Life

Am I Good Enough? 4 Tips for Overcoming Self-Doubt

Am I good enough to charge these prices? Will people like my images enough to book me? XYZ photographer is so much better than me, why will people want to hire me? No way will anyone pay these prices for pictures. Does any of this sound familiar? Self-doubt is common for any artist. Every one of us has asked ourselves at some point if we are good enough to continue to do what we love. Why is that? Where does this self-doubt come from and how do we push through it?

03/01/2018

Lighting

Reception Lighting 201

It’s understandable why the majority of lighting questions I get from photographers have to do with receptions. Reception lighting is the bane of existence for many wedding photographers. You are shooting fast-moving subjects in low, unbalanced color light without the ability to control or adjust the subjects for better posing. For most receptions, you can follow a few simple formulas to ensure that lighting is consistent and beautiful. Here are our setups.

03/01/2018

Post Production

Image Sharpening: A Complete Raw Workflow with Lightroom and ON1 Photo RAW 2018

The biggest fear when shooting is losing the peak focus on the subject’s eye and having an unusable image because you shot them at such a thin aperture. We’ve all been there. Even with full-frame digital cameras and the best glass, there is a chance for failure. That’s where editing programs can save the image and bring back the sharpness you intended to capture. There are different processes and programs we can use to sharpen our images. Knowing when and how to get the most out of sharpening is where I am going to focus in this article. I will be working strictly in Lightroom and ON1 RAW 2018 to demonstrate a complete Raw workflow. Let’s get started in Lightroom.

03/01/2018

Senior Photography

The Unforgettable Senior Experience

High-school seniors, especially girls, are thrilled to get the chance to be a model for a day with our studio. It’s not always about the pictures for our clients and their parents, however. The main reason our studio has been so successful with high-school seniors is the unforgettable experience we provide from beginning to end.

03/01/2018

Lighting

Rethinking OCF: Off-Camera Fill

I use off-camera flash for 90 percent of the seniors I photograph outside. In this article, I look at off-camera flash from a different perspective. Think fill flash, or off-camera fill. I’ll cover 11 OCF setups. First, let’s look at the lighting I use.

03/01/2018

Shutter Magazine

Capturing the Perfect Shot

What draws you to a certain photograph? What elevates a photo to outstanding? I strive for my photos to draw in the attention of my viewers, to engage them and inspire them. Once I conquered the technical aspects of my camera, I began to look for ways to improve my photography. As an amateur photographer, I always need to be on my feet because you never know when the perfect shot is going to come. I have discovered different tips and tricks to capture the perfect photo. Here are a few of them.

03/01/2018

Senior Photography

Unconventional Marketing for Senior Portraits

Our studio’s senior marketing has been unconventional. It’s easy to shower your market in direct mail or buy sponsor banners on the varsity football field. Those tactics are not necessarily bad, but everybody’s doing it. So how are you going to stand out to your target audience?

03/01/2018

Post Production

Retouching Senior Portraits in Photoshop CC

I began teaching myself how to retouch images with Photoshop version 4.0 (Photoshop CC 2018 is considered version 19). To this day, I still use some of the original processes and tools for retouching. In this article, I discuss the most important step in retouching, then explore the basics of retouching skin, enhancing eye color with blending modes and layer masks, and, finally, problem-solving stray hairs.

03/01/2018

Shutter Magazine

3 Keys of High-End Weddings

One of the goals on the vision board of a lot of wedding photographers is the high-end wedding. Depending on where you are in the world, this can have a very different connotation. I’m in the New Jersey and New York City area, one of the most expensive regions to have a wedding, where high-end means multimillion-dollar weddings at places like Cipriani and The Plaza. Whatever high-end means to you, you have to find a way to appeal to more luxurious clients. This isn’t easy, especially if you don’t run in those crowds yourself (I sure don’t). But there are ways to position yourself and your brand so you get in front of those clients and make them happy when you do.

03/01/2018

Shutter Magazine

Dive Right In: Underwater Portraiture Tips

Portraits capture the personality of the subject. One of the biggest challenges is to capture that personality in a photograph. With underwater portraits, there are a few more challenges you have to face. Here are a few things to consider before you dive in.

03/01/2018

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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.

Training topics include photography lighting techniques, photography off-camera flash tips, photography posing guides, photography business concepts and marketing strategies, Facebook for photographers, boudoir and glamour photography training, high-school senior photography concepts, IPS (In-Person Sales) strategies, family photography, Lightroom tutorials, Photoshop how-tos, and much, much more.

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Photography training and education for the modern photographer