Pye Jirsa is a director, photographer and educator. Founder and Partner of Lin and Jirsa Photography, a boutique Southern California wedding and portrait photography studio, and SLR Lounge, a photography education website, Pye devotes his time to helping photographers develop their shooting and business skills.
Website: slrlounge.com
Most photographers are taught early on that soft light is the go-to for portraits, and hard light should be avoided whenever possible. But the truth is, the “best” lighting for a photo always depends on what the photographer wants to create.
Rain in the forecast can be a disappointment for photographers and their clients, especially if they planned an outdoor photoshoot. Rain can ruin the vision for perfect, directional lighting that was originally planned, making it difficult to capture the desired mood or atmosphere. However, instead of rescheduling or moving the shoot entirely indoors, photographers have an opportunity to capture interesting and creative photos with an outdoor rain photoshoot. In this article, we’ll provide you with some rain photoshoot tips to prepare and inspire your creativity.
Parent dances, such as the mother-son dance and father-daughter dance, are critical events during most wedding receptions. They are opportunities to capture beautiful, emotional moments that showcase key relationships in your client’s lives. They also give photographers plenty of opportunities to showcase their creativity with interesting compositions, impactful lighting, and more. To help you take better parent dance photos, here are six essential tips.
What's up everyone! My name is Pye and I am one of the educators for FStoppers Bahamas! This is my first article here on FStoppers, and I am really proud to be a part of such a great community of photographers. We all know dodging/burning is a fantastic tool when it comes to retouching. But maybe a less common usage, it is also a fantastic tool to enhance muscle definition. Since most of the time we think of Photoshop when we think of dodging/burning and retouch, we are going to stick within Lightroom just to illustrate how powerful and efficient the Adjustment Brush tool can really be.
Most photographers focus their business growth strategies on booking more clients. However, the most financially savvy photographers understand the full revenue equation, i.e. revenues equals the number of clients multiplied by the average revenue per client. So, for example, if you want to double your revenue next year, you can either double the amount of bookings or you can double the revenue you make for each booking. In this article, we’ll teach you photography pricing tips to help you charge more for each client that you book.
Under the umbrella of wedding photography stands an approach to documenting weddings known as wedding photojournalism. While part of the wedding genre, wedding photojournalism leans more into its photojournalism roots, offering a more "hands-off" approach to capturing the moments of the wedding day.
Lighting can make or break a fitness portrait. Our goal is to highlight the form and definition of your subject as well as the movement if the intended photo involves action. In this tutorial, I'm going to walk through a few basic fitness photography lighting techniques.
Some of my favorite creative photography techniques to use are those that allow us to capture moments in ways we could never see using just our eyes. One technique, in particular, that I turn to for capturing unique portraits involves using long exposure, aka shutter drag. Long exposure portraits open up a number of creative possibilities and often result in “wow” moments with my clients. Putting the technique to use does require some skill and preparation, but it’s easy enough to master once you know the basics.
For the longest time, my favorite lens on any camera system was a 35mm wide-aperture prime. The focal length forced me to get "in the action" for impactful portraits, yet it was wide enough to capture wide angle scenes. But a new lens has recently won my heart and assumed the top spot in my kit. In this video and article, I'll be walking through a photoshoot while demonstrating why the Canon RF 28-70mm f/2 lens is my favorite lens of all time.
Photographing a couple from up close can drastically change the way your image feels. Getting up close with a wide angle lens creates a sense of action and aliveness that draws the viewer in.
As all wedding and portrait photographers have experienced, things often don't go as planned. Two common scenarios are, 1) timeline delays that cut into your ideal outdoor shooting times and 2) rainy or cloudy weather that covers the sun, making the popular backlit look impossible to achieve with natural light. When either of these two things happens, we at Lin and Jirsa Photography use the following five ways to recreate or fake the sun. We hope these tips will come in handy and allow you to wow your clients despite less than ideal circumstances.
As photographers, we come across many different scenarios, and it might not be possible to get the perfect shot with the perfect lighting 100% of the time. It could've been that we didn't have the right gear with us or that we were in a rush. Either way, that shouldn't be a reason to shy away from trying to get the best possible shot and bringing it to life in post-production. In this video and article, I'll be showing you how to fix a portrait with bad lighting in post using Adobe Lightroom.
We often aim to capture great expressions when cueing and posing subjects, but we sometimes overlook basic elements that may distract our viewers. In particular, natural pointers like our arms, hands, fingers, legs, and feet command a strong presence within images, but we don’t always recognize the power of their presence in the moment. While we surrender some control during truly candid moments, we should make every part of an image purposeful and keep natural pointers in check when posing.
It's important to remember that we are here to analyze and understand, but not be overly critical. While these tips/techniques are great in understanding the visual weight and posing elements within an image, they are not reasons to throw out what would otherwise be a great photograph.
There's a good chance you've heard of the "Ring of Fire," a technique popularized by wedding and portrait photographer Sam Hurd. The Ring of Fire is a special effects technique that uses a piece of copper tube to reflect light and create a highlight flare in the shape of a ring. This technique has been widely adopted, and to create this effect for yourself is pretty easy. Today, I'll be walking through the steps to transform your portraits using the famous Ring of Fire technique.
It's quite common to shoot photo sessions in unimpressive locations; it goes with the territory when shooting on-the-go and outside of a studio. Fortunately, we have options to help us transform boring locations into beautiful backdrops, and it’s easier than you think. Making simple light modifications and quick edits in post can mean the difference between creating average imagery versus creating imagery that impresses your clients.
