Even when you’re shooting portraits outdoors, you can still have your light under control. You just have to take advantage of combined light—that is, artificial plus natural light. It’s generally ideal if you can keep the two light sources in balance. It’s best of all if your audience can’t even tell that you used both types of light.

Artificial light has one large advantage—you have it entirely under your control, and there’s nothing to hold you back from your creative goals. So learn to master flashes and continuous lights, and you’ll take your portrait photographs to the next level.

For many photographers, taking portraits under natural light is the simplest and most common option of all. That way you don’t have to worry about equipment costs. However, you do have to take into account the characteristics of natural light and subordinate your subject’s placement and your exposure settings to these.

Just about every photographer has tried portrait photography at some point. But many of them run into trouble when it comes to portrait lighting. There are several ways to go here. But for all of them, you have to keep in mind basic parameters such as the light’s intensity, quality, and color. Take a look at how to master these.

Full-length shots give dramatically different impressions depending on your height. When you’re photographing someone from up high, they can end up distorted in your picture—for example with shortened legs. Let’s take an illustrated look together at the effects that height and distance can have on portraits.

The eyes are the core of a portrait, and they’re an important means of expression in photography. So let’s take a look at how to make them stand out. We’ll retouch them using a brighten-and-darken technique. And we’ll do the same to let the lips and teeth stand out. The goal: to make our subject really, really shine.

A documentary photo should document something—it should have a message or a story. Today we’ll be looking at how to shoot a story-packed documentary photo set.

There are some situations where daylight just isn’t enough. Your light is weak, giving you no choice but to find or create some of your own. One good candidate for that light source is a flash fired outside your camera body.

The notion that retouching is just for portraits is a myth. Retouching is used in landscape photography, macro photography, and other photographic disciplines as well. In short—knowing how to correct minor defects in a picture will always come in handy. So learn to work with retouching tools.

One common photographic subject—especially for portraits—is senior citizens. Portraits of seniors look good. With edits, they can look even better. In this article, we’ll look closely at one of these edits: HDR editing.