Esther Beaton

Photography Lighting

How to carry out a geographic magazine assignment – Part 3 – Approaching people

Even when I’m in that high vibrational state, where I feel at one with   the environment and where the art of photography seems like innate intuition, it’s not. It’s like driving a car: you can cruise on auto-pilot but that’s only because you’ve put in many miles of experience behind the wheel. Photography only […]

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Behind the Scenes, Landscape Photography, New South Wales, On the Beaton Track, People Photography, Photography Equipment, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Professional Photography, , , , ,

Add More Sparkle to Twilight Shots

sunset behind the subject

Talking about night time events, well, dusk really, one of the key things a photographer has to prepare for is the need to add light, that is, more light than is available from the sky.   At one of our recent Meetups, we started at The Haven in Terrigal. There were birds, boats, waves and

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Landscape Images, Nature and Wildlife, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Travel Photography, Workshops & Courses, , , , ,

How to Turn Daylight into Night

looks like it was photographed by the light of the moon

There are several reasons to shoot at nighttime. Sometimes you want to create a gloomy, scary or heavy atmosphere. Sometimes the story or subject you want to illustrate occurred at night. But what to do if you are at your location in the middle of the day with no chance to return later?   That’s

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Digital Photography, New South Wales, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Quick Tips, Travel Photography,

Making great people photos

mixed lighting opposite colours

There are so many factors that go into good “people” shots. People photos for geographic magazines are a bit different from standard portraits. Sometimes they are raw photojournalism, but usually they fall into a genre called “environmental portraiture”. I’ve done this for so long now that I’ve come to really love it. The essential elements

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Australian Geographic, Behind the Scenes, New South Wales, People Photography, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Professional Photography, Quick Tips, , , ,

Ambient “lighting” is easy

Pearl farmer at dawn, Brisbane Water, NSW

Sometimes you don’t have to work at creating a background because you are blessed with the colours of nature. Or you’re just smart enough to go out at sunrise or sunset. Both of these pictures are pre-dawn. The colour in the sky at this time is called “afterglow” and I especially like this twilight time

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Australian Geographic, Behind the Scenes, New South Wales, People Photography, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Photoshop and Lightroom, Professional Photography, , , ,

Rembrandt artist

Rather than using colour, as in the previous post, to get rid of a busy or dull background, you can accomplish it with exposure control alone. This artist worked in her garage and the best angle of her using her jewellery press had some old storage units behind her. The easiest thing was to turn

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Australian Geographic, Behind the Scenes, People Photography, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Photoshop and Lightroom, Professional Photography, Quick Tips, Studio Photography, , , ,

Building up your lighting

While on the subject of lighting, here are a couple more examples of adding colour. Using coloured flashes is one way to overcome a drab scene – and when you’re indoors, in a clinical environment, it’s always a drab scene. I like to think of it as building my scene, a bit like adding layers

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Australian Geographic, Behind the Scenes, New South Wales, People Photography, Photography Lighting, Photography Techniques, Professional Photography, , , ,
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