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Photographer spends two years capturing intimate moments of dinnertime across the USA

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Each of us has different habits and routines in our daily lives. Milwaukee-based photographer Lois Bielefeld captured these routines in a fantastic photo series named Weeknight Dinners. The people in her photos are just like you and me: everyday folks eating their usual dinner on a weeknight. Two years and 78 portraits later, Lois presented us with the project that shows how diverse and interesting people’s habits are.

Lois chose to capture the dinnertime from Monday to Thursday, which is when most people don’t have so much time to prepare a huge meal and gather the family around. As a result, you get to peek into the daily lives of others for a brief moment and see how different we all are. The photos made me feel like I could share the moment with people in them. I spoke with Lois about her project to find out more about it, and I bring you some charming and informative stories of Weeknight Dinners, along with some wonderful photos.

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Photos of faces perform almost 40% better on Instagram, study shows

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Whether you’re into Instagram or not, there’s no doubt it has become a powerful tool for photographers to showcase their work and even book sessions. Growing an audience is a tedious job (if you don’t want to use bots). But, the results of a recent study may help you grow the audience faster.

The researchers of Georgia Institute of Technology and Yahoo Labs recently looked at 1.1 million Instagram photos. They came to some interesting and potentially useful conclusions that could help photographers gain more likes and comments from their followers, and get people more engaged.

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20+ gorgeous backlit rainy photos and a tutorial on how to take them

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When it’s pouring rain, taking outdoor portraits is not the first thing most of us would do. But Japan-based photographer Ilko Alexandroff uses the rain to his advantage. He takes amazing backlit portraits in the rain, and they make it worth getting wet. In his latest video, he shares plenty of his gorgeous backlit rainy portraits. He will give you a tutorial on how to take them, from light position to camera settings. And of course, he’ll give you some advice how to protect your camera and strobes so the rain doesn’t ruin them.

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Three tips for posing your non professional friends and family

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Ever tried posing your family or other non-pro friends for a photo. For some, it comes naturally, but for others, it may feel like an excruciating experience.

Mango Street (previously) is here to the rescue. They share three basic (yet powerful) tips to help you pose and direct your friends. As usual, good photography starts with the basic things, so once those are in place you can continue to build to more advanced levels.

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This is the perfect angle for portrait photography. Really. It’s “proven by science”

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Ed Gregory at Photos in Color makes a pretty bold claim in his new video. It’s titled “Why this is the perfect PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY angle – Proven by SCIENCE”  The exact angle for perfect headshots every single time. It’s a shame that this video from  has such a misleading and clickbaity title, because it does have some good information in it.

The “perfect” portrait and angle is going to vary a lot from photographer to photographer. It’s a very subjective thing. What we like is what we like. It’s also going to vary greatly depending on the person sitting in front of the camera, too. Facial structure, build and demeanour plays a huge part. There is no one rule to… um… rule them all. But do have a watch of the video anyway. Just ignore the “science” bit.

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Should the Media Use Official Portraits When Reporting Misconduct?

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Two police officers in Georgia were fired after videos showing them brutally beating a motorist spread like a wildfire on social media. A criminal investigation has been initiated over their conduct, and photos of the two officers have emerged in the media.

The official police portraits from the Gwinnett County Police paint a radically different personae than the actions of Sgt. Michael Bongiovanni and Officer Robert McDonald caught on video. The smiling faces of civil servants in uniform posing in front of the American flag create a cognitive dissonance in light of the assault.

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Simplified posing for beginners, breaking down the building & tweaking of poses

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Posing is probably the most difficult part of shooting portraits for most photographers. The technical side can be learned relatively easily. Your style just develops over time based on what you like. But posing, directing a subject, getting the expressions that you want. Is art in itself.

And if you’re working with the general public and not models, it can be a difficult one to master. In this video, photographer Manny Ortiz talks about how he poses his subjects during shoots. He breaks it down as much as possible to simplify the process for you and your subject.

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Photographer captures portraits of people in water droplets to emphasize importance of clean water

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Water droplets can be a great photographic subject. Sometimes, it feels like you can see a whole new universe inside of them. Serbian photographer Dusan Stojancevic recently used droplet photography to create something unique – portraits of people.

As a part of a collaboration with WaterAid, he marked World Water Day by capturing portraits of Cambodian school children, doctors, cleaners, and farmers. All of them had their life changed thanks to the access to clean water. And each of them is shown through tiny droplets.

Other than sharing magnificent photos, Dusan has taken his time to talk to DIYP about the project. He has shared some details about the project, as well as some interesting stories about it.

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Get creative with your portraits using a piece of silver window screen mesh

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A few days ago, we showed you Cheesycam’s tutorial on making large frames for gels or diffusion with screen door kits. Well, those kits often come with some mesh.  Mesh which may now be laying around in your garage doing not much at all. Now, thanks to photographer Mark Wallace, we have a photography related use for the mesh, too.

In this video, Mark shows us how he uses the metal mesh from window screens to add something a little different to a portrait session. It will probably render the mesh unusable for its originally intended purpose, though. But you didn’t really need it for anything else, did you?

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How to shoot wet portraits in a home studio using high speed flash

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Water is one of the most versatile subjects one can photograph. The very nature of water, though, means that it’s wet, so it can be messy and potentially dangerous. Working with it to shoot portraits in a home studio especially so. It’s not impossible, though. You just need to plan ahead, prepare properly, and perhaps have a friend along to help out.

As photographer Gavin Hoey demonstrates in this video, it can be done with very minimal equipment. With just one light, a paddling pool, and plenty of towels, Gavin makes short work of this session. Although, you might want a slightly larger pool than the one Gavin’s using.

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