You really are spoiled for choice when it comes to posing female subjects in your photographs. Working with males, on the other hand, can be a little more limiting, as a lot of the shapes which look great on the fairer sex don't always translate over so well. Use these key fundamentals when trying to get the best out of your male subjects even if they are not models.
Careful selection is the first and most important step in our creation process that is often left out of conversation. Nearly every client I photograph asks me "How do you choose?" It's actually a great question. After perfecting this process, I guarantee your solid and confident answer will blow their mind.
One reason why I gravitate to photographing pets and children is that their unpredictable nature lends to capturing more genuine images that portray their true personalities. In my experience, the parents’ favorite portraits of their children are the candid photos in which the children are completely unaware of the camera and can just be themselves. Here are a few tips on how to create better candid imagery of kids.
Barry Harley, an editorial photographer from Northern Virginia, took whatever tools he had at hand to create an image reminiscent of nothing less than Annie Leibovitz's Vanity Fair group portraits. The difference: Harley was using two Yongnuo YN-560 II speedlites and a Canon 5D Mark II whereas Leibovitz usually uses Profoto strobes together with a Hasselblad and Phase One back or a Nikon D810.
The best photographs and films don’t just bring beautiful visuals to the table. They also place story right at the center of their very make up. “Killing The Rock” (KTR) is a five minute demonstration of this, and reminds us of how commitment to our craft combined with small collaborative like-minded souls can tell stories that go deeper and reach further than we ever could going at it alone.
Quite possibly one of the most overlooked aspects of lighting a subject is the rim light. Not only is it a great method to make your subject pop off the background, it's a quick way to give your portraits a very professional look. This helpful video will show you everything you need to know about creating proper rim lights.
Just recently, I was able to test out the Venus Optics 105mm f/2 STF lens. After having it and using it here and there for a few months, I came to the conclusion that it would not be a bad addition to my photo bag. There were a lot of things I enjoyed about this lens considering I've never really had a prime telephoto lens before.
In a world saturated with photography, you have to find ways to stand out. If you are able to put in the extra skill and effort to make something that is unique, it can quickly gain attention. Backlighting is one technique I use to accomplish this. Initially, backlighting seemed like a difficult task. Extra equipment, more work, and setting up stands and lights all made it so intimidating as a new photographer. Now that I am years in, I can honestly say that my backlit shots have captured more attention and sold more jobs than any other one thing in my business.
A couple of months ago, I finally pulled the trigger; I broke out my wallet and dropped a (rather large) chunk of change on my first mirrorless camera kit, the Fujifilm X-T2. I had been researching mirrorless options for almost a year, and finally landed there for a multitude of reasons. I was mainly interested in a mirrorless kit for use while traveling and backpacking, and loved the idea of a smaller, lighter kit. All signs started pointing at the X-T2 over the other long-term contender, the Olympus OM-D EM-1 MK II. It was only a couple of weeks before I headed off to spend a month in India and Nepal, so I needed to learn this camera relatively quickly.
In this video, Photographer Andrea Belluso uses strip softboxes to create dramatic portraits of his friend and pilot along with a gliding airplane. Strip softboxes create soft light with a long highlight on the aircraft body.
Understanding light is at the heart of photography. The topic of light is a vast one but there are some fundamental concepts which should be mastered before all others. One of those is the difference between hard and soft light.
There are plenty of reasons you may want to blend natural light with flash. I know I rarely shoot with more than one strobe on location so the ambient light often acts as a fill light or rim light. Regardless of your reason to do so, knowing how to easily achieve this is extremely important. Check out this video where I explain my process for balancing strobes with natural light on location.
You've probably seen some pretty comical behind-the-scenes images of the kinds of positions photographers put themselves in just to get a shot. They climb trees, hang off cliffs, stand in the middle of rivers, lay down in the dirt, all just to frame up that perfect shot. Well there's almost always a reason behind the madness and sometimes those reasons end up having a much bigger impact than most people might expect. Sometimes it's about getting a really intriguing angle on a particular subject, but I find myself laying in the dirt quite a lot just so I can create a composition that carries more depth. Let's compare a couple different shots that can help make some sense of this.
Composition may be one of the most widely discussed artistic aspects in photography. In theory, the idea is simple. Putting it to work, particularly in motion arts, is easier said than done. Composition is one of the most important creative aspects of any filmmaking. Simply put, it is the act of defining the position, arrangement, and view of objects within the frame. The composition is, in effect, representing the point of view of your viewer and it will have a direct impact on how that viewer feels when they see it.
Lindsay Adler is best known for creative fashion and beauty work, but aside from her stunning and unique photography, she’s a great speaker and educator. She recently gave a two-hour master class at B&H on how to create a portrait that is a work of art. Listen to her and learn how to elevate your imagery and improve your workflow from pre- to post-production if you wish to build a portfolio that stands out.
Glasses can be a real pain when shooting portraits. Perhaps the subject's glasses don't have the anti-glare coating or even if they do, sometimes your light source can still wreak havoc with reflections. Today I want to share a quick tip on dealing with this issue. Sometimes the reflections can be so bad, they cover a huge part of the actual eye. If it's a tiny spot in the corner of the glasses, we can easily clone it out but if it's covering half the eye that won't work so easily.
