Pro Techniques

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Steve Bedell  |  Apr 01, 2011  | 

In today’s world, stock photos often sell for pennies, yet there are still photographers out there making a good living selling work for a good price. By talking with stock shooter Bill Bachmann, I found out that I, and most of my portrait/wedding brethren, have been missing the boat big time by not using our client images for stock images. According to Bachmann, we’re sitting on a gold mine and...

Jack Neubart  |  May 04, 2011  |  First Published: Apr 01, 2011  | 

Automotive photography involves more than cars, although these vehicles make up the bulk of this genre. Automotive can also mean motorcycles and practically any motorized conveyance that hits the road. Tackling these vehicles may appear overwhelming at first, but not to veteran automotive photographer Richard Izui.

Steve Bedell  |  Mar 01, 2011  | 

Most of us know about making outdoor portraits using the small fill flash on our cameras. But these photos have a “look” that tells everyone they were “made with flash.” They have a flat, often harsh look to them. A more sophisticated technique that can be accessed with many new cameras is the use of off-camera flash; you can even use multiple units controlled directly from the camera. I use...

Mike Ware  |  Mar 01, 2011  | 

For its first 160 years, photography was based on silver. Effectively all camera negatives have to be made of this metal because only silver halides are fast enough to record analog chemical images “instantaneously”—or even in a couple of minutes. But printing from the negative need not be speedy, so the door is open to several slower photochemical processes for printmaking.

Lorraine A. DarConte  |  Mar 01, 2011  | 

In recent years, “posing” has made a big comeback thanks in part to the deluge of photo enthusiasts with decent, affordable equipment who have swelled the ranks of wedding photographers to the point of bursting. This situation isn’t likely to change any time soon, so smart photographers have been buying books and videos and attending workshops and conventions to learn how to properly pose people...

Gary Fong  |  Mar 01, 2011  | 

Many photographers will walk out the door for a portrait shoot with little more than a camera and a reflector. They do so based on the common belief that flash photography is meant exclusively for indoor shooting, that flash is only used when there isn’t enough light to achieve a perfect exposure. However, based on my experience, a flash combined with a few affordable accessories has tremendous...

Maynard Switzer  |  Mar 01, 2011  | 

I’m writing this in mid-December as I’m making plans for a February trip to Vietnam. As those plans are shaping up, it might be a good time to talk about how I decide what to take on my photo trips and how I try to ease it all through the world’s airports.

The gear I take depends on where I’m going, how long I’ll be there, and what I expect to accomplish. One thing I know from the...

Steve Bedell  |  Feb 01, 2011  | 

Eric Luden is a former executive at Ilford Photo, a noted commercial and fine art photographer, and the founder of Digital Silver Imaging, a New England lab that works exclusively in black and white. During the 1990s, he served as a consultant with Eastman Kodak’s black-and-white division before joining Ilford, where he worked for over 12 years. In 2006, he became the VP of North American...

George Schaub  |  Feb 01, 2011  | 

Every digital image starts out as a color image, an RGB that, when shot in Raw format and loaded as a 16-bit file, contains millions of color and brightness codes. These codes, or pixel addresses, can be manipulated in many ways using presets or “manual” adjustments to create looks that range from “true” to highly stylistic interpretations of the content within the image.

Jack Neubart  |  Feb 01, 2011  | 

“My look is all about capturing a natural quality in the person I’m portraying,” Bil Zelman observes. “I find that strobe is very distracting for people.” That doesn’t mean that Zelman entirely shuns strobe. On the contrary, he’ll use it, but more often than not chooses available light to imbue the shot with the quality he’s after. As we’ll...

Maynard Switzer  |  Jan 01, 2011  | 

Ten years ago, when I was primarily a fashion photographer, I did a shoot in Cuba. Normally I’d have used medium and long telephoto lenses, but because the narrow streets I was shooting on featured colorfully painted walls, I switched to a 35mm lens. With that lens I was able to show not only the models but also the background, which revealed a bit about the location. Equally important, I...

Jack Neubart  |  Dec 01, 2010  | 

Berlin is a vibrant city, alive with a history, culture, and counterculture all its own. I didn’t expect to fall in love with it, but did. Interestingly, everywhere you turn in this metropolis you see huge derricks craning their necks in the midst of constructing yet another building. While many scenes may reflect this burgeoning vitality, there are countless views free of any construction...

Lou Jacobs Jr.  |  Dec 01, 2010  | 

Photo Arts group members live in the Palm Springs, Redlands, and Joshua Tree areas of California, and we are very informal with no officers or rules at monthly meetings. We exchange critiques and chat about photography in many of its myriad forms. We also eat well.

Some members are experts in Photoshop and related programs, some are infrared fans, a few favor black and white, and...

Jack Neubart  |  Nov 01, 2010  | 

“I can trace my roots in photography back to when I was a student at the Ontario College of Art (Toronto),” Andrew Eccles recalls. “But there was one problem: back then, I found it intimidating to approach people with the camera, so I avoided photographing them.

“Then I came to New York and started studying magazines such as Rolling Stone, and, through a...

Steve Bedell  |  Oct 01, 2010  | 

I first met Eddie Tapp when I attended the Professional Photographers of America Judges Workshop in Atlanta in 1997. Flash forward to today when film is a niche in photography, and photographers around the world recognize Tapp as one of the premiere Photoshop/digital imaging experts in the world. He lectures and consults to individuals and corporations around the world and can be found presenting...

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