Nothing is more frustrating to me when someone takes 15 minutes to explain something that could be done in 1 minute.

Recently, I was making some animated GIFs and looked up tutorials online that were very slow, the most-viewed one on YouTube takes over 6 minutes to explain!

So I decided to make one of my own and do it 3x faster than that one! Above is my tutorial on how to make an animated GIF in less than one and a half minutes.

I took the photos with my Canon 7D which can shoot 8 frames a second which is perfect for GIFs, but I use it to catch action shots normally. The other time I’ve used an animated GIF was for a wedding party jumping.

My original idea was to make a video tutorial on how I made mine, similar to the custom bokeh tutorial. But as many DIY projects go, this one did not go according to plan. That’s why I wanted to make a blog post so you can learn from my mistakes.

So if you enjoy cutting plastic, and want to save about $60 and not buy one from Amazon, then read on and good luck!

[box]You’ll need the following:

• plastic terracotta round pot (I used an 18″ one)
• empty DVD or CD case
• spray paint for plastic (black and white)
• 3″ convex mirror (you can get from auto parts store)
• gutter attachment piece
• super glue
• knife/scissor
• velcro

I also used a drill to put holes through the pot and dvd base that will match the ones in the gutter piece.

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For more details on how to make the beauty dish visit this great strobist blog post. I’m going to spend the rest of this blog post letting you know what I did wrong and what you can do to avoid it.

THE BIGGEST difference between the one I made and the one from strobist blog centers around the gutter piece.

The gutter piece DOES NOT fit a Canon 580 EX2 speedlight. That meant I almost gave up. I tried to buy this thing to replace the gutter piece but they canceled my order because they wouldn’t let me order it by itself.

So the masacre begins.

This is the correct way to attach the gutter piece

I had to cut that gutter piece into 4 pieces to fit the 580 ex2. Then I put it in backwards, so instead of the long part sticking out the back, mine is sticking in towards the inside. Make sure the long end of the gutter piece is sticking out the back.

One other thing to consider in making your center cuts for the hole, is that the middle of the light comes out lower than the outline of the speedlight head. That’s due to the diffuser and catchlight pop outs that are stored at the top of the speed light head, so adjust your cut accordingly.

My way still works, but there’s a gap created at the back of the pot where the speedlight enters the pot, which makes it tilt a little and not shoot straight into the beauty dish.

Inside my beauty dish, without DVD mirror cover. The gutter would do better if it was facing out of the pot, like the other photo.

One of the other issues I ran into was the glue. I first used a hot glue gun and that simply didn’t work well binding two plastics together.

Then I used super glue which did well binding plastic to plastic, but it is incredibly runny and some how got all over the place inside the DVD case which made the transparent DVD cover look cloudy on the sides where it ran over.

Also, on the DVD cover, I cut the center portion of it out so I could get a flush surface to put the mirror on. Similar to most of the project, cutting plastic was a nightmare. The case cracked in many places (hence the glue mentioned above) from the cutting. That’s also the reason I decided to paint over the front part of the dvd outer case, to cover up how hideous it looked.

Center of dvd cover cut out so creates flush surface

The other problem I ran into was the paint. It peeled which could have been because I had it drying outside in colder temperatures. I think if I was to sand down the plastic pot before I painted that may have helped the paint adhering to the surface.

In conclusion, buy the one off amazon. You save hours of your time, not driving to home depot, not getting frustrated by wasting a Sunday afternoon cutting yourself while you attempt to make precise cuts into stubborn plastic on a project that may or may not turn out at all, and you won’t have a piece of photography gear that stinks like spray paint.

With that said, it is nice to have a beauty dish. Even with the flaws in mine, it creates some fantastic light.

first attempt at using my beauty dish (self-portrait)

In all her glory, here she is. You can see the light isn't coming out completely balanced because the speedlight gets tilted slighty because the gutter piece was doomed form the beginning as mentioned above.

