TeachMeToShoot blog

The lighting gurus over at Strobist have posted another great article. David shows you how to use your flash as the main light for outdoor portraits.
Bright midday sun is a terrible time for photographing people. Harsh light, heavy shadows, "raccoon eyes", and the heat all make for bad pictures. The secret to success is to [...]

Using an external flash with your Digital SLR gives you a huge amount of flexibility. Unfortunately, most people just stick it on top of the camera and fire away. With just a few tools you could be shooting photos like the pros.
The Lighting 101 series from Strobist (link is to the PDF file) shows you [...]

Here in the Denver area is a local photographer who does awesome photos of smoke. Bruce Norman is primarily a nature and travel photographer, but experiments with abstracts and such. His series of smoke photos deserves a look. (This is what we Colorado photographers do when we’re stuck in our house for 3 days during [...]

What causes redeye? It’s simply because the flash is so close to the lens. Whether you have a Digital SLR or a Point-and-Shoot camera, both suffer from the same problem. The redeye you see is a reflection of the person’s retina. The flash goes into the eye and is reflected back almost directly into the [...]

Last week my newsletter readers got information about various methods and tools for softer flash lighting. Let me share some of them here.
The first, and easiest, thing you can do is to use Bounce flash. Obviously, your popup or built in flash won’t do this. You’ll need and external flash with tilt and swivel ability. [...]

What’s a Ringlight, you say? Maybe you’ve heard the term Ring Flash instead. Or Circle of Light. Or “that round flash thingy that attaches to the front of your macro lens.” Strobist has made this Ring Flash Week and the first article is up on their site.
Ringlight flashes have been used for many years by [...]