Strobe Photography

One Light, One Modifier: How to Transform a Flat Portrait Into Something Dramatic
Video Tutorials

One Light, One Modifier: How to Transform a Flat Portrait Into Something Dramatic

There’s a scenario every portrait photographer runs into eventually: you’re shooting somewhere that isn’t ideal, the natural light is flat and unforgiving, and your client is expecting something that looks like it belongs on an album cover. I’ve been there more times than I want to count. For a long time, my instinct was to just work with whatever the ambient light gave me and fix it in post. The results were fine.

Mastering Reverse Lighting: How to Create Convincing Window Light Portraits in Any Studio
Video Tutorials

Mastering Reverse Lighting: How to Create Convincing Window Light Portraits in Any Studio

There are mornings in Seattle when the light through my studio window is absolutely perfect. Soft, directional, wrapping around a subject like it was designed for portraits. And then there are the other mornings, which is most of them, when it’s flat grey and useless. I spent way too long early in my career either waiting for good light or driving subjects to locations just to stand near a window. It took me embarrassingly long to figure out that you can just build the light yourself, and that the result can look just as natural as the real thing.