I’m just learning to play the piano, and with John Lennon’s birthday yesterday I thought I might share one of the few songs I know how to play.

I learned how to play it on some random video site that had horrible video quality, split the song into two separate videos, and had confusing instructions. So I thought I would just put up something that might be a little easier than the video I learned the song from.

I probably messed up naming the keys somewhere in the video, so sorry about that if I did. Making this video was good practice for me because it forced me to label the keys I was playing! Right now, I just play from memory and don’t really know chords and all that technical mumbo jumbo about music so I have a long way to go.

But this really is a rewarding song to learn how to play and it’s not too difficult.

Just focus on learning one hand at a time for one section of the song at a time and replay it over and over! Good luck.

I’ve seen this effect used in some wedding photographer’s images with the heart shaped bokeh (blur) is in the background so I did a little investigating into how this effect is accomplished.

You can watch a video tutorial on how I did this above, or buy a premade kit by clicking HERE.

This little knife is key because the designs have to be very small and (can be) intricate:

Or you can buy a kit from B and H, click the photo above.

Here are the steps to take pictures like this:

1. Watch the video tutorial I made
2. Find a light source(s) that are bright and contrasty to what’s around it: christmas lights, candles, street lights, etc.
3. Put that thing you made on your fast lens and set it to the widest aperture you have (and aperture priority), my Canon 28mm goes to f/1.8
4. If you don’t have a really fast lens, try and get as far away from the light source(s) as possible
5. Experiment with distance to the camera and the focus distance you use on your lens to focus (the light source must be way out of focus)
6. Don’t get discouraged! My first photo, as you can see in my video, sucked, keep experimenting with it to get best results, if you’re still having trouble contact me

The limitation of taking pictures of things with this on your camera is that since your camera is set to it’s closest focus distance, your subjet will have to be very close to the camera, unless the light source is very far away (experiment!).

You can also take images of just these blurry background lights and composite them into other images using Photoshop:

1. Open the two images you want to combine, in this case, one will have just the custom bokeh shapes and the other is your main subject.
2. Put the bokeh layer on top.
3. Change it’s blending mode from ‘Normal’ to ‘Screen’ (this is assuming you’re using a bokeh image with a black background like the ones I provide below – click them to enlarge, then right-click, choose “Save Image As…”)
4. Now all you should see are the custom bokeh shapes
5. Add a layer mask to the bokeh layer and use a black brush to paint away where the bokeh is covering your foreground subject (the other image you opened that is the layer below this one)

DOWNLOAD and try the above directions:

I just bought some Chia seeds bulk for fairly cheap, see below for links on where you can buy them. It’s definitely cheaper than the green grocery in town.

Here’s a link for a 3 lb bag of them: 3-pound-chia-seed-internet-special

Interested more in the book “Born to Run” :

I’ll go ahead and apologize for no in-flight pictures, my wife took our little camera on a relief trip to Haiti (good excuse huh).

We launched a little late, about 3pm, I landed around 6pm and had a great flight overall. Below is a screen shot of FlyChart which comes with a 6030 vario and lets you get all nerdy with your flight – you can see speed, altitude, and vario all plotted and aligned together.

Oh and I titled this with the “Milk Run” because that’s what Ollie calls flying this route, I think he stole milk as a child or something . . .

Click it to make bigger

Here is a quick video that shows how I took a photo with my iPhone 3GS for my 365 day photoblog. I took it on New England Road at sunset and I took it not only because the sun was setting but also for the location and conditions.

What I mean is the fact I was on top of the hill and the road fell away from the image and gave me the ability to get the road and the sunset in the shot together, but also because it had been snowing, the road was wet which reflected the sunset. It goes back to the adage that the best camera is the one you have with you (I also didn’t go to this spot to take a photo, I just happened upon the situation). I didn’t have my Canon 7D so I used my iPhone and tweaked the photo in some Apps: TrueHDR, Cropulator, TiltShift Generator.

This is the image I talk about: