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Five awesome things revisiting the same location can do for your photography

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Some people like to constantly explore new places, without going back to those they’ve already seen. Other people like revisiting the same location several times and photographing it again and again. Although I love traveling, adventure and exploring new places, I must admit that I still fall within that second category. There are some locations I have visited and photographed dozens of times, and I believe that it has helped me improve as a photographer over the years.

You don’t have to go to a distant destination far from your hometown. As a matter of fact revisiting your favorite place in your own neighborhood with a camera will do just fine. In this article, we’ll look at how revisiting the same location can help you improve as a photographer.

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This video shows the danger of sharing photos of your favorite location on social media

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Thanks to social media, we have seen particular locations across the world grow insanely popular. Sadly, this same popularity has also made these locations prone to damage, or even being destroyed by visitors. This sad video from vlogbrothers shows just how dangerous it can be to share photos of your favorite place with the entire world.

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Ugly places, pretty photos: a photoshoot at Lowe’s

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A few weeks ago, a model friend of mine, Rachelle Kathleen, and I were planning to meet for a fun little photo shoot. Instead of searching out the usual beautiful locations around where we live, I had the idea to do just the opposite. I wanted to go somewhere “ugly” by all conventional photography standards, and then see what we could do with it, and Lowe’s seemed like the perfect option.

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3 tips to take great photos even in bad locations

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As photographers, you’ll often have to deal with the unknown. You won’t always be able to scout locations before the shoot, and sometimes you’ll just have to work with what you have. Photographer Manny Ortiz shares three tips that will help you shoot even in really bad locations. You need to take the most of what you have, and these tips will show you how to do it.

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How to shoot portraits on location with outdoor flash

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Using flash on location is one of the best things you can to really push your outdoor portraits. Often, the natural light might give you exactly what you want, but often it does not. The sun might be in slightly the wrong position to give you the background you want. Or a lack of cloud cover might make it not as soft as you’d like. Too much cloud cover could make it too soft. And sometimes, you just want to get creative.

This video from Mark Cleghorn for Elinchrom shows us several ways to utilise flash on location. There’s a lot of information packed into this 4 minute video. It’s a lot like working with flash in the studio, except you have to take the ambient light into account, too. You may want to use it as a gentle fill, or you may want to try to overpower it completely. But without flash, your options are often limited.

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If you’re shooting flash outdoors, your colours are probably wrong. Here’s how to fix it with gels

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Shooting on location with flash is one of the fun parts of portrait photography for me. But, depending on the lighting conditions where you’re shooting, your flash may not be putting out the same colour as the ambient light. This means that while your subject may appear perfect, the environment can appear very cool or warm.

In this video, photographer Robert Hall explains the problem how it happens. It’s an easy problem to fix, all you need is a few gels, and Robert shows us how.

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Lighting direction as a tool: Popping vs blending your subject within a scene

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As someone who shoots on location a lot I’m often given a choice on what I like to call “popping” or “blending” a subject into a scene, in short this really as as simple as using your main light source to either complement the direction of a natural / embedded light source in a scene (a candle, window, lights etc) or contrasting it completely so that the subject “pops” out and suspends the belief that they are illuminated within the scene naturally.

Here’s what I mean:

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Why Light Trumps Location in Photography

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One of my favorite locations for photography sessions is the beach in front of our family cottage.  Its a location that I use quite often for everything from family photos to commercial photography gigs.

The reason that it makes such a great photography location is because (besides being accessible) it has a little of everything: interesting texture, rugged wilderness, water and waves, ice and snow, sunshine, moody rain and fog, unobstructed star fields and everything in between.

But even with a great location, light trumps location in photography every time – and sometimes you have to break the rules!

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How To Find Inspiration And Take Interesting Photos In Boring Locations

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Regardless of where you live, chances are there’s some really incredible places to take photos nearby. The problem is, after looking at and photographing the same thing over and over again, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to see the beauty in it anymore. As a photographer, having the ability to find inspiration in the most boring, redundant, or even cliched locations is invaluable.

It’s frustrating, but, fortunately not all is lost. In the video below, Mike Brown invites us into his own backyard, a place he’s photographed a 1000 different ways already, to show us a few methods he uses to get the creative juices flowing when our eyes can’t see beyond routine.[Read More…]

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