Everyone wants to look their best when they are in front of the camera. Most people practice in front of a mirror to get their perfect "photo face" nailed down but did you know that your shoulder and arm positioning can actually make you look thin in one photo and fat in another?
Back in October I posted a portrait of myself that quickly became the most popular photo on my entire Facebook feed for 2015. The image was never meant to be anything other than a test shot for a few lenses we were reviewing but people kept asking how I created it.
As a fashion and catalog photographer moire is an issue I am all too familiar with. These days, as more and more cameras opt to do without the low pass filter, you might find yourself dealing with moire in some unfortunate places.
Moustaches and Beards. The ultimate sign of masculinity, or so some say.
If, like me, you've found your niche within photography and now shoot a lot of similar projects, it's easy to fall into the trap of sticking with what you know. Here are some of the things I find helpful in staying inspired when shooting portraits.
Veterans Day comes and goes each year and for many of us, it doesn’t extend too far beyond Facebook shout-outs to our friends and family who have served in the military. Perhaps it’s the introverted nature of our times, but it does seem like an adequate show of support. Or does it?
With Veterans Day having just passed, there are a lot of thanks and praises going around to our past service members. We all give our gratitude in different ways. Photographer Louis Amore decided to create a series of portraits focusing on mostly elderly veterans.
A couple weeks ago, we asked the Fstoppers Community to submit their swimwear images for a special episode of "Critique the Community" with Dixie Dixon. Patrick met up with Dixie and went through 20 images of the submissions to give their thoughts on the quality of each image according to the Fstoppers rating system and how the images could be improved.
A few weeks ago we offered to critique a handful of head shot photographs from the Fstoppers Community. Patrick Hall and Peter Hurley sat and gave their feedback for 18 images. Since there were so many submissions for this genre of photography, Lee and I decided to add on an extra round of critique for the photos that were submitted.
Hey, friends! I recently shot in a natural light studio and thought I would share some tips on indoor natural light for those of you who are interested. Enjoy!
A few weeks ago we offered to critique a handful of headshot photographs from the Fstoppers Community. I was able to sit down with professional headshot photographer Peter Hurley for his advice on how you guys can help improve your own headshot photos.
Having the right gear for the job is essential in being able to handle the barrage of lighting scenarios that a wedding photographer will encounter on each outing. I, like many others, am constantly thinking about the next piece of gear.
Due to the incredible amount of submissions, we decided to film a second edition of Natural Light Portraits! This time, Lee and I sat down in the Fstoppers studio and critiqued an additional 20 Natural Light Portraits. Check out the pictures we selected and feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!
Our next episode of "Critique the Community" will feature swimwear photography. This featured image was taken by the amazing swimwear/fashion photographer Dixie Dixon.
International candy day is upon us which means that there are going to be opportunities galore to capture some cool shots of the living dead. One way to make your photos feel a bit more horror inspired is to make them look like they were taken decades ago.
So you found the perfect model for your concept, reached out to him or her, agreed on a date, showed up at the location, and are about ready to shoot. You have never met this person in your life. Now what? We have all seen those unfortunate shots taken by our fellow photographers where the client or model looks wildly uncomfortable.
A couple weeks ago, we asked the community to submit their natural light portraits to be critiqued.
Today marks the end of a full week at Photo Plus Expo in New York City. In the mayhem that comes with such a large expo, one of the stand out presentations for me was hearing Gregory Heisler speak at the Canon booth on Saturday.
So you want to travel with a model? I've been shooting portraits for around four years now, and have started to (finally!) add more traveling to my life. Unintentionally, it turns out that my travel partner, my friend Victoria, also happens to be a model.
Many photographers rely on their 50mm 1.4 and 85mm 1.4 lenses to give that dreamy, narrow depth of field look to their portraits. These two lenses have become a staple for portrait, headshot, wedding, and boudoir photographers who enjoy the soft look that comes with a narrow depth of field and natural lighting.
Each month I will be featuring and chatting to a different creative. My first is Nirrimi Firebrace, a photographer known for her intimate approach to taking portraits. She's been a name on the lips of many creatives for the better part of a decade, paving the way for the next generation of young photographers.
Our next episode of "Critique the Community" will feature natural light portraits. Use this awesome featured image by Dani Diamond as inspiration for your submission. While images which include the use of reflectors are acceptable, please do not include any shots that include extra light (flash or continuous) added by the photographer.
Halloween is almost upon us. October brings the opportunity to photograph a huge array of exciting costumes. As a photographer who specializes in cosplay photography, I’m accustomed to shooting elaborate costumes all year-round, but for most photographers, Halloween presents a fun time to step outside of their normal photography box.
Help me settle this ongoing argument. In his article, my good friend Neil Van Niekerk tells his readers "Fall out of love with your 50mm lens. Use it when it is appropriate." He goes on to say that the 50mm is not appropriate for tight portraits; even uses my photos to demonstrate his point. I say he's wrong.
