Lighting Techniques

Two Onions, One Light, and the Photography Lesson I Wish I'd Learned Before Buying Anything
Video Tutorials

Two Onions, One Light, and the Photography Lesson I Wish I'd Learned Before Buying Anything

I’ve bought a lot of gear I didn’t need. Five tripods under $50, testing each one to death. A drawer full of adapters. More filters than I’ve used in a year. And for a long time, I assumed my lighting work was mediocre because I hadn’t bought the right softbox yet. That was the wrong assumption, and it cost me more money than I’d like to admit before I figured it out.

Checkerboard Lighting: How to Use Background Light for Dramatic Portraits
Video Tutorials

Checkerboard Lighting: How to Use Background Light for Dramatic Portraits

Background light is one of those things I ignored for an embarrassingly long time. My subject would look fine on camera, but something always felt flat about the image. The shadow side of a face would just dissolve into the background like the person was being swallowed by the frame. I kept thinking it was a posing problem or a post-processing problem. It wasn’t. It was a separation problem, and the fix lives in how you think about your background.