In today’s photo tip, we begin a study of still life photography techniques. We’ll start out with a still life photography definition that will describe the two main areas of still life photography. Learning how to shoot still life photos should make you start jumping up and down with joy. Why? Getting good at the […]
In today’s landscape photography photo tip, we will further our investigation into getting better sunset photos. We’ve discussed how to meter the sky to establish our starting exposure, and then we discussed how to tweak the exposure to get more intense colors. Now let’s talk about composition. In previous articles, I’ve discussed making something in […]
In previous articles, we began our study of lighting patterns for portrait photography with broad lighting, short lighting, and split lighting. Now let’s move on to loop lighting. In portrait photography, this lighting pattern tends to be one of the most popular. It’s easy to set up and is flattering to most faces. Remember that […]
In previous articles, we’ve discussed photo lighting patterns where we place the light source to the side of the subject–split lighting, loop lighting and Rembrandt lighting–and create shadows that go off to the side. Continuing with our series of portrait photography lighting patterns, today’s photo tip discusses butterfly lighting. Keep in mind that shadows create […]
In a prior photo tip article, we started talking about lighting patterns in portrait photography. Today we’ll continue our lighting pattern discussion with split lighting. This photo lighting pattern tends to go against most of our portrait photography posing “rules.” We began our lighting patterns discussion by talking about broad lighting and short lighting. While […]
While entertaining, attending concerts and sports events can get pretty expensive, especially if you want good seats for photographing. On top of the expense, many events won’t even allow you to bring a camera. Here is how you can get free tickets to big events and gain practice with event photography. This method doesn’t always […]
When posing, have her seated on a stool or chair – preferably with no back – where she can have both feet flat on the floor and so that she cannot lean back and/or lounge. Have her sit up straight. (Like mother always used to say)! Have her turn about 45 degrees to the side so that she is not straight on to the camera. The ONLY time you want a subject’s shoulders straight on to the camera is if they are a football player in full uniform. Wide faces can be narrowed by turning her head to a three quarter view. Thinner faces can be widened by having her turn more toward the camera.
Whether you’re a photography newbie or you’ve been around the block a few times, it doesn’t take long to learn that properly lighting a portrait subject can make a huge difference in the quality of the finished portrait.
When you study the various lighting patterns, you’ll see they are almost all defined by the shadows – not the light!
