Just a few quick pointers to help improve your portrait photographs.

• If you use strobes instead of continuous hot lights, you will get larger pupils from your subject.  Nearly always this is considered more attractive and engaging.  (note: if you can’t get the large pupils naturally you can still get them in Photoshop.)
• Try and get a “catch light” in the person’s eyes.  That is the little cresent shape highlight caused by reflections of lights in a person’s eye.  (once again, this can be done in post, but looks better if you can do it on location.)
• Use your subject’s far cheek as a background for the nose.  By this I mean don’t let the outline of a person’s nose extend beyond the cheek.  That draws lots of attention to the nose and exaggerates any imperfections.
• When shooting a full figure.  Shooting from belly button level instead of standing level will make the person look taller.

So now you have Adobe Lightroom and it’s time to print out your new artwork.   Hmmmm, what is all this stuff in here?  There’s a lot in the print module to figure out.  Well here’s my notes on the subject which should clear up most of your questions.  This outline will not cover every single option in the Adobe Lightroom Print Module. Some stuff should just be self explainatory. But if there is any question about what a feature might be used for, I’ll try and fit it in.

HDR Hotography is a relatively new way of taking photographs which allows for new frontiers in artistic expression by the photographer and new advances in image capture by your camera.  The basic concept of HDR is the blending of multiple exposures to produce a wider range of visible details in a photograph.  That’s the short description.  If your ready to dig into the detailed step by step instructions on creating HDR photos both in your camera and on the computer, then please read on.

Hey folks!  I’m happy to bring you what I hope is a well received gift.   My personal Lightroom Keyword Library in Adobe Lightroom 3.x format.  So why would you want this you may ask?  Well, maybe you don’t, but if you’ve put much effort toward creating a hierarchical keyword list in Lightroom including synonyms, then you’ll know how very time consuming this can be.  To give you an idea, I’ve been working on this one for two years (estimated 200  hours)  and it’s still very much a work in progress.  In it’s current state it has over 6,000 categories, keywords and synonyms.

You may not find my particular style of organization to be your favorite,  In fact I’m betting you’ll think it’s a little odd.  But that is irrelevant as you can easily reorganize my hierarchal system to something which works for you.  Where you are really benefiting from my work is in the extensive list of keywords (and synonyms) which I’m providing.  This allows you to add one keyword and get almost every other keyword you need (for example type in “flamingo” and you’ll also get “bird, birds, flamingos, feathers, wing, animals, wildlife and pink”)

When shooting images in a city or anywhere with tall straight lines (example buildings, trees, or a road that goes into the distance) you can end up with perspective issue. The buildings seem to converge at the top, or they shoot sideways off the frame, or the are leaning like the Tower of Pissa (no idea how to spell that). Anyway, it’s a common problem with an easy fix. Just open up your Lightroom develop panels and use the Lens Correction Tools. Watch the video for details.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRmDjE7_u-0