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When you're making a big effort to learn photography and grabbing up every quality piece of information you can find, it is quite common to become frustrated at how some professional photographers and educators hold their cards so close to their chest that is is difficult to figure out their techniques. That is why it's such a refreshing surprise when you find a photographer that gives you everything you need to know to start emulating their results. Enter, Andy Lim, professional portrait photographer.
Let's jump straight in and take a look at one of Andy's images.
This is a very very good photograph by anyone's estimation. So how did he take it and what can we learn from it?
Well a few things will stand out to many photographers. We can tell from experience that the colour situation here is going to be fantastic for a photograph. The deep red of the bride's cloak contrasted against its gold hemming and white of the groom's shirt are perfect for a dark background. Add some soft window lighting which is great for skin and faces (not to mention saturating aforementioned colours) and you have the beginnings of a very solid portrait photograph.
The posing is deliberate too. Getting people to look up is often a quite flattering position to put them in making their eyes look bigger and their chins look slimmer. This makes for better photographs and often happier clients.
But what else? Anybody can follow those bits of advice and get a better image, but they probably won't get a shot quite this good.
Andy Lim's Photo Recipes Go Further
I can share my educated guess at what Andy did to get this stunning shot and I was correct, but I didn't go nearly far enough.
In these guides, Andy replicates the exact lighting layout (mapped) with the exact challenges that he was presented with on the day. He includes how he enhanced it with artificial omnidirectional lighting (easier than it sounds) and and makes these detailed observations for all of the other photographs in his recipe guides.
The lighting maps and the exact equipment and settings that Andy used are invaluable for a photographer learning to take such shots.
Perhaps more importantly, Andy goes into what he purposely didn't do to avoid some common mistakes in people photography. How he avoided harsh shadows and the like (in this case it had to do with the positioning of the artificial light source).
This type of information makes learning a lot easier and in invaluable for beginner to intermediate photographers.
Black Friday to Cyber Monday Discount
Currently Andy has his whole training bundle on discount as part of the whole Black Friday and Cyber Monday discount thing. This is the perfect time to get all of these amazing guides heavily discounted.
Rob is the founder of Light Stalking. His love for photography started as a child with a Kodak Instamatic and pushed him into building this fantastic place all these years later, and you can get to know him better here. Rob's Gear Camera: Nikon D810 Lenses: Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8, Nikkor 50mm f/1.8
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