Portrait
4 Things to Avoid When Shooting Portraits
In just about every photographer’s career they try their hand at portraits. Whether it’s for personal or professional purposes, it’s a form of photography that can complement one’s skillset given its emphasis on lighting, composition and the like. However, despite being commonplace, it’s not unusual to see photographers make the same mistakes. Here are 4 things to avoid when shooting portraits. Distracting the viewer It might come as a surprise how many photographers try to incorporate too much external detail into their portrait shots. One of the biggest faux pas in this area is a ‘busy’ setting. While there are ways to incorporate a subject into a lively environment and still make them the focal point of the shot, it’s far from easy. Playing it safe and blurring the background via depth of field, or opting for neutral backgrounds is a sure way to maintain the viewer’s attention. Alternatively,… | Read the full article
Natural Lighting vs Artificial Lighting
It’s an inevitable decision for just about every photographer at some point, particularly portrait photographers – should they use natural lighting, or artificial lighting? Of course, this is often a personal decision and one that photographers would choose for a variety of reasons depending on their circumstances. With that said, what exactly are the differences when shooting with the two different sources of lighting? Natural lighting that offered by way of the sun and the moon, is a readily available, free and accessible source for photographers to work with. There is no requirement to purchase significant gear or equipment. The exception to this might be diffusers and reflectors, which are designed to distort or enhance natural lighting – these are considerably cheaper than actual sources of lighting like strobes, LEDs and the like. Using natural light is also a great starting point for photographers looking to gauge and comprehend… | Read the full article
What Role Can Self-Portraits Play to Help You Improve Your Photography Skills
In every professional photographers’ career, they reach a point where they decide to focus their skills on a particular category within the industry. This could range from wedding photography, to baby photography, portraits, or one of many other prominent categories. What’s often overlooked is the benefit that experience within other categories can bring to your chosen field through the insights and techniques that can be gleaned. Perhaps eve n less recognised, self-portraits are one such area that can help a photographer hone their photography skills, particularly with respect to categories that deal with clients. One of the greatest facets that photographers can draw from self-portraits is the difficulty that accompanies their creation. After all, one has to have the foresight to predict what their specific appearance will be at the moment the photo is taken, yet alone gauge the necessary requirements for lighting, focus, timing and many other considerations…. | Read the full article
What Will it Take to Break a Perception?
Although the year is barely four months old, we’ve already seen a (disappointing) trend amongst several of the stories we’ve brought to you through our social media outlets – namely, a lack of appreciation and respect for the people who build their lives upon their passion for photography. While this is certainly nothing new – after all, since the dawn of time there have been people who try to depreciate a photographer’s skills – one would expect that in today’s age things would be a lot better. Or is that the problem itself? Today’s age is now so heavily oriented on camera phones, affordable point and shoots, and a gross obsession with the selfie, that people have lost their sense of understanding in what it takes to be a photographer. Even more concerning, this is something the media has (implicitly) perpetuated to the wider masses. Take for example, two leading… | Read the full article
Profiling Feature Photographer Natasha Lesonie
This is the start of a new series where we will be interviewing featured photographers and getting an insight into them and their photography. Today we start with the first person Natasha Lesonie. My name is Natasha, I am a portrait photographer. How long have you been taking photos? Why did you start? I’ve been taking photos for 7 years. It started when my first baby was born. I was eager to catch every moment of her life, hands, the passion to the photography. I quickly realized that it’s not enough just to have a professional camera but it also important to study photography as an art. Little by little people started asking me to take photo of their families. Then I received a few requests from agencies and photo magazines who wanted to use my photos for commercial advertisement and even put them on cover pages. That… | Read the full article
Finding that Niche in the Market Place
Before digital photography most photographers would work in several areas. The average photographer would be a wedding photographer, a portrait photographer, they would take photos of anything that people asked them to take. There weren’t a lot of differences in what one photographer did, compared to another. If you look back on old family portraits, there wasn’t a lot of differences between one photographer and the next. That isn’t to say that there weren’t photographers who worked in a unique style, but they were rare. There was a way to take photos of a family, of an individual or of a wedding party. The lighting was much the same with all them, and most had the same backgrounds or back drops. So with the advent of digital photography and DSLR’s becoming affordable, there has been a big increase in the number of people with cameras, and calling themselves photographers. Do… | Read the full article
