Lighting How To

Ways to be bright when it gets dark.

Low-light photography can yield some amazingly striking and unusual images. But it also presents a problem. You need a fast enough shutter speed to prevent camera-shake-induced image blurring, and sometimes to "freeze" a moving subject. You often need to shoot at a small enough aperture to provide adequate depth of field. You want to use the...

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.

Not everyone who shoots portraits can have a fancy studio. Sometimes, you have to work with what you have, which can be a small space at home or even a room in an apartment. Just because you're shooting portraits in a small space doesn't mean you can't have professional-looking lighting though.

Here’s an interesting challenge in which three photographers shot the same pretty model using off camera flash and came up with varied results reflecting their personal approach to portraiture. Francisco Hernandez of FJH Photography organized the shoot and was joined by fellow photographers Eli Enfante end Jeff Antons.

We’re all looking for a creative edge to make our images a bit different from the rest, and in this behind-the-scenes video you’ll pick up four simple tricks for shooting unique nighttime portraits on the street. In just eight minutes you’ll see how to add the “wow factor” to photos shot after dark.

Some photographers fall into a rut by shooting the same type of images over and over again. For some that means landscape photos, for others it’s portraits, macro, wildlife, or whatever specialty they enjoy. The problem with this approach is it’s easy to get a bit stale.