Items shot with a white background are a classic you can use almost anywhere. Read on for the ins and outs of these standard shots.

The market is overflowing with cameras, lenses, and a variety of accessories to bring large or small effects to your photos. They come in all sizes. But do you need them? Everyone certainly tells you that this flash or that softbox will make your photos exceptional. But is it true?

You don’t need to rent a studio, look for a big room, or own expensive equipment. You can work your way into product photography by photographing small objects. It will also give you a chance to practice your work with light. You just need a few common props that you probably already own.

Painting and drawing with light are two of the most entertaining roads to producing creative photographs. Together they form an area of photography where groups of people of all ages can work together and have fun together. With a little patience and enough time, you can create works reminiscent of actual paintings.

Having an eye for photography is about more than just having an eye for great composition. It also means you know how to see light, and when to take your picture. If you’re lucky and catch a “fever” for photography, then the basics like light and composition will become so natural for you that you won’t even think about them—just do them.

Today we’ll take a look at one of the most basic and most used types of diffusion tools: softboxes and octaboxes. These two light diffusion tools look very similar, and you could almost say that octaboxes are a type of softbox. But these tools have subtle differences. The differences may at first glance seem to be mere details. However, details are what separate the good photos from the bad.

When photographing landscapes gets old, and you’re tired of the city, you often end up photographing people. Now, pictures of your friends at the bar do have a certain something,

Most cameras have a built-in flash. But much more can be done with an external flash, especially when you position it away from the camera. There are a few issues you have to solve with an off-camera flash though, such as how to actually tell the flash to fire.

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.

Most articles for beginning photographers are about how to create technically perfect photographs. They teach correct exposure, the very highest contrast, precise white balance, and so on. But several special