I came up with this idea a few years ago when I was trying to find a reflective backdrop for my still life and product photos. Of course, later on, I eventually found out that other people had come up with the same idea as I had. At the time, I was looking for something that would add some fantastic bokeh without reflecting the candles I had placed in the scene. I searched throughout my house and found some aluminum foil that ended up working perfectly. I never had the realization until relatively recently that I could create a much larger version for portraits...

   This is going to be a long read. Grab a cup of your beverage of choice and relax as I explain how I shot 30 photos with different lighting setups. I've got lighting diagrams, ideas for alternatives and some food for thought that will hopefully get you thinking about lighting in ways that you may not have thought of in the past. I really wanted to hone in on the lighting with these photos, so no fancy concepts (usually) and just a simple black backdrop to make the lighting the main focus. I limited myself to no more than three lights max so you don't need a huge studio with a million lights to try these out for yourselves. So without further ado, let's get started with photo number one...

   Clamshell lighting is one of those lighting techniques that should be a staple in every photographer's lighting repertoire. It's a classic lighting setup that offers gorgeous lighting for all kinds of portraits from beauty to corporate headshots. It's actually very simple to do as well. All you need is a soft light pointed down on your subject for your main light and some kind of bounce to fill in the shadows from below...

   Fourth of July is coming up, depending on when you read this I suppose, and one of the mainstays of this holiday is the fireworks display. Even if you're reading this and July 4th has already come to pass, there's probably another holiday or event coming up where fireworks are involved. I've had various people in the past ask me how to take kick ass fireworks photos, so I figured I'd make a video tutorial showing you how. Don't worry, if you don't feel like watching the video, then keep on reading :) ...

   Closeup filters, or macro filters as they are sometimes known, are awesome. They're a relatively cheap alternative to a dedicated macro lens, which not only takes up space in your bag and adds weight, but saves you money if macro isn't a big part of what you enjoy to shoot. You can find sets of these closeup filters for as low as $10 at places like amazon and b&h. Theyre so cheap that even if you've never gotten into macro before, this is a nice, cheap way of dipping your toes in to test the waters. Some people spend a buck or two on an app and get some enjoyment out of it for a little while, this could be your photographic equilivent. ;) Keep in mind that these won’t give you a true 1:1 macro experience...

   This is a question I see a lot amongst photographers starting out. How do I make eyes pop? There's a decent amount of information out there although a lot of it revolves around not just making the eyes "pop", but making them pop unrealistically. It's a common problem I see where a photograph will have some flat lighting, but then eyes that SCREAM out at you and the dichotomy is quite drastic. I wanted to create a tutorial showing a way to make the eyes match the photo they reside in. I used a dramatic photo in the tutorial, so the eyes are very dramatic. This photo below is a much more common portrait setting and you can see how using all of the techniques I used in the video below can also be applied to something a little more normal just by toning down the settings a bit...

   Have you ever seen an awesome landscape scene at night, only to notice that the sky is just a boring black abyss? It seems like everytime I shoot landscapes at night that there's never anything of interest happening in the skies. Not only that, but if its an urban landscape, you'll never see any kind of stars whatsoever due to the light pollution from the city lights. One of the coolest things you can see in the night sky is the Milky Way galaxy. Taking a shot with the Milky Way in it requires a lot of planning and knowledge of how to get it right. Sometimes it's not even going to be possible to get a nice view of the galaxy based on the position of the subjects in the scene...

   I'm sure everyone has seen one of these photos at least once. Double exposures can be such a fun and interesting creative technique. As the name implies, double exposure photography is all about combining two photos and overlaying them with one another to create a single image. Some digital cameras, and most film cameras, have the ability to take multiple exposures and create the effect in camera without needing any photoshop or post production at all. Personally, I like the ability to control the outcome in a more meaningful way without letting my camera take care of business for me. With photoshop you have many more options on the placement of the two photos, how they're blended together and which elements are showing and which aren't...

   If you follow me on Facebook, you may have seen a clone photo I put up right before christmas. It wasn't meant to be the most amazingly intricate and well composed photo in the world, just something fun to do while I was bored during the holidays. When I was making it, I forgot how fun they are to shoot. I used to make them all of the time years ago and the concept of cloning myself kind of fell to the wayside while I was working on learning new techniques. After I posted it online though, I remembered another thing about multiplicity photos. There's a lot of people who love them and a lot of people who still aren't sure how to make them for themselves. So, I decided to make a tutorial explaining how to not only set up the shots to make your life easier, but also how to composite them in post to get the final image...

   I'm often asked questions on how to do certain techniques or how I do my post processing. One of the simpler things I'm asked often is how to change the color of something in a photo in photoshop. It's fairly easy to accomplish and it's also my most received request, so I decided to make a video tutorial on how anyone can do it themselves. I'm a fan of having multiple options available to me for any given task. I've always resented the idea that there is only one "correct" way of doing something. So instead of telling you how it's "supposed" to be done, I show you three different ways you can achieve the exact same result. Everyone has different workflows and techniques that are more intuitive for them, so having the option of learning multiple techniques is something that I feel strongly about...

   I've been in a creative mood lately and I've been messing around with different techniques like freelensing for example, which I'm going to be writing about soon. Today though, I wanted to focus on light trails from car lights. Instead of taking the average long exposure shot of car head and tail lights, I changed up my perspective and went INSIDE of the car. I actually was inspired to take this shot based on a photo I took up in the mountains with a friend of mine. I was messing around with a long exposure while he was driving and I came out with a photo I thought was pretty cool. Looking back though, I knew I could do much better. I didn't have my tripod, so I had to hand hold my camera and a tripod is crucial to making this shot work. So a couple of days ago I set out to retake the shot, but this time with urban lights instead of the forest from the original...

   Oh yes, the illustrious Bokeh Panorama. It's a very cool technique that took the world by storm in the not-too-distant past. In case you don't know what it is, I've created a video tutorial explaining how you would go about creating this cool effect, which you can find at the end of this post. It's fairly simple to do once you figure it out the first time. First though, let me give you a bit of backstory. The bokeh panorama became famous a couple of years ago when a wedding photographer by the name of Ryan Brenizer created this technique which is now called the Brenizer Method. The idea is to create a wide field of view like what you would see from an ultra wide angle lens, like say a 14mm, and combine that with the shallow depth of field of a fast telephoto lens, like a 85mm f1.2 for example. So in essence, you'll need a fast telephoto that you'll use to take a series of shots which you'll stitch together later in a editing program like photoshop (or similar) much like a standard panorama...