For Outdoor Portraits Aim Your Camera At The Sun!

Put the sun at your subject’s back for improved outdoor portraits

William Sawalich

When you’re taking a picture of a person outdoors on a sunny day you have one fundamental decision to make: Do you position the subject so they’re facing the sun, or do you position them so that the sun is at their back? There’s one answer that’s almost always correct: Place the sun at the subject’s back. Here’s why. First, if you position... Read more

Use A Polarizer For Better Color

Polarizers do a lot more than eliminating reflections and deepening blue skies

William Sawalich

Nearly a decade ago, on this very website, I wrote a short piece about using a circular polarizer on overcast and rainy days. I explained how the polarizer would eliminate the shine on damp leaves and other surfaces, and instead allow detail and color to come through. The response was immediate and strong. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”... Read more

Use Teleconverters To Photograph Wildlife

An affordable option to get up close and personal with animals in the wild

William Sawalich

In the good ol’ days of 35mm film, serious wildlife shooters needed 600mm and even 800mm supertelephoto lenses to get up close to their subjects. But then came the digital revolution and smaller-than-35mm sensors, which have the effect of cropping out the center of a full frame and making a 400mm lens behave more like a 600mm. Now factor in higher... Read more

Repair Moiré The Easy Way

When fine patterns interfere with your sensor, here’s an easy fix for removing those colorful bands of moiré

William Sawalich

Photoshop is such a powerful and multifaceted image-editing tool, there are many repairs that can be made with several equally effective approaches. Fixing moiré is one such task. Moiré is the colorful banding that appears when a fine pattern in an image is even finer than the pattern of the pixels on a camera’s sensor. It’s frequently found in... Read more

Studio-Style Lighting Control Outdoors

When taking photos outdoors, look for natural opportunities to control the light as you would in a studio

William Sawalich

When working outdoors, you might think you’re required to take it or leave it when it comes to the light offered by Mother Nature. In fact, though, you often can take control over this natural light simply by changing your position relative to the subject, or by changing the position of the subject themselves, so that structures nearby, as well as... Read more

Types Of Lenses

There’s a lens for every need. But how do you know what you need?

William Sawalich

There are, it seems, one million and one lens options out there for the discerning photographer. You bought a new camera and it probably even came with one, called a kit lens. Is that all you need? What’s a kit lens, anyway? What about a wide-angle, or a portrait lens? Do you need a zoom? Is that the same as a telephoto? Here’s a rundown of types... Read more

How To Photograph A Solar Eclipse

This month’s total eclipse presents photographers with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity

William Sawalich

On August 21, 2017, the “Great American Eclipse” will present a unique opportunity for photographers nationwide. The moon will pass between the earth and the sun and fully block the sun, creating a swath of shadow stretching from the northwestern to the southeastern United States. Ideal viewing can be had in Oregon, Wyoming, Illinois, Tennessee... Read more

Don’t Polarize Portraits

Got a glare on glasses? Tempted to polarize it away? Don’t do it!

William Sawalich

Anytime I talk about fighting glare on glasses—be they the prescription kind or the sun-fighting kind—someone always asks whether they should just use a circular polarizing filter to eliminate the reflection. This might sound like a good idea but the problem is that, more often than not, it doesn’t work very well. Worse still, when you use a polarizer... Read more

The Sunny F/16 Rule

Extrapolate the Sunny F/16 Rule to work in a variety of outdoor lighting situations

By William Sawalich

What’s the correct exposure on a normal sunny day? There’s a formula to answer that, don’t you know? The correct answer is a shutter speed of 1/ISO at ƒ/16. So, with ISO 100 dialed in to the sensor, the correct exposure on a normal sunny day will be 1/100 sec. at ƒ/16. This handy rule of thumb is very helpful as it always gives you an idea of... Read more

Fight Color Shifts At High Shutter Speeds

Many indoor light sources cycle and flicker, and you might see this in your photos at high shutter speeds

William Sawalich

Have you ever seen a strange colorcast in part of a photo when it’s shot indoors at high shutter speeds? I’ve noticed this effect on some photo assignments, although it was never a problem I could re-create consistently. It was only when I read about a feature in certain new cameras that I realized what I was seeing. You see, artificial light sources... Read more

Portrait Photography Tip: Light Adds Up

Learn how the additive quality of light impacts metering and lighting ratios, so you can light your subjects for your desired look

By William Sawalich

In an effort to explain how some light plus a little more light becomes even more light, let me explain how this might matter in the first place. Let’s say you’re photographing a portrait in a studio setting, so you set up a light to illuminate the subject. (It could be a strobe, a hot light, an LED, in a softbox, with a snoot—as long as it’s... Read more

Level Your Horizons

Got a crooked picture problem? Here’s how to fix it.

William Sawalich

I’m naturally crooked. I don’t mean psychologically, or even physically. I mean that when I handhold my camera and try to keep it level in relation to whatever horizon is in my picture, I almost always fail miserably. What my eye and hand think is level is always tilted to the right. You might find yourself producing similar results no matter how... Read more

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