How to photograph a kaleidoscope of wedding culture
By Jeff Kent       

Internationalization is the initiative of the new millennium. Beyond the meeting halls of the European Union and the world financial markets of Hong Kong , multiculturalism is apparent in every aspect of society. In America , the great melting pot, cultural and ethnic diversity are apparent everywhere, from the Haight to the Heartland to Harlem .

The trend hasn’t skipped over wedding photography. While the concept of traditional wedding photography comes in shades of black and white, in reality, it embraces a kaleidoscope of traditions.

In honor of our diversity, we take a look at some examples of non-Western wedding traditions.

The benefits of photographing anywhere but your studio

By Fuzzy Duenkel

Your clients reveal themselves where they're most comfortable, in their own homes with familiar surroundings—so why drag them into the foreign territory of your camera room? Try making a house call.

Here are three more images illustrating the places where inspiration might lead you outside your studio.

Hallways often provide an interesting lighting mix. With cross-lighting, it's usually best to have the subject turned to directly face one of the lights. Halls with bare walls allow for creative montages.

See more examples.

Chicks Who Click: inspiring women to balance career, creativity and personal life

Run, run, run. How fast life flies by! Can you stop for just a few minutes to consider how you're balancing your career, your creativity and your personal life?
Lori Nordstrom, Cr.Photog., of Winterset, Iowa, says slowing down enough to attend the last two PPA-sponsored Chicks Who Click retreats for women in photography was one of the best things she ever did (www.nordstromphoto.com). The underlying theme of the women-only conferences, she says, was finding ways to achieve balance in one's life, how to make family and friends a priority while running a successful business.

Image, right: ©Lori Nordstrom

A day's work condensed to 60 seconds

Commercial photographer Jack Reznicki uses his Canon EOS 1Ds Mark II, a PocketWizard MultiMAX Transceiver and a SanDisk 8GB CompactFlash card to record a photo shoot. Reznicki records two shots per minute, and uses iPhoto and iMovie to convert the images into a QuickTime movie. (2MB file)

Download the article from Professional Photographer magazine.

bobby pins, hair spray, hair elastics, combs, brush, safety pins, mirror, tiny screw drivers, pocket knife, eyeglass repair kit, 2 large clamps, 2 small clamps, duct tape, Band-Aids, insect repellent, pens/pencil, water spray bottle, sewing kit, dishing line, Velcro, lip balm, scissors, first aid kit, AA batteries, super glue, lint brush, aspirin or other pain reliever, black Sharpies, baby wipes, black/white shoe polish, rubber bands, string or twine, lens cleaning solution, cable release, skin lotion, grey card, sunscreen, calamine lotion, bungie cord, hand lotion, water bottle, flashlight, small tissues, allen wrenches, plastic zipper bags, nail clippers, nail file, gloves, hand sanitizer, bubbles, squeaky toy, pliers, lens cleaning cloth, canned air, glue gun, cotton swabs, nail polish remover, shower cap, dog treats

Visit the New Ideas section of the Forums at OurPPA.com and tell us about your most session-saving Emergency Kit items.

By Jeff Schewe

It is with a very heavy heart and great sadness that I must announce the passing of Mike Skurski on Thursday, October 27th, 2005. Mike passed away after post-operative complications. He was at home, from the hospital, being cared for by his parents.

Only some of you may have known Mike, but many, many people knew of Mike. He was a very talented software designer and engineer. He liked to mention that he has been doing Photoshop Plug-ins for almost as long as Photoshop has had plug-ins. He received a hand written floppy disk from Thomas Knoll with the then, Photoshop 1.0 SDK-such as it was.

If there’s truth to the maxim, it may explain why online photo hosting services are flourishing as the world becomes more familiar and more comfortable with digital imagery and sharing photos online with friends and family. Globally, more individuals are shopping, comparing, planning and conducting their business online. The Internet offers not just include specific products, but also services, including those of the professional photographer.

For the professional photographer offering online photo albums creates a great impression. Clients and their family and friends can view, share, and order photos, adding more sales via reprint orders and referrals for future business.

In the March issue of Professional Photographer magazine we ran an article entitled "A favor they will keep" about Neal Clipper's techniques for making clients happy with onsite printing. Here is the list of equipment he uses in his workflow.

