Speedlinks, 1/25/2007

Lotsa interesting stuff dropping from the ether these days. Do you have what it takes (i.e. free time) to see them all? Make sure to look like you're working if the boss walks by...

• John Harrington flipped me a neat little tutorial on shooting smoke.

• Speaking of John, check out his walk-through (uh, make that run-through) of a three-minute, two location assignment on Capitol Hill. (Of course, he lit both locations, too...)

• Young Icelander Thorsteinn C. did a 100-self-portraits-in-100-days thing. The guy sure can shoot for a greenhorn. Very diverse, creative set which uses light well, too. Check his stuff out.

• If you hurry, you can be one of the first 5,000 (current tally: 4974) people to sign up for the Strobist Flickr group. (Think how much it'll impress the grandkids later...)

• Something I had totally forgotten about: Dean Collins and his crew did a book called Photographic Global Notes in the '90's (early digital era) that you can still find used at Amazon. No idea where my copy is after all these years. But it has lotsa good stuff from several top-notch photographers.

The whole book is just cool photos and how they were lit. Diagrams, how-to's - the whole lot. Amazon only has 11 used copies, so I wouldn't dilly-dally if you wanna snag one. It's quite good, too. (Thanks, Mark!)

• And the last one is a goodie: Speaking of Dean Collins, you can now rent his "Best of Finelight" DVDs at SmartFlix.com. Not cheap, but then, neither are the DVDs to buy. Following the link to do it will benefit Strobist.com, too. (Muchas gracias.)

Don't know about the Collins DVDs? It's basically 6-hours of eye-opening fantasticness. Read the review here.

Note: If you are gonna rent them just one at a time, be sure to start with the fourth disc - Collins on Basics. You should watch that one first.

FYI, they have 11 copies, and 5 more on order. So you may have to wait in line a few days.

(Thanks, Victor!)