What makes a portrait dramatic? If you search the internet you’ll get quite a few answers, ranging from the practical to the abstract. Suggestions such as creating a mood, dark backgrounds and using fog or smoke all feature. As does using a characterful subject, often dressing the part. While these things certainly do contribute to a dramatic moody feel in an image, fundamentally for me, it’s all about the lighting. And that’s exactly what Slovenia-based photographer David Keinne harnessed to achieve this stunning low key portrait.
Follow these three tips to create dramatic portrait lighting with a single light
Lighting is one of the key elements in photography. It can make it or break it, and it adds a lot to the story you want to tell with your image. In this video, Adorama teams up with Emily Teague who talks about the use of dramatic lighting in portraits. She tells you about how to use it, and gives you a lighting demo to show you her simple setup for dramatic, moody portraits.
Check out this amazing one-light portrait setup you’ve probably never even considered
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!
One simple secret to making your landscape photos more dramatic
Proper editing adds a lot to the final look of your image, and it can make it or break it. The number of editing styles and methods is unlimited, but there’s one simple addition that can make your landscape photos more dramatic: vignettes. In this video, Mark Denney explains how a simple vignette can contribute to your landscape photos. He also suggests four different ways of adding vignettes so you can find the best solution for any kind of landscape photo.[Read More…]
Lights, shadow and highlight – How I lit this dramatic portrait
Creating a dramatic portrait, moody ,emotional, edgy, dark, the subject/model, scene and clothing help portray all of those but one ingredient that remains constant to help achieve the drama is light, shadow and highlight, in this blog post I cover how I lit this image I will show you the position of the lights and what modifiers were used.
If you want to jump straight to the video explaining it all here you go.
How these dramatic photos were created in-camera
In this era when you can make pretty much anything in Photoshop, it’s always interesting to learn how artists achieve some creative effects without the help of it. Photographer Alexis Cuarezma shot some interesting, dramatic and colorful fitness shots. Although it may look like he heavily edited them, he actually achieved the effect entirely in camera. In this walkthrough video, he guides you through his process, explains how he took the photos and how he achieved the look he wanted.
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