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Check out this amazing one-light portrait setup you’ve probably never even considered

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Portrait photographer Jiggie Alejandrino is a big fan of shooting with just a single light for portraits. He’s already shown us some pretty cool and dramatic one-light setups in the last few months. But now he’s back with a very interesting setup that most of have probably never even considered. And that’s bringing the softbox overhead pointing straight down.

It’s certainly not something I’ve usually considered. At least, not for portraits. It’s a technique I use often for small products to simulate a big cloudy sky, but with larger subjects like people, that cast some pretty obvious shadows, how well does it work? Well, looking at Jiggie’s demonstration, it works pretty well!

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Bracketing vs ND Grads for shooting landscapes – which is best?

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There are many ways to shoot landscape photography and which method you’ll use generally depends on the scene laid before you. But there’s one debate that never seems to end. ND grad filters or bracket and composite in post? Which is best? And why is either technique even needed these days?

These are the questions that Photo Tom addresses in this video, going over his experiences and workflow using both methods, providing his insight and offering some tips for working with the images in post.

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How to remove anything from your photos using GIMP

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Removing anything in GIMP is easy when you know the steps… and practice! When planning this GIMP tutorial, I had a choice; simple or complex. Simple tutorials abound all over the internet on how to remove objects of all kinds. I thought to myself, where’s the fun in that! So, I decided to create a more challenging type of GIMP edit where you’ll learn how to remove someone from a complex background!

The video tutorial above takes about 15 minutes to complete. However, the actual edit of removing the subject can be done in 5 minutes or less. You’ll need to first learn the steps, the tools required to achieve this edit, and again, practice! Step-by-step instructions are located below for those that prefer to read. If you’re ready to learn the tools required to remove anything in GIMP, let’s do it!

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My top ten astrophotography tips

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Introduction

With the Milky Way season already under way in Eastern Australia, we know there will be hundreds of photographers pointing their cameras at the night sky on those cloudless, moonless nights attempting to capture the magnificence of the Galactic Core.
With years of experience capturing the night sky, we have learned a great deal about setting up to capture some stunning images, but the one aspect to Astrophotography and Nightscaping we have learned is most important, and often most rewarding and enjoyable, is PLANNING.
To help you get ready to capture your own incredible Nightscape imagery, here are our Astrophotography top tips you might find helpful in planning your Astro shoots.

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Quick and simple business guide for photographers

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A professional photographer for quite a few years now, I thought some of you may be interested in some photography business advice and tips through this entry-level straight forward photography business guide.

This is a general guide since there are so many ways to define a photography business.

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Birefringence: How to photograph rainbow colors at home

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What does “Cross Polarization” mean?

Cross polarization is a technique that allows us to virtually eliminate specular highlights from images by using polarized light, but it also holds a lot of creative potential, as it can be used to bring out eye-catching rainbow gradients in subjects such as plastics, ice and certain crystals.

In the industry this technique is used e.g. to locate areas of stress in plastic, but it also holds a lot of potential for interesting macro images:

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How to create a natural light portrait studio in your garage in under 5 minutes

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While I’m a big proponent of using flash in my photography, particularly portraits, there are times when the natural light gives you everything you need without the addition of flash. And sometimes, it’s almost there, but might need a little help from a reflector or two to help wrangle the natural light to fit the look you’re after.

That last bit is the principle used here as Pye Jirsa walks us through building up a home portrait studio in a garage in under 5 minutes. It’s a setup that lets you create some great looking portraits that look like they could have been done in a large studio with a ton of fancy expensive lighting, except, it wasn’t. It was a garage.

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What is cross polarization and how you can use it in your photography

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Cross polarization is a technique that uses two polarizing filters – one on the light source and on e on the camera lens – to get rid of unwanted specular reflections.

The following slideshow illustrates the effect at varying degrees, depending on the orientation of the filters with respect to each other.

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Understand the difference between high and low key portraits and how to shoot them both

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There seems to be a lot of confusion as to exactly what high and low key portraits are and the differences between them. At least, there seems to be whenever I spend some time browsing on social media. A lot of people seem to think that high key means “overexposed” and that low key means “underexposed”. But things couldn’t be further from the truth.

In this video, fashion photographer and educator Lindsay Adler walks us through the process of creating both high and low key beauty portrait looks. She explains exactly what she’s going for with each look, why, and how she’s going to achieve it.

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