Recently, I was at a local dance studio taking a headshot for one of their dancers, Crystal. While headshots can be fairly straightforward, it is always good to keep different lighting approaches in mind. Here, I ran through some fairly fundamental...
When it comes to photographing jewelry, there are different approaches to consider with regards to how each particular piece will come across. If you are deadline driven and have many pieces to photograph, you...
If you're like most photographers, you probably prefer to spend most of your time behind the camera rather than in front of it. I am no exception. Inevitably, however, there are times when smiling for the camera is unavoidable. For instance, my...
Until recently,
most small business owners would never have entertained the idea of producing
their own images of their product for advertising purposes. Easy to use
digital cameras, image- editing software, and basic lightingequ...
There are many photographers who absolutely dread the thought of shooting jewelry. After all, jewelry is often highly reflective, very small in size, and can be difficult to work with in creating a composition.
In the world of fashion and high-end portrait photography, lighting is the key to professional-looking images. Having the ability to control the light that falls on your subject allows you many different ways of expressing an idea...
Color temperature refers to the frequency of color that can be measured from any particular light source. The efficiency of our own visual experience, however, can make the idea of color temperature somewhat confusing. This is because our eyes have...
In order to demonstrate the basics of outdoor portraiture, we brought a local model and our photography crew to a beautiful nearby beach. Careful planning and the right equipment allowed us to achieve stunning results. Being equipped with a...
Photographing people outdoors can present a number of challenges, particularly on a bright sunny day. Because film (or a CCD) from a camera cannot compensate for contrast as well as the human eye, it is often imperative to modify the light...
The lighting in most of the outdoor model shots you see in catalogs, magazine ads, and even movies is not always entirely natural. Because sunlight can be very high in contrast, it can be more of a detriment to the looks of your subject than an asset.
Photographing highly reflective objects can be one of the most challenging tasks a product photographer can face. Simply trying to control and modify the reflections that show up can prove to be daunting. However, once you know how to modify these...
For many fashion and portrait shots, it is necessary to use several different light sources to get good results. It is not uncommon to have a main light, a fill light, a hairlight, and one or two background lights. However, sometimes a great shot can...
My favorite season for nature photography is winter. The air is crystal clear, trees often stark, graphic forms against a background of dazzling whiteness, and the profound quiet and solitude of a frigid day in the wild can be an overwhelming...
The intriguing thing about lightpainting is you never know exactly what you’re going to get. And whatever you get, you won’t get it again. That’s part of the technique’s appeal: you’re creating a one-of-a-kind photograph.
Simply, a lightpainting photo is an image made with a handheld, constant light source in a dark room or environment. The camera’s sensor captures only what you choose to illuminate. Lightpainting images can range from relatively simple to fairly complicated. Striking photos can be created indoors with nothing more than a still life subject, a tabletop to put it on, and a small LED penlight to light it. Or you can think big: how about a mega-powerful spotlight illuminating prairie land in the Grand Tetons or a mesa in Monument Valley?