Photography Tips

Have you ever wanted to have a speedlight snoot at almost no cost that is very easy to make yourself? You can make one within 2 minutes at almost no cost from an empty box of Pringles. It’s very inexpensive, easy to make and it will take just a couple of minutes of your time to make one.

Believe it or not but all you need is an empty box of Pringles and scissors. Take the box and cut out the bottom. Next, all you need to do is to slide it over your speedlight. You’ll probably notice that the round shape of the Pringle’s box is not exactly the shape of the speedlight’s head so it might be necessary for you to adjust the box a bit when you do it the first time. And here it it: almost at no cost, ready in 2 minutes, a home-made speedlight snoot.

Taking good (portrait) pictures doesn’t require expensive equipment. Sometimes, all you need is the knowledge about natural light and how it behaves and it can take just a minute to take a nice portrait picture. That’s all what it took me to take this picture – simple yet beautiful (at least to my personal opinion). I took the photograph with the subject standing very close to a window which was also covered with white-neutral cloth. This way I got a double-diffused natural light. It was all that simple!

If you would like to learn more about light, how to use it to your benefit to get amazing shots, I highly recommend Bert Stephani’s Motivational Light DVD.

When you shoot HDR (high dynamic range) photography you have to keep in mind to keep the camera steady for all the shots (under-exposed, over-exposed and with proper exposure). The best solution of course is to put a camera on a tripod but what to do when you would like to shoot HDR but you don’t have a tripod with you? Is it possible to shoot HDR without a tripod and still end up with good HDR photograph? The short answer is: Yes, but you need to remember about few things to eliminate any camera movement between the shots.

Continue reading “How to shoot HDR Without A Tripod?” »

I particularly like soft and nicely diffused natural light during most of the photo shoots (unless I decide that hard light is what I need for a particular shoot) and I use windows as light diffusers more and more often.

Continue reading “Using a window as a light diffuser” »

Until only recently I was either using only natural or only artificial light (speedlight or strobes) in one picture at the same time. However, rules are meant to be broken (yes, it was a very weird rule I had to use only one type of light during a shoot) and lately I’ve been combining and mixing natural and artificial lights. I really like to use one type of light as a hair light and the second as a fill light or as the main light.

Continue reading “Combining natural and artificial lights” »

Until just recently, whenever someone talked about pictures of a person taken in a mirror, I only associated this kind of pictures with Facebook profile pictures of teenagers (I think you know about what kind of picture I talk about). But I have discovered the great advantage of mirrors during my recent photo shoot in Poland – mirrors are great to frame a subject. There are other ways to frame a subject, for example with door frames, windows, trees, etc. but I never used a mirror to frame a subject before.

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I have to admit that I haven’t tried taking abstract pictures before and if I did abstract photography it was purely coincidental. I have discovered lately that my portfolio and photography library don’t have any abstract photographs. I honestly have no experience in taking abstract pictures and I’m not even sure if you need experience for this type of shots. So I decided to give abstract photography a try during a walk in my Brussels’ neighborhood (it was a great weather that day so how could I miss probably the very first feel of sun this spring).

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You’ll hear that every time you talk with a photographer: “Take a camera everywhere you go”. I have mentioned that already a couple of times on my blog already but I’ll add something this time. Therefore, “take a camera everywhere you go, EVEN BOWLING!”.

Continue reading “Take a camera everywhere you go, even bowling …” »

I love working with people, professional or aspiring models, people who want their portraits taken, people who look for specific type of photography for their businesses, commercial or promotional purposes. However, it’s not always possible to prepare some of these photo shoots and often it’s necessary to improvise… actually you can never be confident that you’re 100% prepared for a photo shoot as a photographer. There are almost always unexpected things happening: bad weather, people not showing up or showing up late limiting your time for a shoot, location turning out different than you expected, etc (the list can continue forever).

Continue reading “Improvising a photo shoot on location” »

Little I knew about pen tablets, not to mention how useful they are, when I was starting my adventure with photography few years ago. A pen tablet seemed to me as an unnecessary tool at that time, which was used only by very (emphasis on VERY) professional photographers and graphic designer only – and oh boy, how much could I be wrong. I underestimated the value of a pen tablet for my post-processing job and photography workflow that I can’t believe I did when I think back to those times when I didn’t use one. I got my pen tablet from Wacom over a year ago and it’s been an integral part of my workflow ever since.

Continue reading “Pen Tablet – an essential tool for post-processing” »

I heard two opposite opinions in the past few years whether it is better to overexpose or underexpose pictures. Obviously, the best condition is when you expose a picture correctly, but you might find yourself in a situation when you might need to underexpose or overexpose a picture and you will have to choose which one is better: to underexpose or overexpose. I heard Scott Bourne (at least I’m pretty sure it was him) saying that you should underexpose by one stop to ‘naturally’ saturate the colors already in a camera – this apparently saves you some time in post-processing. However, this tip is more applicable for film photography rather than digital photography, because saturating the colors in post-processing can be done nowadays in a matter of few seconds.

Continue reading “Overexpose or underexpose – that is the question” »

I’ve recently read a very interesting blog article Less Gear, More Character? by Bert Stephani and I have to credit him for giving me the idea on the following article. I completely agree with Bert’s opinion that gear can stand in a way between a photographer and a subject, especially when too much gear is used or the focus of a photographer is on the gear and not on the subject.

Continue reading “Focus on your subject, not gear” »