Pro Techniques

After a while, showing wasn’t enough. Telling became the point.

And because Chris Heisey knows his Civil War, he has a lot to tell in his photographs.

Chris has been photographing Civil War battlefields for almost 20 years, and at the start he took straightforward record shots. “I’m self-taught,” he says, “and...

One of my favorite books as a child was Eric in the Land of the Insects, written by the Dutch author Godfried Bomans. In this humorous fantasy, 9-year-old Eric enters the landscape painting that hangs on his wall and discovers a world of man-sized wasps, bees, butterflies, and other insects that are stunningly similar to the world of humans. Once photography became a part of my life my world was populated with grasshoppers, spiders, snails, flies, dragonflies, and butterflies—Eric’s world.

Mirroring photos has always been one of my favorite techniques, and it is a relatively easy way to come up with some fun and creative images. Mirroring images consists of duplicating part of a photograph and flipping it around in different ways to create a mirrored effect. I use all kinds of subjects for these creations and I am constantly looking for things that would produce...

As mentioned in the previous tutorials, the impact and success of a studio portrait is often the combined result of lighting, composition, body language, lens choice, camera angle, clothing, color, texture, and even luck. Armed with a few portrait techniques, however, your work will improve dramatically. There are many portrait-making methods that can help you develop your own...

Photos © 2004, Roger W. Hicks, All Rights Reserved

We fly less than we used to. Terrorists don't worry us: realistically, flying is still far safer than driving. But we don't like the hassle, three-hour check-ins, restricted carryons, frequent x-rays, and endless security checks. In that sense, the terrorists have made us (and many other people) change...

It's challenging to get the right combination of true color, composition, and light playing on figures who are moving in unprecedented positions at a rapid rate of speed. The dancers are theatrical, sassy, and innovative, and this is where Boston photographer Jeffrey Dunn shines as he photographed America's Ballroom Challenge for Public Television's presentation...

One of the traditional compositional guidelines that many artists and photographers adhere to is that a subject’s movement should go toward the center of the frame. You can see this method of composing an image in the photo of the frigate bird (#1) that I placed on the left side of the frame; it is flying toward the imaginary vertical center line of the image. Similarly, I placed the tall...