Barb Stitzer is an award winning Master Photographer living in Hudson, Ohio with her husband, her teen, Zoe and her tween, Tenley. She creates beauty and memories worldwide. Feel free to find her on Facebook or check out her website.
I remember a long time ago, I took a close up shot that I absolutely loved of a little kid on a slide for an article on a local park that had won a national award.
I proudly brought it to my magazine editor, who said, “That’s great , but where’s the rest of the shot?” She couldn’t tell if the kid were at a carnival or a cave, which made for an unsuccessful park shot…and a bruised ego for me.
… Continue reading How to Use Foreground for Dramatic Portraits
So you’ve been shooting for a while and you want to add a little more visual oomph to your shots, why not try a little low key?
Low key lighting is a classic technique, a la where you use shadow and high contrast to show the shape of your model. Making the background dark can be super complicated or super easy, your choice.
… Continue reading Using Low Key Lighting in Your Portraits: Getting Moody On the Down Low
Do you ever look at a picture and absolutely love it, but you don’t know why? There are a lot of elements that can go into a great shot, but the hardest thing to see/ easiest thing to pick up on are triangles, which are leading lines that frame your subject, drawing your eye deeper into their inner lives.
The more triangles in a picture, the more compelling the shot is.
… Continue reading How to Use Triangles to Improve Your Portraits Composition
Shoot what you love. The Amazing Images Will Follow. That’s my motto.
Above, you can see a shot of my daughters, Zoe and Tenley, on their first day of snow ever. Zoe wanted to hold the snow in her hands and blow it, Tenley agreed, and just as Zoe was blowing, Tenley reached up and whitewashed her face with the snow. I think that the resulting image is my favorite I’ve taken in a long time.
… Continue reading Shooting Winter Wonderland: How to Take Great Snow Images
What to wear? It’s an age old question. One that never goes away. And what to wear for a photo shoot even gets harder. Two weeks ago, Santa brought my oldest daughter, Zoe, ten BILLION outfits from across the globe.
Knit sweaters, lace sweaters, casual sweaters, fringed sweaters…if there was a sweater being made, she got it, in addition to thousands of jeans, leggings, skirts, cords, leg warmers, earmuffs, coats, camisoles, yoga wear and basketball shorts. She got so much clothing that it literally took her four hours just to try it all on.
… Continue reading What to Wear for a Photo Shoot: Clothing for Portraits
Ansel Adams, master of black and white photography, once said; “There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.” So many people take pictures of just whatever… people eating, in awkward positions, with distracting things in the background, etc.,
Then, because that shot took a long time to make, or was hard, even though it’s a bad shot, they feel like they can save it by making it into a black and white. But taking a bad shot and turning it black and white isn’t making it any better, it’s just making a bad black and white shot.
… Continue reading Got Color? No Way! The Whys of a Monochromatic Image
Ahhh, the Holidays. Millions of normally civilized people overextending their budgets and sometimes their left hooks in the pursuit of the perfect gift, stretching their culinary skills (and their smoke alarms) to their furthest heights, and begging and cajoling their extended families into family pictures, lots of them, so that they can forget the stressful, over-emotional, exhausting, sleep deprived knock down, drag out fights and focus on the memories of beauty of the season.
I photograph a ton of families during the month of December, and truth be told, it’s pretty stressful getting people in the perfect outfits when they are balancing a head full of thousands of dancing sugarplums.
… Continue reading Home for the Holidays: Christmas Photography Tips
Depth of field basically means how much of your picture, from foreground to background is sharp. So there you have it, see you next week, bye, byeeeeee….Oh, are you still here? That wasn’t enough? Ok, so depth of field depends on several things, all centering arount the f stop of your camera, one of a triumvirate of things that allow you to let light in, the other two of which are shutter speed and ISO.
Your fstop is how big the hole that lets the light in is. The smaller the number, the bigger the hole, so at f32, the hole is a tiny pinhole and at 1.2 it’s pretty gosh darned huge. . It lets you determine what in your picture is sharp and what isn’t…it draws focus to what you find important about the picture.
… Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Depth of Field in Photography
When I first bought my little Canon AE1 back in 1993 and started shooting, I couldn’t afford a flash.
I shot everything in natural light, and I think I made every mistake known to mankind, so for those who would like to learn from my mistakes, this one’s for you!!
… Continue reading Go Au Naturel: Shooting Portrait in Natural Light
Sunspots, they’re such an enigma. They’re huge right now. Everyone wants to see them in their photos, but they don’t want to have them on their wall…unless you do it right.
When I first started in photography, 20 years ago, there were Big Taboos, the Uncrossable Chasms that one never even considered crossing;
… Continue reading Shooting Sunspots or How to Get a Beautiful Lens Flare