Jake Hicks is a U.K.-based photographer who adds dramatic color to his portraits. He was kind enough to share a few tricks he uses to achieve his signature technique. It doesn’t matter if you are using studio lights or speed lights, this is a simple recipe you can use to color and bounce light and create different effects in your work.
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.
https://fstoppers.com/photo/90671
It seems that a lot of photographers tend to avoid direct sunlight and for a long time, I did too. Occasionally, I would backlight subjects, but I would never dare light them directly with the sun. I decided one day that it was time to embrace the sun.
Our next episode of "Critique the Community" will feature family portraits.
In a newly released YouTube video, famed Photographer Annie Leibovitz discusses her recent photo shoot with Caitlyn Jenner for the cover of Vanity Fair.
As a self-taught photographer, I’m an advocate of learning through doing. I didn’t study it, but I can imagine that reading all the Photography 101 books that are available still wouldn't prepare you for actually being on a set, with a model standing in front of you, and a team awaiting your creative direction. In my journey, experience has meant everything.
Recently, I have been experimenting with creating a sort of more intense style of headshot for certain clients who are interested in a more surreal, vibrant, look to their headshot as opposed to the more traditional headshot which is designed to to more closely emulate realistic lighting. The heavy cross-light look uses powerful lights that are positioned perpendicular to your the main lig
Nope, we're not joking. Photographer Kotama Bouabane is creating photographs using coconuts. While he used the fruit in several different ways to create images, his most interesting method simply involves tape, a coconut, and some photo paper! Read on and check out the video for more!
It’s been almost 3 years since I moved to London to pursue photography as a career. I’ve learnt that there are many misconceptions about those who take photos for a living - so here I’m setting the record straight about what day-to-day life is really like for a portrait photographer in one of the world’s biggest cities.
This week we get to look at yet another style of retouch, a sports styled image. Each genre, weather it be fashion, beauty, landscape, or sports is going to have different parameters to follow and slightly different goals to achieve.
When I started out in portrait and beauty photography, I tried to have a makeup artist for most of my photo shoots. Why? Because I had always been told it would help my retouching. This is true in most cases. As long as you work with talented makeup artists, you will shorten the time spent in front of your computer. However, this is not the only advantage.
I woke this morning to find that director Matt Rycroft, over at the Cooperative of Photography, had dropped this little gem in my mail box. In their latest video the COOPH team up with first class celebrity portrait photographer Greg Gorman, as he demonstrates how to approach a nude photography shoot.
Through his street photography, Brazilian civil engineer, economist and amateur photographer, Jairo Abud, sheds light on how his government chooses to allocate it's resources while millions live in poverty.
Platon has photographed many of the world's most powerful leaders and biggest celebrities and often shoots covers for magazines such as Wired, Esquire, Newsweek, Rolling Stone and New York Times Magazine. Most recently, he captured comedian and TV show personality Stephen Colbert for the cover of Time, which you can see in the video posted above.
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.
Getting started in photography is expensive. Sometimes frustratingly so. This expense tends to compound a bit if one has to pay professional models to build a portfolio. Fortunately, you don’t. Models also need to build a portfolio, so collaborating with photographers to create images becomes extremely valuable.
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.
Getting human subjects to feel comfortable and to emote in front of the camera is always a challenge. We deal with a variety of personalties which can prove hard to manage when you have all the other things such as lighting, camera settings, and composition to think about.
Erik Almas, one of the best commercial composite photographers, has recently teamed up with the team at PRO EDU to create a fully comprehensive tutorial on his complete shooting and retouching process. In this video Almas takes us through an hour-long tutorial, retouching and completing the backplate for one of his tutorial images.
Mary Ellen Mark, famed photographer, passed away very recently. It's only fitting that her final project center around rebirth, a term that is synonymous with city – my home – New Orleans. I found these images on CNN.com tailored beautifully with quotes that elegantly express the story that Mary Ellen Mark's images tell.
It's Monday morning and that means another completed retouch and time to submit your image for next week. We had more amazing submissions last week and here is the winner! In this post, you will see the SOOC image compared to the retouched image and I will discuss the particular challenges and the direction I decided to go with the photo.
It takes a lot to motivate me to reach out to a photographer for permission to feature their work but a lot is exactly what Brisbane-based photographer and digital artist Jane Long provides with her latest series, "Dancing with Costică”. Colorizing, compositing and creating content for images she sources from the Costica Ascinte Archive, Jane is able to deliver&nb
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.
Natural-looking images are making a comeback. If you look at recent issues of big magazines, you will see that makeup is often a nude with some shine to it, retouching is less "doll like," and even simple 1-light setups seem to be the standard. Some people will argue that it has been like this for quite some time. It is true, but I find that retouching is more flagrant than before.