Three Tips for Better Portraits

When using flash, adjust your shutter speed to control the brightness of continuous lights in your exposure. Continuous lights include ambient lighting, natural light, lamps, LED lights, and so on. Here’s the deal: let’s say you’ve got your flash dialed in for a perfect exposure on your subject, but that cool lamp in the background…

Softboxes are the preferred lighting modifier for many portrait photographers.  This is especially true if the goal is to achieve a flattering, softer-looking light.  A softbox allows you to create a nice, even, and relatively larger light throw than you’d get with a basic flash or strobe alone. By doing this, it reduces contrast and…

Learning about portrait lighting, especially flash portraiture, can be challenging. Enlisting the aid of your friends or someone in your family is always a good idea. You can practice with a real person and avoid the fees of a model. But let’s face it, people are only so patient; nobody wants to sit there for…

Photographers know that creating a properly exposed image requires balancing three main exposure settings:  ISO, shutter speed, and aperture.  The optimal combination of these settings is based on the lighting conditions in your scene.  But most people can’t just look at a scene and know exactly what settings to use.  Even an experienced photographer’s guess…

One of my favorite lighting techniques involves mixing flash with natural light, particularly when the natural light is strong and coming from behind the subject. This method creates a beautiful backlighting effect that adds dimension to your photos. The Basics Using natural backlighting alone can work if there’s enough illumination bouncing around to reach the…

You can really make your portraits stand out by adding just one additional light to your setup.  In this video, I’ll give you tips for two-light flash portraiture.  Specifically, we’ll cover how to: Separate your subject from the background.  For those times when part of your subject is disappearing into darkness on one side of…