Photo by: pixelpills.

Today I browsed through the “Party” tag on Flickr. I wasn’t expecting all that much, cause party photos are typically made really ugly by a pop-up on camera flash. I shudder every time I look through people’s Facebook photos and see those party pictures. But this one was different. It’s a long exposure, using available light, to allow the scene to be lit by ambient lights (i.e. the candles and the lamps in the background). The subject is the candle, which lights itself, but you can make out a little bit of the party in the background. Very cool effect, and nice attention to detail.

Photo by: Joe Gascoigne.

This is a cool portrait. Simple lighting – probably a single light high and camera left and a subtle background light (altho that might also be the key light). There’s probably a reflector or a wall (or maybe another light?) off camera right to fill in the shadows. But what I really like is the style. Between the outfit, the hairdo, and the black and white conversion, this makes for a nice, 1950′s retro look. There are a bunch more in the photostream, so click through and check them out.

Photo by: joviano.alves.

Found this picture in the Recent Interesting section of Flickr. Amazing sunset. I blogged about a similar picture a few weeks back, but this one tops it for sure. I love the centeredness of the tree, really helps the composition. And the saturation in the sky, along with the spectrum of colors in the sunset, gives a great effect. Very cool.

Photo by: R3markAble.

This is a cool picture, and a good example of Strobist lighting techniques. In fact, he was nice enough to lay it out all out there and explain how he did it. You can click through for the simple explanation. But, there are a few hints to help you sort it out too…

One, notice the black background and the dim lighting on the subject. There’s got to be a fill light somewhere. Seeing as the face is mostly in deep shadow, the fill has to be coming from up high – so it’s blocked by the hat. There’s a bright light on the gun itself, and the shadows underneath suggest this is coming from up high as well. It’s got to be using an attachment to control spill. Likewise, there’s a controlled light off to camera right, shooting directly at the shooter’s face (see the highlight on the cheek and the nose).

Photo by: david_shankbone.

I noticed the cameraphone tag on Flickr today, and I thought I’d take a peak. I was curious if there was something good in there – since a lot of what you see taken on a camera phone is blurry and, uhh, no good. I was pleasantly surprised to find this little gem. It might not be a masterpiece, but it’s a nice shot of the photographer and his friends hiking through the forest. Nice composition, the lighting works (thanks to the diffusion added by the leaves), and the colors are good. A little editing to help the contrast and saturation, and this would look pretty good…

Interesting to see what a phone is capable of.

Photo by: Ashutosh Khandha.

This is a nice, standard studio portrait. Good illustration of a basic lighting design. You’ve got one large light source coming from high and camera right as a key, and you’ve got a second light source filling in the shadows from a little to camera left. The shadows and the catchlights are easy give-aways.

It looks like the black background has some texture on it, which you don’t see in most of the picture because the background isn’t lit. But, just above the model’s head the keylight appears to spill onto the background bringing out the texture. I don’t know if the effect was intentional… it seems like it would be better to either light the background (and create a little glow/separation from the model) or keep it completely black.

Photo by: Wil* Hughes.

This is a cool portrait taken against a city skyline. The location is really cool – the skyline in the background, and the rustic, worn decking in the foreground. What really brings this picture to life is some simple lighting. The camera is set to under-expose the ambient light (the sun) and make the background nice and dark. It might be a titch too dark for my taste, but you can’t argue with the concept. Then, there’s a light high and to camera right (which the white guy is probably looking at) that provides most of the light for the scene.

It looks like there might also be a fill light off to camera left – notice how the shadows under the white guy’s chin and left arm are soft, whereas the shadow areas on the black guy (chin and left arm) are completely black.  This suggests a fill light coming from the left, lighting the first guy and then being blocked from filling in on the second.

Nice location shot. Looks like a clean, simple lighting set up, and a great effect.

Photo by: Browni_Dot_Com.

This is another picture from the Flickr archives, about a year old. It is so cool… and a great example of HDR (high dynamic range). Notice how the sky is really well exposed and saturated, but the horse is equally well exposed? If you took a simple available light shot… that wouldn’t happen. There are two ways to achieve that – lights (which would require a lot of light to make the horse look that good) or HDR (a Photoshop technique that blends different exposures of the same image to help bring out shadows and highlights).

The problem? It’s clearly a very sunny day. If you stopped your camera down to expose the sky, the horse would be a dull shadow. If, on the other hand, you expose the horse well with the nice highlights and the shadowing underneath, the sky will probably be quite blown out. Solution? You bracket the exposure and blend the stuff in photoshop later on. Cool.

Photo by: sungazer4.

Found this one looking through old interesting images on Flickr. It popped up on the first page, and I just thought it was so cool… It’s not quite the dead of night, cause you have a little light along the horizon, creating a low glow over the silhouette of the trees. The lightning traveling across the cloud is cool, but the big puff of light in the middle of the image creates a really cool visual draw. Right place, at the right time. I imagine it takes some patience to capture a lightning strike just so.

Photo by: Vlad Solomon.

Found this cool action shot in the Last 7 Days Interesting section of Flickr. The image is lit by small flash. In fact Vlad was nice enough to post info in the Flickr description about the lighting. There are two lights – one on the background (with a gel to create the color) and one pointed at the glass. But I’m curious about where the light is that is lighting the glass. From above, pointing straight down? I guess it has to be somewhere in the frontal arc, because the olive is well lit, but I’m not sure where.