Lighting How To

If you’ve been following our product reviews, you know that one of the benefits of today’s advanced lenses is that they are designed to minimize lens flare, ghosting and other stray light artifacts. But what if you could use these light anomalies to create attractive portraits with a unique look?

Natural looking outdoor portraits can be difficult to make, especially under harsh lighting conditions. Using flash can help you meet this challenge, but only if you employ the proper technique. 

Most of us occasionally shoot portraits at home, and in the absence of a real studio rely upon a white wall as the backdrop for our shots. For those on a budget, wouldn’t it be nice to do something more dramatic without spending money on a custom backdrop or fiddling around with Photoshop?

As people move through different stages of their life, photographic records of these events are the mainstay of the portrait photographer’s business model. The idea of hiring a professional photographer to capture life’s important moments will never be completely replaced by relying on family or friends to “just take a picture.” 

Successfully capturing dancers with grace, style, and a certain sensibility for how they move takes a discerning and artistic eye. Equally, it takes an appreciation and understanding of how dancers do what they do to be able to capture just the right moment. And all that defines the photography and lighting techniques of Lois Greenfield.

We’re all familiar with the notion that the camera adds 10 pounds to people in our photos. Rather than debating the veracity of that claim, we’d thought we’d share the following video from SLR Lounge, describing a simple lighting technique for making portrait subjects appear thinner.