"Oh, this is going to be good," I chuckled to myself. Fstoppers co-founder Lee Morris had just posted an article and video called "The New iPhone Fashion Shoot: Bikinis, Foam Core, and Flashlights." I knew the response would be fast and passionate. I wasn't disappointed.
Five years ago I filmed the iPhone Fashion Shoot, a 10-minute video in which I take professional looking images with the iPhone 3GS. That video was supposed to inspire photographers who assumed that their work was suffering because their gear wasn't ultra expensive. The video became extremely popular and became very polarizing. The majority of people thought my images looked good because I used fancy lights.
As we all know, the human experience is unique. Your life and your opinions will never be the same as any other persons. This is why there is a subjectivity to art. When viewing and creating art, there will not be two artists who imagine the same piece. Since photography and retouching are both art forms, it would be plausible that the same applies.
Nick Saglimbeni teamed up with the visual effects guru Raffael Dickreuter to create a lighting tutorial unlike anything I've ever seen before. Instead of simply filming their location, they completely recreated it in 3D to teach photography and lighting on an entirely new level.
Recently, SmugMug featured the amazing artist Renee Robyn, based in Canada in a touching tribute video called "Dream Of A Digital Artist', and I recommend you take the 3 and a half minutes and check it out. If it doesn't leave you in awe and full of inspiration, then you must not have a pulse.
It's Monday so it's time for another speed retouch and episode of Retouching Mondays. This week image comes courtesy of last weeks winner, Ben Scott. If you would like me to retouch your image and send you back the full-high res final image, all you have to do is post your image in the comments and wait to hear back. I will email the winner on Thursday morning, so post your newest favorite image that you want retouched. It can be any genre, beauty, fashion, landscape, wedding! I'll record the retouching and send you the final image to use as you wish! Take a look at the speed retouch of Ben's image and let me know in the comments if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Now lets take a look at the before and after and the challenges for this week's Monday Retouch.
In my recent Natural Light Tutorial with RGGEDU, I went through every aspect of natural light photography and retouching... Or so I thought. During a shoot this week, I realized I missed one thing: enhancing freckles with Photoshop. In this article I will show a simple method to making those freckles pop.
I'll preface this today by making it clear that I know very little to nothing about architectural retouching, landscape retouching, or product photography retouching. That said, I've dedicated the last two decades to Adobe Photoshop, and the last seven years specifically to portrait retouching. As such, I've come to realize one key thing: If your skin work is no good, everything else in your retouch just falls apart, if you will, as the basic foundation is already substandard.
In this tutorial I will show you how to setup your studio strobes for full length portraits as we shoot an editorial style lighting setup. First we will look at the entire gear list we used and you can use for a similar setup, from the backdrop to the studio heads. I will breakdown our lighting. with lighting diagrams and explanation of WHY we are placing our lights where we are. Also, in this video tutorial we share some Behind The Scenes from our shoot day.
It seems that every week a new camera bag hits the market, and while the majority are stylish and functional they all have one unifying trait. They all seem remarkably masculine in appearance. Whether this is a reflection on the industry of photography as a whole (seeing as men outnumber women) the fact of the matter is that there isn't a whole lot of selection for women... until now. Introducing, the Cologne camera bag/purse by Pompidoo.
Last week I made a list of 10 of my favorite photographers to follow on Fstoppers and a few people complained that too many of them were "portrait" photographers. I've scoured the community again and today I've created a new list with 10 incredible, additional photographers who shoot much more than your average portrait.
In this article we will take a closer look at the Mola Setti Soft Light reflector and compare it to a few images taken with a Silver Deep Parabolic Reflector. The goal of this article isn’t to choose a winner, it is more of a comparison of different types of light modifiers that are available to you. I will leave it up to you to decide which one of these light modifiers best fits your style of photography.
Its Monday so as promised here is the completed retouch for last weeks winning submission by Mitchell Flores. For only being the first week of this regular segment we had an great number of submission and it was hard picking, can't wait to see what you guys submit this week. In this post I'll go over some of the steps of the retouching process and talk about the challenges for this particular image. If you would like your image to be selected for next week, post your low-res image in the comments below by Wednesday of this week.
Most amateur photographers assume that they need to buy a ton of expensive gear in order to compete or reach the level of most professional photographers. I’m quite guilty of doing the same. As a matter of fact, I spent the first couple of years studying the work of photographers that I admired and I was quickly intimidated by their level of production. I didn’t think that I could possibly afford to invest in the type of equipment they used. It wasn’t uncommon to see these photographers use 3+ studio strobes on set, along with a seemingly endless list of modifiers they had access to. Their level of production just didn’t fit my personal budget at that time.
As a Photographer you will often find yourself in a situation where your color palette is less than ideal. For example, you show up on location for a Portrait shoot and your subject is wearing dull, dark clothing on a dark background. What do you do? If you happen to find yourself in this kind of situation, here’s what you can do to add a little life to your images and broaden your color palette.