CAMERA: Nikon D2X digital SLR
PRINTER: Mitsubishi CP9550DW dye-sublimation roll printer. “I use two of these
units, which can produce a 5x7 dye-sub print in about 23 seconds,” says Clipper.
“I route images with bigger groups to one printer and smaller groups to the other,
alternating them to keep things moving.”
COMPUTER: Sony VAIO notebook with a high-speed processor. “The key is the
amount of time it takes to get the picture from the computer to the printer,” says
Clipper. “The faster the processor, the faster you can print and move on. Also, get a
unit with lots of USB ports; if you use two printers, you’ll need extra ports.”
WIRELESS TRANSMITTER: Nikon WT-2. Clipper’s photographers often transmit
the images directly to the computer for printing.
MEMORY CARDS: Lexar CompactFlash Cards with a Lexar CF 32-bit CardBus
adapter. “I recommend using a lot of smaller cards rather than big cards with a ton of
information on each,” says Clipper. “Then you don’t get behind in your processing
waiting for the cards to download.”
SOFTWARE: ACDSee Pro Photo Manager. Clipper’s teams use this brand new app
for image sorting, manipulating, renaming and resizing.
LIGHTS: Portable lighting units powered by Dyna-Lite XL packs, modified by
Westcott Halo soft boxes
BACKGROUND: Backgrounds by David Maheu

By Tom Peterson, Product Line Manager for Rimage Corporation

Professional photographers need clear answers to their questions about using CDs and DVDs as archival media.  What causes data loss in CDs and DVDs? How do you avoid that? What is an archival CD/DVD? How do I find archival quality CDs/DVDs? How long should my data last on archival quality CDs/DVDs? What is Blu-ray technology? Do I need it?

Tom Peterson is the Product Line Manager for Rimage Corporation, providers of CD-R and DVD-R publishing, duplication and printing solutions. He is responsible for the purchase of more than two million CD-Rs and DVD-Rs each month for the company and meets monthly with representatives of all major media manufacturers to keep abreast of changes in technology. Peterson led the initiative within Rimage of working with vendors to establish the Rimage 100-year media warranty.

We asked Peterson to provide the answers you wanted.

by Wendell Benedetti

The value of actions and plug-ins to professional photographers is indisputable, but finding the right ones can be daunting.

Plug-ins and actions dramatically expand the capabilities of Photoshop. Some provide new and time-saving ways to apply the application's tools, while others provide distinct capabilities. Both streamline the workflow from image capture to final output. No professional photographer should be without them.

But there are literally thousands of these tools available. Instead of Googling through pages of worthless links to find ones for your particular workflow, check out the examples from the Web sites below. All of them offer downloadable plug-ins and actions, and many include reviews, tutorials, instructional DVDs and lively forums.

This spring, San Diego boasts more than nice scenery. The 2006 “Art of Photography Show” was culled from 9,535 images submitted by 2,700 artists around the world, in the largest art competition in the city’s history. Arthur Ollman, director of the San Diego Museum of Photographic Arts, was charged with choosing the 100 best images for an exclusive presentation. He actually picked 104, for a collection that thrills event organizers.

Caption (right): "Suspended, Burma 2005," Monica Denevan, 1st Place

There were no categories for the exhibition. Instead, organizers asked artists to submit images that excited them. The only guiding principle was the exhibition’s theme and the title of the show, the “Art of Photography.”

Caption (above): "Nan on Porch," Craig Johnson, Honorable Mention

By Jeff Kent

From Westchester to Sri Lanka, Todd Shapera is driven by a passion to capture the inner beauty and resilience of individuals just about everywhere on earth. He's linking disparate worlds through photography.

Todd Shapera has always been a storyteller in one form or another. Among other pursuits, he’s written for National Public Radio, worked on speeches for politicians and UNICEF, and penned articles for numerous financial publications.

Though photography had interested him for a long time, it didn’t present a viable career option until the mid-1990s. While working in public relations for a global investment firm, Shapera frequently traveled the world to attend financial seminars. He made contacts with various journalists and people working with different financial publications. Carrying his camera on his trips, he started documenting the people and places he visited.

With a budget of $10,000, photographer Bryan Linden set out to transform part of his home into the Ultimate Home Studio. Here you can see a QuickTime VR panoramic view of the studio space before and after the work.

Find the first article of a series on Linden's home studio project in the June issue of Professional Photographer magazine.

This month in Professional Photographer magazine, we published a feature on food photography from Stan Sholik, giving you a look at some of the tricks of the trade. As a companion to that piece, we therefore give you a link to an excellent example of how not to style and photograph "food" (some descriptions contain strong language).

