Portraits

As wedding photographers, we always find ourselves walking the high wire between art and popular demand. But then, is the balance hard to achieve? In my opinion, I’d say it is wise to just put the thought, sincere effort, and presence of mind into your photos. What you capture will be loved equally by the artist in you as well as the couple you shoot - who seek nothing less than spectacular. The picture we are going to dissect is a product of this belief.

From the outside looking in, the creative industry can be daunting. We think we need thousands of dollars of equipment to take images on par with our peers – but that’s not strictly true. Here’s a breakdown of how I photographed one of British pop’s biggest acts using cheap lights from eBay.

About this time last year, the Sigma 85mm 1.4 Art series lens was released and I went ahead and decided to pull the trigger and invest in the new glass. I had heard great things about other entries in the art lineup and understandably Sigma's new 85mm focal length was getting a solid amount of hype. For the past year, I have been shooting exclusively with Sigma's 85mm. It's been the only lens in my camera bag and the only lens I've used for a straight year. What follows are my impressions after a solid year of use; what I like about the lens and what I don't like.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past 30 years, allow me to give you a brief introduction to the Commercial, Fashion, and Celebrity Photographer David LaChapelle who just released his latest and final books, "Lost + Found, Part I" and "Good News, Part II." LaChapelle, 54, has photographed some of the most iconic figures of the 90s and 2000s including Tupac, Hillary Clinton, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, and Muhummad Ali. Pretty much anyone worth their salt has been shot by this guy.

One photographer has set out to prove you don’t need a beautiful location to take amazing snaps by holding a photoshoot inside a Lowe's store.

Natural, fuller eyebrows are a classic look that seem to be enjoying a resurgence recently. This fun and helpful video will show you how to easily create fuller eyebrows on your subject using Photoshop.

Unless you're specifically going for the hard light look, shadows can sometimes be a distraction in portraiture work whose impact you might want to lessen. This helpful tutorial will show you how to convincingly lighten them to help even out the luminosity across your subject's face.

When shooting portraits, there are certain things or ways we shoot that help us achieve a better end result. We should all be trying to capture the best portrait possible, so if someone shares advice I usually give it a try to see if it works for me or fits the style of my work.

Most tutorials focus on one aspect of the shooting process or another, which can sometimes make it a bit difficult to understand why each creative decision was made at different steps of the process. This great video follows a photographer from planning to finished image, giving an overview of the shoot, what difficulties he faced, and how he overcame them.

The eyes are one of the most crucial parts of a person when it comes to portraiture and retouching, as they are the first thing a viewer looks at and generally the establishment point of human interaction. This helpful tutorial will give you a complete guide to retouching eyes to give them a natural, vibrant look that instantly draws the viewer in.

If you look at a lot of children's portraiture, you'll probably notice a popular look that is the signature of quite a few photographers, namely natural light, shallow depth of field, and an airy, soft, and vibrant retouch. This awesome and comprehensive tutorial will show you how to replicate that look in your own work.

It's easy to get caught up in thinking of only photographically intended accessories when trying to expand your creativity and as a byproduct, getting locked into paying photography accessory prices. However, with a little imagination, some very cheap items can make for inspiring and fun portraits.

If you’ve ever been to a photo event in New York City or taken a pilgrimage to B&H Photo, chances are you’ve noticed the man in the trench coat with the old news photographer’s camera – bellows, big flash, and all.

I hate having my pictures taken. It’s common, but still ironic, to have a photographer who dislikes being on the other side of a camera. This fall, I made a promise to my wife that we would have our family photos taken and I was able to experience the entire process of hiring and working with a photographer. It wasn’t my intention to treat this as a learning opportunity, but now that all is said and done, I can say that I have learned a lot. Experiencing the client’s perspective, watching another professional operate, and the renewed perspective gained for what a photo is worth are among many things I came away with from our session.

When you get in the video world, you soon realize that editing can go pretty far, but it’s not as easy as Photoshop. It tends to take more time to get to a decent result, and a tremendous patience to achieve perfection. In this short tutorial, Steve from MiesnerMedia shows us how to smooth out skin in our videos using DaVinci Resolve 14.

Half the fun of shooting portraits is the veritable multitude of ways you can use photographic techniques and creative ideas to represent a person. This fun video will show you three such techniques that only require bare-minimum equipment and a subject.

Beginning the journey of learning to be a photographer is overwhelming. If you have no background in photography, you are learning a whole new world of terms and techniques from an abundance of information that is often confusing and conflicting. We’ve all been there. Most experienced photographers can often pinpoint common themes when comparing their own experience starting out with others who are now doing the same.

In a showdown of competing presidential (and vice-presidential) photographers, the White House released new official portraits of President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday. The two portraits were shot by two different photographers, and it’s evident in the style of each photo. The question is, which photographer did it better?

Each and every photographer has their own unique way of working with models, cameras, and light. It’s something that clearly shows through in the series Jessica Kobeissi has developed in which different photographers shoot the same model. In the most recent episode, she brought Dani Diamond and Brandon Woelfel back for a new shoot, but this time they added a few obstacles to make the challenge more fun.

I often wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall when directors like Steven Spielberg pitched "Back to the Future," or when Ridley Scott said he wanted to direct "Blade Runner." It’s just a super way to see how the masters get the go-ahead from the producers. Often it’s just your personality that resonates with the person, or perhaps you have a great skill that people know you for. The portrait of Steve Jobs that was used for the cover of his biography as well as for the Apple website from the day he died was taken by Albert Watson. In this video, he gives us an idea of what it was like to shoot one if the world’s most well-known tech leaders.

