Lighting

People often complain about how terrible they look in their passport photos, and it doesn't help that the US government has some pretty strict requirements regarding the layout, lighting, and composition. That's probably why everyone seems to be talking about Prince's official passport pic, which the musician shared with the world recently.

One of my absolute favorite things to do in Photoshop is to play with lighting effects. Whether that be to make something glow, create a spotlight sort of effect, or set my hands on fire, I'm always so impressed with the many ways Photoshop allows you to alter lighting.

Yongnuo is a Hong Kong-based photo gear company that's best known for making cheap flashes and creating near-identical clones of popular Canon and Nikon prime lenses. Now the company is branching off into yet another area: LED light wand.

I recently wrote an article about 8 Reasons You Should Buy A 50mm f/1.8 Lens and one part was about using it with the "El Bokeh Wall." What's an El Bokeh Wall? It's using some aluminum foil to add beautiful bokeh to the background of your photos. Here's a full tutorial on the technique.

Photographer Alexis Cuarezma is a master of doing rapid-fire portrait shoots of famous athletes for Sports Illustrated. When some of his shoots are limited to just 1 minute, Cuarezma uses 2 lighting setups simultaneously and sometimes even 5 setups on 1 set using a burst of exposures.

Here's a short 3-minute video by Australian photographer Pete Leong on how you can set your flash and camera settings to illuminate portrait subjects while a bright sun is in the background back-lighting them.

I love hard light. I love the shadows it creates and the colors it brings out. I also love the convenience it affords. I work exclusively with small flash, and by using predominantly hard light in my images, I am able to travel extremely light, as I need few to zero modifiers.

The first time I sketched a photo was in 2011. It had never crossed my mind before that. Up until then I had never really needed it. I was five years into a business and new ideas had always come pretty easily.

Photographer Jonny Armstrong's portfolio is filled with some of the most remarkable wildlife photos you'll ever see: many of the portraits have a studio-like quality to them, and they're often taken from just a few feet away.

Photographer Nick Fancher often does high-quality shoots with simple locations and do-it-yourself gear -- he published a book on the subject earlier this year that's titled Studio Anywhere. For a recent portrait shoot, Fancher visited his model's apartment and shaped light using a custom prism gobo, DIY barn doors, and the blinds on the model's door.

What happens if your portrait clients request golden hour lighting... outside of golden hour? That's the situation photographer Pye Jirsa of Lin & Jirsa Photography found himself in recently while shooting a wedding. As you can see in the 4.5-minute video above, Jirsa was able to deliver by using creative lighting, a powerful flash, and a couple of colored gels.

If you want to play around with shadows and add depth to your lighting, this simple technique is perfect for you. And you only need minimal gear to do it.

Here's a short and sweet 3-minute video tutorial by photographer and retoucher Glyn Dewis on how you can achieve super simple cross (or Rembrandt) lighting in a portrait using a single light source. The trick is in moving the light forward enough so that some of it spills onto the other side of your subject's face. Looking at your subject from the edge of your light is an easy trick for seeing if any of the light will reach the other cheek.

Here's a 5-minute video in which photographer Jon Legge shows how you can put together a tabletop studio for well-lit product photos. It'll cost you just 10 to 15 minutes and about £25 (~$40) in materials.

New York City-based editorial and commercial portrait photographer Felix Kunze says that the number one question he gets asked by people is how he makes his V-Flats for studio portraiture. He answers that question in the 8.5-minute video above, a step-by-step walkthrough of his build process.

When you're just starting out in photography, you may not have a lot of money to invest in putting together a high-end arsenal of studio lighting equipment. By being resourceful, however, you can do a lot with a little.

Dedolight celebrated its 30th anniversary this year by holding an international competition in which competitors create the best tutorials they can for passing on their lighting knowledge.

