We're excited by all of the PocketWizard shooters around the globe, and set up this blog so we can share their enthusiasm for making images. Thanks for visiting.
By now you all must know that David Hobby over at Strobist is not only a talented photographer, but also a generous educator. We’re excited to join forces with David to offer this exciting contest! Here’s the deets:
Once a month, one free pair of PW Plus II Transceivers will be awarded to the best video on YouTube of a photo shoot detailing creative use of wireless triggering. Video can be live video or, a series of still photos with voiceover and clear explanation of how wireless triggering was used.
Creativity with wireless triggering is key to this contest. Show us your best, most creative use of going wireless with radio triggering. And detail, detail, detail! Explain your setup well so everyone can understand what it took to make your vision come alive.
All videos must be tagged “pocketwizardstrobist” to qualify. The judging panel will be David Hobby of Strobist and Phil Bradon from PocketWizard.
In addition, photos may also uploaded to Flickr tagged “pocketwizardstrobist” with link to the YouTube video in the description.
The contest runs mid-July through end of November. Winners will be announced on the 15th of each month, beginning in August.
EDIT: Feel free to leave a link to your video as a comment to this post. Also, we’ve seen great use of YouTube’s video annotations to point out gear use and positioning - great idea! Don’t forget you can always rent wireless gear if you don’t own it yet.
Good luck! Let’s her those shutters clicking. Go wireless! Read more at Strobist.blogspot.com
Photographer Randall Grant photographed Jessica Gomez on location using PocketWizard at the Dead Sea in Israel for Sports Illustrated’s 2008 Swimsuit Edition.
Setting up a remote camera is old hat to seasoned PocketWizard shooters, but newcomers often have a lot of questions. Like, how do you get the correct angle? What about turning on the camera so it stays ready? And, what happens if a player is about to fall crashing down on your $8,000 digital camera as he’s being shoved out of bounds? Well, bunkies, fear no more. Max Simbron comes to our rescue, complete with an excellent explanatory blog and even a video he produced on the same subject! Way to go, Max! Link
University of Denver graduate Justin Curtis Edmonds doesn’t have a job yet but he’s got some clever photographs of graduation, thanks to the ubiquitous Pocket Wizard. In his words, “I also had a camera in my hands with a Pocket Wizard so that I could fire either camera or the arena strobes from my seat. My friends and the other graduates around me were in awe of the setup that I had going and were completely astonished that I knew how to do all of that. It may seem like rocket science to others but it’s just fun to me. I made sure to get some good images of all my friends with the remotes and as soon as Facebook’s photo up-loader decides that it is going to work again they will all be able to see them.” See http://jcedmonds.blogspot.com/2008/06/apad-76-project-complete-still-jobless.html for the complete story. Incidentally, Justin, we’ll follow your career. You will surely have as much fun as a professional photographer.
Of course it isn’t, and the photographs made by Patrick J. Endres prove it. Using a unique approach to underwater photography, Patrick lowers his camera into a lake and uncovers a hidden world of beauty. He’s been documenting the life cycle of the Copper River Sockeye Salmon and it’s truly fascinating! We don’t know of too many underwater photographers who use the Pocket Wizard, but definitely stop in to Patrick’s blog and web site to learn how and why he did it. And if you’re an underwater photographer who uses a PocketWizard, please let us know. Link
Talented sports shooter Criaig Mitchelldyer writes in his blog,
Today was ‘Media Day’ for the Portland Beavers, the AAA team for the San Diego Padres. Every year I shoot mugs and some portraits for the team for the program covers, etc. Every year I’m running around like a freak trying to grab different people for different photos, so this year I decided to setup a remote camera and a ring light and setup a station for the guys to shoot their own photos while I was doing other things. I hooked up a Pocket Wizard (sic) to a foot switch, so they just sat down, made whatever face and hit the foot switch. Here are a couple of my favs.
You think hockey is a brutal sport? How would you like to be the photographer assigned to shoot from inside the goal net? The object is to take exciting images as two (or more) warriors battle it out in the hopes of scoring a goal. It turns out this is one of the most saleable images of hockey coverage.
What do you mean you don’t want to go into the goal net? What did the referee say when you tried? Grin. Of course you can’t go there, but your PocketWizard can. Just ask veteran sports shooter Bruce Bennett of Getty Images.
He packages up his Canon 5D and 15mm lens along with the PW inside a protective box. The rig is outfitted with a “stay awake” cable so there will be no lost time in firing the first frame. Then Bruce goes back to his regular shooting position and goes to work with, say, the 300mm lens, switching to the Pocket Wizard when the net action gets hot. Read the whole story at http://blogs.gettyimages.com/sport/2008/05/14/little-netcams-get-big-pictures/
If you are looking to bone up on how to do amazing things with flash off-camera, consider visiting Strobist.blogspot.com
This website is about one thing: Learning how to use off-camera flash with your dSLR to take your photos to the next level.
Here, you’ll find everything you need to know about how to more effectively use your small speedlights. There are more than 1,000 articles about lighting. Over a million photographers from around the world have learned small-flash lighting techniques from this site. We’re thinking you can, too.
David Hobby started this blog to share his knowledge of creative problem-solving for lighting and now has an absolutely huge group of enthusiastic photographers that take great joy in shooting, learning and improving. And, you’ll find lots of PocketWizards doing interesting things with remote triggering!
You may also want to head over to their Flickr group, which at the time of writing this has 28,920 members and 111,044 photographs in the group pool.
And if that’s not enough for you, the blog is also translated into Spanish, Italian, German and Danish!
Get your creative juices flowing! Great site, great people.
Columbia, SC-based photojournalist Brett Flashnick (Brett, tell us you didn’t make that name up!) knows you can’t get too close to a horse during a race, lest the thoroughbred take a chunk out of your head with his hooves. So, like many photographers, Brett uses Pocket Wizards to trigger the cameras from a safe distance. “When the race began,” says Brett, “I decided to shoot from down the track with my 300mm f/2.8 and 1.4x converter, with the PocketWizard on the hot shoe of the camera, so I could have two angles of the shot, in case the remote didn’t work for some reason. Once the event is done with, you can go back to your remote, and collect your images and hope you got what you envisioned.” Nice work, indeed.
One of the great perks of selling a professional photo tool like PocketWizard is that you get to meet photographers from all walks of life, in all aspects of the profession and with different ways of solving lighting and shooting problems. One of our recent encounters (at WPPI) was with Jacksonville, FL-based Scarlett Lillian, wedding photographer extraordinaire. Scarlett works witha Canon 5D and Canon 580EXII flash, getting it off-camera with the help of the ubiquitous PocketWizard Plus II. Take a look at her work on www.scarlettlillian.com and read more on her blog at www.scarlettlillian.net. Beautiful, elegant work, Scarlett!
