In the last two installments we covered basic three and five light studio lighting and that was good. Studio lighting is great if you have a place to work and provided your subject can come to you.
There’s an old Arabic proverb that says when you can’t bring the mountain to your studio, you have to find a way to light the mountain, or something like that. I may be paraphrasing just a bit.
… Continue reading The Best Options for a Great Portable Lighting Kit
This is another in a series of articles on studio lighting that I put together with help from Karl Leopold at ImagesForever.net in Melbourne, Florida. Karl graciously opened his studio to me and patiently went through the basics of lighting a studio portrait.
Last time we went over a fairly basic three-point lighting setup for studio photography and that was fun and you can do quite a lot just by moving the lights around and adjusting your camera settings. But for many only using three lights left you wanting more.
More lights, you say! You want to burn more power! Yeah, buddy, now you’re talking my language! So you want it bigger; well, my friend, step right this way.
… Continue reading Studio Lighting Setups for Portrait Photography: Part II
There’s a myth out there, in the real world, that says “to take great photos, you have to have a great (read expensive) camera”. This has been a subject of debate for years amongst the gear heads and elitists in the world of photography. The bottom line: it’s simply not true. Anyone, anywhere, can make solid photos with just about anything that qualifies as a camera so long as you understand and apply the fundamentals of photography. If this wasn’t true, why is the iPhone the top camera used for photos submitted to Flickr?
… Continue reading Can You Take Great Photos With An Inexpensive Digital Camera?
If you’re serious about being in the photography business to make money, then you’ll definitely want your website to be found easily by the people who are looking for your type of services, which means paying close attention to search engine optimization. SEO for photographers can sometimes be a challenge, but that need not be the case.
When used correctly, SEO can help to bring the right customers straight to your door – people who are searching for exactly what you offer, and who are ready to buy from you.
To do that, you must adopt a strategic approach to ensure that every page of your photography website is properly optimized for those keywords important to your business, and we talked about how to perform keyword research in the previous article in the series (SEO For Photographers Part 1: What Are People Looking For?).
But when you’ve identified the keywords and phrases you want to rank for, how and where do you deploy them to your website for the best effect?
… Continue reading SEO For Photographers, Part 2: Where To Use Your Keywords
With so many beautiful and inspirational locations all over the world just waiting to be captured, knowing where to take your camera next can be a battle.
From the breathtaking British Isles to the peaks of the picturesque Peruvian mountains, we’ve compiled a list of the top ten destinations in the world that every landscape photographer should add to their bucket list.
Ready? Let’s roll…
… Continue reading Top Ten Destinations in the World for Landscape Photography
Did you know that ‘getting organized’ is one of the top ten New Year’s resolutions? It’s true! So let’s roll up our sleeves and get to tidying up your lightroom editing process. Lightroom, after all, is an archive of your work, a database of your creative content.
Having a streamlined system will allow you to minimize your editing and post-processing time. Don’t let those digital dust bunnies pile up!
… Continue reading How to Get Your Lightroom Catalogue Perfectly Organized
Shadow photography is a simple, yet effective way to create stunning images of just about any subject. All you need to get started in shadow photography is a light source and a subject who casts a shadow – that’s it!
If you are interested in trying out shadow photography, here are some tips to get you started:
… Continue reading 5 Quick Tips for Awesome Shadow Photography Images
Life is happening all around you. Every day is full of amazing, once in a lifetime moments that you can’t wait to capture and share.
Unfortunately for us as photographers, the moments we most want to capture often happen in less than ideal lighting conditions.
This is why flash photography is a great tool to have in your arsenal. Flash photography allows you to take well-exposed photos in virtually any lighting condition.
… Continue reading Do You Get the Most Out of Your On-camera Flash?
I went to the movies to see Skyfall recently. As I sat amongst strangers, throwing popcorn into my mouth, it suddenly dawned upon me that what a movie, at its simplest, is just a big collection of photographs.
Consider this: a movie’s sole purpose is to tell a story. So the movie-maker’s job is to position his cameras, subjects and lights to create compositions, angles and look/feel in a way which powerfully communicates his story – moment, by moment, by moment.
Frame, by frame, by frame. Photograph, by photograph, by photograph.
You want to improve your photography? Forget about photography courses – go watch a movie! But first…
… Continue reading How To Become A Better Photographer By Watching Movies
This begins a series of articles on studio lighting that I put together with help from Karl Leopold at ImagesForever.net in Melbourne, Florida. Karl graciously opened his studio to me and patiently went through the basics of lighting a studio portrait.
Portrait lighting is one of those deceptive subjects where it’s easy to grasp the concept, but can take years to master the application. Yet when all the pieces come together it can be magic. Getting all the move parts of a great portrait to come together at the same time can be a little frustrating, but all the effort seems like nothing the first time you see a great portrait hanging on the wall and realize you shot that!
A great portrait is one that the subject and people who know them leave on the wall for decades, a shot that not only shows what a person looked like but defines them. But before the glory comes the tough march up the hill of learning.
Some elements of studio photography are surprisingly technical and to keep it from sounding like a university lecture, I’ll need to break up the topics a little.
… Continue reading Studio Lighting Setups for Portrait Photography
