Lee Varis is a Boston based photo-illustrator whose career in commercial photography spans four decades. His work includes movie posters (Star Trek,) albums, CDs, and magazines (Nat Geo, Fortune, PDN.) Lee is the author of the best selling Photoshop book “Skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing and Retouching Faces and Bodies.”
Testing the Ultimate Technical Camera – part 2 This 2nd part of my examination of the Cambo Actus GFX system focuses (literally) on the lens tilting functionality. The tilting lens stage allows the photographer to alter the plane of focus,
Testing the Ultimate Technical Camera – part 1 Cambo USA recently contacted me with an opportunity to test the Cambo Actus technical camera with the FUJIFILM GFX—this was very exciting for me because I could renew my experience with view
Pixelstick meet Fujifilm… now lets create! While we were on our photo tour of Venice Carnival, Bobbi Lane and I had a great opportunity to test out a prototype of Fujifilm’s new medium format camera, the GFX. I had been
Shoot Mode Tone Control Picking up where I left off last time. Besides the Film Simulations themselves, The Fuji-X cameras offer additional controls for customizing the look of the in-camera jpegs! The Fuji-X cameras have what they call “shoot modes”
Don’t just pre-visualize—see the shot! My “Re-Thinking the Raw File Workflow” post stirred up quite a storm of protest from photographers so thoroughly invested in a raw-file workflow that they missed the point of the whole post! So… consider this
An Adventure in Venice, Italy for Carnival Bobbi Lane and I had the great fortune to shoot with a prototype GFX 50S on our tour of Venice Carnival 2017 this past February. Needless to say, we were extremely excited to put
Photographing Venice during Carnival with Fuji-X cameras I recently had the opportunity to attend Chromasia’s Venice Carnival photo tour led by my wife Bobbi Lane and our friend David Nightingale. All three of us are part of the Fuji-X team, and we’re very
Editor’s Note: This is an advanced tutorial. For a detailed explanation of these techniques, Lee is sharing see his post on LAB Masking. Everyone would agree that a great photo starts with a great capture—good composition, good light, good exposure, and a
Editor’s Note: Lee presents a very powerful way of enhancing color and sharpening an image in this post. The video that concludes this post is an excellent tutorial with step by step instructions and explanations. These are advanced techniques. Here
How to deal with the unfortunate facial expression in group portraits Ah… it’s that time again! The time when we are challenged to capture the idealized family portrait to send out to friends and family. To help you along, I’d
Imaging Workflow Beyond Lightroom & Photoshop Most of the time, photo-imaging workflow can be completely managed within the familiar applications of Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, etc… but occasionally it becomes necessary to go beyond the capabilities of these programs
An Alternative to Focusing Fresnel Spot Light with the Benefit of Easy Custom Shapes I have been experimenting with digital projectors as a light source in my Glamour Photography Workshops. If you don’t have access to large movie hot lights
Pixelstick meet Fujifilm… now lets create! While we were on our photo tour of Venice Carnival, Bobbi Lane and I had a great opportunity to test out a prototype of Fujifilm’s new medium format camera, the GFX. I had been
Shoot Mode Tone Control Picking up where I left off last time. Besides the Film Simulations themselves, The Fuji-X cameras offer additional controls for customizing the look of the in-camera jpegs! The Fuji-X cameras have what they call “shoot modes”
Don’t just pre-visualize—see the shot! My “Re-Thinking the Raw File Workflow” post stirred up quite a storm of protest from photographers so thoroughly invested in a raw-file workflow that they missed the point of the whole post! So… consider this
An Adventure in Venice, Italy for Carnival Bobbi Lane and I had the great fortune to shoot with a prototype GFX 50S on our tour of Venice Carnival 2017 this past February. Needless to say, we were extremely excited to put
Photographing Venice during Carnival with Fuji-X cameras I recently had the opportunity to attend Chromasia’s Venice Carnival photo tour led by my wife Bobbi Lane and our friend David Nightingale. All three of us are part of the Fuji-X team, and we’re very
Editor’s Note: This is an advanced tutorial. For a detailed explanation of these techniques, Lee is sharing see his post on LAB Masking. Everyone would agree that a great photo starts with a great capture—good composition, good light, good exposure, and a
Editor’s Note: Lee presents a very powerful way of enhancing color and sharpening an image in this post. The video that concludes this post is an excellent tutorial with step by step instructions and explanations. These are advanced techniques. Here
How to deal with the unfortunate facial expression in group portraits Ah… it’s that time again! The time when we are challenged to capture the idealized family portrait to send out to friends and family. To help you along, I’d
Imaging Workflow Beyond Lightroom & Photoshop Most of the time, photo-imaging workflow can be completely managed within the familiar applications of Photoshop, Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, etc… but occasionally it becomes necessary to go beyond the capabilities of these programs
An Alternative to Focusing Fresnel Spot Light with the Benefit of Easy Custom Shapes I have been experimenting with digital projectors as a light source in my Glamour Photography Workshops. If you don’t have access to large movie hot lights
Creating Panorama Scenes in Photoshop I did an exterior shoot for the Broad Stage back in 2011 Â (see the blog post here) and the next assignment was to document the interior for use on their website and in printed promotional
There some times when even a travel tripod is just too much to lug around, and sometimes you need to get really low, or switch quickly between tripod steady, and hand held without leaving a valuable full-size tripod unattended. Thats
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