Shooting portraits in direct sunlight can be pretty challenging, and those harsh shadows on the face are likely not something you’ll want to see on your model’s face. Well, if you’re not up for old-school solutions, artificial intelligence comes to the rescue. A group of scientists has created an algorithm that removes all those unwanted shadows in a matter of seconds.
The shadow game – the Lighting Series #5
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When you think about image design and lines of sight, it’s easy to overlook light and posing. But it doesn’t have to be hard… Today I will share some primary tips on using posing to create shadow games.
Photographers, don’t fight the shadows. Embrace them
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In tricky lighting situations, most photographers expose for the highlights to prevent them from getting blown out. But this can create dark shadows which sometimes don’t preserve enough detail. What to do with them? Should you brighten them up in post? According to Sean Tucker, you shouldn’t. Instead, just embrace them and use them to your advantage. In this highly inspirational video, Sean discusses how to do it, and why this advice goes for both photography and life.
How a few pieces of paper helped me recover more detail in my pictures.
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I am aiming this week at those of you first getting into photography and looking for a budget friendly way of improving your photos!
You see, this week I’m giving some love back to the age old concept of “The best camera is the one you have with you”. By that token, the best reflector is the one you have with you! So what’s small, reflective, portable and weighs less than a feather (A large one)?
This artist combines shadows and doodles to make incredibly fun photos
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Photography wouldn’t be possible without light, and where there is light – there are shadows. Creative Belgian artist Vincent Bal chases shadows and turns them into something unique. With some everyday objects, a few doodles and a camera, Vincent gives life to shadows and turns them into super-fun photos like you’ve never seen before.
The Sony A7II and its absurd shadow recovery.
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Until today I’d known my Sony A7II could handle the shadow world, but I could never bring myself to push it. Mainly out of fear, no actually entirely from fear of losing the image. Recently I had the absolute pleasure of working at Rebecca Bathory’s place I decided to test the range once and for all.
How to light real world objects with “flat design” style drop shadows
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The “flat design” style drop shadows seem to have become a big thing lately. Whenever I check out my YouTube feed, I always seem to see a new tutorial on how to do it in Photoshop, Illustrator or After Effects. It’s easy to see why. It’s a pleasing look. It complements a flat design with a sense of realism, depth and context. This is the first time, though, that I’ve seen it done for real, with actual objects.
In this video from the Cinematography Database, Matt Workman teams up with Greg from Lens Pro To Go to show us how it’s done. Starting off with a simple overhead setup, they take us through the entire process. They break the process down into individual steps and build it up one light at a time. This lets you see exactly how each light is contributing to the scene.
Light is KING! 10 Tips on Handling Light in Street and Urban Photography
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If it wasn’t for light, there wouldn’t be such thing as photography, right? Yes! For some – light is one of the most important ingredients of the photo. You can count me in. Definitely, I am one of them. Please note that all my tips are based on my street/urban/fine art photos and most of them are evening and night shots. This is not an ultimate tutorial as this subject is wide as an ocean.
Power Trick: shadows for composites and digital manipulation
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Shadows are often the hardest part when creating composites. In my workshop I often get the question can’t we just take a copy of the model, duplicate that, make it black and use that as a shadow. My answer was always ‘no’ till recently. I am gonna show you a way how you can (often) use your model as a shadow.
[editor’s note: we are huge fans of Aad Sommeling. Aad is big about sharing and we are quite happy that he allowed us to share this primer, if you want to get deeper into the world of compositing, there are also a few workshops he made that will help you get started]
Great Ways To Include Shadows In Your Pictures – Discussion
by Leave a CommentResults from the Shadows Assignment, in which you were asked to include shadows in your photographs.
We had 9 flickr submissions (two by Carlos – waytogo!) as well as 10 comments submissions – coming to a total of 19 submissions.
All images submitted were great and I had a hard time choosing the top four. I got those four as they each reflect a different technique of using shadows.
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