Sure, the pros may use a wide array of expensive lights to take their studio portraits of celebrities. But you can pay nothing and get unique indoor portraits with just one—the Sun.

Every photographer knows that feeling where they want to head out just like that and take some pictures. But often, there’s nothing to take pictures of. The model didn’t show up. Or the weather’s bad. Or it’s dark. Missed moments like this are the right moments for experiments. Today I’ll talk about one such experiment.

1. We keep the lights off. The holidays are a time for candles, gently lit shrubbery and the warm glow of the fireplace. All great for ambiance — all terribly

Today we’ll be looking at photos of despair and beauty, from the Sarcophagus (the cover protecting the damaged fourth block of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor) and the perished city of

Even though professionals do macro photography using DSLRs and often high-priced lenses, you can try basic macro photography with any old compact. You just have to switch it to macro mode.

Sunset. Grand finale of evening golden hour. I have been traveling around the world and seen lots of places, people and views. But for me sunsets are always the most memorable.

Used wisely, low depth of field makes your pictures more interesting, more intelligible, and easier to “read”. So—how do you get that pleasantly unsharp background in a photo? The following

This time around, we’ll be showing you a simple trick. Or more precisely, some settings changes that will make your DSLR more effective. And a feature that you can use

Beginners’ mistakes are free. (Well, psychologically at least.) But you should still learn from them—even more than from your successes. And sometimes you can learn about them before they happen. So let’s take a look at photographers’ most common mistakes.

Photography is literally painting with light, and so no photo can come from a scene where there’s no light at all. And even low-light sites have a problem: poor exposure. What can we do to get good pictures out of bad light?