Wrapping It Up

Whew! Finally, I'm on the last chapter of my new and soon-to-be-released ebook, "Flash-Free Portrait Photography."  I've cleverly titled the last chapter, "Wrapping It Up," which seems fitting, if not actually clever, since it's mostly a wrap-up/bullet-point-recap of the previous 100 pages. I'm also including a few words about post-processing, but very few. Post-processing, after all, isn't what the book is about. Somehow, though, it seems to be sort of incomplete without at least a few words on the subject of post. Nothing technical or how-to-ish, just some general suggestions regarding post. (Not that I'm anything close to being a subject-matter-expert on post-processing. I'm definitely not!)

BTW, still running a 20% Off sale on my previous three ebooks through the end of June. If you purchase via one of the links in the right-hand column, enter JUNESALE as the discount code when checking-out. It will automatically deduct the 20% from your total.

Authoring ebooks like these are always big learning experiences for me!  Not in terms of learning to author ebooks, but regarding my own photography. (I hope it will also be the same for those who read the book.)  It's not that I'm not already familiar with most of the stuff I've included in the book, but writing about it forces me to organize and focus on what I already know. (And research those things I might be weak on.)  It's one thing to put this stuff into practice, that is, to use what I already know about shooting in natural light when I'm actually shooting in natural light. It's another to explain it to others via words and pictures.  I'm a better man for the experience!  Well, perhaps a better photographer? Okay, I'm probably a better something because of it. I'll leave it at that.

I suppose I should quickly wrap this blog update up and get back to wrapping it, my ebook, up. I really, really want it to be done. Not that it will be done done. There's still always more editing, rewriting, and proofing to be done before it's done done and even then, it always seems like there's more that could be done before it's done. (Wow! I done put a lot of dones in those last last few sentences.) Anyway, writing is rewriting they say. (Whoever "they" are.)

BTW, I also purchased a URL for the ebook this morning: FlashFreePortrait-dot-com. It wasn't my first choice. My first choice was NaturalLight-dot-com, but when I entered that choice GoDaddy told me it was available for sale, but not at the normal URL pricing. They said it's a "Premium" URL and wanted nearly $4K for that freakin' thing! Seriously? Four thousand bucks? Thanks but no thanks, BigGoDaddy. I'd have to sell considerably more than 400 ebooks at ten bucks a pop just to pay for the URL! (Have to pay my affiliates their commissions, after all.) My second choice was simply FlashFree-dot-com but that was already taken. So, my third choice, FlashFreePortrait-dot-com, was what I ended up purchasing for my new ebook's web address.

The lovely young thing at the top is Jenna. (Click to enlarge.)  I lit Jenna with a 4' Photoflex Octo for my main, plus a couple of kickers either side. I cranked up the camera-right kicker, a medium Chimera strip box, for a harder edge light. The other, camera-left, was a small shoot-thru umbrella, powered low just to gently fill and bring out her hair on that side. It was set about head-high on the same axis as the model.  In post, I converted to monochrome via CS3's B&W tool and added the vignetting. The image was captured with my Canon 5D Mk1 with a Canon f/1.8 85mm prime. ISO 100, f/5.6 @ 125th.