Lighting How To

Whether the holidays bring out your “Humbug!” or your “Ho, ho, ho!” there’s one thing you must admit: it’s the most colorful season of the year. Except maybe for spring. And autumn. Anyway, all seasonal colors are just begging to be zoomed, blurred and pleasantly smeared. Smartphone users: you can play too.

Getting the light right is perhaps the most essential component of all great images, whether they're captured indoor or out. But there's another crucial component that can really add depth and impact to a photo, namely the thoughtful use of shadows.

Photographer Gary Daniels captured this epic image during this year’s July 4th celebrations in Addison, Texas. The plane is a World War II-era B-25H Mitchell bomber from the Cavanaugh Flight Museum, which was taxiing on the runway just as fireworks were going off behind it. 

One often overlooked technique for improving outdoor photographs is using a your camera’s built-in flash or a more powerful external unit for filling in shadows, adding sparkle to a subject’s eyes and much more. If you think this requires complicated camera and flash settings, read on.

We thought we’d start the day with a fun short-and-sweet” technique for embellishing photos with sunstars captured in the camera. So pull up a chair, watch the two-minute video below, and see how it’s done.

Some landscape scenes look far more compelling when rendered in b&w, whether you captured the shot using your camera's monochrome mode or do a conversion later during the editing process. In either case, some thoughtful processing is required for optimum results.

Great lighting in boudoir photography is key. How to create the right light for an eye-catching lingerie photo can be tricky though.