Recent Portraits Articles

Five Tips on Working With Nude Models

If you are thinking about shooting nude models, there are a few extra things you want to consider beyond other photoshoots. Here are a few tips to help you get started.

Improve Your Environmental Portraits With These Helpful Tips

Environmental portraits are a fantastic chance to show off your creativity and to tell a compelling story about your subject. This fantastic video will give you lots of helpful tips to improve your environmental portraits.

Learn How This Editorial Beauty Photo Was Shot and Edited

Beauty photography can be a great chance to balance careful, precise lighting and to work on really perfecting precise retouching. This fantastic video will show you the process behind lighting, shooting, and editing this fantastic editorial beauty photo.

Helpful Tips for Portrait Location Scouting, Composition, and Posing

A successful portrait takes the confluence of multiple factors, including lighting, composition, location choice, posing, expression, and more. This excellent video will show you how location scouting, composition, and posing came together to create two portraits and give you some helpful tips for your own work.

More Ideas for Creative Self-Portraits at Home

You don't need a model to practice your portraiture; you'll do just fine yourself! Here are some more ideas on creative and unusual self-portraits for you to try.

Recreating a Classic Hollywood Portrait

Recreating classic portraits can be both a fun creative exercise and a great way to sharpen your technical skills. This awesome video will take you behind the scenes of recreating a classic Audrey Hepburn portrait and adding a modern twist.

Here's How a Photographer Took a Wet Plate Portrait Over a Live Video Chat

Photographers directing virtual photoshoots through video calls has become the new trend, since lockdown laws were enforced throughout the world. However, one photographer has gone a step further and has managed to produce what may just be the first ever wet plate portrait taken over a live stream, through video call app Zoom.

How to Take Simple and Effective Speedlight Portraits

Photographers who do not specialize in portraiture or other genres involving working with people may not own dedicated professional lighting equipment suitable for the task. But almost every photographer owns a speedlight, and you might be surprised by how versatile they can be for lighting portraits. This great video tutorial will show you how to take effective portraits using a single speedlight.

Helpful Tips for Posing Couples Who Aren't Models in Engagement Photos

Posing can be a difficult skill for a lot of photographers to master, and of course, it can twice as tricky when you add in a second person. If posing couples is something you need to work on, this fantastic video will give you tons of helpful advice for posing couples for engagements photos.

The Magic of Ken Yu's Polaroids

There’s something magical about watching a Polaroid coming to life in your hands. The little piece of instant film is a moment of captured time that is always a joy to have, but there is something about the scope of Ken Yu’s Polaroid Project that makes it truly special.

Learn How to Create This Fantastic Portrait With Just One Light

A lot of more advanced portrait styles require the use of multiple lights to fully craft the images, but you might be surprised by how much you can still accomplish with just a single light. This great video tutorial will show you how to light and shoot this eye-catching black and white portrait using only a single strobe.

Helpful Tips on Posing for Self-Portraits

With all the lockdowns across the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, quite a few photographers have been left without subjects to shoot. If you want to keep shooting, you might have considered turning to self-portraits but be at a loss for how to pose yourself. If you are struggling with that, this fantastic video tutorial features professional models giving a range of helpful tips for posing in self-portraits.

3 Unique Self-Portrait Ideas You Can Try at Home

If there's one subject you're always going to have access to, it's you. Here are three great ideas that can work as templates or inspiration for some self-portraits to try.

Learn How This Beauty Image Was Lit and Shot

Beauty images are a wonderful chance for you to find your personal style through your choices of lighting, posing, and editing. This excellent video tutorial will show you how a photographer used two lights and gels to create a unique beauty image.

Kenny Rogers: The Photographer

If you have an ear for music or you're tuned into pop culture, you're likely aware that Kenny Rogers passed away last week. Did you know that he was also an avid photographer? Did you know that Rogers was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum?

Photographer Uses His Drone as a Safe Way to Take Portraits of Locals in Quarantine

Strict laws around social distancing has meant an abrupt halt to most photographers’ shooting schedules. One creative wedding photographer, however, is finding a resourceful way to continue taking portraits while documenting lockdown: he’s using his drone to take pictures of his neighbors and their families.

