WINNER #1 : $100 Gift Card to Artsy Couture and a Lightsphere Universal

“Sisters” By Stephanie Cook

WINNER #2: $100 Gift Card to Nations Photo Lab and a Lightsphere Collapsible

“Wish You Were Here” by Nacho Magda

We are excited to announce this month’s photo contest and its wonderful sponsors, Artsy Couture and Nations Photo Lab. For the month of May we are celebrating Mothers and the theme is “For the Love of Family”. So grab your cameras and get creative. Two lucky winners will be chosen this month. One lucky winner will receive a $100 gift card to Artsy Couture and a Lightsphere Universal from Gary Fong Inc. (valued at $49.95) Another lucky winner will receive a $100 gift card to Nations Photo Lab and a Lightsphere Universal from Gary Fong Inc. See RULES and ENTER BELOW.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER

RULES:

To enter this contest you must “Like” Gary Fong Flash Diffusers, Artsy Couture, and Nations Photo Lab on Facebook and or on Twitter.
-One entry per week.

-Image must be JPEG, in sRGB color space, with the long side as 1800px at a resolution of 300dpi

-You must own the image

-Include a link to your facebook/ twitter/ Instagram page in the email if available

Winners will be a juried selection by representatives of Gary Fong, Inc., Artsy Couture and Nations Photo Lab.  This promotion is in NO WAY sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook. You will NOT be notified publicly via Facebook if you are a winner. You MUST be 18 to participate. By entering this giveaway, you are providing information to Gary Fong Inc and NOT to Facebook. Prizes do not have cash value. There will be no returns/exchanges on any of the items.
*By submitting your photo, you grant Gary Fong Inc permission to re-post your photo on our blog and/or Facebook page. Photo Credit will be provided.

“This is my #1: Excellent! Tough situation to shoot, but that’s not what makes this image good. The image has, wonderful composition, good use of light and lens, wonderful tones. Excellent seeing!” -Bob Davis

Great job to all of you who entered. Stay tuned to this month’s contest launching today that is sponsored by Artsy Couture and Nations Photo Lab. Subscribe to this blog NOW so you won’t miss out on the next great opportunity to WIN!

I learn so much from my customers, which is why I spend a lot of time in camera stores, or doing little workshops.  I get to hear what photographers want to get out of their equipment, and where they are getting confused in using their gear.  This is why I do so many YouTube videos.  I can make innovative products, but unless you know how to use them to their best potential, they’re just things to put in your camera bag.

I just added Live Chat to our e-store.  When the green chat bubble is on the right, that means I or one of our product experts is on.  I’m always on it by the way, but if it gets busy there’s a number of us, many of whom are professional photographers as well.

Coming up soon will be our knowledgebase, and help forums.  My job, and my passion, is to have raving customer satisfaction with my products.

Here’s my first conversation on the chat!  This is fun

Not a lot of people venture this wide open in flash photography, and that’s a huge missed opportunity for creativity. Watch this video, and you’ll see a comparison between available light and a very soft flash puff.

One thing great about using flash for your indoor images is that the main color temperature never changes. this dramatically increases your workflow in post.

We all have run into the situation where we have an awful area to shoot.

When I was a novice photographer, I would really freak out in a non-studio setting. Then I’d start moving furniture around to try to find a clean background that looked decent. And the lighting in the room would be typically be awful. Using flash made it worse. What I didn’t know then was that I could eliminate the surrounding room entirely, by simply using directed flash to eliminate the ugly room.

The easiest way to understand flash photography is to grasp the concept that with flash, there are actually two exposures going on; the first one is the “ambient” light, with a much higher speed “blitz” of flash as another simultaneous exposure. The neat thing is that you can mix the two independently so that your flash can “blend” with the ambient light, or you can make your flash relatively so powerful, that the ambient light disappears. This is especially handy when you have an ugly background!

In the example above, the first photo on the left shows where my model was. left, She is sitting at the bottom of a stairwell in a utility building. From that very spot, using only two speedlights and my Snoot and Lightsphere with color tabs, I was able to instantly create the dramatic images you see above.

I have been very very busy making instructional YouTube videos – right now I have over 9,000 subscribers and over 2.7 million page views. I’m all about making instructional videos because I so often see photographers who don’t understand flash, and therefore have use whatever light is available. With just a few pieces of inexpensive equipment, they could quickly create awesome results. I can make blue skies on cloudy days, and I can make a swimming pool look like a fiery red cauldron. In seconds!

Thanks for reading this far into my email – it shows you’re interested in this topic. So, as a thanks for your interest and support, please feel free to take 20% off of any purchase on my e-store at garyfonginc.com, just use coupon code YOUTUBE20 when checking out. And watch this video below. If you are open to changing your photography dramatically, I am pretty confident you’ll leap with excitement at what you can do!

In this video, I show you how to use one of them Yungnuo super inexpensive flash triggers to shoot on Manual mode for lots of creativity. And I also explain why it’s maybe not a good approach!

For those of you looking to get into wireless, off-camera solutions right away, one of the options is to purchase a very inexpensive flash trigger. This solution has a lot of limitations, such as the inability to enjoy TTL metering, or high speed sync. (In other words, it’s better to use the camera’s built-in wireless flash function than to use a non-TTL slave trigger.) This video explains why.

Not only is this top-of-the-line kit a great value (as compared to purchasing each item by itself) but it is the best set of tools for the professional photographer to change or modify lighting, on-the-go, with the smallest bulk possible.

With the Pro Kit, you can change completely the lighting of any situation, including color temperature (in relation to the subject), shape and power. Watch this video for a glimpse at what you can do with it!

(if you watch until the end, there’s a little easter egg for ya!)

this video was shot today. My most important function as a person who designs flash accessories is to teach people how to use my inventions the way they were designed.

The big question is, what is the best lighting for flash? After you see this video, I hope you learn something really powerful and motivating!