Welcome to my learning and education page. I’ve picked up a few bits of knowledge in over three decades of being involved in photography and I created this space to share what I have learned. Below you will find information on my in-person workshops as well as a listing of articles, reviews, and tutorials on various aspects of photography.
Come join me for an afternoon of hands-on learning with studio strobes and light modifiers. This workshop is really more “play” than work as we will spend a large portion of the time actually shooting with studio lights and getting to try out a wide variety of modifiers. This is a great opportunity to gain experience with different types of light shaping tools which will help you to find what works best for your style of photography.
Click here for more details and to register.
In this two-hour workshop, we will go out to the streets of the city center here in Valencia. We will go searching for the beautiful available light that occurs on the streets and alleys here. You will learn how to make use of backlghting and make use of reflected light from walls and windows for a “main light”. You’ll discover you don’t need to bring a refelctor or fill light to get well lit images even in the middle of the day.
Details and dates coming soon!
Creating a connection to your subject is the key to creating an engaging and attractive image. This is as important, if not more so, than the technical aspects of lighting and camera settings. Tethered shooting during a session is one of the best tools the headshot photographer has at their disposal. Having the subject able to view the images as they’re captured brings them into the process. You and the client end up working together as a team to create that “best shot”.
Click here for more details and to regsiter.
In this video, I go over three different ways to convert color images to black and white using Adobe Photoshop. I start off with the quick and easy way of simply desaturating an image, to having the most creative control over how colors are represented in brightness in the final image.
These techniques work in the last several versions of Photoshop.
This demo created on version 25.5.1
Video created using DaVinci Resolve 18
Music licensed through Soundstripe
Adobe Photoshop contains a very broad and deep set of tools for making edits and adjustments to images. While there is little limitation to what can be achieved using the native tools available in Photoshop for more than two decades, they may not be as intuitive and user-friendly to photographers who have spent most of their time editing raw images in Lightroom.
In this article, I’m going to demonstrate how to use the Camera Raw filter and also show some specific situations where it can really be handy and save time. Hit the link below to see the full article.
https://petapixel.com/how-to-use-camera-raw-filter-in-photoshop
Let’s face it, not everyone who ends up in front of your camera is going to have amazing white teeth like the model in the photo above. There are going to be times when you have a client whose teeth might be stained.
It’s not just things like coffee or certain foods and beverages that can cause this. Certain genetic dispositions, age, or even some medications can put a dimmer on what otherwise might be a brilliant set of teeth within a smile.
In this video I’m going to demonstrate a time-saving feature in Adobe Photoshop, Match – All. Found under Window, Arrange, Match-All, this workspace organizing feature has been around for a long time, but many users may have never seen it or if they did, never tried it out to see what it does and that’s what I’m going to demonstrate here.
If you found this video useful, please consider supporting future content by Buying Me a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/brandonjackson
If you shoot headshots and/or portraits, clamshell lighting is something you should definitely become familiar with. This versatile and easy-to-create lighting setup produces a very flattering look useful for a variety of portrait situations.
Clamshell lighting gets its name from the way the light sources are placed, with one light above and in front of the subject with a second light or reflector in front of and below the subject. The resulting shape of the setup resembles an open clam but with a gap between the two shell halves.
Read the full article over at https://petapixel.com/clamshell-lighting/
Here’s a quick fix that I use to reduce shiny foreheads in headshots (and portraits) using Adobe Photoshop.
Step 1 – Create a new layer above the background layer by clicking the New Layer Button (or CTRL+SHIFT+N on Win / CMD+SHIFT+N on Mac)
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In my latest article for PetaPixel.com I take a look at rim lighting. As you might guess, rim lighting is used to light a portion of the edge of your subject. While it is most often used as part of a multi-light setup, it can be used on its own for dramatic effect.
This type of lighting isn’t limited to use in still photography. You will see it implemented in video and motion pictures also, but the use of rim lighting in movies is quite a broad topic unto itself, so I’m going to just focus on photography here.
Welcome to the first entry in my Lab Color series of articles (and videos) on Lab Color. It only seems appropriate to begin the series with an introduction to, and explanation of, Lab color. The Lab (pronounced L – A – B, not “Lab”) color space is formally referred to as CIELAB and is a color space that device independent, which means it is not based on the color reproduction capabilities of specific output devices such as monitors and printers like the sRGB or Adobe1998 color spaces.
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