They are finally here. We have been so busy lately, but it is time to announce that the WordPress Themes for photographers are ready for purchase and installation.

We are really pretty proud of these WP Themes. They are built with the incredible power of WordPress, and are widget and portfolio ready. The price is a one time purchase and includes any and all updates to the theme you purchase.

What makes them different from a regular WordPress theme? Well, for starters the home page is fixed. Most contain a mini gallery entitled “New Work” and all can be used with the incredible SlideShowPro.net Gallery Tool (see their website for licensing and specifics on the different products they offer. Need help deciding? Call us.) SlideShowPro allows you to easily manage galleries, add images, create new categories, add music, video and more. It is the most robust gallery tool I am aware of. They have a Lightroom module that really rocks if you are currently using Lightroom.

We know that a lot of photographers don’t want to write a lot, so we added the post feature to be more of a “Project” post. As you decide to add to your projects you can open the page in WP and edit it, add images, or simply add a new project page. You can edit any page on your site at any time you want. You can even reorder the pages, create new pages, and add ‘sub-pages’ to your pages. Easy, quick and fun.

We recommend the following widgets for you as well: GEN Gallery, Analytics, SEO Tools, Visual Editor and Lightbox. In addition, we will offer some great little movies on getting your site up and working for you.

There are so many reasons to go with Lighting Essentials WordPress sites for photographers: Search Engine Friendly pages, easy to manage, clean design, large images, fast set-up, no webmaster, tracking… the list goes on and on.

BTW… here are some previous Interviews posts I think you will enjoy. Some on the magazine site.
Claire Curran Corbett
Michael Maersch
Joshua Targownik
Jimi Giannatti
Kieth Taylor
Laurie Meehan-Elmer
Jay B. Sauceda
Eduardo Frances

And if you are looking for a workshop, check out Learn to Light for an updated calendar of workshops all over America.

Let’s take a look at these new WordPress themes for photographers.

The “Anna Maria” site is our newest site. Clean and Simple, the site allows for a home page show of new work, projects to show more work, a full gallery presentation for portfolio, simple clean pages, optional footer area and more. Building an Anna Maria site would be nearly as much fun as when we visit the lovely Isle near Tampa, FL for which it is named.

Anna Maria features:

• 6 large images on home page with thumbnails. “New Work”
• Three “Projects or Posts” on front page.
• Widget enabled.
• No Sidebar on interior pages
• Optional Footer area for widgets
• Search Engine friendly pages

Antique White has a nice feel to it. Large images with small thumbs for the New Work gallery on the home page. A footer area for widgets, and three projects showing to bring visitors into the site. Antique white can easily be customized by changing a little CSS here and there and adding a new background. Antique White has been one of our favorites.

Our Antique White theme features:

• 10 large images on home page with thumbnails. “New Work”
• Three “Projects or Posts” on front page.
• Widget enabled.
• Sidebar on interior pages
• Footer area for widgets
• Search Engine friendly pages

The Black Portrait features a unique styling, and only one interchangeable image on the home page. Managed by the photographer, the home page is very simple and clean without footers. Pages do not have sidebars, but feature large image areas and text as well.

Black Portrait features:

• 5 large images on home page with thumbnails. “New Work”
• Three “Projects or Posts” on front page.
• Widget enabled.
• Sidebar on interior pages
• Footer area for widgets
• Search Engine friendly pages

The New Business theme offers thumbnail New Work gallery, footers and all the SEO goodness of WordPress. This theme also has no sidebars in the interior pages. Easy to change background colors, fonts styling and color and more, this theme is seemingly very popular.

New Business features:

• 10 large images on home page with thumbnails. “New Work”
• Three “Projects or Posts” on front page.
• Widget enabled.
• Sidebar on interior pages
• Footer area for widgets
• Search Engine friendly pages

We call this one “Template 3″ and we have no real reason for that. With a large image show on the home page to a full, built-in blog this site can really grow with a photographers career. Easily change the background and change the CSS for different colored text and headlines. From wild to sublime, Template 3 is ready for your best shots.

Template 3 features:

• 8 large images on home page with thumbnails. “New Work”
• Three “Projects or Posts” on front page.
• Widget enabled.
• No Sidebar on interior pages
• Search Engine friendly pages
• Built-in Blog

Themes are only $99. All are modern WP and are ready for the Plugins of your choice. From SEO to analytics to serving ads, there are hundreds of incredible Plugins to make your site do what you want it to do and you don’t need to know code to do it.

All of our themes ship with a beautiful web gallery built in. You can use it for a professional presentation or you can implement other gallery styles. We love the presentation that SlideshowPro.net has and we recommend it for photographers who have a lot of images in many categories.

Additional licenses for the SlideShowPro.net gallery tools are available at their site. Licenses at SlideshowPro.net start at $39 and are per domain.

If you would like us to add any of SlideShowPro’s tools from SlideshowPro for Flash with Director, or Slideshowpro for Lightroom, simply purchase your license and let us know. We will install it for you. Whether you use their Lightroom or Director product, it will make an outstanding presentation in your site. If you are not sure what you need, contact them or us and we can help.

