Hasta La Ideas

Even with the WYSIWYG nature of digital photography, setting up lighting for a shoot can be a pain; during the few high-volume projects I shot, I started by photographing the subject under different lighting setups, with a piece of paper in-frame that had notes (aperture, shutter, lighting settings) scribbled on it for reference. That way the art director could later pick a lighting/shooting set-up they liked and I would have a reference for how to precisely recreate it, even weeks later during a re-shoot.

DSLR Slate is a brilliant iDevice app with paper-replacing functionality both for still photography shoots and video; as its name suggests, it can take the place of the old-school clacker-style slate.

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