Fall is one of the best times of the year to shoot outdoor portraits. This piece will focus on how to best utilize the autumnal light to bring a warm glow to your images and make your subjects look great. Choose your location and time of day with your subjects’ features in mind and explore this magical time of year.

Late Afternoon Light
Alyson is...

As mentioned in the previous tutorials, the impact and success of a studio portrait is often the combined result of lighting, composition, body language, lens choice, camera angle, clothing, color, texture, and even luck. Armed with a few portrait techniques, however, your work will improve dramatically. There are many portrait-making methods that can help you develop your own...

I'd like to preface this article by telling you that I have been involved in this industry as a professional photographer for over 30 years. Outside of the fact that I feel really old now, I think it's important, because as a participant and observer of the portrait and wedding photographic world since the mid-1970s, I've seen many changes and milestones in the...

If you want to be carefully posed next to the beautiful fountain in the picture-pretty park, Cliff Mautner isn't the photographer you hire to shoot your wedding. But if your taste runs to the park in the dark...well, now you're talking.

"Give me anything but another picturesque park," Cliff says, and he's not kidding. "I tell...

I had a thought (it happens!) back in the `80s. I was thinking how great it would be to create a portrait piece of someone that combined several images together to show the many facets of that individual. Let's take an example. Suppose you were commissioned to do a portrait of a young man. His interests may include playing football, swimming, sailing, playing guitar...

For years photographers have extolled the virtues of taking portraits on overcast days or during the "sweet light" that occurs near the beginning and end of every day. On cloudy days, the contrast range is reduced, allowing you to capture detail throughout the image, from the brightest area to the deepest shadow. Near sunset, you also get a reduced contrast range, with...

The Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers (SWPP) invited me to come to England and Ireland to do a series of lectures and classes. The SWPP is fast becoming one of the world's leading groups dedicated to advancing the professionalism of portrait and wedding photographers throughout Europe. Not only were the photographers receptive to my instruction, but they were...