Lighting

Hair photography can be a pain to shoot. Having a good hair stylist is incredibly important to make sure you don’t end up spending more time than you should behind the desk for the retouching. When it comes to hair, you’ll already have to spend more time than you’ll like.

This is your chance to participate in the Flashlight challenge, prove you can make an amazing photograph with any light source, and have your photograph featured in an Fstoppers article all about you!

Photographer Michael Muller has been shooting the biggest names — often for the biggest movies — for more than 30 years. In this video, self-confessed lighting newbie Sawyer Hartman heads to Muller's studio to learn a few tricks of the trade.

In this detailed video, Basic Filmmaker gives you a complete overview of the things you need to know before investing in a lighting system for your video needs.

Godox is back at it again, this time offering Photokina a sneak preview of a soon-to-be released portable round head speedlight, offering a direct competitor to the Profoto A1.

Good lighting can do more than just properly illuminate your subject for a good exposure; it can help you tell a story. This super informative video will show you four lighting setups for cinematic silhouettes.

When you're first starting out with studio lighting, it's easy to become focused on getting the key light just right, but if you become too fixated on that, you can overlook the importance of the rim light. This great video will show you how to use a rim light to separate your subject from the background.

Interfit, the well known maker of studio flash units and flash accessories, has announced today the release of their new battery powered strobe the Badger Unleashed.

Sometimes it takes a deeper look at a master to bring us back to basics.

Light can make or break a photograph, and that's particularly true in landscape photography, where a beautiful scene can either be rendered rather blandly or resplendently depending on the light that's falling on it and how you make use of it. This great video will give you seven tips for making better use of light in your landscape images.

I have been a photographer for almost eight years, and to be honest, it has not always been fun. No career path is without its ups and down, and certainly, the creative industry is no different.

Lighting schemes should always have a purpose, whether it's to flatter a client, show the details in a product, or create a mood. In this fantasy portrait, my purpose was both to flatter the model and to create a sense of place. Let's talk about how it was done.

In this short video, Manny Ortiz gives a very quick introduction to three lighting modifiers that he uses in the studio — the beauty dish, octabox, and umbrella — and gives a short overview of their pros and cons.

Cheap and decent quality LED lights can be found online easily these days; however, sometimes, you have to make specific sacrifices in either quality or function to get those cheaper prices. That's when DIY comes in.

When you're new to lighting, it can be a bit overwhelming trying to understand how to control multiple lights with the precision needed to create a polished photograph. This quick and great video will show you how to create a classic look using just one light.

The Profoto B10 is here, and it's one of the most exciting advancements in lighting that I've seen in years.

Listen, I know what you're all thinking. "Whoa, it looks cool. The modeling light is even bi-color. But it costs how much?" I get it, but bear with me.

Of the many lighting techniques available to us as portrait photographers, using backlight with a simple reflector is one of the most versatile and least expensive methods you can choose. This method is widely used outdoors, but did you know that you can apply the same strategy to studio portraits?

We're heading into the realm of storybook fantasy with this week's Lighting Breakdown that blends natural and artificial light.

Lighting can make or break any kind of shoot, and having a deep arsenal of lighting techniques and methods can ensure the lighting invariably makes the shoot.

Not all of us have the luxury of an expansive studio space that we can fill with equipment and in which we can endlessly experiment. This great video shows to make the most of a very small studio space to light and shoot highly professional portraits.

Profoto just released a teaser video announcing a new product is about to be released. It may well be an updated B2 or a baby version of the B1X.

Making mistakes is part of learning, even if the criticism stings sometimes. And after seeing some of these common photography mistakes, I had to put my hand up and say, "guilty as charged." I guarantee you will too.

When photographing commercial interior images, a common issue is an unsightly glare on reflective surfaces. Removing these reflections by compositing image layers significantly improves your images, separating you from the pack of "run-and-gun" real estate and interior photographers.

How many of the primary lighting patterns can you execute well? Here is an explanation of five of the most common lighting techniques used in photography.

In this week's lighting breakdown, I'm going to explain the three-light setup I used to create these striking portraits in studio.

Name brand speedlights — like a lot of things in photography — are absurdly priced, and although they carry the big brand names, they also lack in a number of key areas versus the lower cost, third party alternatives. Take a look at my reasoning for steering clear of the big camera manufactures brand speedlights.

Beauty can be a lot of fun to shoot and it’s fun to find different ways to light a face in a flattering way. We might not be perfect in real life, but on camera? On camera we can be as perfect as the lighting setup and editing allows us to be! Magic? No. We still need gorgeous models but a great setup certainly helps.

As more and more photographers are starting to dabble into video, the need for versatile yet affordable constant lighting gear is ever changing. Today I test the new Boling BL-50 lights to see if they could be the best bang for the buck.

In this week's lighting breakdown, I'm going to explain why and how I used a flash outdoors during midday to create this fun, casual portrait.