2016 has been a year that has seen Joey L plunged in to unusual situations. His name is usually associated with is masterful lighting and portrait style of A-List celebrities. Then, in October this year Joey reached out to me about his work for the legendary Lavazza calendar which a more travel orientated series of portraiture. Now, Joey has gone one step further and taken his beautiful image style and applied it to a crisis in Qayyara in Iraq.

The Internet is run on cute puppy photos, and that’s a verifiable fact. Do your part in contributing using these helpful pet photography tips.

Great portraiture can be created with anything from natural light to a studio full of the most expensive equipment, but if you — like most photographers — are closer to the natural light setup than a high-end studio, perhaps this video might show you just what you can produce with one, cheap light.

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.

Most dog or cat owners have had to use an Elizabethan collar at one point or another with their pet. “It’s a necessary and beneficial part of the healing process, but to them it’s like being put in timeout,” photographer Ty Foster explained. In this photo series of his, he visually expressed the emotional hardships that our animal brethren have to endure while wearing what he refers to as “the cone of shame.” In the series, Foster goes out of his way to show the trials and tribulations that come along with wearing this shameful collar.

Finding backgrounds for indoor portraiture can be a pain after a while. You can get mileage out of proper backdrops and different lighting setups, but there's an option for punchy portraits with for all intents and purposes, unlimited variations.

The art and business of photography has had no trouble in inspiring millennials into finding a path to success within the field. Twenty-somethings have embraced the use of new technologies in their workflow, marketing, and creativity, but there is one lesson on reaching your goals that has not changed since the dawn of commercial photography.

No doubt, it is crucial to get your subjects' eyes in focus in any portrait, but that can be a bit difficult, particularly since a lot of photographers love to shoot at very wide apertures. If that is something you struggle with, this great video will give you five helpful tips for getting sharper eyes in your portraits.

Have you ever bemoaned the lack of great subjects to shoot with in your area? Ever cried in exasperation while struggling to come up with concepts? Those complaints all go out the window in mid-October when virtually every city in the world that celebrates Halloween explodes with wonderful photo opportunities.

A lot of the time, you have complete control over a portrait, including where you take it and thus, the background that complements your subject(s). But in other situations (wedding photography, for example), you do not get much of a choice and may be stuck with a boring, distracting, or simply unpleasing background. If that is the case, this helpful video tutorial will give you five tips for still making professional portraits.

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.

When someone asks me how long I’ve been doing photography, it’s a complicated question. I worked in the film industry for years and still do. Many of those concepts and techniques are directly translatable — composition, exposure, color, etc. I fooled around with photos, but I didn’t really start photography, putting my life on a whole new path, until someone told me not to.

Just couple of months ago 'Selfie' was chosen as the word of the year by the Oxford English Dictionary. Now that pretty much everyone have a camera in their pocket, taking self portraits is easier than ever. It seems like everyone are doing it, and you can see it all over social media. The thing is - because the subject controls everything about the creation of the image - from posing to angle of shooting, it's easy for them to hide things they don't like. In this beautiful short film, Dove shows girls how including their insecurities in their selfies can change their opinions about their own beauty.

I still think the hardest part of portraits isn't shooting or post-production but the human element. Making your subject feel comfortable in front of the lens is crucial to getting shots you're both happy with. This helpful video will give you some quick tips on how to do just that.

When you are new to working with artificial light, it is important to start out with a single source at first to build your confidence and knowledge. And just because you are only shooting with one light, it does not mean you can't produce professional-level images. This fantastic video tutorial will show you everything you need to know to get started with one-light portraits.

Natural light portraiture is a great way to stay versatile and able to move through a variety of locations and poses quickly without having to deal with the logistics and interruption to your creative workflow presented by lugging around a bunch of lights and modifiers. However, because you can’t control the light, you need to consider your compositions a bit differently. This excellent video tutorial will show you a four-step process for creating better natural light portrait compositions.

Trade for Print or TFP shoots are shoots where the photographer doesn’t pay the model and the model doesn’t pay the photographer. They are a great tool for when models and photographers are starting out or when they don’t have a budget. Here are some tips for how to make them successful.

The 50mm focal length on full frame cameras is a staple, but there are more options than ever before. So, which is the best for the Z mount, and is the quickest worth the cost?

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.

What happens when you take a shot and you just love the expression of your subject, but the light lets you down? You take it into Lightroom and sprinkle some magic dust all over it, and in this tutorial, I'll show you exactly how I do that.

In this great tutorial, Aaron Nace from Phlearn teaches you how to change hair color in Photoshop. He shows the trick to changing red hair to brown, black and blonde and this video also gives great insight into and cause for practicing your skills with blending modes as well as selective color and levels adjustment layers.

Whereas things like camera settings and lighting can be quantified and thus committed to memory in a straightforward manner, posing and directing a subject is a bit more nebulous and often gives photographers a fair amount of trouble. Peter Hurley is well known as a master of directing and posing, and in this excellent video tutorial, he shares some of his best advice that is sure to improve your own work.

Less can often be more when it comes to creating stunning portraits in Lightroom. If you’re relatively new to it or you’re somebody who prefers a minimalist but effective approach to portrait editing over going crazy in post with loads of effects, then this tutorial is definitely going to help you.

Here we are on day five of our 30 for 30 where we are releasing 30 videos to the Fstoppers YouTube Channel the entire month of January. Yesterday Charleston, South Carolina was hit with the biggest snowstorm in over 25 years. I decided to team up with my crazy friend Bryan Young and take ski portraits around town. The resulting images are pretty hilarious and are definitely once in a lifetime photographs.

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.

For prime lenses, most of us want the fastest we can get. Well, Fujifilm have launched a 50mm that has a widest aperture of f/1.0, and it has autofocus.

Last week we asked the Fstoppers Community to submit some of their family portrait work for the next episode of Critique the Community. We accepted anything family related, groups, kids, or babies and chose 20 of them to give feedback on. Check out the submissions below and listen as Lee and Patrick give their thoughts.