’ve been daydreaming. The dreams have been about what it would take to create a “bare minimum” photo business. Sometimes you grow a business and look around and one day the idea of paring things down sounds appealing.
Starting tomorrow we’ll be looking inside various bags in the Daylight Photo commercial photography location kit. Everything in those bags serves a purpose and is necessary for the work we do. But what if I were …

“How do I shoot tethered to my computer with a digital SLR?” That is possibly the most oft-asked question here at prophotolife.com. In most every instructional video I’m watching a computer monitor to view the images as they’re shot so it only makes sense that we give the process a look.
If your photography allows it this is a great way to view a large histogram and to check critical sharpness of the photos enlarged to 100%. The files can be easily managed and the good ones immediately tagged as you …

As we were packing for location photography this week I thought it might be interesting to show an overall of just what we take along on the average location photo shoot. This is our “medium” location kit, sometimes we pack less, sometimes we take the whole studio. Most of our location jobs (probably 75%) fall around this “medium” category.
It’s important to have everything we may need and then a backup for each item in case something goes down. It’s also nice to have the extra equipment in case we decide …