In this short video, Colin Smith at PhotoCAFE comes through once again with an easy way to improve the look of your photographs using gaussian blur in Photoshop. The tip itself is worthwhile, but his "bonus" tip is the key to making it really work.
Lightroom’s tone curve is one of those tools that is often looked over, especially with beginners. This video will explain everything you need to know to get started using this powerful tool.
There’s a slew of backdrop options out on the market today for you to choose from. Sometimes, those options don't always fit your vision, whether because of budget or creativity. So, what do you do then? Why not make your own canvas?
At some point, all creatives fall into ruts where it’s difficult to imagine new concepts. Unfortunately, inspiration doesn't always present itself. Sometimes we have to create it. Below is a list of practices I follow.
One of the most fundamental skills you can have when it comes to artificial lighting is learning to balance the ambient and strobe. This great video goes behind the scenes of a sunset portrait shoot to show how to do just that to get both a properly exposed subject and background.
I'm no painter. In fact, if we ever play Pictionary together, do your best to get on the other team. So, when I wanted to make my own custom backdrops, I knew I was way out of my depth. Like many photographers, I've drooled over Sarah Oliphant's hand painted backdrops for years. When I saw Jeremy Cowart draw his own backdrop on an iPad Pro, I thought I may have something within reach. While I continued trying to decide exactly what Oliphant backdrop I want to start with, I thought maybe I could experiment with some digital painting of my own.
"How did you retouch that?" This is the common question I see most when I post my images online. Unfortunately, answering that question directly won't get photographers any closer to being able to replicate that style on their own. In order to broaden the dialog here are five things you must understand if you want to get skin looking beautiful in your portraits.
Photography of any kind at night can be a slow process getting started. Photographing the Milky Way, however, may require a little bit of extra technical knowledge ahead of time before really letting your creative side take over. In this video from PhotoRec TV, Toby Gelston breaks it all down before jumping into it.
Candlelit portraits are cool, especially when shot inside the studio in a planned way. With a little imagination and a simple technique, you can create vivid candlelit portraits.
You know those tricks that are so brilliant in their simplicity that you smack your head in disbelief when you see them? That was me the first time I saw this. Here's a great way to avoid lens flare and loss of contrast when you're shooting into the sun.
Finland-based commercial photographer Antti Karppinen shares what he thinks are the "7 Most Common Studio Portrait Light Mistakes" and how to fix them. Barring any creative differences, these are pretty good rules of thumb.
Making sure your images are sharp is a necessity for every photographer. Getting your focus right in camera is of course key but there is always room for improvement in post. Like most things in Photoshop, there are multiple ways to sharpen an image, but my absolute favorite is the High Pass filter. Colin Smith of photoshopCAFE explains exactly how it works and why it's the best way to sharpen your images.
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.
Some model poses seem to pop up everywhere repeating across different mediums and across decades. Many photographers deride these posing cliches, but these cliches can be useful on fashion and other model shoots, especially when working with new models still learning how to move. They can help create serviceable images when you are stuck for ideas or when you need shoot a series of good looks in a short period of time.
Even if you're not J.J. Abrams. a little lens flare can be a great way to add a new look to your shots. Learn how to control it and how to manipulate its appearance with this helpful video.
As with any craft, there are fundamental techniques which should always be considered regardless of the job, model, or location. Even working professionals overlook general rules from time to time and occasionally need to be reminded.
For many photographers, the majority of their subjects aren't models and aren't trained in posing. And so, it falls to the photographer to really be able to guide the subject to finding suitable looks. This great video gives you some quick tips on how to do just that.
Implementing gels into your photography is a really simple and effective way to make sure your images really stand out from the rest of the crowd. There are a ton of different ways to use gels to create some absolutely stunning imagery, but in this post I am just going to show you a few ways that you can use them to add color to your background to produce really dynamic portraits.
We've planned for the aurora and captured a ton of images in the previous episode. We've left the arctic and are back at home under the soft glow of our calibrated screen. It's time to process these babies. Be aware that there's advanced editing stuff ahead. If this goes straight above your head, I recommend that you stick with processing in Lightroom until you've got that under control. We have a lot to cover, so let's get started.
So how do you make that mountain appear as large to the viewer as it does to you? How do you get rid of noise in your nightscape images? And how can you get everything in perfect focus, front to back? This might as well be titled “5 Things you can’t do in one shot,” since each technique in this essay relies heavily on layering multiple exposures of a given landscape scene. I’ll show you the techniques I often use to translate my vision to the image. Let’s go.
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