If you loved this gallery of alleged diet food horrors, perhaps you would enjoy Wendy McClure's new book, The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan: Classic Diet Recipe Cards from the 1970s.

By John Russo

[Editor's note: Because our April cover photographer, John Russo, came to our attention through his elegantly designed yet simple Web site, we asked him to write about liveBooks, the company that offers the editable Web site marketing and presentation software that he uses.]

Since the early days of the Internet I have been deeply inspired by its promise of being the ideal marketing tool for photographers. The idea of having one portfolio Web site that I could market simultaneously to photo buyers in New York, Miami, and LA just sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, as most of you have experienced, it was too good to be true. Countless hours and dollars later, the Web has never lived up to my dream of a simple, cost effective way to market my portfolio. That is, until now!

Press Release—In 2001 D. William Gibbons created the “14 Days Project,” also known as “The Face of Freedom,” to gain information from around the world, intent on bringing people closer by sharing that information and creating unity through the power of visual arts and film. Gibbons, the founder of production and consultancy services firm Lighthouse Imaging Group, realized the opportunity to help shape the future of international understanding and in 2002 tapped a talented group of photography and film specialists to help him create the first exhibit in the series, “14 Days in America.”

Features interviews with photographers Arnold Newman, Eve Arnold And Elliott Erwitt

There is an oft told tale of Marilyn Monroe walking down a New York City street, incognito, turning to her companion and saying, “Do you want to see her?” With that, she threw off all vestiges of Norma Jeane and miraculously transformed. There were no grand gestures, no change of clothes, no make-up.  It was a simple shift, a slithering out of one skin into the other. Arguably the most photographed person ever, the “outing” of Marilyn is something she looked at with both skepticism and awe. She once said, “I carry Marilyn Monroe around with me like an albatross.” In a new film, American Masters offers a unique take on one of the world’s first superstars by turning to the still photographs that captured Monroe’s beauty, her complexity and, ultimately, her own complicated relationship with the star side of herself.  AMERICAN MASTERS Marilyn Monroe: Still Life premieres Wednesday, July 19 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).      

Caption: Marilyn Monroe during a photo shoot for The Seven Year Itch, 1954, © George S. Zimbel 2005

Visual Aids is a recurring feature of Professional Photographer magazine Bonus Content, providing you with Web links to spur your creativity, stir your thought process, or liven your mood.

Visual Aid #001

Warning: Contains extreme cuteness, including puppies and kittens. May cause ill effects among the jaded ilk.

Visual Aids is a recurring feature of Professional Photographer magazine Bonus Content, providing you with Web links to spur your creativity, stir your thought process, or liven your mood.

Visual Aid #002

Look into the far reaches—curious and amazing.

An excerpt from Kevin Ames' "Photoshop CS2: The Art of Photographing Women" (Wiley Publishing, Inc., avail. Sept. 2006)
All photos ©Kevin Ames

In our August issue of Professional Photographer, we printed an abridged chapter excerpt from Kevin Ames' informative and instructional "Photoshop CS2: The Art of Photographing Women." The following is a collection of sidebars, tips and notes that we couldn't include due to space limitations.

Ever want to know what it was like to go on a photo adventure tour? One participant in The Moab Experience, Thomas H. Nevin, shares his journey down the Green River to Arches National Park.

©All photos ©Thomas H. Nevin

Personal journal of Thomas H. Nevin

Host: The Moab Paper Company; Greg Schern, President
Date: June 3-8, 2006
Schedule: One day photography workshop; four days on river; one day photo op at Arches National Park
Accommodations: Red Cliffs Lodge, Moab, Utah

Photo: View behind Red Cliffs Lodge

By Ellis Vener

"Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography and Creative Thinking," by Julieanne Kost, is one of the more profound Photoshop and photography related books I've seen in many years, yet has the least amount of technical content. The photographs are from Kost's collection of photographs made while on business trips over a five year period. As a mainstay in Adobe's Photoshop education program, Adobe Evangelist Kost is on the road "about 200 days" a year. While she has educated many thousands of photographers on Adobe's flagship software through  various Photoshop conferences, workshops, and a DVD series from Software Cinema), the real meat of her book is a plainspoken treatise on how to stay fresh and creative, even in the face of your fears or while mired in the prosaic grind of the workaday world.

