If you're anything like me then you feel pretty strongly that your face belongs behind a camera, not in front of it. I absolutely hate getting my picture taken, and I'm never more displeased than when I get my photo IDs made. From garish drug store / post office lighting to a poorly executed smile there's always a reason to dread whipping out my driver's license or ID. While I can't really help you with your DMV escapades, passports are unique in that you can actually provide your own image for the document — something I recently took advantage of and you can too. So here it is, The Photographer's Guide to Taking a Passport Photo You Won't Want to Destroy with Fire. All in 10 minutes or less.

A photographer will know exactly what lens distortion you’ll experience with a wide angle lens up close. Does the general public?

Any good makeup artist will tell you that great eyebrows will make any face look good. Think of eyebrows like frames for prints: when they are beautifully crafted, they will make your prints standout. Eyebrows will do the same for a model's face, whether it is a male of a female model. They can totally change the expression and the look of someone depending on how they are shaped. Sometimes, a makeup artist can only go so far and we are left with work in post-production. So it is important to have a little knowledge on what the eyebrows should look like to get the best out of a model's face.

Tis the season, a new senior class will emerge this spring. Thus, for high school senior photographers, a new class to educate about your business. As a senior photographer, I have already chosen and photographed my 2015 models/representatives, but it isn't too late to get started.

San Francisco based photographer, Jeff Cable, is perhaps best known for his work with the US Olympic Committee, photographing the last four Olympic Games though his list of offered services includes Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, weddings, nature, sports, and senior portraits. In this video produced by B&H Photo's learning studio Jeff walks you through getting started in the senior portrait game from location scouting and preproduction to shooting and workflow.

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.

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.

Work smarter, not harder. This quick tutorial will make the painstaking process of removing stray hairs in Photoshop easy.

There are many staple techniques for creative portraiture, and one of my favorites is shooting through glass and reflections.

A little different from the last handful of episodes, Nathan Elson’s How I Got the Shot, Episode 7, moves into a darker-toned portrait set marked by its emphasis on moody overhead lighting.

In tandem with shutter speed and ISO, aperture is one of three fundamental exposure parameters that grant you the technical and creative control over your images that you bought a specialized camera for in the first place. If you are new to photography and wondering what aperture is and how it works, check out this great video tutorial that will give you a practical guide to using it for taking better control of your photos.

Chances are you've been asked to shoot someone's headshot before. As photographers, we need to be able to make our client(s) look as good as possible. To be able to light, shoot and retouch skin are vital skills that keep our doors open, and food on the table. Hollywood photographer and digital illustrator, Lee Varis been a photographer for 40 years and involved in digital imaging for 20 years.

As I spend more and more time around other photographers, I’ve had the opportunity to sit back and listen to everyone’s take on what makes a retouched image successful. Some photographers spend minutes retouching, while others spend literally hours on an individual image. Regardless if you spend 15 minutes or 3 hours retouching in image, it’s important to have a strong workflow so that you maintain your sanity.

iPad Photoshoot from Jesse Rosten on Vimeo.

Reaching high school seniors on social media isn't as easy as one might think. First, you have to attract a following, then you have to appeal to their interests. I quickly found that Facebook is not popular among 16-18 year olds. I could still reach my wedding clients through Facebook, but the 16-18 year old crowd had gravitated elsewhere. Why? Their parents are now on Facebook and they want to keep their privacy. This age group is using other forms of social media; one of the most popular, Instagram.

So much of photography is built on social relationships. Models, makeup artists, hair stylists, designers, and assistants all play a crucial role in contributing to the creation of an image. At the center of the photographer's work is the model, yet photographers may find it difficult to reach out to modeling agencies for collaboration. This article will describe some best practices to start and maintain relationships with modeling agencies and their models that may enable you to further develop your portfolio.

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!

Understanding and mastering lighting patterns is a critical skill for any photographer focusing on portraiture. This great video breaks down five primary lighting patterns and their storytelling purposes, offering invaluable insights for photographers looking to elevate their portrait work.

You don't always need to have a complicated lighting setup to shoot high-quality images, and in fact, with a bit of ingenuity and editing prowess, you can make some very creative photos. Check out this awesome video to see how this natural light HDR portrait was shot.

New York portrait and event photographer Kristina Hill never planned for one of her images to be stolen and used without her permission. Unfortunately, copyright infringement is a concern photographers often need to be more mindful of. Many of us have had our images used inappropriately or even edited without our permission, but having a client’s loving engagement photo twisted and manipulated into a bigoted political attack ad is something altogether different.

Double exposures are a pretty neat way to create striking images that instantly grab the viewer's attention. They can be quite difficult to get right in camera, however. Luckily, that's why we have Photoshop.

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.

Some discoveries in life are intentional and some are just happy accidents that work out in ways we never anticipated. I rely on the Transform tool in Lightroom to correct lines and perspectives, but I learned that it can completely change the look of an image to add interest and trick the eye of the viewer.

Post-production is core to most genres of photography, though it is more important to some than others. Portraiture is one of the most intricate areas of retouching with tricky tasks like skin retouching. Watch as one photographer talks you through his entire portrait editing workflow.

Aaron from Phlearn is back at it with this great tutorial. In it he shows you how to make freckles from scratch. This really unusual technique yields some pretty convincing results.

Traditionally, you edit portraits in Photoshop, where you can take advantage of the program's powerful array of local editing tools. On the other hand, Lightroom has taken tremendous steps forward in the past few years, and while Photoshop still sits at the top for portrait work, there are many situations in which you can complete a portrait edit entirely in Lightroom. This helpful video tutorial will show you how to do just that.

Cleaning skin is one of the most tedious tasks there is when it comes to portrait retouching. It takes quite a bit of time, and when done improperly, the texture can quickly become mushy. To keep the final image as natural looking as possible, there are a couple of techniques that can be used to limit the number of pixels we alter. In this tutorial, Zoë Noble demonstrates how she uses the clone stamp tool to clean the skin.