Which TTL Metering Mode Should I Use?

Understanding how a DSLR’s light meter works is the first step toward more accurate exposures

By William Sawalich

Whether you’re shooting a fully programmed automatic exposure or using modes such as Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority, or even if you’re setting exposures manually, in all cases you’re relying on your camera’s through-the-lens light metering capabilities to determine the correct exposure. A DSLR’s TTL meter measures the amount of light... Read more

Telling A Story With Portraits

An editorial approach to portrait work can yield amazing results

Text & Photography By Thomas Boyd

The most meaningful portraits tell a story; they not only memorialize a person at a specific time and place, they give us insight into that person as well. Really great portraits tell us as much about the photographer as the person they photographed. The significance of the portrait you take today may not reveal itself for years and the portraits we... Read more

Make Blooming Flowers More Vibrant With Lightroom’s HSL Tools

Lightroom offers some surprisingly powerful custom color controls

By William Sawalich

In Lightroom’s Develop module lives a tab with the cryptic letters HSL. This tab, as you may infer from some contextual clues, allows you to modify the color. So those letters stand for Hue, Saturation and Luminance. By modifying these three sets of sliders, amazing color control can be as easy as the click of a button. That’s why this is the perfect... Read more

Angle Of View And Choosing The Right Lens

Two lenses might be able to render the subject the same size, but that doesn’t mean the shots will look the same. Here’s how angle of view should impact your lens choice.

William Sawalich

I have a client who hires me regularly to make portraits of her employees. The primary requirements are that each person remain about the same size in the viewfinder—cropped from the waist to the top of their heads—and that the background shows depth, but is out of focus as well. This means, fortunately or not, that there are a lot of ways I could... Read more

Portraits With Soul

Photographic style for the soulful wedding photographer

Text & Photography By Alessandra Cave

Paying attention to how guests fit into their surroundings is key. In this shot, the natural beauty of the young woman, the soft backlighting and the gentle breeze contributed to create a romantic photograph. Weddings are a wonderful setting to explore portraiture. While the wedding photographer’s job is to capture the bride and groom (as well as... Read more

Keep It Simple

Not interested in taking traditional wedding photos? Consider one of these beautiful alternatives.

Text & Photography By Danielle Cohen

The array of incredible wedding photographic styles and wedding photographers to choose from today is staggering. Whether it’s highly conceptual composite images you love or simple, natural film pictures that’s your thing, the time is just right for wedding photography as a true expressive art. Most of today’s couples have sophisticated tastes,... Read more

The Art Of Expression

The skills gained by shooting weddings and portraits can transform your photographic style

Text & Photography By Tracey Clark

My career as a photographer began in the wonderful world of weddings. Fresh out of art school, with only a minimal amount of technical training, I stumbled into a job as an assistant to a wedding photographer. Little did I know at the time, what I learned shadowing an established, very talented wedding photographer not only would teach me everything... Read more

Using High-Speed Flash Sync

Want to shoot with a flash but don’t want to be limited by the slow sync speed? You need to use high-speed sync.

By William Sawalich

A major advance in the world of speedlight photography was the introduction of high-speed sync. High-speed sync allows for shutter speeds faster than a camera’s traditional flash sync speed to be used. A camera’s sync speed is determined by the shutter, and is most often 1/250th of a second or less. Beyond 1/250th of a second, a focal plane shutter... Read more

The Faceless Portrait

Capture portraits that convey meaning without focusing on the face

Text & Photography By Meredith Winn

There’s a story behind every faceless portrait. It lures you in with bits and pieces that make up the whole. These are the details that anchor story to image—the relationship between two humans and the way their hands clasp, the femininity found in fabric or how the wind catches a hemline at 7 p.m. on a hot August afternoon. These types of faceless... Read more

Better Flash Exposures With Flash Exposure Lock

The push of a button can make your flash smarter and your exposures better

By William Sawalich

No matter how brilliant the electronics, every once in a while even amazing flashes with awesome automatic capabilities can be fooled. It’s the nature of auto anything: it’s probably going to be right most of the time, but every once in a while it’s tricked into delivering the wrong amount of flash. Usually that’s because it wants to compensate... Read more

Romancing The Frame

Gaining trust is the key to getting an honest, lasting portrait

By Tracey Clark Of Shutter Sisters

Above: The atmosphere that Ashlee Weaver uses to help frame her subjects creates a fairy-tale feel to her couples’ imagery. Romance is elevated through an ethereal look and feel of the outdoor landscape, as if they have escaped to some enchanted place. And through creative composition, it’s as though her subjects are surrounded—nearly enveloped—by... Read more

All About Flash Exposure Compensation

Not sure what flash exposure is ideal? No problem. Try flash exposure compensation to automatically nail the right light.

By William Sawalich

One of the benefits of working with a dedicated speedlight flash unit is that it opens up a whole world of excellent automatic flash exposure possibilities. In many cases, smart flashes are designed to provide the speed and ease of automatic exposures with the accuracy and control of manually adjusted flash outputs. Still, sometimes smart flashes get... Read more

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