In the September issue of Professional Photographer, we published the first part of Stan Sholik's look at the ins, outs, and applications of different types of backgrounds, "Background Check, Part 1: Getting real," which covers seamless paper, muslin, canvas, fabrics, cyc walls and other real drops. In the October issue, Sholik covers virtual backgrounds.

As a complement to the article, click through for a list of background designers, manufacturers and retail sellers with live links and information on the types of backgrounds they sell.

Professional Photographer magazine offers our readers free lighting tutorials from Web Photo School.

Fall is here, bringing a riot of rich, natural color. Do you want to push your color palette beyond khaki, denim and black? In this lesson, learn how to determine what color to use, how colors interact with other colors, and how to control saturation.

Topics Covered:

• Working with a stylist to create a specific look
• Setting up a high color-contrast set
• Using props to bind the look of a shot
• Shooting and reviewing images digitally
• Using Louvers to control soft light
• Creating a colored background spotlight with a Dedolight
• Tips on capturing natural-looking poses

Go to Contrasting Colors for Vivid Results at Web Photo School.

Award-winning photojournalist discusses digital photography tips and building rapport with subjects

Press Release—This month, Kingston Technology Company, Inc., features award-winning photojournalist Harry Benson on its Kingston Icons of Photography Web site. Benson describes how he’s captured riveting photographs for major newspapers, plus Life, People and Vanity Fair magazines.

Kingston’s Icons of Photography Web site profiles some of the world’s most respected photographers. Each month, the company spotlights a different Icon plus their tips, techniques and an online gallery of images. Icons share anecdotes and advice  for taking better pictures, and cover topics ranging from lighting and backgrounds to color profiling and making the most of equipment. Through “try it yourself” suggestions, Icons explain how they tackle their own photography challenges.

October leads with a new profile by Scotland-born Benson, who claims that awareness and attention are very important when working as a photographer. “The biggest mistake photographers make is only looking at the world when they’re holding a camera. Take the time to look around and understand what is going on,” he says. “Photojournalists have a unique way of seeing the world. This is what makes us different.”

The consequences of the September 11, 2001, attacks touch millions of lives around the globe in more ways than we can imagine. Even now, five years after the event, remains are still being discovered near the former site of the World Trade Center twin towers.

Undertaken as a personal project, “Remembrance” is a collection of images by New York photographer and instructor Marie Triller, who returns to Ground Zero each year to document the 9.11 memorial service and its attendants. Her images record the anniversaries without bias or romance, reflecting the passage of time and tone as seen in the mourning faces, memorials, ceremony, displays of politics, protest and patriotism, and the signs of rebuilding and regeneration.

Professional Photographer magazine offers our readers free lighting tutorials from Web Photo School.

Using a softbox gives your subject the soft treatment, but sometimes you want more contrast. Because the umbrella is a bounced light the results have more punch. This lesson uses two Photoflex 45-inch umbrellas (the white ADW and silver ADH) and demonstrates the versatile look they can add to your photo shoot.

Topics Covered:

• Advantages to the umbrella
• Contrast comparison
• Umbrella as a key light
• LitePanel for fill
• Lighting a background with an umbrella
• Using an umbrella as a "split light"

Go to Using Umbrellas in High-Contrast Fashion Shoots at Web Photo School.

O'Reilly Media announced today the winners of the Photoshop Cook-Off Contest at PhotoPlus Expo 2006. Grand Prize Winner Suzanne Pitts and 10 additional winners in five categories were selected from hundreds of submissions created by Photoshop aficionados.

"What's so wonderful about the Cook-Off contest is that everyone's a winner," says Betsy Waliszewski, who organized the contest along with Cookbooks editor Edie Freedman. "The O'Reilly recipes used to manipulate the images stirred the creative visions of photographers at all levels, from enthusiasts to seasoned professionals."

A panel of 15 A-list photographers chose the winning entries. The winning images range from Pitts' arresting black-and-white photo of a ballet trio to a fancifully surreal image of a flower budding from a peeled orange.

©Suzanne Pitts

When nothing seems to be going right, it’s easy to lose your perspective. When you’re stressed out, says Burnie Glenn, CPP, let yourself float for awhile. You might not be a world-famous photographer, but remind yourself that what you do is important to the people you photograph, Glenn says. “Sometimes it takes a blow to the head with a celestial two-by-four to get the message that it’s time to move on and find something better.” It’s a matter of attitude and faith in yourself, he adds. “The Titanic was built by professionals; Noah’s ark was built by amateurs.”