Your website can show videos, play MP3′s, link Podcasts and more. With WordPress, the ability to grow your site is simply incredible. We feel that this may be the future for website construction for those who want to maximize the searchability and networking that the interactive web offers.

All sites have the SEO tool set installed so creating SE friendly pages, with easy indexing by Google and others are a no-brainer. Visual editors makes it easy to manage, and the overall power of WordPress is harnessed to allow fast and simple maintenance. WP will even update itself at the click of a mouse.

If you are interested in any of the WP Themes, send me an email (with the subject: LE WordPress Themes) and I will get you hooked up. We offer hosting as well, and you manage your own domain (webmail, email and more) from an easy-to-use panel. If you would like, we can actually install your theme on our hosting for no additional fee. Our hosting is competitive and very high quality.

We hope to have the sales site up this weekend. But until then, we can invoice you through PayPal and get you started on your fantastic website.

See you soon on Lighting Essentials.

–don

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Well, it is tech-sheet Friday, but that will have to be tech-sheet Saturday this week. The tech sheet I am working on is about using a meter, and there are a few more images that must be shot before it is ready to go.

So I have instead decided that it would be good to put our newest desktops up here at lighting-essentials.com so you can get a head start on decorating your desktops in preparation for Valentines day. Oh, and if you want to see the one I did for Smashing Magazine, it is here, about 5 or so down.

Now for some news before we unleash you into the page.

We have workshops in Montana and Chicago, and due to massive requests, we are now booking Omaha. I am really excited about this. Lots of traveling and working from hotel rooms, but it is also great to get to places that are off the beaten path and meet some great people.

The workshops have changed a lot since we started, and now they are right where it makes sense for them. I concentrate on lighting, but we also discuss the other realities of shooting subjects from portrait to fashion. Posing, handling a shoot, staying in control, shooting for post and more.

Now, on to the calendars for February. BTW, if you like them and are using them, let me know either in the comments or by email. And be sure to subscribe with RSS and let your friends know by clicking the save/share link at the bottom of the post.

First up is our calendar for the digital age… analog delivery of phone service, internet and power. Oh well, things change, huh. This photograph was taken in Hayden, Arizona.

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Remember to use your “Save As” to capture these or they will open in a Lightbox and be more difficult to download.

Next up is our ode to love. Marisa is a model in the Bay Area. This shot was taken with natural light to the front, with a gold reflector used to light the back wall behind her. This delicate light created a subtle gradient of light and sets her face off well.

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Remember to use your “Save As” to capture these or they will open in a Lightbox and be more difficult to download.

And for all you Briana fans, a simple, but lovely shot to warm your desktop for this cold, wintry month.

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Remember to use your “Save As” to capture these or they will open in a Lightbox and be more difficult to download.

Tomorrow will bring our Tech Sheet on using a light meter, and next week a couple of new videos that will be fun.

See you then.

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Well, the last year of a strange and rocky decade draws to a close tonight. I know this past year has been an emotional roller-coaster for me as well as a very successful one with the workshops and the business.

I hope you will join me in saying ‘hasta la vista, baby” to 2008, but also in telling it to get the hell outta here. No more political crap for another couple of years and let’s get to the business at hand… building a great set of images.

Many of you have expressed a desire to go pro, or at least semi-pro and that means I need to focus a little on the business of photography, at least how it pertains to me, as well as the lighting. Thing is, there are wonderful blogs out there that do that sort of thing better.

Same with other areas like DIY and Photographer’s rights. I recognize that I need to get some of that into the site, but it will be through some amalgamation of the stuff already out there. Watch for a bi-weekly post on links to valuable information found on other sites.

We will also be focusing a little on getting some great photographers on with tutorials and interviews. That will take place more on the LE Magazine site, but honestly we are really working trying to figure out some avenues to drive some of this info down without it getting convoluted and – well – lost.

I have some good stuff coming this week, and the tech sheet will go up on Saturday morning instead of Friday for several reasons, but mostly because I want this post to be up for Friday morning as well.

Well, here are our three Desktops for January 2009. We will only be issuing 2 per month coming in February, and I will share the reason for that in February. Hey… it’s a good thing, you’ll see.

Our first is for the Briana fans out there. Shot with a small white umbrella in late evening light, I balanced the umbrella to only give me open shadows and a pop to the dress, not to overpower the ambient light. And hey, you Briana junkies may want to visit her site and get her dance calendar or a poster or, hey… both.

Get the images here and remember to use the Save Link As option to get them.
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Next up is the lovely Prescilla in Mexico. This shot was done with one speedlight to camera right and balanced with the ambient sunlight which was coming in from camera left behind Prescilla.

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The last one is a brightly colored wall shot in Tucson very early in the morning. I like old walls and doors and such. They are such great metaphors for things that are hard to express in other ways.

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Now we are all hearing how the next year is gonna suck. That sucks. No, not the year, that someone who knows nothing would tell you something to try to bring you down.

If someone had told you a year ago that the United States would elect an unknown Black Senator to the presidency, your house would be worth 30% less, and gas would be about a buck-fifty a gallon, would you have believed them? No, me either. Not because it is bad that it happened, only that no one expected it. Hillary was our next president, that was a done deal. House prices were climbing like crazy and gas was supposed to hover around $4 a gallon before it went up again… look it up… its all there in black and white from the ‘experts.’ Fools. Don’t let them take your hope and your dreams.

