Five Creative Ways To Shoot Portraits

ami-portrait1.jpgThere are five really handy tips that you can use in your portrait photography. The truth is that it’s easy to get high classy, imaginative and exceptional portrait photos. You may have heard that there are only two methods of lighting used when taking healthy portrait shots; soft and romantic lighting or dramatic lighting. While this, you may have heard, is a key to brilliant photos, it can be fairly limiting in more ways than one.

(Not to negate good lighting of course!)

Light is one of the most fundamental aspects to good photography. You may have heard the term “studio/portraits”. This is generally referring to placement of light, in a studio, on the person you are photographing. It’s a preferred option for many photographers to do portraits in a studio because of the control the photographer has over the situation; mainly the lighting, as lighting can be a hard issue to work with at social functions and even outside. So for the purpose of this article, I’m focusing (excuse the pun) on portraits done in the studio, although some portraits are done at a person’s home.

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Starting Portraits In Digital Photography

portrait-of-blonde-child.jpgThe first rule of success in portrait photography is to capture the positive side of the person you are taking. Capture them as happy, enthusiastic, and calm or generally displaying positive actions or moods then you will be well on your way to achieve sensational photos.

You can also create sensational portrait photos when the person is pensive, serious and concentrating. An example of this would be a musician playing his or her instrument; they may not be able to look at you and smile, but

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Bird Photography

sparrow.jpgI am primarily a bird photographer.The common opinion is that as a birder you need to shoot rare birds. Rare birds are a welcome opportunity, but what can you do when you live in a big town and can’t travel a lot to other places. That is exactly what happened in my case. My opportunities to travel are limited because I have no car. There are a lot of birds living in town parks and luckily, they are not as shy as wild birds. Here, there is potential to catch some really exciting shots.

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Professional Photography – Extract from the Tutorials

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Introduction
to Roger Jeakings:

How does a professional combat photojournalist see the world of photography? This was the question we asked Roger Jeakings, combat veteran, tutor and author with more than 20 years of front-line experience to tell us. Roger has an enterprising communication style all of his own and the one thing he promises you is his thoughts and ideas won’t be boring. This article is the first of series designed to bring the professional and amateur photographer closer together. Note: This is an extract only. You will need to subscribe to the tutorials in order to see anything after this extract. You can subscribe at the bottom of the extract

The Professional Touch.

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Of Water-Lily Ponds and Snow Filled Woods

barn-in-snow.jpgAll Landscape Photography is Local

Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neil, Jr., member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years is credited with the line “All politics is local”. And Like politics, all landscape photography is local.

Sometimes photographers give a universal feeling to a shot so that the viewer will never know where it was taken. Sunset shots can be like that. After all, the sun is setting somewhere every second of every day.

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Photography Tutorial No 3 – A little goes a long way…

moz-screenshottut3.jpg A little goes a long way

Sometimes it’s difficult to understand why people are precise and caring about some things while completely abandoning any semblance of responsibility for others. Take my partner for instance. She is a qualified registered nurse with an eagle eye for anything that bears the slightest resemblance of dust. Out comes the vacuum cleaner, the polishing rag, or the bucket and mop. But when it comes to her car, nothing seems to matter. It just functions and if it gets a bit grubby yours truly has to deal with it or nothing happens. That’s how it is.

So what has this background got to do with images, you might well ask? To see more you will need to subscribe to the tutorial…

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Get a Photographic Farm!

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If you ever wonder what you should be shooting, get a farm. I mean this in the photographic sense.

I am not the first to suggest that all photography is local, nor that if you are a serious photographer that you should take your camera with you everywhere you go, nor that the best light in the day is in the morning and afternoon when you get those beautiful 45 degree slanting rays of sunlight. There is beauty everywhere. There is photographic material everywhere.

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How To Photograph Winter Scenes

snowandtelegraphpoles.jpgYou wouldn’t think so but winter landscapes- or snow scapes – are one of the most challenging to photography enthusiasts. The difficulty can be that the average light tone of a snow scape is a lot lighter than what a medium grey tone is. This can put your meter readings out and give you an incorrect reading. In cases like these the snow is underexposed even though the camera may be telling you the exposure is just right.

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Where Will Your Fine Art Photography Career Take You?

1b.jpgThe web, thanks to the advance of technology, is slowly evolving from a textual to a visual media. This has opened new markets for image professionals, and, unlike graphics work, photography is in more demand because it requires actual skill. If you’re interested in being a fine art photographer, there is no better time to launch your career than now.

Masters of fine art photography make bank. Their work gets splashed across the trendiest magazines. Their galleries get linked from Boing Boing and Laughing Squid. Their work gets exhibited in museums and galleries and other places affiliated with fine art photography associations. A professional fine art photographer can expect to make six figures within the first three to five years. But as a fringe benefit, fine art photographers get to go everywhere.

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