Search results for: photography composition rules of composition
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by Mathew Malwitz · Posted
First, a disclaimer: Like composition, lighting portraits is a subjective exercise. A setup that works for one situation may not work for the next, and lighting that one photographer adores might repulse another. Cultivating a personal lighting style involves an awareness of conventional approaches and willingness to go beyond what everyone else is doing. Study portraits
by Mathew Malwitz · Posted
Despite what you might have seen on the internet, you don’t need all the money and time in the world to photograph wildlife. Sure, an African safari would be nice, but it is by no means the only way to capture stunning images of wild animals. In fact, regardless of where you live, odds are there’s a vast ecosystem that likely goes unnoticed. If you have trees in your neighborhood, you’re off to a great start.
What You Need to Photograph Wildlife
While gear plays a crucial role in our ability to photograph wildlife, it isn’t everything. In this
by Mathew Malwitz · Posted
These days, everyone has a camera right in their pocket. Smartphones have long been the go-to camera for quick photos of our friends, family, pets, and of course, ourselves. With features like portrait mode, users can simulate blurry backgrounds and isolate their subject for more eye-catching images. What else could you ever need? What if I told you that with the
by Allan Weitz · Posted
Though there aren’t any hard rules on the subject—and all rules are made to be broken—wide-angle and ultra-wide-angle lenses are often considered to be the go-to lenses for landscape photography. It’s not like you can’t capture wonderful landscapes with normal or telephoto lenses (you absolutely can), but due to their broad capture angles, wide- and ultra-wide-angle lenses usually win out over the alternative choices. For those who wish to go wider than ultra-wide, you have to turn to fisheye lenses.
Photographs © Allan Weitz 2020
What Is a
by Caleb Quanbeck · Posted
Getting close enough to wild animals is one of the greatest challenges a wildlife photographer faces. So how do you solve this problem? The way most wildlife photographers do is to buy a telephoto lens with as much reach as their wallet allows. Today, a fairly economical way to enter the realm of the super-telephoto lens has been via the family of very nice 150-600mm lenses from brands like Sigma and
by Todd Vorenkamp · Posted
by M. Brett Smith · Posted
Portrait photography, or portraiture, remains one of the most popular genres of photography today—and for good reason. Portraits are compelling; they are evocative. Portraits tell a story; they elicit an emotion. Shot correctly, a portrait can reveal the true essence of a person, who they are and what they feel. According to Godard, portraiture is tantamount to capturing the soul. About what other medium or form of expression could you say such a thing?
As with most genres of photography, portraiture is not beholden to any one specific
by Jill Waterman · Posted
Making pictures by night is a curious practice. While specialists of this subject embrace it as a deep-seated passion and have a never-ending quest for technical and creative advancement, those more familiar with daytime photography are often unaware that tried and true photography rules often need to be adapted or even overlooked at night. With this in mind, consider the following tips the next time you venture out in the darkness, to help you to adapt.
1. Take a Chance and Explore the Unknown
What’s my exposure time? This is the number one
by Todd Vorenkamp · Posted
1. Shoot every day Like any skill, the more you do it, the better you can get. The best camera you have is the one in your hand, so if you aren’t out with your full DSLR kit, don’t be afraid to take great photos with your cell phone camera or a point-and-shoot. Photography is photography, make pictures with a camera. Any camera.
2. Always have your camera near Pull up a chair and I can describe two amazing scenes that have been indelibly embedded in my mind. Unfortunately, for the first, my camera was broken (I was at sea, far from
by Todd Vorenkamp · Posted
Welcome to B&H Food Photography Week! Running from July 19-22, 2021, across all of B&H's channels, will be loads of new content and events about how to create amazing food photos—all you need to do is find a chef! You'll find inspiring presentations from top food photographers and creatives who share their secrets on making food photographs that look as great as the food tastes!
Find us on social media at #BHFoodPhotoWeek to share the table with your fellow foodies and food photographers!
To get more involved, tune into the live
by Allan Weitz · Posted
A friend of mine once described his favorite wide-angle lens as his “gateway to landscape photography,” and that’s a pretty good metaphor for wide-angle lenses if I ever heard one. Wide-angle lenses and ultra-wide-angle lenses naturally lend themselves to capturing landscapes with a sense of depth. They also tend to capture a sense of drama that you seldom get when photographing landscapes with longer focal length lenses.
Photographs © Allan Weitz 2021
Wide-angle lenses feature angles of view (AoVs) ranging from about 63° to about 74°, which
by Allan Weitz · Posted
I’ll never forget the first time I looked through the viewfinder of a camera fitted with a 20mm ultra-wide-angle lens. Everything looked amazing and I blew several rolls of film shooting everything I saw along the way. Prior to using this “exotic” lens, I had never shot with anything wider than the 50mm normal that came with my first 35mm camera.
The sobering part came when I developed the film and started eyeballing the results of my first outing. In a word, they were underwhelming, but I kept at it until I figured out how to use ultra-wide
by Todd Vorenkamp · Posted
Congratulations on getting your first telephoto zoom lens. Telephoto zooming makes for fun photography! Whether you got your 55-200mm or 55-300mm “kit lens” with a new camera, or you’re adding it, or a similar lens, to your quiver, your photography is about to enter a new world of awesomeness. In this article, we will discuss some tips for how to get the most out of your new telephoto zoom lens.
Photographs © Todd Vorenkamp
by John Harris · Posted
Bokeh is a word that carries a lot of weight in modern photography circles and can, surprisingly, breed heated conversations, but what does it really mean and how does it apply to portrait photography? As an introduction, consider the word—which is derived from the Japanese term for “blur” or “haze”—to mean the aesthetic quality of the out-of-focus parts of an image surrounding an in-focus subject. It is not simply something not in focus, it is a product of shallow depth of field and can be quite beautiful on its own, but also lends to
by M. Brett Smith · Posted
On March 20th, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons, the latest installment of its popular life-simulation series. In six short weeks, the game has already sold more than 13 million copies, making ACNH one of the strongest game debuts ever for the Nintendo Switch, and putting it on track to becoming one of the top-selling Switch titles of all time.