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Advanced Beauty Lighting
Lighting

Advanced Beauty Lighting

I covered the basics of beauty lighting several months ago. This month I take you on a deeper dive into beauty lighting. We’ll look at a more advanced setup I used recently to produce two killer looks for the same model. There are constants in beauty lighting: a strobe with a beauty dish acting as the keylight, a reflector or second strobe to fill in the shadows from the keylight, and classic clamshell lighting. Add a stellar creative team, additional accent lights to amp up the look and maybe some colored gels for that extra wow factor.

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11/01/2017
Panasonic GH5 Firmware Update
Product Spotlight

Product Review | Panasonic GH5 Firmware Update

As many of you already know, I am a huge fan of the Panasonic GH series, and have been onboard since the GH3. I love the quality and price point of the video that comes off these cameras. It’s incredible. The recently released GH5 is already a workhorse in our studio.

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10/02/2017
Westcott Flex LED Mats
Product Spotlight

Product Review | Westcott Flex LED Mats

I love Flex lights. They are easy to use, very powerful, cost-effective, they throw great light and they’re extremely portable. They are not just for video. Read my article on commercial shoots in this issue, where I talk about how we used two of the 1×1 Flex Panels to light some food photography.

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10/02/2017
Tamron SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Zoom Lens
Product Spotlight

Product Review | Tamron SP 24-70mm F/2.8 Zoom Lens

There is no substitute for speed. Investing in a f2.8 lens is a must for any photographer working events, weddings or portraits. It gives you that extra stop or two of light needed to work in low-light situations. More importantly, it gives you shallow depth of field, so your subject pops off the background. If you are looking for a cost-effective, fast-performing lens, the new Tamron 24-70 f/2.8 zoom is a great all-around lens.

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10/02/2017
Storytelling in Commercial and Editorial Photography
Commercial Photography

Storytelling in Commercial and Editorial Photography

Every time I look at a project, I ask myself, “What’s the story?” In commercial photography, a team of creatives conceives stories around a concept to sell a product. In editorial photography, the subject is the story, and I collaborate with a writer and photo editor to illustrate that person’s story. Then there are personal projects, where I have the opportunity to mix those worlds together. Whether my job is to adapt a story into an image for a client, magazine or myself, or to simply photograph what or who is there, my process involves an interplay of three equally weighted components that make an image work: light, subject and context.

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10/01/2017
Email Marketing for Photographers: Email Sequences That Increase Portrait Profits
Marketing

Email Marketing for Photographers: Email Sequences That Increase Portrait Profits

Can emails really drive print sales and increase your bottom line? If so, are you confused why your sales emails seem to go unanswered?

Most photographers, especially shoot-and-burners, already use email to deliver online photo galleries to clients. For them, email is simply the easiest way to deliver final image downloads and essentially close the photographer-client transaction. Email delivery today is what burning photos onto CD’s used to be, hence the burn in shoot-and-burn. It feels clean and done. But is it smart?

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10/01/2017
How To Push the Limits of Light With High-Dynamic-Range Editing
Post Production

How To Push the Limits of Light With High-Dynamic-Range Editing

A commercial or editorial client will likely require editing images for a greater dynamic range. In that case, you will want to know what your editing options are after the shoot. Ideally, you want to work with a tripod to give yourself the most flexibility in stopping down your aperture, staying at a low ISO and taking long exposures. Long exposure sometimes removes your option to shoot handheld. Let’s look at some options for multiple exposures and how we can merge these files.

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10/01/2017
Building Your Portfolio With Styled Commercial Shoots
Commercial Photography

Building Your Portfolio With Styled Commercial Shoots

When I started moving from wedding photography to studio work, one of the appealing aspects was expanding my creativity. As a wedding photographer you’re creative, but you’re limited to the wedding world. As much as you may want to go outside the box, you’re still photographing a wedding. Once I moved to studio photography as my main source of income, I realized I was still in the same boat, just in a different-themed boat. Instead of being boxed into weddings, I was boxed into headshots and standard commercial shoots. In order to exercise creativity, which is so important to any photographer’s career, I had to arrange shoots of my own.

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10/01/2017

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Behind the Shutter

Photography training and education for the modern photographer

In today’s competitive landscape, quality online photography training and education is priceless to your growth. Unfortunately, most publications contain a ton of fluff. No real meat to their content. Not at Behind the Shutter. We are committed to the photography community and improving professional photography by providing current, insightful, and in-depth educational content.

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