The first known photograph was captured in 1826 when light reacted with a particular type of asphalt known as Bitumen of Judea. Since that first natural light photo, photographers have introduced artificial flash lighting to photos through all kinds of different ways. In this post, we're taking a look at a brief history of the camera flash -- from its humble beginnings with explosive powder and burning metal up through the latest LED lights -- to see how far it has come.

After sharing his DIY square "ring light" build here back in July, photographer Isiah Xiong is back again with another DIY project. This time, Xiong is explaining how he built a DIY version of the $300 the Eyelighter reflector for around $40 to $50 in materials.

Aputure's latest Light Storm LS 1c is a powerful accessory for any photographer looking to light up their workspace. Today, we're taking a look at how well the system handles, along with some of the unique features it has to offer including built-in wireless control and DMX light controller compatibility.

A client named Nick recently approached me as he was finishing his degree, wanting his portrait taken to commemorate the event. With his references, wardrobe, and location, I saw an opportunity to replicate some of the lighting I had seen in Spielberg's Lincoln. As a period film set in the mid 1800s, light "sources" were limited to daylight, moonlight, or oil lamps and candles. My hope was to capture the magic of cinematographer Janusz Kaminski's lighting, while also adapting it for the purpose …

The sun can be a photographer’s best friend: it is a constant source of light that lasts all day and doesn’t require any power from your end to keep it up and running. However, knowing how exactly to work with a source of lighting that changes over time can be a bit difficult. In the 6-minute video above, director of photography Jon Salmon and his team show us how to use the sun during various times of the day to obtain the ideal lighting during a shoot.

Elinchom have just announced the Litemotiv, a new extension to their lineup of softboxes. The two new modifiers are made up of sixteen sides and come in two distinct sizes. According to the company, theses monster softboxes help to create “close to perfect catchlights.”

As photographers, we capture the light around us to preserve moments in time. Sometimes, however, we not only want to contain the light, but also control it. So, when Elinchrom asked us if we wanted to test their powerful ELB 400 portable battery pack and Quadra Pro flash heads, we, of course, said yes. Now, let’s see what we can do with 424 watts of portable power.

A magical moment of soft and warm light, the golden hour is a period slightly before sunset or slightly after sunrise when the sun is low in the sky. Many photographers aim to shoot during these time periods in order to take advantage of the unique natural lighting. Rizon is an elegant new app for iOS that will not only find you the best time but remind you to head outside when the time approaches.

Here's a humorous example of why you should pay attention to lighting when combining photos into a composite image. A few days ago, Jeb Bush's super PAC Right to Rise USA tweeted a picture that showed Bush with a stock photo of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in the background. People immediately noticed that something was strange with Bush's left hand.

When photographing Czech aerobatics and fighter pilot Martin Šonka recently, photographer Dan Vojtěch wanted to capture the plane in a different light than other photographers have done in the past. He then decided that he would shoot the plane in motion, but light it like he would a studio photo using flashes firing around it.

Photographer Lindsay Adler is teaching a CreativeLive course this month on the basics of portrait photography. The 5-minute video above is a discussion about three fundamental principles of light: intensity, direction, and quality. Adler shares how these principles can be manipulated to create better photographs.

My name is Jeremy Lebled, and I'm a fashion photographer. I recently just did a shoot to demo Leica's S Camera. My specialty is using just the sun to get a high-end studio look to photographs instead of using dozens of strobes.

Over the past half year, Latvian photographer Gvido Mūrnieks has been testing out a DIY ring light he made for himself. The light is large enough to shoot with longer focal length, but at the same time it's small and light enough to quickly throw into the trunk of your car on the way to a shoot.

Wedding photographer Paul Keppel created this helpful 3-minute video tutorial on how he goes about shooting consistent wedding ring photos using a cheap LED light and a macro lens.

Back in April, the Chinese camera gear maker Venus announced its new KX800 macro twin flash, which looks like an external flash unit with three tentacles bursting forth from the top.

