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Rugged cases like Pelicans are great at protecting your gear. They’re waterproof, climate proof, indestructible and makes a great apple box when you need to sit or stand on something. After having more camera equipment than I am willing to carry on my shoulders, I bought a Pelican 1560 with padded dividers to carry it all. The way the cases are structured, it is very difficult to put anything large inside, like reflectors or umbrellas into the case, and it is also very space consuming / uneconomical to put things like clamps and power cables and grip equipment inside the case, and almost always stupid to put water bottles inside the watertight case....

If I look back at how I learned to take pictures, the path isn’t straight at all. But this isn’t necessarily just because I took wrong turns (yes including selective colour, and cheap tripod). It’s also down to my goals changing. Constantly. One of the things that has changed significantly over the years are my goals for light. I remember when I first saw someone take pictures of a model, he was using a big soft-box and was really impressed by the technical quality of the result – pin sharp due to a very small aperture, which in turn was made possible by tonnes of light....

My wife, Vicki, and I are full-time portrait and wedding photographers. When we aren’t shooting these things, some of our favorite concepts are creating dramatic images of people in fantastic surroundings. After years of doing this kind of work I now find it difficult to photograph landscapes without placing a human subject into the image. Some of our work of this type has been featured by DIY Photography before. We work with a lot of models and one of our all-time favorites is Sarah Maillet....

There are still a few very unique and interesting things that can be done with film, but not with a digital camera. One of these experiments is the recording of sparks on film. Sparks are created when an electrical discharge moves either through or across the surface of the film. I first got interested in this project when I noticed static discharge patterns on x-ray film. Those patterns were due to the charge buildup on the plastic rollers in the auto development machines, but I wondered could I make better patterns in the lab?...

Action cameras have become part of many a filmmaker and photographer arsenal. Even if they’re not our primary camera, they’re great for grabbing behind the scenes clips or putting in higher risk situations. And then, sometimes, they are the primary camera, capturing the action. But most of them come with a pretty severe fisheye effect. Some can deal with this natively in-camera, but often you get the best results in post....