Monolith

2009 Gilboa, Israel

30 Second exposure, about an hour after sundown.

A single, handheld, manually triggered flash was used to "paint" the rock formation with about 5 shots from different locations and angles.

Shake it

2008 Herzelia, Israel

"Chief" - The Bass Player in Yizhar Ashdot's band - during their Irish tour.

This photo became part of the cover art for a single released from the tour.

Site Logo: Photographing a broken lightbulb

For the header of my site, I wanted to photograph something that would be immediately related to title of the site ("luxphile"  - hence related to light), but would capture the somewhat dark atmosphere found in some of my work.
After a few days of deliberation an idea bulb lit up (or rather broke) above my head - and I decided on the shattered bulb concept.

If you've ever photographed someone wearing glasses, you should know that reflections can be tricky. The problem increases significantly when photographing a round glass object - since no matter where you place your light source and camera - you'll always catch a reflection.

The best way around this issue, is controlling your specular highlights, David Hobby has a wonderful piece about the technique over at the Strobist Blog which I really recommend you read.
But either way - long story short: If your going to photograph something that will reflect your light-source from any direction - the trick is to make the light source's reflection fill the entire object.

In order to make the light source's reflection (or "Specular Highlight") fill the whole object - you'll wan't a large diffuser - much larger than your standard umbrella or lightbox. The rule of thumb is - use something that would fill your entire field of vision if you were standing where your object is. Usually this is done with a large white fabric lit from behind.

In my case, I made a makeshift softbox from some white fabric, draped over a coffee table, and a broomstick. As you can see - you won't be needing any expensive studio equipment to achieve this :)

 

I tried lighting the fabric directly from above - but found that I got softer light  and less reflections when I shot my strobes into the ceiling to further diffuse the light before if hit the fabric.

You can see a much more impressive, yet conceptually similar setup over at Strobist, under Stainless Steel and Cookies.

I used to SB-24/25's at full power to light the ceiling, and one SB-26 on 1/64 power, just winking on the left of the "softbox" to light the very bottom of the bulb and separate it from the black background.
The key lights were fired with modified poverty wizards, and the left fill was on optical slave mode.

I hope you found this tutorial useful, and would love to hear what you think about it, and the final result in the comments.

Star Trails at the Dead Sea

2008 Mt. Yishay, Dead sea, Israel

2:15 Hour exposure
(Exposure stacking - made from 34 stacked 4 minute exposures)

Texture: Scratches on Blue

Blue/Gray scratched surface texture - great for grunge/vintage style edits.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Scratches on cream

Scratched, cream colored texture.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Wood Grain with eye

Wood grain texture with a large imperfection ("eye").


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Wood Grain

Wood grain with straight lines and no imperfections


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Deteriorated Concrete

Deteriorated concrete texture, with a bit of sloppy masonry as an added bonus :)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Scratches on cream/white

26th July, 2009

All textures in this set are free to use, commercially or non-commercially - as long as you provide credit to the source - see the CC: BY Licence for details

If you found this texture useful, please let me know in the comments!

And fell free to add tags, so that others can easily find it as well.

Texture: Deteriorated Concrete

Dark deteriorated concrete texture - great for grungy edits.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Sloppy Gray Paint

Wall painted gray with large sloppy strokes.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Woven Fabric

White, loosely woven fabric from a chair.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Brushed Concrete

Gray brushed concrete texture.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Thin Wood Panels

Perpendicular thin wood panels lining a wall.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Brushed Concrete

Brushed concrete with spots created by evaporating water.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Deteriorating Concrete with Gravel

Brushed concrete that has deteriorated to show the gravel beneath it


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Concrete with Pencil Markings and Stud

Gray brushed concrete with pencil markings and a stud.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Concrete with Pencil Markings

Gray brushed concrete with pencil markings.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Texture: Books

A Pile of books photographed from the side.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.