Portrait lighting can be tricky to learn. After reading articles and watching tutorials about light, you’ll excitedly look for a person to practice on. Although, once you finally have a person in front of your camera your mind goes blank and nothing is as easy as those tutorials made it seem.

You’re probably used to seeing perfect family photos on Pinterest. After all, photographers love showing their best work. But you’ll learn a lot more from seeing an entire family photo session rather than just one perfect photo. So today I’m giving you a glimpse into one of my tra

When preparing for a family photo session, there are plenty of things to keep in mind. Such as: making sure you know what time to meet, where you are going to do the shoot, and having all your gear handy. However, even the most seasoned family photographer can overlook some items from time to time

You want to snap a picture of the kids around the Christmas tree. But after finally getting a photo where they’re all looking happy, you’re disappointed with how it turns out. In this scene both the tree and the people are nicely illuminated. Why is it so dim? Where’s the ambiance?

To determine when black and white is the best option in nature photography, you need to learn to see your scene in black and white. Most beginner photographers arrive at their monochrome images by experimenting with post-processing. While this occasionally works, shooting with black and white

A well-processed photograph should be just like a good haircut. That’s one of my favorite analogies when it comes to explaining my approach to editing my own photographs. Not only does it confuse people and make them think I’m weird but it is also incredibly accurate when it comes t

When it comes to retouching portraits there are a number of mistakes that I see photographers make over and over. Part of the problem is that there are too many poorly made skin smoothing plugins. Another is that Photoshop gives you too many options for portrait retouching. There is a simple soluti

Going on vacation is one of the best opportunities to practice travel photography. But the problem persists that more often than not, those boatloads of vacation photos that you snapped end up going nowhere other than maybe scattered about on Facebook. Sound familiar? You’re definitely not al

If you’ve ever tried your hand at real estate or architecture photography, you know that these are two of the most complicated forms of photography out there. The challenge is due mostly to having to balance out shadows created by harsh or uneven lighting. Thus, it’s no wonder that High

When it comes to food photography, photo editing is at least half of the battle. Sure, there’s an art to styling and shooting food so that it looks yummy right out of the camera. But more often than not, it pays to spend a little time sprucing up that photo in post-production. There are lots o

This article will walk you through some tips for how to set up a basic portrait post-processing workflow that can help you save time and stay organized. The problem When you’re new to photography, everything is exciting. Every time you come home with a full memory card, it’s a mad rush t

Black and white is a powerful and expressive medium for portraiture. The absence of color seems to allow us to see deeper into the soul and reveals the model’s character. Black and white portraits often have a timeless quality that adds to the expressiveness of the portrait. But working in bla

Who does not love a crisp, deep black background for a portrait? You can achieve this with the application of just two ideas, and just a little post-processing too. We are talking about a couple of techy things in hopefully, a non-techy way. These two ideas will give you tips for how to make

Have you ever seen a photo of a child in front of a Christmas tree and wondered exactly how to achieve those nicely blurred lights in the background? I have good news for you–it’s so easy! In this article, I’ll walk you through it step by step so that you can create special family

Photographing wildlife of deeply contrasting colors, such as black bears or white waterfowl, can present certain challenges setting up shots that are properly exposed for the wildlife and also the surroundings. Harsh lighting also makes exposing for these subjects especially difficult. The hurdle to

Have you ever felt that your landscape photography is missing a little punch? You look at other photographers’ images and their colours have a very appealing amount of contrast. But no matter how much you play around with HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance), Contrast, Vibrance or Saturation, your

If you currently have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, did you know that you have access to a variety of mobile apps developed by Adobe? Even their least expensive subscription plan (the Photography plan, which includes access to Photoshop and Lightroom for $9.99 per month at the time of this w

Learning to see and use light is one of the most important steps to creating great photographs. As you become more aware of what nice light really looks like, you can start to manipulate even the harshest conditions with some simple tools. The photo above was shot in bright sunshine using both a d

All professional, and many hobbyist photographers, post-process their photos. There are various reasons why you want to edit your photos, besides the fact RAW files need some level of processing, including: To fix minor errors made when you took the image. To make the image look more like you envis

Outdoor portrait photography involves going outside, and utilizing the beauty (or the ugliness) of your surroundings. You probably already know some local beauty spots, and can think of some good places to take portraits right away. But once you start observing your local area with the aim of making