portraiture

How to Shoot Dramatic Portraits with a Point and Shoot Camera and One Light

Photographer and YouTuber Jiggie Alejandrino loves to show his viewers what's possible when shooting with just one light; but for his most recent tutorial, he took the concept one step further. Not only did he shoot this using a single LED light panel, he used a point-and-shoot camera instead of his more professional gear.

How to Photograph Darker Skin Tones with an Off-Camera Flash

I used to think that skin tone was irrelevant to lighting setups. When I photograph people with a flash, I don’t have go-to numbers for the position of my light (distance, height, and angle). My workflow is placing my light somewhere I think it’ll work and fine-tuning from there.

Sigma Unveils 85mm f/1.4 Art Lens for Mirrorless Cameras

The rumors were right: Sigma has unveiled a new 85mm f/1.4 DG DN Art lens designed specifically for mirrorless cameras. Promising stellar optical performance and coming in at just $1,200, the lens undercut's Sony's 85mm G Master by a whopping $600... and yet it doesn't skimp on features.

Photographer Illustrates the Dos and Don’ts of Portraits

Bonnie Rodríguez is on a mission to help people shoot better portraits. The photographer and photography educator has attracted a following of over 745,000 followers on Instagram by regularly sharing side-by-side examples of what you should and shouldn't do when photographing people.

4 Top Tips for Taking Better Photos of Your Kids Indoors

We’re forever taking photos of our children. We want to remember those first experiences, milestones, and adventures. But how many of those photos come out the way you intended, and how many make it onto your walls and into photo books?

These are the Winners of the 2020 Sony World Photography Awards

The World Photography Organization has revealed the winners of this year's Sony World Photography Awards, one of the most prestigious competitions in the industry. Each image—from the overall winner, to the category winners, to the Open, Student, and Youth winners—demonstrate the power of photography to not only capture a meaningful moment, but to send a powerful message.

How to Experiment with Window Light Portraits at Home

Window light portraits are something we all can do from the comfort of our own homes. It's quite amazing during this time of lockdown, actually having the time to observe the light around the home at different times during the day and how it can transform a room as the sun pops out from behind the clouds. So what a perfect time to learn and practice lighting.

How to Edit Portraits in Affinity Photo

Portrait and headshot photographer Ivan Weiss recently created a helpful tutorial that walks you through his entire portrait editing process in the popular Adobe alternative Affinity Photo. If you've been wanting to give Affinity a shot, this is a phenomenal resource.

I Shot the Same Model with Every Sony Lens

I managed to get Sony to lend me every single lens they have to loan and I shot the same model with all them. Many of these lenses are not made for portraits so the sample image may not be relevant to the lens. I just thought it would be interesting to see how the lenses looked when compared side by side.

Catchlights: The Small Detail that Can Make or Break Your Portraits

Photographer Joe Edelman has put together a helpful beginner's guide that explains one of the most important (and easy to overlook) details in portrait photography: catchlights. These specular highlights can make or break your photo, and in this video, Edelman covers all of the basic "dos" and "donts" of catchlights in portraiture.

Photographer Documents Neighbors’ Isolation from His Bedroom Window

In a bid to stay creative (and sane) during lockdown, London-based photographer Christopher Fernandez posted a sign on his bedroom window inviting neighbors to let him document their self-isolation in candid portraits from afar. Much to his surprise, his neighbors came a' calling.

Remotraits: Shooting Portraits via Facetime Through Various Materials

Because of the quarantines currently sweeping the country and world, creatives have had to get especially creative to make collaborative art in spite of distance. I’ve seen photographers shooting portraits of people from the sidewalk and through windows. I’ve also seen photographers shooting via conferencing apps. I, too, recently conducted my own remote portrait sessions, which I’ve decided to call Remotraits.

How to Use Studio Strobes with Fuji Instax Instant Film

Fuji's Instax film is typically thought of as a "snapshot" product, not something you'd use in a studio, but Brooklyn-based photographer Anthony Tripoli hasn't let that stop him. He's figured out a way to shoot studio portraits on Instax film, strobes and all.

How to Shoot Portraits Through FaceTime

If anything good has come out of the current lockdown, it’s the many wonderful ways people have been finding to stay creative. When the coronavirus began to take hold and necessary government instructions rendered my wedding and portrait photography business inoperable, I had to deal with the shock and financial implications of it like any other photographer. It also threw up another challenge: how do we as creatives stay creative?

How Wicker Chairs Became a Portrait Photography Staple for Decades

If you look at album covers from the 1970s, one of the things you'll repeatedly see is a particular type of wicker chair commonly referred to as a peacock chair. Here's an interesting 7.5-minute video by Vox that looks into the history of this photography trope, which was 100 years in the making.

