Special Effects With Gelled Lights

Three ways to use gels to improve your lighting

William Sawalich

Plain white light is perfectly fine, but when you want to have a lot of fun and create a practically infinite list of color options, you’ll want to use gels on your lights. These dyed sheets of translucent plastic impart color to any light shined through them. Best of all, they’re dirt cheap—perhaps the biggest bang for your buck when it comes... Read more

Photographing Soccer

Long lenses and fast shutter speeds are essential when photographing this expansive and fast-paced sport

William Sawalich

Soccer is gaining popularity in the United States every day—not just with players and fans, but with photographers too. Whether you’ve got Premier League aspirations or you just want to shoot your kid’s weekend game, photographing soccer is a great way to capture exciting images and get a closer look inside the game. Here’s a rundown of the... Read more

Creative Capture For Clever Composites

A whimsical photographic technique creates surprising works of symbolic allusion

Text & Photography By Ron Palmere And George D. Lepp

“My first SLR camera was a Canon film body,” says Ron Palmere, who created this composite photo, “which had a feature that allowed me to capture up to nine exposures on one frame. One day, while photographing a Bird of Paradise specimen with its distinctive design, I took multiple exposures using a 200-400mm lens with a lens collar. Years later,... Read more

Take Time-Lapse Videos To A New Level

Use Adobe Premiere to add production value to time-lapse videos

William Sawalich

Last week, we discussed how photographers can turn a series of still images into a time-lapse video without the use of video editing software. The process is simple and effective, but there are some things you can do with video editing software (such as Adobe Premiere Pro) that easily add production value. Namely, with even a basic understanding of... Read more

Shining A Light On Portraiture

How photographer and educator Bobbi Lane determines the best way to shoot a portrait

Text By Jill Waterman, Photography By Bobbi Lane

“This one is my favorite because of the subtlety of lighting,” says Lane, noting that it was actually a “grab shot,” since the model was sitting and stood up to take a break. “As he looked away, I saw the possibilities. I guided the position of his face to get the light in the eye. But I love the edge lighting and the softness of the glow... Read more

Make Time-Lapse Video Without Video Editing Software

Use Lightroom and Photoshop to turn a series of stills into a time-lapse video

William Sawalich

Time-lapse videos are a great way to see things with a camera that aren’t possible with the naked eye. And while they can be stunningly beautiful, they’re also actually pretty simple to create. You can even do it without specialized video editing software; still photography applications like Photoshop and Lightroom work just fine. The process of... Read more

The Safest Lightroom Import

Making an automatic backup during a Lightroom import provides even more image security than you thought. Here’s why.

William Sawalich

Photographers who are interested in maximizing image security and minimizing the chance of data loss due to disk malfunction or other disasters know that it’s important to copy their precious images to two separate drives—one of which should ultimately be stored off-site, away from the other, to minimize the chances that a catastrophe such as fire... Read more

Five In-Camera Techniques to Maximize Sharpness

Blurry pictures got you down? Make sure you’ve got all five of these techniques dialed in.

William Sawalich

There’s nothing more depressing for a photographer than discovering upon closer inspection that the great moment they thought they captured is in fact not sharp. There are lots of causes of blurry pictures, including motion blur from a moving subject, camera shake, missed focus and more. How do you avoid making these unintentionally unsharp pictures?... Read more

Portrait Lighting: Should You Face The Key Light Or Face Away?

How the subject is positioned relative to the key light makes a huge impact on the look of a portrait

William Sawalich

How you position a portrait subject in relation to the key light makes a huge impact on the picture. It’s how you create precise lighting, based on tried-and-true lighting patterns that have helped faces look their best for generations. But along with these various subtleties of portrait lighting comes a more fundamental choice: Should you face your... Read more

Shooting Selfies And Self-Portraits

You don’t have to rely on the latest tech to shoot inventive selfies

Terry Sullivan

In the February 3, 2014, edition of New York magazine, Jerry Saltz, the publication’s insightful and prolific fine-art critic, ran a compelling article titled “Art at Arm’s Length: A History of the Selfie.” In it, the critic presents four points on what these days seem to be everyone’s favorite pastime. I found many aspects of this article... Read more

Five Photoshop Hidden Gems

These simple and effective Photoshop controls may not be flashy, but they’re a great way to make editing easier, better and generally more efficient

William Sawalich

When you’re new to Photoshop, it’s easy to feel like there’s a never-ending list of things to learn and that it’s going to be impossible to learn them all. That daunting truth is also the beauty of such a robust application: There are always additional secrets to discover. And after 25 years of using the application, I still regularly learn... Read more

Portrait Color Management

Photographers generally get three chances to ensure their portraits have beautiful color: Create accurate white balance, be deliberate about lighting and bring it all together in post

Text & Photography By William Sawalich

Accurate color management is crucial for ensuring portrait subjects look their best, highlighting beautiful hair and lovely skin tones. Color is simple, right? For many shots, as long as the white balance is somewhat close to correct, your picture will be fine, right? Well, not necessarily, especially when it comes to portraits. What might pass as good... Read more

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