Photo How To

Some photographers shy away from shooting portraits because they don’t own supplemental lighting equipment or they’re intimidated by the complexity involved. But today we’ll show you how easy it is to make beautiful people pictures outdoors under available light.

You've seen this technique used to streak lights in night scenes, right? Well, you don’t have to wait until it gets dark to join the fun. Learn how to do this easy trick and you can isolate your main subject from a crowded background.

Free lenses. That’s right. They’re everywhere. And that’s not just my cabin fever yapping. 

Some discouraged photographers complain and say they can’t get good shots because they don’t have the time or funds to travel to exotic, photogenic places. Sorry to rain on their pity party, but everyone can get decent images without a travel budget. Here are a couple projects you can start on tonight, as soon as it gets dark.

Need to shoot a camera for eBay, Thingamajig for your employer’s website or pastry for the bake sale? You can get slick, professional-looking results with minimal headache and a very tiny investment using mostly recycled stuff. 

Many, many years ago a coworker at Altman Camera in Chicago showed me that it was possible to screw a Vivitar +10 Macro Adapter into a partially disassembled set of Nikon K-series extension rings and thereby build a soft focus lens that practically exploded with delightfully horrendous aberrations. It was fixed-focus, you had to bob to-and-fro like a drunken sailor to use it, but it was sensationally unsharp and I’ve been hooked on this genre ever since.