Portraits

I enjoy taking headshots for people, and I shy away from the commercial, copy-paste, white background styles where the deliverable image is straight out of the camera. However, last month, I combined my preferred style of headshot with the number of subjects you'd typically see with a large corporate, straight-out-of-the-camera shoot. Here's what I learned.

Recent years have seen the internet awash with outlandish wedding and engagement shoots, with photographers venturing to incredible locations for their backdrops. But Priscila Valentina recently decided to shoot an unconventional set-up, enlisting a model in order to document him relocating a piano to the grounds of the Eiffel Tower to sing his vows on his wedding day. The series of images are a stylized shoot in response to the Paris riots.

When it comes to lighting your subject, there are many different ways to do so and many different tools to help create and shape the light. If you do not have a ton of modifiers for your strobe but you do have a V-Flat, here's one way you can use the V-Flat to create soft light in your shot.

Using dodge and burn to retouch skin is one of the best ways to achieve more realistic looking results. However, like any tool, its purpose can be misunderstood or it can be misused with negative consequences. Here are five mistakes to avoid.

In this article, you’ll discover how to spice up your portrait lighting using colored gels. You are about to discover how to easily gel your strobe lights to create different lighting effects from gelled key lights to creating different color backgrounds.

Art and inspiration go hand in hand. For photographers, curling up in the corner of the bookstore with a stack of magazines, oohing and ahhing at photographs we wish we had created seems to be a part-time job. However, equally as important as what our heroes produce is how they produce it. We can learn a lot from the methodology of the folks that do what we want to do day in and day out. With that in mind, here's a conversation with Art Streiber.

Finding new locations to shoot can sometimes be a challenge, especially when you don't live in the area. What can you do to improve your chances of finding those amazing photoshoot locations?

Pet photography has become extremely popular, as many pet owners are looking for photographs of their fur babies. One photographer took his talents to help shelter dogs find new homes and is giving tips to other photographers to do the same.

If you’re looking for your clients to walk away with imagery they think is top notch, it’s a good idea to understand how they see themselves in front of the lens. Peter Hurley gives us a quick rundown of tips and tricks to create headshots that will resonate with the tagline: "Confidence and Approachability."

This week we continue our Puerto Rican Photo Challenge. In our second challenge, two photographers explore the elaborate cave systems hidden deep within the central hills of Puerto Rico. In the full article, you can vote which image was the best and later this week we will reveal the winning image.

If you have ever thought of light painting Portraits but were too afraid to attempt it, then check out these five tips that will get you on the right path to success.

One lens costs $879 and the other costs $2,198, but does the difference in price mean a difference in quality?

Peter Hurley has grown into a household name among photographers over the past 15 years while working from his studio in New York City. With a personality that keeps his clients on their toes and a vocabulary that is ever evolving, the leader of the Headshot Crew has some tips for you that may help you grow even faster with your photographic journey.

The project, brainstormed by New Zealand’s transport agency and Clemenger BBDO Wellington, is an effort to highlight the deaths caused on NZ’s roads due to passengers not wearing seatbelts.

Choosing an interesting composition might be the most underrated of all photography techniques. Here is a tutorial on why changing how you frame your subject can make or break your image.

Coming from SLR Lounge and Pye Jirsa is a great breakdown on how to use a three-point lighting setup to achieve more dramatic fitness or athletic portraits.

Lately, it seems as if I am seeing a lot of photos where the model or subject is seen through a window, for example, the shot where the model sitting inside a coffee shop enjoying a cup of coffee while the photographer snaps a photo from outside. If you are having trouble finding a location to do that, here's a hack for you to recreate a similar look.

One of the best light sources is the sun, but when you go indoors you are limited to where the light is depending on windows or openings that allow it to seep in. Using the light from that window can be fairly easy, but how do you achieve a good shot with the window in portrait shots?

Initially, there wasn’t much about the idea of photographing high school seniors that excited me. Boring portraits of kids wearing their caps and gowns and flashing whatever year they’re graduating with their fingers like an awkward gang-sign always came to mind. After all, it’s this type of cliche portrait that I most often stumble across online, but this doesn’t mean that all senior portraits have to be so boring. Below are a few tips that I've learned over the years.

I am definitely one of those photographer's whose favorite and go-to lens for portraits is the 85mm focal length. After loads of time spent with it, I can say that even now years later, the Sigma 85mm 1.4 Art is still pretty much the king.

Windows can be a great way to add some elegance and visual interest to a portrait. This great video will show you three different ways to incorporate windows into a portrait shoot using only natural light.

When was the last time you can remember having fun with your photography? Not the joy of landing a photography job or the excitement of nailing that one photo, but rather childlike fun while shooting.

Understanding good lighting is one of the most crucial aspects of creating elegant and compelling portraits. This great video will show you seven common and highly useful portrait lighting setups (most of which only use one light) in just 70 seconds.

Whether you're a world-class photographer working with a world-class model, or a hobbyist doing time-for-prints with an aspiring model from Purpleport, everybody can use some posing inspiration from time to time. The Study of Pose aims to be the ultimate solution.

