Tag Archives: portraits

Photography

Seven tips to improve your portraiture lighting

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If you pay attention to available light especially the time of the day in certain locations, all you need is one Speedlight to create great settings for portraiture. Naturally having a gorgeous model like Lindsey Martin makes it easier. 1/250sec @f2.8 ISO 100 outdoors. Backlit by sunlight and fill flash with Speedlite 580EX in home made beauty dish.

1.Set your Speedlite to fire on manual power

There is nothing scary about firing your flash on manual.

In the film days, you needed another piece of equipment–a flash meter.

With the near instant feedback and histograms in today’s cameras, figuring out exposure on manual is easy.

Dividing the Guide Number by the flash-to-subject distance will give you a good ballpark number for the aperture setting.

(Guide Numbers are always given in ISO 100, so you can easily find it’s equivalent for any ISO)

I usually set the flash to 1/8th power and sometimes even 1/16th power.

This reduces the flash-to-subject distance and allows my Speedlites to recycle fast so that if you’re after quick changes in expression, they keep up.

Continue reading Seven tips to improve your portraiture lighting →

Internet & Technology, Photography

Does anonymity affect how you behave online?

Absolutely.

I know this first hand.

Just read the comments on this satirical post on “21 Signs You’re a Real Photographer.”

Best example I can think of is when camera owners who fancy themselves as photographers criticize a working photographer’s pictures.

Some background: Joe Klamar, a freelance photographer for AFP (Agence France-Presse) flubbed on an assignment where he had to photograph US Olympians.

His pictures and the accompanying stories went viral understandably due to the current sense of patriotism sweeping the country during this summer’s London Olympics.

Afterwards, a gallery offered to showcase his photos in an exhibit.

If you look over the comments in the Peta Pixel website, you can see many of the commenters don’t include much information of themselves.

Whenever I want to respond to a comment, I usually try and find a back link to research a little about that person.

I feel it’s important to get a sense of whether that person has the credentials or just the know how to be taken seriously.

I can sympathize with Joe Klamar.

I’ve been there and I’ve done that. Continue reading Does anonymity affect how you behave online? →

Photography

Finding the light and using what’s there

Caitlin lit by window light on the right. A Speedlight set on manual power @ 1/32th power to create separation and just enough to accent her cheek on the left.

One of the more difficult skills to pick up is finding the light in any location and making it work for you.

Along with learning how to relax/distract your subject so that they aren’t so self-conscious, this skill, finding the light, doesn’t just happen overnight.

Books and mentors can only show you so much.

You won’t get it until you play with own light equipment and photographing in various locations.

Why various locations?

By trying different locations, it forces you to look and evaluate where the light is.

For my picture Caitlin taken during a demo for Small Flash Lighting, I kept things simple using one Speedlight off-camera.

The main light was a huge west-facing window and it was about 10am so the sun wasn’t shinning directly inside yet. Continue reading Finding the light and using what’s there →

Assignment, Photography

Dr.Juliet Beni–UCR’s youngest doctoral candidate

Dr. Juliet Beni earned her doctorate in psychology from UC Riverside. She is the youngest person in UCR’s history to be awarded with a doctorate.

One of the biggest appeals to photographing mostly people is the chance to meet new people.
Even the most ordinary person has at least one interesting and remarkable story.

You just have to ask the right way and hopefully that will come through when they talk about it.

But you need to be ready with that camera.

I got a chance to meet UC Riverside’s youngest doctoral candidate, Dr. Juliet Beni, 19. Continue reading Dr.Juliet Beni–UCR’s youngest doctoral candidate →