shadows

How to Create White, Black, and Gradient Backgrounds in Photos

Creating an evenly lit background can be trickier than one would think, but is a skill that every photographer should master. But with the right equipment and knowledge, it gets much easier to capture a pure white, black, or colored gradient background in-camera without the need for heavy Photoshop cleanup in post.

An Intro to Shadows in Photography

What is a photograph? There are many different ways to answer this simple question, but in basic abstract terms through the lens of lighting, every photograph is a combination of highlights and shadows. The only reason we see depth and dimension is in fact shadow. Understanding shadows is crucial in growing as a photographer.

This AI Automatically Removes Harsh Shadows from Your Portraits

A team of computer scientists from Google, MIT, and the University of California, Berkeley have created an impressive AI-powered "shadow removal" tool that can realistically remove harsh shadows from portraits, while leaving natural shadows intact. The results are impressive.

Is it Wrong to Photograph ‘Light’ in Street Photography?

There is an observation about stand up comedians that once they reach a certain level of fame their material becomes less about "grounded" observations and criticisms and instead becoming more about airplane food and hotel rooms.

Photographer Captures San Francisco Sights as Shapes

Photographer Burton Rast has just completed a new project titled, The Shapes of San Francisco. He spent 100 days exploring SF and shooting one photo per day of the city's most popular and photographed sights, but "in a unique way." Each photo focuses on shapes.

Minimalist B&W Photos of Birds in the Skies Above Greece

For his personal project Above The Street, Below The Sky, photographer Andreas Kamoutsis spent over two years watching and photographing the birds flying above the busy streets of big cities in Greece. The series is a minimalist, black-and-white study of shadows and shapes.

Photos of Light, Shadows, and Lines at the BMW Headquarters

BMW's headquarters are an iconic landmark in Munich, Germany -- the uniquely designed complex was deemed a protected historic building in 1999. Munich-based photographer Skander Khlif visited the tower and shot a series that studies the light, shadows, lines, and silhouettes.

How to Fake a Before and After Photo: The Power of Lighting and Posture

As photographers, we're already intimately familiar with the importance of lighting and posture, but just how much of a difference can the proper pose and lighting make? This video by BuzzFeedBlue, titled "How to Fake a Before and After Photo," answers that question by showing the shift in real-time.

ISS Astronaut Captures the Thousand-Mile Shadows Clouds Cast on Earth’s Surface

Hovering somwhere between 205 and 255 miles above Earth is the International Space Station, currently housing six intrepid explorers that are hurtling through space at roughly 4.8 miles per second.

And one of those individuals is Alexander Gerst, a geophysicist who spends a great deal of his time on the ISS holding a camera and putting it to use taking pictures of our planet.

Tutorial Shows How to Correct Skin Tones, Colorize Shadows and Add Light Effects

When it comes to nailing the white-balance in a photo, it's rarely an easy task, especially with portraits. It becomes even more arduous when you're trying to stylize the image a certain way, since you might not want the same tones and color balance in your skin tones as you do in the rest of your image.

This tutorial by the folks at Phlearn shows you how to get past those challenges and achieve the results you want in every part of your photo without having to sacrifice elsewhere.

A Study of Shadows in Manhattan During the Blackout Caused by Hurricane Sandy

To view photographer Romain Laurent's Shadows project properly, he recommends that you first properly calibrate your screen. The photos are all dominated by blackness.

You see, they were all captured during the major blackout in New York City caused by Hurricane Sandy in late 2012. When the power went out in the city's financial district, Laurent pulled out his camera in order to do a photographic study of light and shadows in the eerily dark areas of the city.

Monsters: Photographs of People Making Silhouettes in a Museum

In December 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City featured an interactive art installation by Philip Worthington called "Shadow Monsters". The exhibit was created using a computer, a camera, two projectors, a light box, and some clever software. When visitors stepped in front of the light box, their shadows were magically transformed into creatures that were brought to life through sound and animation.

Photographer Joseph O. Holmes saw the unique exhibition as a photo project opportunity. However, instead of photographing the resulting monsters, he decided to turn the camera on the participants themselves, capturing their monster-making activities as a series of silhouettes.

Photos of Sunlight Streaming Over Foggy Mountain Treetops

Polish photographer Boguslaw Strempel has a fantastic series of landscape photographs of mountains and valleys found in Poland and the Czech Republic. Strempel visits his photo spots early in the morning, when a blank of fog is hanging over the treetops. As the sun rises, the trees cast long shadows across the valley, turning the scene into a magical display of sunbeams.

A Study of Light, Shadows, and Framing: Street Photos by Ray Metzker

American photographer Ray K. Metzker has had a long and distinguished career in photography, and is well known for his cityscape and landscape images. Many of his street photographs exhibit what Henri Cartier-Bresson refers to as the "Decisive Moment" -- that moment in which all the subjects and details in a scene come together just perfectly in your viewfinder.

Clever Photos of People Casting Intricate Shadows With Their Bodies

Earlier this year, we shared the photos of Tim Noble and Sue Webster, London-based artists who are well known for creating amazing shadows using piles of carefully arranged objects. Perhaps inspired by their work, photographer Julian Wolkenstein shot a clever series of photographs a couple of years ago that show three people contorting their bodies in various ways to create intricate shadows on the wall behind them. The project is titled, Nova.

Tree Leaves as “Pinhole Cameras” During a Solar Eclipse

If you went outdoors to observe the solar eclipse yesterday, you might have noticed that the shadows cast by trees had suddenly become quite strange. The tiny gaps between leaves act as pinhole lenses, projecting crescent shaped images of the eclipsed sun onto the world below.