8 Common Portrait Photography Mistakes You Should Avoid
Portraiture can be a minefield for small but detracting mistakes that hinder an otherwise great shot. Here are eight common mistakes to avoid.
Portraiture can be a minefield for small but detracting mistakes that hinder an otherwise great shot. Here are eight common mistakes to avoid.
One of the many things I've learned over time is the importance of learning how to learn. Some people learn better by reading, some by observing, and others by actually doing.
One of the things I love most about photography is the challenge of creating something new and refreshing. In today's behind the scenes video, I thought it would be fun to try to capture some family photos with a split view above and under the water.
Lighting people is a difficult but important skill to learn, and an additional complication is introduced when your subject wears glasses. This great video will show you how to eliminate distracting reflections in your subject's glasses while still creating flattering lighting.
One sign of a good photographer is their ability to make something out of nothing, and finding locations that work well for shooting fashion and portraits can be hard work — until you know how. Photographer Julia Trotti runs you through some great advice on how to find and create the perfect spot.
Photographing men isn't always the easiest! This very short video gives some great pointers for getting started.
People are one of — if not the — most beloved subjects to photograph. But with so many different lenses, there are a lot of ways to do it. Which lens do you reach for primarily when taking portraits?
With so many lighting modifiers, understanding how each one works and in what situation you ought to use them can be a little daunting. In this video, Karl Taylor discusses two of the most common and demonstrates their differences.
In an age of ultra sharpness and perfect optical balance, our technically brilliant images can often lack charm. So in this tutorial, I'll show you how to use retro lenses on your modern digital camera for photographs that have a lot of character and harken back to the days of film.
We've seen plenty of portraits, fashion, and family shots done remotely throughout quarantine, but what about taking it up a notch? Check out these FaceTime portraits taken of Boston Red Sox baseball players!
Tom Oldham photographs celebrities in a totally refreshing way — real expressions, getting under the skin of a polished image. Winner of the 2020 Open Photographer of the Year, Tom tells us about his approach and his inspirations.
Making great portraits isn't only for people, and with our pets being live-in models, we can get a little more practice perfecting our lighting and post-processing even at home.
There are a deceptive number of moving parts in a portrait shoot, and it's easy to get overwhelmed and let some slip through the net before you have many shoots under your belt. Here are seven crucial tips to remind yourself of the key areas that need your attention.
On-location portraits can be a great way to add more visual interest to your images, but unfortunately, the sky does not always cooperate as you had hoped. You can't just cancel your shoots whenever you do not have great weather, though. This great video will show you how to retouch a portrait in Lightroom while replacing the sky using Luminar 4.
When it comes to portrait and fashion photography, posing a someone who isn't a model can be one of the hardest things to learn. How do you succinctly tell someone to move how you want them to in order to get the shot?
If you're a landscape or architectural photographer, you're probably quite used to using filters to control the look of your images. A good polarizing filter, for instance, can have a dramatic impact on your image. Portrait photographers, for the most part, tend not to use a lot of filters, and this could an area where they could experiment more.
Karl Taylor brings us this great video about natural light portraits, and the one tool he feels is essential for shooting into the light.
Portrait photographers are told time and time again that their goal is to somehow bring a subject's soul, as Godard would phrase it, to life. Is this just myth? Is it even possible? Can you manipulate what aspects of a person's personality are highlighted in a portrait?
If you're like me and just about every photographer I know that shoots film, you have more than one camera. Maybe one or two 35mm options, a 645 or 6x6 camera, and perhaps a 6x7 camera. The question is though, how many is too many?
In order to be a great portrait photographer you need a set of decent tools in order to do your job. Whether you work in the studio or out in the field we take a look at five top lenses for portrait photography.
An award-winning macro photographer travels the globe capturing the world’s smallest creatures, some so tiny they’re invisible to the naked eye, despite the fact he says he is scared of bugs!
Shooting for Billboard Magazine would undoubtedly prove exciting for any photographer, but especially so if it was your first assignment since the global lockdown began. This is the story of how one photographer completed a portrait shoot for the renowned publication, taken in the back garden of the subject’s home.
In this great video, Brandon Woelfel takes us through photographing with natural light at golden hour and dusk. Explaining his ISO, shutter speed and aperture options at every stage makes it nice and easy to grasp the secrets he's sharing.
While dedicated studio lights are much more powerful, speedlights are far more portable and can be a perfectly viable substitute in a lot of situations, especially location work where full monolights would be cumbersome and tedious to use. This great video will show you how you can use simple speedlights and portable modifiers to shoot professional headshots anywhere you go.
An octabox is a highly versatile and relatively affordable modifier that many photographers use in a wide variety of genres and scenarios. This fantastic video will show you five different ways to use a single octabox.
Despite the incredibly strict lockdown rules in his native Cape Town, one photographer is adapting to quarantine restrictions by utilizing his underwater equipment in order to take high-quality bird and wildlife pictures in his back garden.