Burnie Glenn, a past president of the Dallas Professional Photographers Association, and his wife, Marcia, own and operate Glenn’s Photo Studio, specializing in weddings and portraits, in Dallas, Texas.

Image ©Burnie Glenn

Features Interviews with Mikhail Baryshnikov, Tina Brown, Graydon Carter, Rosanne Cash, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Whoopi Goldberg, Mick Jagger, Bette Midler, Demi Moore, Mark Morris, Yoko Ono, Keith Richards, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patti Smith, Gloria Steinem, Jann Wenner, Anna Wintour,  and family members

Press Release—It’s 1972, the year of Watergate, "The Godfather" and Exile on Main Street. On a suburban Maryland lawn, a young Anna-lou Leibovitz peers into her Nikon as members of her family scramble into place.  As they pose, an ever-present Super 8 camera captures the scene. Although Leibovitz is a Rolling Stone magazine photographer, this event—her first turn as the official family photographer—is as important to her as any arena concert or movie shoot.

Flash forward 34 years to 2006. This time, the now-famous photographer is on the other side of the lens. And this time, her younger sister Barbara is pointing the camera, documenting the life and times of Annie Leibovitz for AMERICAN MASTERS.  "Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens" premieres Wednesday, January 3 at 9 p.m. (ET) on PBS (check local listings).

Caption: Café Flore, Paris, 1997; photo by Martin Schoeller

Everest Climb for Peace Takes Epson Multimedia Storage Viewer to New Heights

Can Epson technology survive in the midst of extreme sub-zero temperatures, fierce winds, avalanches and oxygen deprivation? Epson’s P-4000 Multimedia Storage Viewer met the challenge with ease as it aided climbers on their trek during the treacherous 60-day Everest Climb for Peace expedition. The team reached the pinnacle on May 18, 2006.

Professional Photographer magazine offers our readers free lighting tutorials from Web Photo School.

Achieving a pure white background may seem simple, but it's not so hard to foul it up. A new photographer usually goes too far in one direction or another when attempting to create a perfect white background.

A) An insufficient amount of light on the background creates a shade of gray.

B) Too much light on the background turns the subject matter 'milky' and saturation is lost.

This lesson shows you the techniques necessary to control your white backgrounds.

Topics Covered:

• How to prepare for an indoor sports portrait
• Setting up proper lighting ratios
• Techniques on using a light meter
• Special effects using Plexiglas

Go to Achieving a Pure White Background at Web Photo School.

By Joan T. Sherwood

The world is both a small and limitless place, and once you begin to explore it, as Lou Jones has, you find out how little you know and how much there is to see. In his new book "Travel + Photography: Off the Charts" (Focal Press Elsevier; $29.95), Boston-based freelance fine art and commercial photographer Lou Jones helps prepare photographers to venture across the globe, sharing invaluable experience beyond lighting and composition. He broaches the realities of the world when you enter into other countries and cultures with a camera.

Caption: Construction worker, Alaman, Cuba. ©Lou Jones

Reviewed by Ellis Vener

The title harkens back to "On Photography," the first of Susan Sontag's two book-length philosophical meditations about the role of photography in society. Like Sontag, Johnson has a well defined philosophical stance about the subject. The difference is that Johnson comes at the subject from the view of someone who is a maker and not a consumer of photographs.

"Stephen Johnson on Digital Photography" (O'Reilly Media, $39.99) begins with a brief history of the origins of digital photography and then zooms through the rapid evolution of technologies and techniques over the past 20 years, much of which the author was deeply engaged with. Johnson makes an eloquent plea for the sanctity of straight photography in photography's digital era, and rightly points out that if we compare it to the evolution of mankind, electronic photography is still in its Stone Age period.

Professional Photographer magazine offers our readers free lighting tutorials from Web Photo School.

Modifying the standard approach to portraits can add more life and interest to your shot if you know what you're doing. When it comes to shooting glamour, rules should be considered guidelines.

The most interesting glamour shots out there are taken by photographers who have veered from the rules to come up with their own bag of tricks for shooting.

This lesson will show you a couple of simple modifications you can make to a standard portrait lighting setup to enhance the appeal of your images.

Topics Covered:

• Setting Up the Background
• Setting Up the Quantum Q Flash
• Installing the Radio Slaves
• Setting Up the Main Flash
• Programming the E-300 Camera Settings
• Setting Up the Fill Light
• Setting Up the Separation Light

Go to Shooting Glamour in the Studio at Web Photo School.