Photography can be quite an expensive hobby or career. Needless to say us photographers love our gear and always want more of it - or at least I do! Over the past couple of years, I've been transitioning from being primarily a wedding photographer to incorporating more studio photography in my business. I don't plan on leaving weddings, but I love having a couple more thousand dollars a month doing quick and easy headshot photography. Here's how I built my studio with both simplicity and quality in mind.
LED lights are all the rage these days. Though they're already used quite a bit in the video industry, they're starting to make their way into the stills side of things, with folks like Peter Hurley embracing them. This great video examines the process of shooting portraits with LED panels, as well as the pros and cons of using them over strobes.
When you're shooting portraits, whether in studio or outdoors, you're probably used to controlling your lighting to avoid undesired casts, but there's a potentially surprising source of such casts you might be missing. Check out how much what your model wears and what even what you wear can affect your final images.
If you're just starting with shooting portraits and retouching them, learning and subsequently mastering the myriad of techniques used in Photoshop can be a bit daunting. This helpful video will get you up and running.
Photographers stand behind the camera and models stand in front of it. It's been that way since the dawn of time (or at least cameras). This fun video examines what happens when you switch those roles and the kind of results you'll get.
The difference between good and great posing is all in the details. Whether you photograph men, women, or couples together, knowing how to make everyone look their best is 110% your job as a photographer.
Allow me to put on my curmudgeon hat for a moment, but do you ever feel like photographers shooting for big publications will sometimes go for wild off-the-wall creative concepts that seem to just fall flat? That's how I feel about these portraits of "Game of Thrones" actors for Time magazine from British Photographer Miles Aldridge.
You don't need a ton of gear to produce dramatic portraits. By using focal length and lighting to your advantage you really can add so much more power to your images.
We talk a ton about different lighting setups and how they affect tonal transitions, strength of shadows, etc., but rarely do we investigate how the way we work with our lights affects our subjects' pupil size, and yet, that plays a large role in a person's perception of a portrait.
From Vanity Fair covers to designer fashion shows and theater stages, artist Sarah Oliphant has painted her way into the fabric of fashion by creating beautiful canvases worthy of framing on a scale large enough to become the industry's leading backdrop painter. Oliphant Studio has been creating scenic backdrops for photographers, film producers, fashion designers, architects, and interior designers since 1978. Along the way, Oliphant has collaborated with the top level of fashion and editorial portrait photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Steven Meisel, Patrick Demarchelier, Albert Watson, Mark Seliger, Norman Jean Roy, and Sue Bryce while also providing an inventory of backdrops available for rent to photographers beginning and advanced.
University photographers often end up rubbing shoulders with some pretty famous alumni, and that privileged position sometimes offers the chance to shoot some compelling portraits of said celebrities. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always mean you’ll have a lot of time to bust out the strobes in the studio. Sometimes, all you have is 90 seconds, a speedlight, and a hallway.
After losing almost my entire photo kit due to blatant stupidity on my part (yay insurance), I was put in the unenviable position of rebuilding a camera system from scratch. Being a portrait photographer, I immediately gravitated towards full-frame bodies. I was close to pulling the trigger on one when it hit me: Why not try a crop sensor? I'm glad I did.
A casual conversation leads to an interesting question. There I was again. Spouting endless drivel at the beginning of a date. Trying desperately to impress her with my chatter. Listening to her and responding with what I hoped were deep and probing questions that both relayed my interest in her personally and required a significantly lengthy response which would provide me the necessary time to catch my breath and subdue my nerve-induced racing heartbeat.
No, keep your iPhone in your pocket and forget about the duck lips. We're not talking about selfies; we're talking about self-portraits. Step to the other side of the camera and learn how to take better shots of yourself.
Much like the way the Willie Geist of Sunday Today describes his senior portraits in this video, mine were definitely a somewhat lackluster experience. The "edgy" photos I had were me in front of a shiny corrugated metal wall holding my favorite guitar at the time, I thought I was cool, and thank goodness this was really prior to the days of digital workflows otherwise I would be obligated to have an embarrassing photo of me somewhere in this article. But times have changed, and with those changes the standards for what constitutes a senior portrait have risen exponentially, especially with the emergence of social media's "do it for the likes, bro."
American renowned former White House photographer and photojournalist, Pete Souza, for his first ever audio interview hosted by Ohio University, speaks of his time documenting the professional and personal life of former President Barack Obama.
The traditional workflow to edit a portrait from start to finish usually requires a few different apps. But why complicate things and not just try and rely on one single software to get to the final result? Last month I reviewed ACDSee Ultimate 10 and thought it’d be a good idea to follow up with a tutorial showing how far you can go by using exclusively this photo editing solution to retouch a portrait. Discover all my steps and see how this alternative could perhaps suits your workflow better than your current one.
Just when you thought you needed that crazy portrait lens, along comes someone shooting with nothing more than a drop of water. Check out this cool portrait series shot in a very unique way.
Cleaning hair in post-production is without a doubt retouchers’ and photographers’ worst nightmare. It takes up a lot of time, energy, and precision, but more importantly, there are so many techniques out there that often we forget about even the most basic ones. In this very comprehensive video, Aaron Nace from Phlearn shows how to retouch hair in the most simple way possible.
