In today's blog we're taking a look at a photography video we posted on our YouTube page youtube.com/thesmashcake

I recently mentioned to a friend and newbie photographer that I take my studio strobes outside and her question was “How in the world do you get flash outside to look natural?” This is something I've not had to deal with in years because it's just become second nature, so I didn't even think to write a blog about it. My friend was right.

In today’s video learn how to build a smash cake set and add photography props to create a first birthday smash cake photography set.

The Good, The Bad and the Ugly about the GoDox MS300 Flash Light. ***SPOILER ALERT*** - this is a great buy if you’re just starting out as a photographer.

Today's blog is all about how I jump-start my creativity. These are the tips and tricks that I have learned over the course of almost 20 years. I still have those days where no matter what I try I just can't get the creative juices flowing. But by following this playbook I can help you ensure that you suffer a lot fewer of those uninspired days.

Each of the flashes we go over in this video is a flash that I use in my own studio to create smash cake photos for my clients. I picked each light based on its usefulness and my extreme hatred of needlessly wasting money.So give this video a look and decide for yourself which of there flashes will work best for you.

Today you’re going to learn off camera flash but here's the catch. You're going to do it in 2 minutes. I know that's a bold claim but that's how confident I am in your ability to learn off camera flash. It's simply not as hard as people make it out to be and today we're going to prove that in 120 seconds.

I believe photo editing is a fantastic way to enhance the creative vision you had in you head when you took the image. For that reason I love editing my photos in Adobe Lightroom/ Photoshop and I think editing can be the cherry on top of any well crafted image. But if we’re being completely honest I do have those days where I’d rather gouge my eyes out with a spork than sit behind my monitor for 6 hours straight.

To be a pro you need to learn everything you can about general photography and then you can choose to specialize. This includes how to use off-camera flash in your portraits. If you choose later to only use natural light for ascetic reasons, that’s up to you. But if you don’t use flash because you never learned how, then you run the risk of failing to do the job in a crisis.

James Bond had Q. The Ghost Busters had Egon. Captain Kirk had Scotty. Some of the greatest heroes in movie history always had one know-it-all tech guy on their team. That tech guy spends his days testing some of the coolest gadgets known to man in an effort to make the hero look like a total badass on screen. So it stands to reason that if you want to be a photography badass you're gonna need a tech guy. Too bad there isn’t a place where photography techies hang out all day doing nothing but testing new camera gear! Oh, wait……

Here at TheSmashCake.com we use artificial light for most of our first birthday sessions. In the beginning we used mostly window light to shoot our smash cake sessions and we found it in the summer months that was a perfect and simple solution. But we’re located in the Pacific Northwest and we do get about 8 months a year of rain and cloudy gray skies. As you can imagine when we’re shooting in the winter months it becomes a huge problem to maintain correct exposure.

The next day I took my friend’s advice and I rented the Sigma Art 50mm 1.4 from lensrental.com and prepared a smash cake set for what was bound to be the worst smash cake session of my career. Now if you guys wanted to quit reading at this point I wouldn’t mind because this is the part where I have to admit I was wrong. During that shoot I discovered that the Sigmas Art 1.4 is an amazing lens.

Today I jilted my love of 15 years for the belle of the ball.  My love’s name was Canon and she and I made beautiful pictures together.  Not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars for the last decade and a half.  But along came Sony with the a7iii and not only did it catch my eye...it stole my heart.  So, in this blog I’m going to outline some of the reasons why I put my baby in the corner and started getting footloose with Sony.  Because nobody puts baby in the corner...not without a good reason at least.

Smearing plexiglass with frosting makes it slicker than a politician on an election year.  And you’re telling me that you want to place a little tyke who can barely walk on top of it? You're basically choosing style over the safety of your little clients.