Hi guys,

I'm happy to see it's still possible to find a way down to here!
Sorry about being so silent during the past months... "We've all been very busy" is the common excuse and, well, it does apply here!

As you might know, we are working on Sylights on our free time and still have full-time jobs to attend to.
Which makes me think we should have a small post presenting ourselves some time...

Anyway! Things are going to get "serious" soon and I'll tell you more about that later.

Today's news is about an amazing photographer, and how we are partnering up with him on his project.

Von Wong Photography

Benjamin Von Wong is an awesome photographer from Montreal.
I don't want to say too much about why I love his work because he'd just blush, so if you don't know him already just check out his portfolio on Flickr!

However, Benjamin does more than just posting photos online; he also shares behind the scene videos, and has decided to go even further with his friend and videographer Erwan Cloarec.

"Von Wong does Europe"

Ben & Erwan are about to come to Europe, meet as many artists as possible and tell their stories. They're going to write about them, to make photos of them and to make videos of them.
And because they believe in the power of sharing, they are also going to put together Behind The Scene videos of their photoshoots and photoshop retouching tutorials.

Their skills and creativity are not to be proven anymore, yet we hope they'll push back their limits and venture out of their comfort zone: the outcome for us photographers can only be better!

"Von Wong does Europe" is more than just two jumping-to-the-ceiling guys coming out of their politically-correct country to discover people of the Old Continent :)
It's about discovering talents, placing them in the spotlight of their creativity to make them shine, and then explaining to the world how they did it.

This, at Sylights, is a vision we really dig!
That's why we have decided to back their project and become an official partner of Von Wong does Europe.

As a result, you can expect some updates about their trip, as well as lighting diagrams of wonderful photos of the artists they'll meet to join your own wonderful photos on sylights.com!

Last but not least, just click here and help them make this happen! You don't want to miss on the "perks" they've set up for their contributors!

Contributed by Olivier Lance

Hey, sorry we're late!

Last weeks have been kind of crazy here, including a trip from France to the USA for an unexpected visit to NYC to attend the PDN PhotoPlus Expo!
... which was awesome, by the way!

During this time, photos were sent on Sylights from photographers who wanted to bring back those DIY Ring Flash babies home.

Well, two of them did!

Read the rest of this post »

Contributed by Sylights Team

Today, we are launching our very first photography contest on Sylights!

This launch comes with the release of a new feature allowing you to accurately find what you want in the lighting diagrams gallery, but we'll detail this soon in another post :)

The contest will be running for two weeks, from today (Tuesday 11th October) up to Tuesday 25th. At the end of those two weeks, thanks to DIY Photography and their DIY Lighting Kits, we are going to choose two winners who will each receive a DIY Ring Flash and its bracket.

This DIY Ring Flash is compatible with most speedlights and will provide you with a beautiful light for your next portraits. That's not just me saying, check out what David Hobby thought about it too!

So if you want to win one of the two kits, go ahead and post your best shots on Sylights! There is no limits to the number of photos/diagrams you can post, but you'll have to take care of a thing or two:

• Include this text in your diagrams' description or title: [DIY Ring Flash Contest]
• Of course, we are looking for beautiful photos, so show us the work you're proud of :)
• Make sure your diagrams are clear and complete, easy to understand
• Sylights is about sharing and learning, so be sure to include a description with shooting details and such. The more educational your description is, the better!
• Setup photos are more than welcome in addition to your shots

Also, you obviously need an account to post your photos, as we won't be able to identify owners of "guest diagrams". Check that you're logged in before posting!

We will announce the winners during the first week of November here on the blog and we'll contact them personnally to get the information we need to send the price over.

So that's it! We're now waiting for your lighting diagrams and photos!

Best of luck to all of you,
Sylights Team 

Contributed by Sylights Team

It's finally here!

Sylights for iPad has been officially released yesterday, and is available on the AppStore for free!
Download it right now if you own an iPad and were using a scaled Sylights for iPhone (or patiently waiting ^^).

If you want to learn more, see the feature list after the jump.

Read the rest of this post »

Contributed by Sylights Team

Dear photographers,

we hope you're enjoying our new version of Sylights.com. If you haven't seen it yet, it's time!
Wonderful photos and their diagrams are posted every day by talented photographers who are waiting for more interaction with you! :)

There are three announcements inside this post, three exciting news that you'll discover after the jump!

Read the rest of this post »

Contributed by Olivier Lance

"Lighting diagrams made easy".
This is what you can now read on the home page of Sylights. Just above a thumbnails list of recent and popular lighting diagrams.

Yes, we've put an update online. Yes, you have to check it out!
This is not just about the home page: we've packed a lot of new features and improvement in this one.
Learn more after the jump!

Read the rest of this post »

Contributed by Sylights Team

So, that's it. 2010 is gone!

Yeah we know it's no big news and we're actually a few days late. But still, we'd like to wish you a very joyful year 2011!
And we would also like to thank you for following us during those months since June 2010, when Sylights was officially born! This year has been great for us, thanks to your support, your feedback and of course your enthusiasm!

Although we try to stay active and keep in touch as much as possible, we know we've been quite silent recently, in terms of speech and updates. We are sorry for this. However, as an "apology" and to show you we haven't stopped working, we have prepared some surprises that will come, one by one, during this promising year 2011!

The first one has been announced yesterday on diyphotography.net: a ring flash creator!

We hope you'll like this project and use it to craft your own ring flash!
And if you do, don't forget to show us the result and share some diagrams :)

Happy New Year again, and stay tuned for the upcoming news.

Contributed by Sylights Team

Yesterday, a new website has come to the world of photography resources: post-traitement.com. It is a French site whose headline would translate to "Post-traitement.com - The place to learn photography post-processing". English-speaking people, don't turn away now, you might find something useful there too, or perhaps help with translation :)
Created by French student and photographer Nicolas Constant (Flickr, Twitter), post-traitement.com features many tutorials written by Nicolas around photography post-processing with the objective to teach from the basics to the more advanced topics in photography processing, using Photoshop (and other tools later on).

You'll find after the jump a small interview we had with Nicolas to introduce his website:

Read the rest of this post »

Contributed by Olivier Lance

[update] The update is now available on iTunes. Check the App Store :)

Dear iPhone users,

our next update to Sylights for iPhone is currently being reviewed by Apple!
This one catches up with some of the last updates to sylights.com. Here is the change log posted on iTunes:

• 20 new items to create your diagrams
• 18 redesigned items
• Added an outline around the selected item
• Fixed a bug causing a crash on devices with iOS 3.2 or earlier
• Fixed various minor bugs

For the last ones of you still experiencing crashes on iOS 3.2 and earlier, this update should make it work fine. If you still have problems with this version, let us know here! See Pierre-Jean's comment here for instructions to send us an iPhone crash report.

You'll notice there is one tiny new feature, that was missing to a lot of you out there: a selection outline, showing more clearly which item is selected, and its bounds.

The update has been in review for a few hours now, so you should expect it quite soon. Another update should follow quickly, and also a small surprise... so stay tuned! :)

Contributed by Olivier Lance

As we told you in our last post, some new objects were being designed... they are now here!

We've added two subjects and five gears:

• A dog and a cat in a new "Animals" category, with all other "Subjects"
• A softbox on a boom and two octoboxes on booms (a small and a large one), in the "Hair Lights" category
• A medium format and a large format camera

You can check out these new items on the editor or have a quick look on the "diagram" below!

Contributed by Olivier Lance