Portraits

Point and shoot. That's how many people think about modern photography. A lot of things we take for granted today developed in the 1800s, including photography. Exposures took days until Louis Daguerre invented his daguerreotype process, which reduced days to minutes and produced clearer, more detailed images. At about the same time, the Victorian Period began with the ascension of Queen Victoria to the British throne. Disease was rampant and mortality rates were high, especially among children under five years old. Arguably, these were contributing factors to the unintended birth of portrait photography.

We demand a lot of portraits lenses. They must be sharp wide open. They must focus well. Their bokeh must be pleasing. A stellar portrait lens is the holy grail for a lot of photographers. So, just which lens is the ultimate Canon portrait lens?

Underwater photography is becoming more popular as technology progresses. The use of an underwater housing dates back to the mid-1800s when William Thompson was utilizing a watertight box over his camera to photograph seaweed near Weymouth, England. Since then, underwater photographs have become an incredible way to explore and understand the life under the surface.

There's no arguing that Bernie Sanders' rise has been one of the most remarkable grassroots campaigns in the history of the U.S. His photographer, Arun Chaudhary, recently gave a fascinating interview on what it's like to photograph Sanders and what he's trying to accomplish in doing so.

In my last article, Adventures in Large Format: A Beginner's Perspective, I talked about some of the things I noticed upon purchasing and attempting to use my first 4x5 large format camera. As fun as fiddling with some knobs and taking a photo of a stool was, it was time for me to point my camera at some actual people. After lugging the camera upstairs and taking portraits of some of the awesome characters that work at the bar, it was time to see how I did.

In the age of the selfie, a truly well-crafted self-portrait can make us take pause. Courtney Emery's images are intriguing and multifaceted creations that draw the viewer in and offer a very interesting look at her identity.

I'm always drawn to behind the scenes videos. I can't decide whether it's seeing how other photographers work or gazing at the equipment I now want to buy. It's probably a little from column A and a little from column B. This behind the scenes video is by Studio NEXT-IMAGE and shows photographer Sails Chong creating world-class shot after world-class shot in Japan using the Hasselblad H5D and Broncolor Siros L.

Four years ago I purchased my first set of studio strobes in an attempt to learn how to shoot portraits like the ones I saw in my favorite print magazines. Having shot most of my portraits using available light at f/2 and under, I thought this would translate over easily when I switched to shooting with strobes. As I snapped my first frame and realized that even at the lowest power setting on the strobe the image was overexposed, I set out to find a way to be able to accomplish the effect. The answer was high-speed sync.

Alexis Cuarezma is a San Francisco – based sports photographer, who specializes in both on-location and in-studio portraiture. In this video Alexis walks us through his photo shoot with IFBB Bikini Pro, Ashley Pfaff, providing a great sense of the process. He begins with the mood board and guides us to the final result, explaining his lighting choices and techniques.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2007. Photographer Platon was selected to take his portrait for the cover, an image which has now gained far more reach and notoriety than just the magazine's cover. Here, he talks about his experience photographing one of the most powerful people in the world.

Oh, what's that? I'm using flashes to take a portrait? Well let's turn those bad boys up to 11 and make that subject pop! When you're first learning to light with flashes, the temptation can be overpowering to drown out all the ambient light in your scene to make your subject stand out. I'd argue that, at least for environmental portraiture, sometimes subtlety with flash is a more compelling way to go.

Canadian Photographer Melissa Trotter is getting a lot of attention with her latest foray into alternative themes. "Blood Dress" was viewed more than 1.3 million times in just 8 hours after being posted online. Inspired by a "milk dress" shoot, Trotter says she instantly fell in love with the idea of creating the same concept with blood. There are plenty of comments to go along with the provocative image. The owner of Stolen Innocence Photography, Trotter says she's been overwhelmed with the response she's gotten, pointing out most of it has been extremely positive.

The latest fantasy shoot from the Slanted Lens instantly brings to mind the incredibly Academy Award winning movie Mad Max. With the help of a local junk yard, some incredible styling, and creative lighting, Jay P was able to execute an eye grabbing shoot. Check out just how he did it.

I am a wide angle fanatic, especially when it comes to prime wide angles. I carry four lenses in my camera bag: two of them are prime wide angles, one prime nifty fifty, and one telephoto. Out of all these four, I found myself reaching just for one particular lens: the Sigma 24mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art. This came to substitute my old Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM lens which I adored, but it used to struggle a bit with chromatic aberrations and at times I craved for a wider view.