Portrait photography is a popular, though often difficult genre in which to be successful. This helpful video will give you three tips to improve your portrait images.

I recently spent time working alongside Alice Prenat, the portrait photographer behind the elegant Parisian studio, Portrait Madame. After her talent was discovered by Sue Bryce, Prenat launched an upscale brand and studio in Paris, where she celebrates the "everyday" woman.

When it comes to photography, sometimes we don't have a roll of black paper. In this video from The Creative Contrast, they show us two and a half ways to get an invisible black backdrop with both natural light and strobes.

This phenomenon seems to happen to us all: you take or find an image that shouldn't work, but you just love it all the same. Show us yours!

There is an old saying that "you only find what you are looking for." It's critical for any artist, including we photographers, to know what it is that we are working to create. To have a vision and stay true to it so that it will become a reality. When you go out with the intent of creating images you know what you want, right? You choose the location, the time of day, maybe the lighting, certainly the subject, and of course what gear that you need to bring it all together. We tend to be control freaks to make sure that we get what we want.

Don't work with children or animals they say. But, what do they know? Here's my trick for getting our favorite subjects to be a little more camera friendly!

Can outstanding customer service take your portrait photography sales to the next level? Megan DiPiero thinks that it can, and she’s here to tell you how.

Including all of the person's head in your photograph is considered to be one of the basic rules of portraits. Clipping off the top of someone's head is considered a rookie mistake. However, I want you to consider taking a different approach to that old standard.

Nearly 10 years into taking photos, it’s safe to say I’ve been bored of my own pictures lately, and have been increasingly open-minded in looking for new ways to keep my work innovative. Delving deeper into creative concepts, the best way I feel I’ve improved as a photographer is by exploring set design and focusing my efforts on the pre-production.

A British photographer has unveiled her new series, "Birth Undisturbed." Initially aspiring to recreate her own home birthing experiences, Natalie Lennard’s images depict stories of women both real and imagined, as she aims to “bring the rawness of primal birth into the art world.”

With so much attention paid to retouching the skin, hair, and eyes, it can be easy to overlook a person's lips when you're editing a portrait. This great video will give you a complete guide to creating picture-perfect lips using Photoshop.

Portraits are a great way to reflect professionalism. As a portrait photographer, what are the things that you can ensure to get the best for your clients? There are a few important areas that you have to pay attention to as a portrait photographer. Here is a quick article that discusses on how to arrive at the perfect professional portrait.

Retouching and photography have always gone hand-in-hand, but what are the possible implications, if any, for publicly sharing retouched images of your baby daughter?

Have you ever had an inkling to give self portraits a go? This can be a great way to improve your photography and boost your confidence, but how do you get started? Here's a few tips when it comes to shooting self portraiture!

When working with models or people without posing experience, a bad pose can ruin your shot regardless of how everything else comes together. You can have the best location, best lighting, and the best gear but it all comes down to your subject's talent and ability to pose. Here's a number of tips that you can use to help your subject achieve better results in front of the camera.

I shoot for a clothing boutique and we shoot outside at the same area weekly. To say I have overused the available locations is an understatement. Sometimes I find myself on the side of the road, next to a rundown building I’ve shot at 20 times already, and think to myself, how in the world can I make this different? I’ll bet most of us have been there at some point.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to shooting portraits is posing the subject. You might have all the lights set and the background lit, but ultimately it all comes down to posing the subject perfectly to get best results. In this video, Miguel Quiles shares an interesting trick on how to pose almost anyone.

A surprising omission and sudden need to fill a gap led me to an important revelation.

A photographer renowned for spending months at a time carefully curating his sets has just completed his latest project. He has now built a life-size replica of a local 1960s Chinese takeaway; complete with the original paintings and fittings, the series features genuine customers and the owner of the real takeaway. It debuts exclusively on Fstoppers.

One of the most important things in photography is lighting. It doesn't matter if it's natural light or artificial light, how you capture it is key. Here are a few tips on how you can improve your lighting.

A new year means new possibilities. Each year, most photographers put aside money for specific items such as gear, repair, equipment, and more. The one item many forget is education. This is an important part of growing as a photographer and needs to be addressed each year to keep the creative mind flowing.

Whenever we see an amazing image, the first thing that pops into our heads is "that's an amazing shot! It must be Photoshopped!" In this behind the scenes breakdown, see how Alexis Cuarezma created these dramatic colorful portraits using effects that were all done in camera.

Sometimes, you miss focus slightly, but the expression and everything else are there, and the client ends up picking that portrait. What do you do in that case? Try replacing the eyes.

Posing can be a particularly hard thing for many photographers to master and is often one of the last skills they acquire. This helpful video will give you five go-to poses you can use when working with men as well as some helpful tips.

When it comes to outdoor portrait lighting, does size really matter? In this article, you will discover a few reasons why size is important on your next outdoor portrait lighting photo shoot.

What does photography mean to you? In this article, I share my story about how photography changed my life and my journey as an artist. See my ups, my downs, and see what it took me to get where I am today.