Sunset is my favourite time to shoot, not just because of the “magic hour” light you get, but because it’s the time adding flash to an image can change it the most. You can take a photo of your subject under what looks to the naked eye to be pretty dull conditions and then flip the camera around and show them something on the rear screen that they can’t believe hasn’t spent hours in Photoshop. It’s all...

I’ve had a few questions on Twitter about just what I mean when I say I use my 70cm Elinchrom Deep Octa in “beauty dish mode”, so this quick post is to show what I mean. This is the way you’d typically use a soft box with both layers of diffusion material in place for maximum softness. However you can remove the outer baffle and let the light be a little harder and more specular. But the way I have been using it for...

When you are at the World famous Silverstone circuit and you’ve got access to the pit lane, it’s just plain rude not to use it as a location. Especially when you’ve got the lovely Sarah and her equally lovely VW Polo as your subject. The plan here was twofold – firstly I wanted to get some good shots in the can for Sarah and secondly I wanted to find out just how well my new lighting rig coped in a typical car show...