Portrait Photography How To

The flash vs natural light debate is almost as old as photography itself. (Or at least as old as flash photography itself.) Photographer Craig Beckta recently jumped into the fray with the below video, which is titled “7 Reasons Why Flash Is Better for Portraits Than Natural Light.”

We’ve shared quite a few videos recently on how to effectively pose people in photos and they’ve proved to be quite popular. So, here’s another one with a slightly different spin on posing we think will help you out on your next portrait shoot.

My approach to taking portraits is simple: I want to capture natural, relatable images, where I'm able to catch every individual's true essence and true identity. For me, prime lenses are the ideal type of lens for this type of photography.

For the past 30 years, my great passion has been to travel to the world’s most remote and beautiful places on earth telling stories with my camera. I spend weeks at a time immersing myself into the landscapes and with the people who inhabit these lands.

Julia Trotti has been our go-to photographer for comparing prime lenses for portrait photography. In her latest head-to-head lens test, Trotti compares shooting portraits with an 85mm prime lens vs. using a 135mm lens to find out which one is better.

When I’m looking at ways to do a specific task my brain often reverts to Occam’s razor. (Occam was a logician and Franciscan friar in the 14th century.) The way I interpret it, is that if there are many ways to do something the easiest and most direct method is usually correct. It’s the KIS principle and keeping it simple works best for me. Like most people, especially those of us who are self employed, there aren’t enough hours in the day, so I’m extremely concerned about workflow and just how much time each project is going to take. If I have a task, like organizing and editing my work, that I can do one way that takes an hour and another that takes 30 minutes, I’ll take the 30 minute option every time. With all that said, I’ll explain how I handle a portrait session, from the original shoot to ordering the final images. It may or may not fit your way of doing things, but just keep my buddy Occam in mind and remember there’s more to life than sitting in front of a computer.

Anita Sadowska is a professional fashion photographer based in Dublin, and in this quick tutorial she teams up with an experienced model to demonstrate simple posing techniques that will help you shoot boudoir photos at home like a pro.