Video Tutorials

How to Light Rain in the Studio (and Make It Actually Look Like Rain)
Video Tutorials

How to Light Rain in the Studio (and Make It Actually Look Like Rain)

Rain is one of those elements that looks effortless in a great editorial image and absolutely terrible when you don’t know what you’re doing. I’ve watched photographers point a garden hose at a subject and wonder why the result looks like someone got splashed at a car wash. The problem is almost never the water. It’s the light. Water is transparent. If you don’t give it something to catch, it simply disappears into the frame.

Shooting on a Cyclorama: What Nobody Tells You Before You Book the Studio
Video Tutorials

Shooting on a Cyclorama: What Nobody Tells You Before You Book the Studio

There is a specific kind of panic that hits when you’re forty minutes into a commercial shoot and you can see the edge of your background in the frame. Your talent is ready, your strobes are dialed in, and you’re burning through your shot list. But the white vinyl is doing that thing vinyl always does: it has a faint crease running across the lower third, and no amount of gaffer tape is going to save you.

Flow Posing Newborns: What Kelly Brown's Technique Teaches Us About Working With the Baby, Not Against It
Video Tutorials

Flow Posing Newborns: What Kelly Brown's Technique Teaches Us About Working With the Baby, Not Against It

Newborn photography sits in a category of its own. The subjects can’t take direction, they startle at sudden movement, and the margin for error on safety is zero. For most of my career I’ve focused on fashion and beauty work, where the lighting puzzles are technical and the subjects can tell me when something is uncomfortable. Newborns are the opposite on every count. So when I started getting requests from clients who wanted environmental newborn portraits alongside their brand family campaigns, I knew I needed to learn from someone who had built a real system around this work.

How to Keep Dramatic Lighting Without Exposing Every Skin Texture
Video Tutorials

How to Keep Dramatic Lighting Without Exposing Every Skin Texture

Every few months a client emails me something like: “I love your dramatic work, but I’m self-conscious about my skin — will that lighting make it worse?” It’s a fair question, and for a long time I didn’t have a clean answer. Hard light rakes across texture. Scars cast tiny shadows. Acne that looks invisible in a mirror can look like a topographical map under a bare strobe. I used to mentally file these shoots under “handle carefully” without a clear system for handling them.

How to Light a Subject 100 Feet Long When Your Strobes Are Built for a Studio
Video Tutorials

How to Light a Subject 100 Feet Long When Your Strobes Are Built for a Studio

Most of the lighting problems I solve happen within four walls. My studio in Los Angeles is a controlled environment, and I’ve spent years learning how to predict exactly what a modifier will do at a given distance. Then a shoot comes along that strips all of that away, and you remember what lighting fundamentals actually look like when the subject is a 50-foot fighter jet baking on a tarmac at 105 degrees.

Small Flash, Classic Results: How to Build a Studio Portrait Setup with Two Lights and a Reflector
Video Tutorials

Small Flash, Classic Results: How to Build a Studio Portrait Setup with Two Lights and a Reflector

There’s a problem I run into constantly with newer photographers who come through my studio: they think dramatic, polished portraits require a wall of monolights and a dedicated grip crew. I understand where that assumption comes from. But some of my tightest commercial work has come from setups I could pack into a roller bag. That’s exactly why this tutorial from Daniel Norton caught my attention and earned a permanent sketch in my lighting journal.

Use a Polaroid's Manual Mode to Lock In Your Studio Lighting Before You Shoot
Video Tutorials

Use a Polaroid's Manual Mode to Lock In Your Studio Lighting Before You Shoot

There’s a problem every studio photographer eventually runs into: you’re lighting a subject, your digital camera is doing its own quiet negotiating with TTL, and you’re never quite sure whether what you’re seeing on the back of the camera is the light or the firmware. I’ve been in sessions where I thought I had the setup locked, only to find the exposure drifting between frames because the camera kept second-guessing me.

What a Sewing Studio Teaches Me About Building a Creative Space That Actually Works
Video Tutorials

What a Sewing Studio Teaches Me About Building a Creative Space That Actually Works

There’s a version of studio envy that has nothing to do with lighting equipment. I felt it the first time I walked into a workspace that was clearly built around how someone actually thinks, not just what looks good in a behind-the-scenes photo. My own studio in Los Angeles has gone through probably six iterations in the last decade. Too sterile. Too cluttered. Wrong flow between the shooting area and the editing corner.

6 Lighting Fundamentals That Matter More Than Any Camera You'll Ever Buy
Video Tutorials

6 Lighting Fundamentals That Matter More Than Any Camera You'll Ever Buy

Every few weeks someone emails me asking which camera body I’m shooting with, or which prime lens I’d recommend for portrait work. I get it. Gear is tangible. You can read specs, compare prices, feel confident you’re making a measurable upgrade. But after nearly two decades shooting fashion, beauty, and corporate work out of my studio here in Los Angeles, I can tell you that the camera has never once been the reason a shot failed.

How to Start a Photo Studio: Four Paths From Zero to Your First Shoot
Video Tutorials

How to Start a Photo Studio: Four Paths From Zero to Your First Shoot

Every photographer I know who shoots commercially eventually hits the same wall. A client wants a controlled environment, or you want to test a new lighting setup, and suddenly your garage or spare bedroom isn’t cutting it anymore. I’ve been there. When I was first building my studio practice in Los Angeles, the question wasn’t just “do I need a studio?” but “what kind of studio makes sense for where I actually am right now?

Two Lights, One Room: How to Pull Off a Clean Home Portrait With the Broncolor Siros Kit
Video Tutorials

Two Lights, One Room: How to Pull Off a Clean Home Portrait With the Broncolor Siros Kit

Most of my portrait work happens in a controlled environment where I can label every light, dial in every modifier, and sketch the setup in my lighting journal before the client walks through the door. But the jobs that actually test your knowledge are the ones that strip all of that away: a tight residential space, a minimal kit, and a subject in front of you. That’s the situation KL Taylor works through in this Visual Education tutorial on the Broncolor Siros lighting kit, and it’s one of the more practically useful demonstrations I’ve come across for photographers who need to produce polished portrait work outside a dedicated studio.

What Sue Bryce Taught Me About the Real Purpose of a Glamour Studio
Video Tutorials

What Sue Bryce Taught Me About the Real Purpose of a Glamour Studio

There’s a version of studio photography where the gear is the point. You dial in the light, you position the modifier, you shoot. The image is technically correct and emotionally inert. I know that version well because I spent years making it. What I’ve been slowly learning — and what Sue Bryce articulates better than almost anyone working today — is that the technical side of glamour work is actually the easier half of the job.