Portrait Photography How To

It’s one of those debates photographers will probably have for eternity: is it better to shoot using only natural light or with strobe lighting? Of course, there’s no right answer but it’s always fun to put both types of lighting to the test.

Jason Lauré is a veteran of some 25 books during his years as a highly accomplished photojournalist, and his latest--Africatrek--is his most personal book to date. As the subtitle states, this story is "an American photographer's odyssey through Africa." However, this book offers us even more. It's the journey of Lauré's life...

All photos © Joyce Tenneson

As one of today's most successful and influential photographers, Joyce Tenneson has a unique gift for portraying a person's true character in her images. This ability to reveal the true persona in her portrait subjects has become her signature style--one that elicits an emotional response from the viewer.

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Several years ago, singer Paula Cole posed the musical question, "Where have all the cowboys gone?" Apparently, photographer Kendall Nelson has the answer. In her book, Gathering Remnants: A Tribute to the Working Cowboy, Nelson delivers a starkly beautiful pictorial essay on the lives of cowboys who live on working ranches in the American west. For about three and a...

Many portrait photographers employ a portable light to boost ambient illumination and fill in shadows when shooting outdoors. In the four-minute video below you’ll see how simple diffusion panels can modify the quality of light and give you exactly the look you’re after.

Sometimes it’s great to get outdoors and shoot environmental portraits with a real backdrop like Colorado’s Flatiron Mountains outside of Boulder. The problem is that unless you have some sweet golden-hour light, the harsh midday sun can make such a task very difficult.