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Ben Matthews

Purple Stork photo birth announcements - we transform your snapshots into a work of art.

Luminosity Masks Tutorial

Creating an Ambient Look with Speedlights

Glowsticking.com recently posted an article about Media Permissions which is disseminating patently false information. They are saying that if somebody posts a

Introduction to Macro Photography - A Comprehensive Guide by Yanik's Photo School

Backing up photos is one of the most critical (ongoing) tasks for photographers, both amateur and professional. The “computer age” has been a blessing, allowing ...

What This Set Of Portraits Is This set of self-portraits is the product of a learning self-assignment. Aware that my portrait photography sucks has room for improvement, I decided to shoot 10 different one-light portraits to get more familiar with principles and possibilities of the lighting aspect of portrait photography. They're self portraits not because that was my choice but out of necessity: I don't know anyone who has the time and the patience to invest into cooperating with a basic learning project like this and without much chance of something useful coming out of it for them. These are time consuming because of all the experimentation, retries, adjustments, setups, tear-downs, etc. that go on with the nature of this type of exercise. So, don't complain, my art was painful to create, it should be painful to view. Common Portrait Attributes Each used only one flash or strobe. Diffusers, reflectors, and other light modifiers were explored to adapt that single light to each purpose. No ambient light was used in these images either, except the very last one, the experimental portrait. An attempt was made to create a variety of different types of lighting to get a better understanding of the possibilities and limitations of a variety of light modification techniques. Because they're self portraits, they, well, kind of suck. It's quite difficult to be on both sides of the camera for portraits so I chose to focus just on lighting and related tasks; posing and other aspects will have to wait for another time (and subject). Things I Learned There are setups, descriptions, and notes for each picture in the set. But in general, here are some things I learned from going through this: I like strip-lighting and look forward to getting much more familiar with its possibilities. I like shallow depth of field for portraits and this often means I don't need as much volume of light as I might otherwise. I don't need a lot of lights to create interesting, compelling, or creative portraits. One light is p

We all know that the main difference between a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens is the angle of view. Compared to a wide angle lens, telephoto lenses have a