1. Think deeply about its name.
2. Download new icon sets for it from the IconFactory.

It’s hard to find an old skool mac junkie who hasn’t spent way too much time shift-reloading their homepage just to watch the random animated pixel-logo gifs (RIP-ing along with other OS9 awesome stuff.. kaleidoscope, anyone?). Just about the only thing said junkie might have spent more time doing (well, besides working and playing Marathon) is getting into silly debates with Windows fanatics about multi-button mice.

But I digress. The Iconfactory has really grown since their days of just making cool stuff for macs – they now do beautifully drawn software icons for Windows and Mac, make a host of icon-making tools and really, really sweet iPhone games.

Frenzic was the first one I played. Forget the fact that it’s completely and infuriatingly addictive. It’s GORGEOUS. Ramp Champ was the second – so stuffed full of beautiful, intricate illustration that I almost forget how fluid and intuitive the interface is. Which brings me to Pickin’ Time.

It’s really just a glorified version of Memory (you choose a veggie to pick and then pick it out of the subsequent screens.) Sounds easy, right? I’m sure it is – at least when the freakin’ tomato isn’t doing some kind of secret ninja mind game to get you to click on it when you really meant to click on the apple.

Download it to your iphone through the app store or online.

And, if you’re a still an icon junkie, be sure to pick up Dave Lanham’s beautiful Pickin’ Time icon set for Mac, Windows & Candybar.

I initially planned to have both the zebra and the giraffe in the picture but I really like just the giraffe by himself, just enjoying another lovely sunset down on the reserve.

I expected this to be an easy shot and, for the most part, it was. Once I made some gels to fit inside the snoot (“Well, I might as well cut smaller gels for all the colors instead of just one magenta one…”) and figured out that the LumoPro is stymied by the ST-E2′s preflash signals (Solution: Connect the LumoPro to the camera with a cable and turn off the optical slave), that is.

I had a lot of fun building this set – I made the landscape from a green napkin laid over two sock rolls. The trees are a couple sprigs of curly parsley held up by photo clips. The pic below shows the final setup. Wayne says I need to tell you all that I didn’t turn off the overhead kitchen lights during shooting because apparently, that is the kewlz.

ISO 200, 1/180th @ f/8. Background light: 580EX II at 1/32th power, snooted and double-gelled (purple and Full CTO). Key light: LumoPro 120 at 1/16 power, fitted with a grid spot, tinfoil gobo, and Full CTO gel. Tiny foil baking pan reflector.

For the portrait above, I didn’t use the reflector – just a grid spot on the flash and the flash head zoomed in completely. For the portrait below, I setup a mirror as a reflector to light up his cape.

Scope the low tech setup here:

ISO 200, f/11 @ 200/sec. Canon EOS 5D with 50mm macro & ST-E2 transmitter. 580EX II at 1/8 power with homemade grid. Tinfoil reflector.

Since I’m getting ready to go out of town for a couple days, the food situation is looking pretty thin. I also wanted to play around with some new gels I made earlier this week so I decided to use toys for today’s challenge.

Step One: Determine depth of field and overall lighting tone.

1/180 sec @ f/2.5

In this composition, the background light will provide the overall lighting tone for the scene. When working with flashes (or any non-ambient light sources), use the camera’s shutter speed to determine the amount of ambient light and the aperture to determine the amount of flash light. Remember that aperture also determines depth of field so the trick is to determine how much depth of field you want and then adjust the light level to be brighter or darker until you reach the tone you want.

The background here is lit with my trusty IKEA desklamp, gelled with a homemade red gel.

Step Two: Set your main light levels

1/180 sec @ f/2.5

Once you get your background tone set, set up your secondary lights. In this case, I wanted to just feather the mainlight across Black’s back and sort of carve him out of shadow just a bit with the flash. To keep light from spilling onto and weakening the red light in the background, I fitted the flash with a gridspot and zoomed the flash head to its max setting.

I adjusted the flash settings until I was happy with the amount of light hitting Black. Light from the flash isn’t spilling on to the background but it is illuminating the table somewhat (visible in the lower right corner).

Step Three: The Mighty Gobo

1/180 sec @ f/2.5

Gobo is short for “go-between.” and means anything you can put between the light and subject. Gobos can be used to create patterns and texture (these gobos are often called “cookies”) and are often used to block the light. They don’t have to be anything fancy – you can make a gobo from black card, cardboard, fabric or tinfoil, as I did above. Tin foil’s quite nice as it can be molded and stands easily on its own.

I’m pretty happy with the above picture so now it’s time to play with reflectors.

Step Four: Reflecting the light

Here is the same scene with a 10cmx10cm folding mirror placed opposite the flash on camera left.

Here is the same scene with a piece of letter-size plain paper folded in half placed opposite the flash on camera left. Compare the two pictures above – the paper-reflected light is much softer and more diffuse than the mirror. Neither is necessarily better – whether you want a diffuse or hard highlight is up to lots of things, including the client, the art director, the bride, the magazine, and sometimes, even the artist.

The Setup

Gear Notes: Canon EOS 5D with 50mm macro lens. ST-E2 Remote Transmitter & 580EX II flash. Table lamp fitted with Honl Photo speedstrap and homemade gel. Leksvik kitchen table by IKEA. Tinfoil from CVS. Printer paper from Staples.

The action figure is Butterfly, one of three assassins from Taiyo Matsumoto’s great comic, Tekkonkinkreet (published as Black & White by Viz in the US). I started with a two-light setup: one light trained on the background and gelled with a Full CTO, the other with a homemade grid and focused on the subject.

Camera: 1/90th@f4, ISO 200. Flash: ETTL mode, -3EV

For you portrait geeks, this is a comparison of two common and similar portrait styles: Rembrandt on the right and loop on the left. Light illuminates pretty much the whole mask of the face in loop lighting, which is named after the loop-shaped shadow that forms under the nose. In Rembrandt lighting, the subject is turned somewhat away from the light and only the triangular space under the eye is illuminated.

As satisfying as these pictures may be, they illustrate one of the main conundrum of the wedding photographer: balancing the color cast of ambient light (in this case, quite orange) with the very cold light of the flash. Regardless of whether you shoot with your white balance set to flash or auto, if the main light source illuminating your subjects is a naked flash, your subjects will look colder than much warmer ambient-lit background.

Camera: 1/90th@f4, ISO 200. Flash: ETTL mode, -3EV

The solution is to gel your flash and bring it close to matching the color temperature of the ambient light. Honl Photo makes a nice kit that fits every flash I’ve ever owned and works with their Speedstrap system. It even works with the cheap IKEA lamp I used to illuminate the background. For the photo above and the following two photos, both the lamp and the flash illuminating Butterfly’s head and shoulders are gelled with a Full CTO.

In order to keep the light focused on Butterfly and off the background, I put a homemade grid on the flash and zoomed the flash to its maximum setting. The grid spot keeps the light even on the illuminated areas and falls off dramatically at the edges. You can clearly see the difference in lighting between the non-gridded flash above and the gridded flash below.

Gear notes: Canon EOS 5D, 50mm macro lens, ST-E2 Remote Transmitter, 580 EX II flash on its own cute little stand, homemade grid, Honl Photo color balancing gel pack & speedstraps, and one very cheap IKEA desk lamp.