Exposing to the right, or ETTR, is one of those photography techniques that sounds intimidating until someone breaks it down for you. I remember the first time I heard the term thrown around in a landscape photography workshop. Half the group nodded knowingly, and the other half stared blankly at the histogram on the back … Read more
We have all been there. You are at a birthday party, a family gathering, or an evening event. The lighting is low, so you pop up the little flash on top of your camera and take the shot. When you review the image on the back of your camera, something looks off. The subject’s face … Read more
Hard light comes from a small, distant light source and creates sharp, well-defined shadows with high contrast. Soft light comes from a larger, closer light source and creates diffused shadows with gradual, feathered transitions between highlights and dark areas. If you have ever taken a portrait outdoors at noon and wondered why the shadows looked … Read more
Catchlights are the specular highlights reflected in a subject’s eyes when a light source bounces off the curved, wet surface of the eye. In portrait photography, these bright little reflections are what give eyes dimension, sparkle, and a sense of life. Without them, eyes look flat, dark, and unsettlingly lifeless, which is exactly why understanding … Read more
Your backlit subjects turn into silhouettes because your camera’s light meter reads the bright background and tries to darken it to a mid tone, which underexposes your subject in the process. The camera does not know what your subject is. It simply measures all that light coming from behind and adjusts exposure accordingly, leaving your … Read more
You set up three lights. You followed the tutorial. You positioned your key, your fill, and your backlight exactly where the diagram told you to. But when you hit record or snap the photo, the result still looks flat, dull, and two-dimensional. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. I have spent years working … Read more
You are shooting a portrait against a bright sky. Everything looks perfect on the back of your camera. But when you zoom in on your computer, you notice thin purple and green outlines along the edges of your subject. That unwanted color fringing is called chromatic aberration, and it is one of the most common … Read more
You plug your memory card into the computer after a long day of shooting, and your stomach drops. The card shows empty. Hundreds of photos you just took are gone without a trace. If this has happened to you, take a breath. You are not alone, and in most cases, your photos are not truly … Read more
Nothing ruins a great shoot faster than discovering dark spots scattered across your photos during editing. If you have ever wondered whether those annoying blemishes are sensor dust, you are in the right place. Learning how to check your camera sensor for dust in two minutes is one of the most practical skills any photographer … Read more
If you have ever mounted a 50mm lens on your camera and felt like it looked more like a portrait lens than a standard lens, you have already experienced crop factor in action. Understanding what crop factor is and how it changes your lens’s reach is one of the most important concepts in photography, especially … Read more