Lighting

Creating portraits outdoors can present a number of challenges, particularly on clear, sunny days. Because direct sunlight is one of the most "high contrast" light sources there is, it is often too harsh for natural-looking...

Spain offers a veritable feast of photographic subject matter, with its wide variety of people, scenic countryside, castles, coastline, and architecture. You can choose...

Few people realize that photographic spot meters date back some 2/3 of a century. The very first was built by Arthur Dalladay, editor of The British Journal of Photography, in about 1935; he described it in the BJP Almanac of 1937 on pages 127-138. This meter still exists, in the possession of a...

Recently, I was at a local dance studio taking a headshot for one of their dancers, Crystal. While headshots can be fairly straightforward, it is always good to keep different lighting approaches in mind. Here, I ran through some fairly fundamental...

People who have attended art classes have been taught that in order to produce depth in a painting there must be a foreground, middle ground, and background. Control over this dimension and depth usually is the result of planning and foresight. As...

For many fashion and portrait shots, it is necessary to use several different light sources to get good results. It is not uncommon to have a main light, a fill light, a hairlight, and one or two background lights. However, sometimes a great shot can...

Most people assume that professional portraiture requires expensive camera strobes for good results. Strobes can work beautifully with portraits, particularly when used with softboxes, but they are not necessary in many situations. Armed with equipment to...