SoCal’s up-and-coming rockstar photographer, Jasmine Star, has quite the following amongst other aspiring photographers.  Her transparency, personality, and zest makes her work irrisistable to follow.  She loves to show of as much fun and endearing humanity through her blog as possible.  But she also goes above and beyond answering questions that many of her fans pose to her.

In the most recent FAQ she’s posted on her blog, she goes over use of flash versus no flash, as well as some cool tips on her usage of Kubota Photoshop actions.  She also links to an older blog post some two years old about something else worth paying attention to.

Jasmine Star’s off-camera reception lighting setup is pretty simple–oddly simple, to be honest.  Rocking a Photoflex LightDome shrouding an oldschool Sunpak Auto 838 attached to her beloved PocketWizard, she sidelights and backlights the reception with the one light just in one position most of the night.  Basic, effective, and dramatic.

One of my more favorite examples of her lighting is an example given in the same post, a great shot of the bride and groom.

For more of Jasmine’s awesome work, hit up her photography website at http://www.jasmine-star.com and her blog at http://jasminestarblog.com.

Everyone loves smooth, creamy portraits that a beauty dish creates, but hates paying the ridiculous prices for the units, usually starting at around $200. So why not hack yourself one? David Tejeda did!

The commercial photographer decided to make one himself for his Nikon SB-800 (although this can be used with pretty much any large flash unit) after looking at some available online, which just weren’t worth the cost, in his opinion. So after finding a little bit of inspiration from Flickr member Tyler Burk, adding his own special ingredient in the form of a convex mirror to help bounce light, and just a little bit of effort, David has himself a REALLY nice looking beauty dish for a tiny fraction of what even the cheapest units go for online.

Made out of a garden pot, an empty CD spindle, a drain gutter downspout, some velcro, and spraypaint, this beauty dish creates some silky lighting for your portraiture, with a reported loss of light of only about a stop and a half, not too shabby for a DIY hack at all. The top image here is the bare SB-800 flash, the bottom is with the beauty dish.

DIY Beauty Dish [The F Stops Here, via Lifehacker]

Want a nice, even, non-directional light source for your macros and even short-range portraiture? Ring flashes are the way to go. But they’re also expensive, and most people probably wouldn’t even use them enough to warrant buying one even used to make it worth the purchase. However, how does about $5 and some time and effort sound for a pretty nifty fix?

The website Fring (short for Fiber Optic Ring) has a VERY creative method for channeling the light from your onboard flash into a circle of light around the edge of your lens/hood. With a little bit of MacGuyver-style ingenuity, you can build yourself a pretty sweet-looking piece of DIY hardware that will for sure have your friends in awe of your cleverness.

Hop on over to Fring to see how you can make one yourself, and come up with some great-looking images like these. I feel somewhat bad about suggesting a tutorial that I haven’t tried myself, however I know that at this point I don’t need one of these lights, so it’s not worth my effort at this point. When I do, however, this will be the way I go, and I may update this article later on.

Fring – DIY Optic Ring Light [via Lifehacker, via Hacked Gadgets]