While a university student, author Shubnum Khan signed a model release in exchange for professional portraits as a part of a project by photographer XX billed as “The 100 Faces Shoot.” Unbeknownst to her at the time, the photographer started licensing the images as stock photography, and Khan’s visage started to appear in advertisements around the world selling everything from McDonald’s hamburgers to hyper pigmentation cream to management course materials....

Yup, is a harsh title, clickbaity even. Sadly, it’s true. I do think that this story (and lesson) could have ended up very differently. Luckily, no one is hurt and no harm as done to my studio aside one dead battery. I am a big Godox fan. I shoot quite a bit with the AD600, AD200 and the V860II for Sony. Well, mostly with the AD600 and AD200. The 860II is many times waiting in the drawer for when we need an extra light....

When you need to travel with gear that you want to keep safe, it can be a pain. Sure, you can just throw a bunch of stuff in a backpack, but if you’re going somewhere rugged and it’s being thrown around a lot during travel, a hard case like a Pelican or Nuprol case is often much better. But they’re not always that easy to organise. They usually come with pick and pluck foam or generic dividers that don’t really do the job as well as you’d like....

We’ve all seen Eric Pare’s DIY light tubes for light painting, but these ones from Adam Rahn at DroiMedia are a little bit different. These ones are designed for video. They’re to emulate lights like the Quasar Science and CAME-TV tubes. These DIY options are relatively inexpensive, easy to build and allow you to customise them to your own shooting needs. For the build, you’ll need… High CRI (90+) LED stripsFrosted acrylic tubeWooden dowel rods12v DC adapter2 end caps per tube...

In an ideal world, studio floors and walls would all be pristine and perfect. But in the real world, even freshly painted and cleaned ones don’t stay that way for very long. They pick up dust and dirt, get smudges, scuffs and scratches, and we end up having to either clean and repaint them more often or just deal with it in post. And if it’s a rented studio, forget about it....