In a recent post, Film or Digital: My Current Leica Dilemma, I asked my readers what they should advise me regarding expanding my path of film photography or spending my camera budget on an admittedly expensive (but older) Leica digital rangefinder. The response was basically, “why are you wasting time with film photography, go digital.”

The first Friday of October is World Smile Day that was proposed by Harvey Ball, a commercial artist as a response to his creation of the smiley face.

In 1952, Lester A. Dine invented the ring light to make dental photos but today people use them for all kinds of other photography too.

One way to add color to a monochrome image is to start with a black and white photograph and paint in the colors on separate layers. Using Photoshop or any image-editing program that lets you work with layers; you can simulate this hand-coloring technique from the 1950s.

A monolight is a self-contained studio flash, that can be powered by AC or DC battery power and like any studio light allows the fitting of light modification devices, such as reflectors, umbrellas or softboxes. Within a single, compact housing, the light contains a power source, modeling light,  flash tube and controls