There are already a good number of portable lighting studios on the market, but WhiteBison’s SOOC Studio strives to be the best full-featured option. The kit includes a foldable carrying case that transforms into a durable 18x16x12-inch setup with built-in 6,000K LED strips and an easy-to-clean plastic infinity curve.

Photographers are familiar with the ring light, which produces a pleasing ring-shaped highlight (or “catchlight”) in a subject’s eyes. It’s often used in the fashion industry to create images you see in many magazines. The Square Ring Light is just like that — except it’s a square. I find it makes a unique, almost otherworldly catchlight that really draws attention to the eyes.

Photographer Aaron Draper wants people to see homelessness in a different light -- literally. For his project titled Underexposed, he hit the streets with his camera and off-camera strobe in order to capture portraits of the homeless and "bring them into the light and out of the shadows for others to view and appreciate."

As long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated with the small and wondrous world of macro imaging, predominantly as a macro videographer, but also in the stills realm as of late.

Photographer Nick Fancher is the author of Studio Anywhere, a photographer's guide to shooting high-quality portraits in unconventional locations and with low-budget tools and materials.

If you thought the Selfie Arm was a strange idea, check this out: the SelfiePICTEE is a T-shirt that has a fold-down bounce reflector on the front that provides a quick fix for the harsh shadows on your face when snapping a selfie.

Photographer Eric Paré has built much of his career around the concept of light painting, but a recent photo shoot he did involved a very different source of lighting: the bioluminescence of glowing plankton.

Indian photographer Kunal Daswani created this short and sweet beginner's tutorial on how you can easily shoot a product photo using natural window light and a few sheets of white printer paper.

Here's a 10-minute video in which well-known wedding photographer Ryan Brenizer shares 5 of his top tips for lighting in wedding photography. He covers bouncing the light, backlighting, turning a flash into a "light grenade," moving light closer, and continuous lighting.

Photographer Michael Zelbel of Good Light Magazine published this short video tutorial on how you can use a simple white shopping bag as a cheap way to add soft off-camera lighting to your portraits.

Want to play around with studio lighting from the comfort of your own home without dropping any money on actual lighting equipment? Here's a 10-minute video by DigitalRev TV with 5 different lighting setups you can create using things found around a house. Kai and Lok cover using lamps as hot lights, creating makeshift diffusers with photo frames, using a Pringles can as a snoot, turning a home organizer into a soft box, and crafting a beauty dish from a round aluminum pan.

Want a portable and powerful LED light for illuminating your shots? The "Sun-Blaster" is a 1000 watt equivalent LED flashlight that you can build yourself for around $40.

Here's an interview by Advancing Your Photography's Marc Silber, who sat down for a short conversation with photographer David Hobby of Strobist back in 2011. In the 4-minute video above, Hobby offers some thoughts about photographic lighting and talks about some of his most memorable experiences in lighting portrait subjects.

I received a Rosco Gel kit a week ago, and after a few tests I can say I really love using all the awesome colors for my photography.


The kit includes 20 individual 30x48cm square sheets for color corrections (e.g. CTO, CTB, ND) and a range of different colors, all of them contained in a protected and resealable packaging.

If you're just getting started in learning how to light your shot with flashes, you may be confused about the terms "high speed sync" and "flash duration." Here's a helpful 6-minute primer in which photographer Daniel Norton explains what these two concepts are, how they differ, and which situations they come in handy for.

Product design is the notion of transforming an idea into a tangible object that has a purpose. Solving problems with products is what I like to do -- it's how I try to give something back to the world. Adaptalux is something I created recently to give photographers a portable macro studio wherever they go.

Here's a behind-the-scenes video by photographer David Iliyn showing how he recently did an outdoor photo shoot with a musician with 12 separate off-camera flashes.

Here’s a fun and very easy way to do professional product photography light painting using your iPhone, or any other phone or tablet for that matter. The bigger the screen the better the results, but a standard phone screen will absolutely do the job.