How to Shoot Epic Landscape ‘Selfies’

One of the most impactful types of outdoor portraiture is what you might call the 'epic' selfie: a self-portrait where the landscape photographer becomes a tiny fraction of his or her own composition, giving a sense of scale and awe to an already epic vista.

Portraits In The Time Of Coronavirus: Shooting Free Front Porch Photo Sessions

We are living in unprecedented times. As a photographer of social events (weddings), individual, family, business portraits and sports, the recent closing of schools and the virtual shut down of our towns and cities—basically our lives as we have known it—has shut everything down.

21 Portrait Photography Lessons from 21 Great Photographers

My portrait photography education didn’t happen in a classroom, library, or workshop. Most of what I learned came from studying my heroes’ work, trying to figure out why I loved their pictures, and then putting my own twist on them.

Three Ways to Use RGB Lights in Your Portrait Work

RGB LEDs are a relatively new piece of technology, and a wonderful addition that photographers should be taking advantage of. Before this technology existed, we were forced to resort to adding gels to our strobes in order to add a pop of color into our images. This worked well (and still does) but having the ability to change the hue and saturation of your lights with the flip of a switch or turn of a dial is incredibly useful.

5 Reasons Your Couples Portraits May Look Awkward (And How To Prevent It)

So you’ve just finished your first couples portrait session and once you’ve gotten home and started looking through the images, you realize that something just feels “off” with your shots. Oftentimes it’s just little things we never really pay attention to, especially when we’re trying to catch the last bits of daylight, but they’re all easily avoidable. In this video, we’ll show you 5 reasons why your couples portraits might look awkward, and what you can do to avoid them.

10 Portrait Photography ‘Hacks’ You’ll Wish You Knew Sooner

Portrait photographer Miguel Quiles recently released a two-part series on "portrait hacks" that might be his most popular series of tips ever. In the videos, he covers 10 tips from his years of experience shooting and teaching workshops—tips that he says "everyone wishes they knew sooner."

Portraits of Strangers on the Streets of Cuba

For my project "The World I See," I have gone to 19 countries in the last 12 months and walked up to strangers to ask for their photograph. In the beginning, I was just walking up to people, getting their photographs, and then walking away.

Shooting a Portrait with Light, Shadow, and Highlight

Light, shadow, and highlight -- this is always a great combination for creating portraits from a lighting point of view. This is the interesting part: changing the intensity of the highlight or the tone in the shadows while maintaining the exposure can produce a different feel to an image, from being dramatic to soft and subtle, and that is what is so intriguing about photography.

Three Posing Tips that Will Improve Your Portrait Photography

Posing is one of the most difficult "arts within an art" to master when it comes to photography, but this short video from Eli Infante might help. Eli shares three tips that you can use to liven up your posing and improve your portrait photography in the process.

Shooting Creative Holiday Portraits at Night with a Single Flash

Photographer and YouTuber Irene Rudnik was recently scrolling through Instagram when she stumbled across some beautiful blue-hour snow portraits by photographer @kateblc. Like any good artist, she decided to run with that inspiration, and in the video above, she takes us along behind the scenes to see how she captured a beautiful holiday-themed nighttime portrait using only a single flash.

5 Creative Portraits in a Crappy Parking Lot

You don’t always get perfect locations or circumstances on every shoot, so in this video, we wanted to show you how to achieve 5 creative and unique portraits in a small parking lot.

5 Ways You Can Use a Softbox to Shoot Stunning Portraits

Portrait photographer Miguel Quiles is back with the third part of his series on various lighting modifiers. Part one covered the beauty dish, part two covered the umbrella, and part three is all about the different ways you can use a softbox to capture distinctive portraits.

A Simple One-Light Portrait Setup Every Photographer Should Master

Portrait photographer Miguel Quiles' most recent video breaks down his favorite one-light setup for portraits. The tutorial is perfect for beginners who are just getting started with flash photography—not only is it easy to replicate, but having a one-light setup in your back pocket is a must as a portrait photographer.

How to Get Great-Looking Skin Tones in Lightroom

Ryan Breitkreutz over at Signature Edits has created a useful tutorial that dives into one of the most critical aspects of portrait photography: skin tones. In this 30-minute video, he shares some his personal tips and techniques for capturing natural-looking skin tones, first in-camera, and then in Lightroom.

See Canon’s ‘Dramatically Improved’ Eye Autofocus in Action

Portrait photographer Manny Ortiz recently got the chance to try out Canon's recent autofocus update for the EOS R, and the news is good: according to Ortiz, the update has "dramatically improved" Eye AF performance and totally changed the usability of the EOS R for portraiture.