PictureCorrect.com: Headshot Photography Studio Equipment Setup

How do I start? What type of equipment do I need? Do I have to spend a ton of money? These are some of the questions that plague us when we think about setting up a photography studio for the first time. Wouldn’t it be great if someone just told you what you need exactly? Well, here you go. If you’re thinking about setting up your own studio, Vanessa Joy offers some great tips on what you need to get started:

Joy takes us into her headshot photography studio and gives us the complete tour of equipment she uses. Since her studio is only about six months old, this is the perfect example of what’s needed.

Strobes

A couple powerful and consistent strobe lights are first on the list. Joy suggests the Profoto D1 or D2 lights so the light quality and color stay consistent.

Backdrop

You can simply use a paper backdrop or a complete wall, your choice. It just depends on what you need and how you need to light your set, as the backdrop can change how the background light comes through and the color.

Softboxes

Softboxes are a must in the studio. They can produce the same soft, directional lighting that you would get from natural window light. Joy uses two 3×4 Profoto softboxes for a Butterfly setup, and to cover a greater area and produce a beautiful, well-defined shadow in the background. She also recommends the 1×3 softboxes if you want to do a hair light, or rim light.

Studio Camera

A camera designed specifically for studio work is great, but not very versatile if you’re on the go. Since Joy is primarily a wedding photographer, she goes for the more portable Canon 1DX, which is nice and fast.

Tripod

A very important piece of equipment for any photographer. Joy recommends a MeFOTO tripod. Having a tripod will give you the flexibility of setting up your camera and leaving it in one spot as you move freely around the studio. You can weigh it down for increased stability with sandbags or other weights.

Minimum of Three Lights

One of the secrets of a breathtaking photo is the lighting. Without good lighting in a studio, you won’t be able to create a sharp and clear picture. Different lights create different effects, so it’s good to be prepared and have options. A minimum of three lights—one background light and two main lights—will ensure you always get good quality of the color and awesomely lit images.

And last but not least…

A comb! This will save you a lot of trouble if you have to change a model’s hair; you won’t have to worry about the oil from your hands making the hair look greasy in the final image if you’ve had to use your hands to keep restyling throughout the shoot.

These are just the basic necessities of a new studio. Of course, you can add to this arsenal or remove a couple things depending on what kind of photography you’re shooting. Let us know in the comments below if you have any other suggestions for someone building a new studio.

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PictureCorrect.com: Sharp Photography Tips & Techniques

There are lots of ingredients that go into making a spectacular photograph, but the most important is for the picture to be in sharp focus. Even the slightest blur takes away from the picture, no matter how good the subject, lighting, and color.

Photographers have somewhat varying opinions on what constitutes a tack sharp picture, but generally, a tack sharp photograph has good, clean lines. The picture has clear definition instead of a soft blending of lines—or even downright blurriness.

Photo by Ferran Jordà; ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/60-second exposure.

There are several things you can do to increase your chances of getting that coveted tack sharp picture.

Hand-Held Digital Photography Tips

If you’re hand-holding your camera, brace your arms against your sides to help steady the camera. If your camera has anti-shake technology, such as Vibration Reduction (VR) or Image Stabilization (IS) that can be switched on and off, this is the time to have it turned on.

You can also lean against a wall or tree or whatever sturdy object that’s handy, and help keep yourself and your camera steady. Alternatively, lean or lay your camera or lens on some readily available sturdy object to help steady the camera.

Steadying your camera by hooking the strap under your elbow and wrapping the rest around your forearm will also help stabilize the camera and hold it steady in your hand.

Getting those tack sharp photos while hand-holding your camera can be difficult, so to increase your chances of getting that perfect shot, use the burst or continuous shooting mode to take several shots at once. That increases your chances that at least one of the pictures will be in sharp focus.

Photo by Tom Davidson; ISO 400, f/8, 2-second exposure.

Tripods for Better Focus

There’s no getting around the fact that it’s easier to get a tack sharp photo using a tripod. You just can’t hold the camera as steady as a tripod will. And like most things in life, with a tripod you get what you pay for. A cheap tripod will help, but it won’t hold your camera rock steady like a more expensive tripod will. The moral of the story is to buy the best tripod you can reasonably afford.

The more expensive tripods don’t come with the head attached. You have to buy it separately, but that means you get to choose what suits you best. To get a sharp photo, buy a quality ballhead that won’t let your camera slowly slide to one side.

If you’re going somewhere where carrying a tripod just won’t work, beanbags make a nice cushion for cameras in these settings. They cushion your camera, helping to steady it and increase your ability to situate the camera to focus on the subject you want.

To improve your chances of a tack sharp photo even more, use a cable release instead of pressing the shutter. It may not seem like much, but the movement from pressing the shutter will make the camera move enough to prevent getting those tack sharp photos.

If you don’t have a cable release, the self timer will also work. It allows you to press the shutter, while giving the camera time to stabilize before it actually takes the picture.

Advanced Photography Secrets for Sharp Shots

If you have a DSLR camera, there are even more ways to make sure your camera stays steady while taking pictures.

