Lighting How To

(Editor’s Note: Exploring Light is a monthly Shutterbug column featuring tips, tricks, and photo advice from professional photographers in Canon Explorers of Light education program. This month's column is by Bob Davis on how collaboration with other photographers can improve creativity).

Many photographers prefer to shoot portraits outdoors, either because they don’t have a studio or they like the look achieved with available light. There’s a bit more to this method than you may think, but it’s all explained clearly in the behind-the-scenes video below.

Landscape photographers tend to head out in the field with a bunch of gear—everything from filters and a sturdy tripod to an assortment of lenses. The challenge often occurs when you come upon a beautiful scene and can’t quite decide on which lens to pull out of your bag to get the best shot available.

When shooting scenes with a wide range of tones, it can be difficult to balance exposures and details across highlights, midtones, and shadows. One way to do that, that’s recently fallen out of favor, involves High Dynamic Range (HDR) adjustments than often deliver unnatural results.

A "mistake" in photography is something to be avoided, right? That's not always the case and in the below tutorial, pro photographer and educator Karl Taylor explains how a lighting error can sometimes add sex appeal to a portrait.

One way to really mess up an otherwise nice portrait is to get the lighting wrong and end up with shiny hot spots on a model’s face. But if you make that mistake, never fear, because one of our favorite image-editing experts comes to the rescue with a Lightroom quick fix below.

If you’ve ever tried shooting nighttime portraits against a bright city skyline, you how difficult it can be for a subject to remain motionless for a 30-second exposure so both she and the background are properly exposed. Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to this type of portraiture, as you’ll see here.