Screw ‘em. Live. Live well. Create and look forward. Are there bumps, sure, but we have had bumps before. This is a marvelous time to take advantage of the wimps and doom&gloomers. Kick ass. Don’t bother taking names unless you need to.

Have a great year and see you on the other side of today!

–don

No related posts.

Well in the tradition of the last 3 months… can we call that a tradition? Anyway, in the tradition of the last three months we present our August desktops. One features a morning scene we all can identify with and the other has nine tiny Briana’s dancing their way across the screen. That’s kinda fun, eh?

The lighting tutorial on small strobes starts Monday. I hope we have a good participation. I have broken it down into easy chunks of knowledge, so everyone can get familiar with their small strobes and how to use them to light more effectively.

Let’s go take a look at this months desktop designs, shall we. Again, these are free so download them and share with your friends.

Our first set of desktop calendars is a still life that many of us recognize… and empty coffee cup. Yeah, it may be one of those days, but at least you’ll know what day it is.

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Our next desktop features LE’s favorite model dancing across the screen in her famous little black dress. That makes August and even hotter month, ya know.

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Remember to join us for the four part post on small strobe use starting Monday, August 4, 2008. Each Monday for the month of August we will have a new post on the subject.

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Everything reflects. That is something you will hear me say all the time. Whether at the workshop or working one on one with a photographer, one of the most important things to drive home is that everything reflects. Skin, silver, blue sweaters… they all reflect, but at obviously different qualities.

In this photograph we wanted a very deep shadow to create more mystery around the already mysterious image. The model with luscious lips emerging from behind the mask. In my mind, I wanted her to be emerging from the darkness as well. The mask is very glossy, so I knew a large, liquid highlight was called for so that the curves of the mask and her face would be smooth and soft.

Using a large softbox very close to the subject provided a large reflection of the source on the mask, her fingernails and her skin. This light, quite powerful, also provided some fill on the shadow side of her face because it simply lit up the wall. Even thought the wall was quite a distance from her, the fact that her skin reflected the light on the wall was problematic. It also provided a nice kick of reflection on the mask… one that I didn’t want.

To mitigate the reflection and increase the contrast I hung a 6′x6′ black cloth just to the right of the image and in as close as possible. This black cloth provided two qualities: it blocked the light from hitting the wall, and more importantly, it gave the skin and the mask something dark to reflect.

I essentially ‘subtracted’ the light from the shadow side of the image. Please note that there is no Photoshop on this image to darken or ‘burn’ that area in. The transparency is perfectly black and the contrast is as you see in the image.

You will notice that just on the edge of the mask as it disappears into the darkness, there is a little edge light going on. That is caused by the ribbon catching the light and creating a little fill of its own. I thought it was very subtle and added to the image by providing a point of diminution… where the final vestiges of the mask and the subject go into total shadow. Sometimes little things can really make the shot come alive. Look for them in your shots.

(I shot this on a 4×5 view camera, but you can do the same thing with any camera setup.)

This shot is another subtractive lighting still life. It was shot for a client who wanted the feeling of strength for their software tools. The theme was bodybuilding and they came up with the idea of a body builder with light coming in from the side. Yeah. Never seen that before. I pushed for a still life and they said go ahead and shoot it cause they could use it for something else if they didn’t use it for the brochure cover.

The light in this case is quite different. I will explain and add a diagram to show how different it is. I call it edge light or feathered light. The camera is focused down on the still life which is an old rusted weight, some weight lifting gloves and chalk that they use for working with the iron. All is on a 4×4 sheet of ‘stone’ slate. The camera in this case is a Deardorff 8×10 with a 375MM lens. Shot at f32 I would have loved another stop, but this was optimal for what we could do.

Diagram of setup:

You can see where the dark shadows play at the right side of everything. Deep and mysterious, they help create the drama. It also creates a nice light for revealing texture. Whether it is the leather or the slate background, the textures make the shot richer and more interesting. Notice the white chalk. I deliberately placed it on the far side from the light so that it wouldn’t be too bright or lose texture. The addition of the black subtractive card increased the contrast. Without the subtractive, there was nearly no texture in that lump of chalk.

When I delivered the shot, I made a presentation holder with the 8×10 transparency mounted in it. (I always shoot two sets of transparencies or more on shots like this.) The client went nuts. They ended up making some really cool large wall graphics and I shot 3 more similar still lifes for them. They tripled the shoot fee and it was a nice job. Oh, and I didn’t have to shoot some bodybuilder dude with the side light.

Recommended:
I keep a 4x4ft square of black cloth with me in my kit. It comes in handy on many shoots where there is a little glare to be knocked down, or I need to darken an area or do a little subtractive lighting. It packs very small, and can be invaluable… oh, and it is big enough to do a headshot against black on location if you need it. And a little bit of speedlight and ambient light mixed against a dark background can be very dramatic.

Information for today’s photographer. From novice to pro, LE Magazine has it all.

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