Portrait Photography How To

We’ve all been taught to avoid shooting in direct sunlight whenever possible, to avoid blown-out highlights, harsh contrast, washed-out colors, unflattering shadows, and models with squinty eyes. In the shooting and editing tutorial below, you’ll earn how to meet these challenges and achieve beautiful photos.

Some photographers spend a lot of time fretting about aperture settings, and how they affect depth of field (DOF) in their photos. In today’s quick tutorial you’ll learn why it’s not necessary to worry about aperture as much as you think.

Skin retouching is an essential task to master if you want to create alluring portrait photos, whether your model is a man or a woman. That’s because you can have beautiful light, nice composition, and an inviting pose, but all that’s for naught if the subject’s skin is unappealing.

It's an oft repeated mantra of many photographers, particularly Canon shooters: "Canon has the best color science." But is it true? That's up for some debate but a frequently cited selling point for Canon over rival brands is what some believe to be its accurate color reproduction particularly when it comes to skin tones.

Los Angeles-based boudoir photographer Michael Sasser is here to dispel a myth. While it's certainly not ideal, you can shoot flattering portraits in harsh sunlight.

If you're unfamiliar with the term "Smart Objects" here's a definition paraphrased from the experts at Adobe: They're a type of "container" that holds multiple layers, that enable you to apply a variety of characteristics to an image with different tools and features.

Let's say you capture a nice image, and you want to bring out a bit more detail during the editing process. It doesn't matter whether the photo is a portrait, macro shot, a landscape scene, or something else. What's your strategy?