One of the best things about window light is that you can find it almost anywhere. As winter approaches and chilly weather threatens to keep photo sessions indoors, photographers will face the choice of how to light their portraits. Strobes and flashes are a great option, but not all photographers own them. Almost everyone has access to a window though, and a window has plenty to offer any photographer who knows how to use it.

Photographer and Fstoppers alum Limor Garfinkle has been working on a very interesting project for the last two years: designing and shooting portraits of comedians that show off their unique personalities. Now, the project is ready for its gallery premiere at the TBS Comedy Hub as part of the New York Comedy Festival, with the proceeds benefiting the Mount Sinai Division of ADHD and Learning Disorders. Fstoppers recently interviewed her about the process and fun experience of shooting these portraits.

As a photographer, working with children can be incredibly challenging at times, but it can also be just as much fun. I have found that there is no real secret behind taking great shots of kids, but rather it comes down to how you navigate interacting with each child while on the shoot. The range of personalities that kids will display is incredibly diverse, this means that it is unlikely that you will be able to interact with any given child the same way that you did with another. This also means that it will be really easy to capture very unique shots on every single shoot.

As a wedding photographer, outdoor couple shoots are undoubtedly my favorites. On the big day, it gets overwhelming with little scope to get planned shots. We tend to go with the flow. For this reason, outdoor couple shoots are a treat to any photographer as it offers a lot of time and space. Here are my two cents on how to make your outdoor couple shoot an enjoyable and a memorable one.

Perhaps a better question to ask is: “Why am I a photographer?” In recent months, I feel like I've completely lost touch with why I became a photographer. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love what I do, but sometimes I forget why. When I was first starting out as a photographer and all of my shoots were “just for fun,” it was easy to see why I enjoyed it. After all, there were no consequences if I screwed something up, and I looked at photography as more of an escape from reality than a job.

Being that I’m primarily a wedding and documentary photographer, it’s not every day that I get the chance to take a portrait of a celebrity. Add to this that I live in Northwest Arkansas, which isn't really a hub for celebrities, makes it even less likely for me — especially one as well known as William H. Macy. So I thought it would be interesting to line out how I pulled it off and got the final image.

Hopefully by now people have had a chance to get familiarized with videos that are circulating featuring three to four photographers all getting together for a day and shooting the same model. It's an awesome idea that can really bring together a small group of creatives for a fun and challenging group project and photoshoot. It seems like a great way to bring people together with a creative vision and just plain make art. This video is that very concept brought to us straight from London.

A smile can make or break your portrait. While shooting the person who is forcing a fake smile, it can be obvious in a lot of people who aren't used to "smiling for the camera" and ruin the shot, while a genuine natural smile can make your photo that much better. So how do you get your subject to give you a better, more natural smile?

A simple question for you: do you find that from January to December, over the course of a given year, your photography changes along with the seasons and the environment? Kind of a loaded question though, right? The answer probably depends quite a bit on what exactly your brand of photography is. Of course, other factors play a major role like your location and whether your work is outdoors or in the studio too. When is the last time that you sat down and looked at your body of work? Aside from technical improvements, do you notice any trends that may coincide with various times of the year?

In many of the photography groups I am part of, I constantly come across the question of which lens should someone get as a portrait photographer. We all have different styles, and depending on what type of portraits and what other genres of photography we usually shoot in, we could all recommend you a different lens or pair of lenses.

The concept of a portrait lens has always baffled me. When I first started out in photography, reading the Internet and listening to other photographers would have led me to believe that I needed something around the 85mm or 135mm focal lengths if I wanted to photograph a person. Anything else wouldn’t work. Well, that simply isn’t true, is it? Any lens can be used as a portrait lens. In fact, the moment you photograph the likeness of a person with it, it becomes a portrait lens. So why not experiment using different lenses in your portraiture?

What’s stopping you? We all have at least one imperfection that we wish wasn't part of us so that it would be easier to achieve our dreams. I often wonder what my photography and life would be like if my extreme anxiety disappeared, if I had more money, physical strength, and even if I were a man instead of a woman. Our flaws that hinder us are often hard to deal with, but once we embrace them for what they are the outcomes can be surprisingly perfect.

I found Irene Rudnyk a few months back when I was looking more into portrait photography. I found that her work stood out amongst a lot of other work because of how clean and straightforward her style was. In this video, Rudnyk goes over how she shoots in a small bedroom inside her house using only natural light and a reflector. This video goes to show that a good photo really can be created anywhere if you know exactly what you want and how to do it.

Today's tip is a more basic tip aimed at newer retouchers, and is a common quick fix that I feel is necessary when your subject has red in their eyes. This is a 20-second fix which can be made even faster by turning it into an action and assigning a hot key shortcut.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about using the Fujifilm GFX 50S as a travel camera. As part of that article, I touched briefly on using it for portraiture. I also touched briefly on using the GF 110mm f/2 lens and a few autofocus issues that I had. Today, I would like to dive a little deeper into using this camera for portraiture and my experience with it. We’ll take a look at focusing, sharpness, skin tones, working with flash, and handholding the camera. Finally, I’ll wrap up by giving you my personal feelings about the camera and whether or not it could be an effective portrait camera.