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Search Results for: posing

Posing Tips For Newborn Portraiture From Award Winning Photographer Stephanie Cotta

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Stephanie Cotta, the sought after newborn photographer behind the popular Ultimate Guide To Newborn Photography, Posing & Retouching course over on RGG, has just released a segment from said course that offers aspiring newborn photographers the opportunity to learn one of Cotta’s favorite poses. The “Side Stretch Hands Together” is typically the very first pose Cotta begins with, so it’s a perfect starting point for those looking to learn some new infant poses, too.

Aside from teaching the pose, Cotta also delivers some pretty good tips throughout the clip. For example, she briefly talks about different props, saying she prefers to use the same blanket to lay the newborn on during the shoot because it results in a matching and cohesive collection of photographs for the parents to hang on the wall.[Read More…]

10 Posing Tips For Brides-To-Be

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Having worked on many bridal shoots as a model and involved in several real weddings before, I’ve picked up some things that I hope might help a few others. If you’re part of the wedding industry then please feel free to share this tongue in cheek guide with your clients, whilst understanding that although it’s a bit brazen, it might actually be what they need to know!

Dear Bride-to-be,

Posing for the camera: There are certain posing tips that apply to all women whether they are wearing a bridal gown or not. However, your wedding day is the time when you’ll really want to put theory into practice and believe me it makes all the difference. Here are my top ten bridal posing tips;

1. Where to hold your flowers – Aim for just below belly button level. Not too high and not too low. This pushes your arms out with a slight bend at your elbow, avoiding crushed skin and bingo wings. It also acts as bonus stomach coverage. #Winning

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Posing, Light And Selective Composition – Getting The Best Out Of A “Nowhere” Location

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Today we are hosting a tip from Neil van Niekerk who also runs the excellent tangents blog.

Framing very selectively in-camera, you can very often pull out quite a surprising image out of “nowhere”.

With Julia and Luis’ wedding, I roamed around the reception venue – a bed & breakfast on the Jersey shore, for interesting spots. There were interesting nooks and crannies that would work for the romantic portrait session. But I also like adding variety, especially unexpected variety.

I went through a back-gate, and into a parking lot behind the venue. This gate was the delivery entrance for the venue’s kitchen, and the parking lot was, well, just a parking lot.

But, I loved the texture of tye wooden fence and gate, and the late afternoon sun really brought out the texture. I hurried back inside and asked Julia and Luis to join me – I think I may have a great idea! I shot it using the following settings: 1/250 @ f/5.6 @ 200 ISO – available light only Nikon D4: Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8.[Read More…]

Natural Beauty Takes A Poke At Fashion Photography By Juxtaposing Beauty With Hairy Armpits [NSFW]

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Photographer Ben Hopper wanted to say more with his recent project Natural Beauty – a series of portraits showing beautiful females with armpit hair.

Shooting in black and white that feels a bit like fashion portraits, using medium format Mamiya Leaf, the series heavily corresponds with contemporary fashion photography. Yes, the exposed hairy armpits create a staggering contrast.

We were pretty curious so we asked Ben about the models and learned that while some of then, kept their hair naturally, others avoided shaving (or waxing) for weeks (or in some cases months) specifically for the project.

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Repurposing A KFC Fried Chicken Dinner As A DIY Ring Flash

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I have a two DIY ring-flashes. My first one was made out of illustration board, and the second one was made of out of a bucket of fried chicken from our local restaurant. Here is my step by step tutorial on how to make your own DIY ring flash using the leftovers of a KFC dinner. (of course you can but a DIY ring flash kit or a totally pro solution as well, but then the KFC leftovers will be thrown away rather than recycled).

It takes about two hours to make one.

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Repurposing A Jump Rope As A Camera Pistol Grip

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Our favorite maker, Chad Bredahl (previously featured here and here), just released a quickie on how to build a camera Pistol Grip.

A pistol grip is not an expensive item per-se (the great handle from P&C, for example, is about $19), but I love the idea behind it and I think a similar mechanism can definitely be used for other builds as well. And besides, who can resist the chance to dissect a lil girl jump rope.

If you ever tried to shoot video with a DSLR, you’ve probably noticed how quickly your wrist starts to heart. This happen because camera grips were not designed for video. A camera pistol grip changes your hand orientation while holding the camera to a more natural position do it does not get soar after a while. (Kinda similar to how you hold a pistol, hence the name).[Read More…]

Interesting Test On Overexposing And Salvaging Blackmagic Footage

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By now, we are kinda used to the fact that RAW images can be pulled or pushed to recover details in what were once lost photos.

It seems though that with “cheap” camera that produce RAW footage like the Blackmagic Cinema Camera (or a Magic Lantern loaded Canon), pulling overexposed movies is becoming a viable option for amateurs / advance amateurs videographers too. (It was always an option for the pros).

Swedish videographer Mattias Burling did a short test showing how much burnt data you can recover when shooting RAW with a Blackmagic camera.[Read More…]

Lytro Behind You, KaleidoCam Enables Post Production Re-Focusing, Re-Exposing And Re-Polarizing

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It was not that long ago when Lytro stunned to world with a camera that can re-focus in post production. This was quite a revolution as till then, the focus point was at the time when the shutter opened, was the focus pint and that was it. Millions of photos ruined by being almost in focus but not quite and Lytro aimed to change that. The hype, however, did not convert into a fed.

Now researchers in Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany extend the idea of Lytro to enable post production control of almost any possible aspect of photography including: exposure, light-temperature, focus and polarization. (and even a bit of spatial control) They call it The KaleidoCam. This video explains how it works.[Read More…]

Composing an Action Sequence Shot

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They say a picture is worth a thousand words and a movie is worth a thousand pictures. But sometimes you want something in between, something that is as still as an image, yet conveys action like a film. This is an action sequence shot.

Sometimes the best way to achieve an effect is to do it in post. So this post will not involve any gear hacking (although I can think of some elaborate ways to make this with no post at all), but some good old post processing method.

An action sequence shot as a still image that is made from several frames. In the following tutorial Kaan Kiran demonstrates one method of making such action shot.

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This $9 wooden music box is the only cheap Leica you can buy

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As we all know, Leica is not really famous for its affordable prices. As a matter of fact, the company recently launched a $24K kit designed in collaboration with Lenny Kravitz. But now even us who can’t afford Leica gear can have at least something inspired by it: a wooden music box that costs mere $8.94.

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