Articles on: photo & video

I look at images that creaked their way through my first camera, and I am smitten by my lack of photographic ability. That first Polaroid I got for my 16th birthday provided artistic endeavors (such as a very sleepy photo of my parents putting up with having a camera in their face) that I hadn't known existed.

Some people are just naturally, infuriatingly photogenic. Many of us, however, are not.

[caption id="attachment_10270" align="alignnone" width="620"] Photo: Billy Lee[/caption] Last year, commercial photographer Shayne Gray had one very big day — he quit his day job as a director and applied to be in the audience for Joey L's portraiture class. Since then, he's been working full-time for himself, and has collaborated with numerous talented directors, photographers, and models.

[caption id="attachment_7536" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Photo via Daniele Faieta on Flickr.

Learning three manual exposure settings seems simple compared to memorizing the placement of chins, shoulders, hands, elbows, hips, knees and feet required to create a flattering portrait. Posing can be downright scary for new photographers, but without it, a technically perfect photo falls flat in an unflattering rendition.

[gallery size="large" columns="2" ids="34847,34848"] Photoshop and Lightroom are both players on the same team, one with more speed, another with more finesse but both with a similar goal. When it comes to retouching skin, the traditional industry standard, Photoshop, offers a number of advanced editing techniques, while Lightroom offers speed, simplicity — and a few hidden tools.

Photoshop’s Liquify Tool is a magic wand for pixels, tackling tasks from shedding pounds to adjusting flyaway hair. But that same Liquify Tool is also a can opener for the metaphorical tin of worms — is it wrong to give your subject a Photoshop diet?

Wide angle lenses fit entire scenes, cityscapes, and structures into a single image — but the wider a lens gets, the more prone it is to distortion. Cityscapes become dotted with structures that would topple in real life and the sleek lines of a stunning structure become something reminiscent of an optical illusion.

Photoshop’s selection tools make it possible to isolate a single object or remove a photo’s background — but if you mess up using the lasso tool, the only option is to go back to start outlining all over again. That’s why, when it comes to making specific, detailed selections, many Photoshop pros don’t use any of the selection tools at all.