Today on our new Fstoppers Live channel, we had the chance to interview Vasyl Nykolyshyn, the owner of Raycrown accessories, about a brand new shoot-through octabox concept he has designed. Not only is this light modifier wind-resistant and easy to build and break down, but it can also be used off-axis as a large soft light and on-axis as a massive ring light. Let us know what you think!
Are you starting to book in clients for when the lockdown restrictions are lifted? Why not give your posing technique a quick refresh before photographing people again?
When shooting fitness photography, lighting plays a big part to help capture all details in the subject's appearance. How many lights should you have? What are some of the best placements for strobes during the shoot?
A marine biologist and underwater photographer from Russia is showcasing some of the most colorful – literally – creatures he has discovered in the depths of the sea. He has now also spoken of the extreme conditions and freezing cold nights that one must suffer through in order to capture such beings.
Posing is something a lot of photographers struggle with even after mastering other aspects of the craft. If that is something you tend to have trouble with, this great video will give you lots of helpful tips for improving your portrait posing.
The light and airy look is a wonderful style and one that is highly popular with a lot of clients right now. However, many photographers trying to emulate it make a mistake that derails the image. This great video will show you the common mistake, how to fix it, and some helpful editing tips for getting the best possible results.
Shooting a great portrait is only half the puzzle, as your post-processing has to back that up to create a complete winning image. This fantastic video will show you the process of editing this portrait for show-stopping results.
When an idea goes beyond what is possible, sometimes you need to create your own reality. Learn how the photographer for and NHL team got below the ice for a fresh perspective and created some very cool portraits.
Lighting is absolutely crucial to creating a successful portrait, doing more than simply illuminating your subject, but also communicating, mood, intention, and much more. This fantastic video will show you nine different portrait lighting setups you should know.
In trying times, inspiration for the arts can be elusive. If that's the case for you, perhaps this video might help.
Last week, I sat down to do four portrait retouching courses from Chris Orwig. This enormous bundle of informative and accessible tutorials is packed with easily digested information. My confidence when it comes to editing portraits is now significantly higher.
When you think of portraits, you probably do not think of long exposures. But incorporating long exposures can be a fantastic way to give your portraits a very unique look that stands out from the crowd. This great video will show you how to create an eye-catching engagement portrait the incorporates motion from a long exposure for a striking look.
When you think of lighting, you might think of splitting things between either natural light or artificial lights, but strobes can be a great way to balance out an exposure with varying levels of ambient light. This excellent video will show you how you can use a strobe or even just its modeling light to create great golden hour or nighttime portraits.
Retouching a portrait in Photoshop often takes the use of a wide variety of techniques, all of which you must have a good grasp of to create a professional image. This fantastic video will show you how to use frequency separation, dodging and burning, color grading, and more to retouch a portrait in Photoshop.
Elle Mexico is determined to continue working throughout COVID-19 by finding creative and safe ways to do so. For their latest issue and cover story, a photographer took to using a drone to capture the editorial from above, while respecting social distancing guidelines.
A lot of beauty images use fairly complicated lighting setups, but you might be surprised by the great results you can get from just a single light. This fantastic video will show you the process behind lighting, shooting, and editing a single-light beauty setup.
We’re all said to have a doppelganger — someone who looks just like us. And that has never been apparent more so than in this photo series. One photographer tasked himself with taking portraits of people from all around the world who look not only related, but near-identical to each other.
A photographer has put together this behind-the-scenes video to show how we created a realistic “punch portrait.” Mike Smith has managed to pull off an image of himself seemingly being punched, except there’s one catch – no direct contact was made at all.
One of the greatest tools you have at your disposal for creating mood within a portrait is controlling the contrast through your lighting setups. This excellent video will show you how you can use lighting to control the contrast in portraits and create more dynamic photos.
If you are currently stuck at home and looking for something to shoot, now is a perfect time experiment with different creative ideas to keep your technical skills sharp and to continue to develop your style. This fantastic video will show you how you can set up, shoot, and edit an eye-catching mixed light portrait.
You might be surprised by the sort of unique images you can create just by using common objects in a creative manner and adding a bit of unusual technique. This fantastic video tutorial will show you how a photographer combined shutter dragging with a bit of creative prop usage to shoot this fascinating portrait.
One of the best tests of a photographer's lighting skill is their ability to use natural light and strobes together in an organic and convincing manner. This fantastic video tutorial will walk you through the method of using gelled strobes and natural light together to create this portrait along with the editing process in Capture One and Photoshop.
Inspiration can be hard to source at the moment, I'm sure I'm not alone on that. Fortunately, one photographer is printing creativity en masse and giving it away for free.
Life as we know it has suddenly changed, and most of our businesses have ground to a near stop. Many of us were left scrambling to figure out how to keep some sort of work coming in. But when you primarily photograph people, yet your state has issued stay-at-home orders, you really have to explore ways to carry on.