Environmental portraits show people in their place and their habitat. The environment sets the mood and the place of the story, and a single look at the photograph can tell you what the story is about. Let me show you three things I think about as I light the background
I have long said that if I had to choose one light to use for the rest of my life, it’d be a huge white umbrella, like the Paul C. Buff 86″ PLM (parabolic light modifier). I’ve made a living with that modifier for the last several years. It’s been
I recently said that if I were allowed only one light for the rest of my life I’d choose a huge white umbrella. But if you’re just getting started with off-camera flash, I highly recommend a small collapsible white shoot-through umbrella. OCF with an umbrella is forgiving and highly versatile.
I made this portrait the other day at the Out of Oregon Photography Conference. I was teaching a class on portraiture, and I had a picture like this in my mind as soon as I found out Maygen would be helping as the model. She was a surfer and I
The first full week of October kicked off with a bang, with lots of great reviews and educational content from our team. Lauri Novak kicked off the week talking about how to be a mentor, while Bryan Esler talked reviewed Impact white satin umbrellas. Rich Harrington gave his insight on
For years, I’ve relied on white umbrellas for my off-camera lighting work. They’ve worked great. I still have two 7-foot umbrellas by Paul C. Buff from when I first got my AlienBee B800 flash units (which I no longer use). But as time went by, I realized I needed some
I was thinking the other day about what one lighting tool would I choose if I were stranded on a desert island for the rest of my life with a whole lot of people who needed to be photographed. I know it’s kind of a specific situation, but the answer
Category: Street Photographer: Dan Schneider “stairs” Dan’s black and white capture of a person walking up stairs plays to some of my favorite qualities of a photograph. First of all, this is minimalism at its finest. There’s a very simple and clean look to the photograph. Your eye is immediately
I’m always talking about soft light and how great it looks for portraits. But what does it mean? If there’s soft light, is there hard light? Let me show you what it means and you’ll see that yes, there is hard light, and soft light is waaaaay better. Soft/Hard = Big/Small
Every time you make portraits you should make one shot that pushes your limits or gives you a little thrill. The client may not like it, but it will help fill your soul. I usually use one light from the front to make portraits, but it’s amazing how much impact
Making great light is essential to making great portraits. And I mean that: you’ve got to make great light. You can find a good source of available light, but I’ve rarely seen any available light that couldn’t be made better, either with reflectors and flags or by adding light somewhere
I frequently travel to shoot landscapes and time lapses. One thing that seems to always follow me is a dark cloud. No, I’m not Charlie Brown… I mean it just seems to rain a bit on most of my shoot days. For example… in the middle of this timelapse it
