What is Fill Light in Photography?
Fill light is one of the unsung heroes in the photographic industry, yet the fill light in basic three-point lighting can be just as important as the key. Getting it right can make your images look much better.
Fill light is one of the unsung heroes in the photographic industry, yet the fill light in basic three-point lighting can be just as important as the key. Getting it right can make your images look much better.
Umbrellas are perhaps the most under-appreciated light shaping tool around. Due to their low price and wide availability, they are considered by some to be only for those who are beginners. This couldn't be further from the truth.
In this short tutorial, well-known portrait and fashion photographer Lindsay Adler will show you how to use "the most inexpensive and under-appreciated" lighting modifier to capture beautiful studio portraits. She's talking, of course, about the lowly umbrella.
If you're looking to expand your skill set in shooting portraits with umbrellas, check out this 8-minute video by photographer Miguel Quiles. In it, he introduces different types of umbrellas and then shares 5 different ways he uses them to create stunning portraits.
Nubrella is an innovative new umbrella that could come in handy for photographers shooting in the rain. It's a hands-free, wind-resistant design that can keep you and your camera dry while you're snapping away.
Fashion and portrait photographer Jeff Rojas is back with another simple, incredibly useful lighting tip. This time, he's showing how to use a single reflective umbrella to create three distinct looks by simply moving your light source around your subject.
Daniel Norton, the same photographer who showed you how to capture three distinct looks simultaneously when you're pressed for time on a shoot, is back for another useful quick tip. This time, he's showing you how to capture four distinct portrait looks with a single umbrella.
First things first: the photo above isn't a composite. In fact, as Elizabeth van der Bij of ENV Photography jokingly explained in the comments on her Facebook page, her Photoshop skills "suck", so she couldn't have faked it even if she had wanted to.
No, the Alberta-based photographer and the couple, Kassandra & Craig, simply stuck it out and kept taking pictures as the storm approached until, as luck would have it, the Universe delivered in a big way.
If you're the type of person who prefers umbrellas to rain ponchos, you might prefer the Brolly rain umbrella to rain covers when using your camera in wet weather. It features a special finger hole grip handle that frees up the fingers that would otherwise be clutching the umbrella, allowing you to use your cameras more naturally without getting wet.
David Hobby over at Strobist uncovered an intriguing new type of parabolic umbrella by B2Pro Lighting last week that has some people intrigued, even as many others are calling BS. The umbrella sports a patent pending pattern of RGB photo sites that, according to B2Pro, will "bring lighting for digital photography and motion picture into the 21st century."
If you find yourself regularly shooting in the rain and in need of a better way to keep yourself …
The Pileus Internet Umbrella is a cool research project that aims to connect an umbrella to the cloud and use the available space on the underside of the umbrella as a screen for projecting photographs.
The Strobella is a small shoot-through umbrella that you mount to your flash …