The first is to use mirror lock-up. This locks your camera’s mirror in the up position so when you take a picture the mirror doesn’t move until after the picture is taken, limiting the movement inside the camera. This means to take a picture, you will have to press the shutter release button twice on your remote or cable release (you’re not going to all this trouble and pressing the shutter release on the camera, are you?). The first press lifts the mirror and the second press actually takes the picture.

Photo by TheGiantVermin; ISO 160, f/2.8, 1/500-second exposure.

The second method is to turn off the Vibration Reduction or Image Stabilization. That may sound counter productive, but when you’ve stabilized your camera with a tripod and other methods, the vibration reduction keeps looking for shakes/movements. If there isn’t any movement, the vibration reduction actually causes some shaking while looking. A good rule of thumb is to keep these turned off when shooting with a tripod, and only turn them on when you’re hand-holding the camera.

One last way to increase the sharpness of your pictures is to have good glass. The lens you use makes a big difference. A quality lens with good glass is more expensive of course, but it’s another instance of getting what you pay for. Think of it as an investment in great photos.

Use as many methods as you can to steady your camera, and you’ll have a much better chance of getting lovely tack sharp photographs.

About the Author:
This article was written by Pat Lyne (thephotographylearningcenter dot com) from Photography Learning Center with information on digital cameras, digital photography, and more.

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NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day: Full Moon Silhouettes

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PictureCorrect.com: Interesting Photo of the Day: Abandoned Chicago Highway

How do you get an eerily empty shot of an otherwise busy highway—completely devoid of vehicles, like some post-apocalyptic scenario? You stack 50 exposures together. That’s exactly how photographer Michael Salisbury created this image:.

I stacked 50 photos to create an empty highway in Chicago. (Via Reddit. Click image to see full size.)

Salisbury made the original images using a Phase One iQ 180, a medium format camera. Salisbury explains that he usually takes a ‘plate’ image of the background, or anything that would remain static in the final image. The actual composite part is the road, which had a lot of traffic and needed to be ‘cleaned up’.

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PictureCorrect.com: How to Maintain Privacy When Sharing Pictures of Your Children Online

While a lot of people don’t mind posting photos of their kids online, photographer Marcin Lewandowski is against the idea of showing his child’s face on social media. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to share photos at all. If you feel the same, you might be interested in his suggestions for other ways to share pictures without revealing a child’s identity:

Wanting to retain your child’s privacy doesn’t have to limit your creative possibilities. On the contrary, you have a world of options to work with.

As a bonus, when you concentrate on something other than focusing on a child’s eyes, you might just have a much easier time and a lot more fun photographing children. You can play around with your imagination and figure out more interesting ways to share your family’s life.

Children’s feet and fingers are especially cute. They make wonderful subjects and tend to change very quickly, too. Place them with larger adult feet or something else for scale.

Children’s clothes are also a great subject, especially if they’re wearing something funny or are in costume.

Though you may be trying to avoid photographing faces, you don’t necessarily have to avoid photographing your child’s head. Use your creativity. Find something to hide the face–a branch, a hat, a mask. Or, try shooting a silhouette.

Find creative ways of masking the face.

One more thing that you can try is incorporating distance in your images. From far away, faces become unrecognizable.

Photographing children without showing their faces doesn’t have to be stressful or uninteresting. It should actually excite your creative side and push you to try new things.

There’s no correct take on how to use social media when it comes to your kids. Many parents love sharing photos with their friends and family and save their worries for other matters. For some, a stance against showing a child’s face on social media is based on the fact that Facebook and other social media platforms can use your content in whichever way they like. But Lewandowski says his biggest reason is that he doesn’t want to use his son’s face as a trophy. He limits his exposure to a minimum until his son is old enough to decide for himself what gets shared online.

What are your thoughts on this subject?

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PictureCorrect.com: Interesting Photo of the Day: Fiery Winter Sunset in Montana

Next time you hear someone insist that December skies are always “gloomy,” show that Grinch this dramatic image of a fiery winter sunset, which was photographed by Reddit user uscmissinglink‘s sister in southern Montana:

“Montana Sunset” (Via Imgur. Click image to see full size.)

The photo was created in Custer Gallatin National Forest, which encompasses over 3.1 million acres of wilderness in Montana and South Dakota and serves as a gateway Yellowstone National Park.

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PictureCorrect.com: When to Use Graduated ND Filters

One of the trickiest aspects of natural light photography is balancing highlights and shadows. Waiting for the clouds to cooperate is difficult, and post-processing is a gamble, not to mention time consuming. The trick is to understand how manipulating light in-camera—particularly with filters—can make your life a whole lot easier, as this video shows:

The video focuses on an image that adventure photographer Corey Rich took of a couple mountain climbers beginning their ascent of Cerro Torre in Argentina’s Patagonia mountains. It’s an epic shot, with the mountain peaks ablaze in light at the top of the frame and the two hikers well lit beneath them.

The only way Rich could nab it was by using a three-stop soft graduated neutral density filter, which doesn’t affect the bottom half of the image, but darkens the top half by (in this case) three stops. You can also buy a one- or two-stop graduated ND filter. But, as Rich notes, it’s best not to rely on them too heavily, and to use them sparingly:

“When I’m in the mountains, I’m a fast and light guy. I actually carry just three filters. I find that if I’m going to pull out a grad filter, it’s because the light is radically different….Less is more—faster, lighter, that’s the key.”

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