Is Every Portrait Photograph a Lie?

Truth, at best, is always an unstable concept, especially when combined with the medium of photography. This fascinating short video from Jamie Windsor takes one of the most famous portraits ever taken, reveals its deception, and explores the implications.

Quarantined Photographer Shoots via FaceTime

While many photographers are using the lockdown to brush up on their skills or work on personal projects, this Condé Nast photographer found a creative alternative to producing full-fledged photoshoots with models.

How to Create Great Self Portraits While at Home

While stuck at home, self portraits are a great way to practice photography and editing. So watch this video by a grand master of those two thing, Brooke Shaden, for some insight and a glance at her workflow.

8 Tips for Maximizing Your Downtime

Sitting at home starting to bring you down ? Michael Sasser has brought you 8 tips to maximize your downtime during quarantine. Most of which are items you might have been putting off for some time.

Fstoppers Reviews Joel Grimes Beauty Brushes

It's always best to get it right in camera, but sometimes, there are cases where subtle things may go unnoticed but become visible later during the retouching process. Having the right set of tools is crucial.

An Eighth Grader Takes on a Professional Photographer

We often see videos that pit amateur photographers against professionals, but the twist of this one is showing what a photographer in eighth grade can accomplish when shooting against a professional. It is quite impressive!

Six Steps to Sharper Selfies

So, you want to photograph yourself but don’t have anyone to stand in to get your focus set? No problem, all you need is a tripod and a coin for sharp selfies, every time.

Five Ways to Put Models At Ease for Better Portraits

Not all of us work with professional models that can turn on the natural-looking poses when the lens is bearing down on them. Whether it’s Auntie Jean or an aspiring model-to-be, some people just don’t feel comfortable in front of the camera, and this often makes for awkward-looking portraits. So, here are five tips you can use on your next photoshoot to put them at ease and take better portrait photographs.

Challenge Yourself to Some Self-Portraits

There are times when I've wanted to photograph people, but haven't had any around to flex my photographic skills. That's when I've been able to turn to a subject that's always available and willing to work on my schedule: me.

Three Photographers Photograph the Same Waitress

A few weeks ago, Pye Jirsa from SLR Lounge traveled back down to Puerto Rico to battle Lee and I for the "World's Best Photographer" award. Today, we have the results and the full behind the scenes video of the shoot-off. Brace yourself; things do not go as expected.

Black Girl Magic and Beyond: What I Learned Photographing Women in Honor of Black History Month

This series of photographs was initially intended to celebrate the beautiful diversity of black women in honor of Black History Month, but by the end of the shoot, it had become so much more than that. I’m going to attempt to explain the powerful effect this shoot had on me, though I have to admit I may not have the words to properly elucidate why.

This Is the Best Portrait Lens I've Ever Shot With

A few years ago, I reviewed the Hasselblad H6D 100c, and one of my biggest complaints was the lenses. This is not the case with Hasselblad's X1D system. Every XCD lens I've tested has far outperformed my expectations, and now, I've found the best portrait lens I've ever shot with.

A Helpful Guide to Lighting and Posing Family Portraits

Whether you are doing it professionally or simply looking to use your skills to capture lasting memories, family portraiture can be a challenging but rewarding genre. This helpful video will show you both how to light and pose family portraits.

Shooting Portraits With a Massive 400mm f/2.8 Lens

400mm f/2.8 lenses are generally the domain of sports and wildlife photographers, who need lots of reach and to be able to capture as much light as possible and are often willing to pay five-digit prices for the ability to do so. However, with such high-quality optics and thin depth of field, there is another genre in which it is fun to play with such a lens: portraits.

If You Want to Make Money in Photography, Stop Taking Pictures of People

Are you a photographer that owns a business or are you a business owner who offers photography? That realization can sometimes mean the difference between having a successful business or not. Here’s why you should stop photographing people as the sole subject of your imagery.