For those of you may not know, we recently created a 20 hour photography tutorial with the incredible Joey Wright on all things swimsuit photography and retouching. We've been posting a weekly behind the scenes series of the creation of this tutorial. This is Episode 5.

Some photographers love using macro lenses for portraiture. Others hate it. The choice of using a macro lens when shooting portraits thus becomes an individual one which has a myriad of upsides and downsides which we will cover in this article.

I surround myself with creative and inspiring visionaries. One of them is a conceptual photographer and illustrator named Elena Ohlander, whom I am happy to call my best friend. Her focus is in conceptual self-portraiture and illustration that deals with identity, gender issues, space, individuality, and pop culture. Her main influences are Taiyo Matsumoto, Gregory Crewdson, Paolo Roversi, Cindy Sherman, and Japanese aesthetic.

For those of you may not know, we recently created a 20 hour photography tutorial with the incredible Joey Wright on all things swimsuit photography and retouching. We've been posting a weekly behind the scenes series of the creation of this tutorial. This is Episode 4.

Paris-based French Photographer Dani Olivier has spent eight years refining a process for creating incredibly mesmerizing images by projecting intricate patterns of light onto nude models.

Birth photography has become a popular sub-genre of documentary photography that shows the raw, real, and beautiful journey of bringing new life to the planet. It seems fitting to spend a few minutes on this Mother's Day remembering how your mom earned the right to exclaim: "Hey, I brought you into this world, so [insert personalized threat]!"

I’m sure most of us have been there before: standing on a street corner, your “camera bag that doesn’t look like a camera bag” slung casually over your shoulder. Your camera is in hand, its strap hanging loose, dancing in the summer breeze. You raise the rangefinder window to your eye and snap: the perfect shot of a homeless man! He looks really sad; this will finally change everyone's mind — straight to Instagram. But there’s a fine line between biting social commentary and “Poverty Porn,” and sometimes, it's hard to see which side you’re on.

After recently buying 200 tintypes from the deep archives of estate sales, eBay, and Etsy auctions, I became transfixed by seeking out if there was still anyone making imagery using this 160-year-old process. I found a wide range of Instagram accounts ranging from those just starting out to those with thousands of followers. These are the top 10 tintype photographers that stood out with their compelling visuals and dedication to keeping this lost art alive.

As a headshot and portrait photographer, I'm always looking to streamline my process and create consistent results for my clients. With that in mind I want to share with you my "bread and butter," super-simple setup I've been using for the last two years.

I recently posted an engagement photo in a Facebook group and immediately got a comment on it. The comment said: "Awful expression on her face... would not keep this picture." Although I have pretty thick skin when it comes to snide comments and CC on my images, this comment really got under my skin.

You don’t need the best gear to take good photos, but it sure doesn’t hurt to have them. PRO EDU just dropped the covers on their latest tutorial featuring one of world’s greatest, two-time winner of the esteemed “International Photographer of the Year Award”, Sandro Miller.

I’m a nerd. There, I said it. It’s out there now, and it’s never coming back. I’m adamant that all facets of life are infinitely improved by statistics. I paw over numbers, percentages, and graphs for academia, sports, science, films... the list rolls on. Even reeling off the sort of stats I like makes me want to forge some sort of Excel spreadsheet to identify the stats for which areas benefit the most from stats. Sorry, I digress. The point is fewer things are richer in information than statistics. We often use this approach to compare lenses and cameras, but what if we could apply it to something far more subjective: portraiture?

On one side, we have advertising photography, where everything is contrived and meant to look a certain way. It might as well be a painting with how planned out each step is. On the other, we have photojournalism. As the opposite, true photojournalism should never be staged, posed or "created." The idea is to capture what is and has happened. Unlike a painting, photography has the power to show real time exactly how it is with no artistic interpretation. What captivates me is when those two worlds collide to create art with purpose, and that is exactly what Clay Cook has done with his portraits of impoverished youth in Ethiopia.

Think for a moment about the Tolkien-inspired visions flashing though the mind of Robert Plant as he penned the mystical lyrics to “Ramble On.” Vast landscapes with wandering figures, uncertain of their destination, but driven by their journey. Now get ready to scroll down and get the same feeling.

Today Facebook announced a partnership with Flixel and their Cinemagraph Pro app for iPhone and iPad. You can now make a cinemagraph for your Facebook profile in just a few seconds, and totally for free.

Swimwear Photography with Joey Wright Behind The Scenes continues today with Episode 3. In last week's episode we started filmed the first lesson of the entire tutorial but in this episode we cover 3 full days of filming.