Open Your Portrait

After opening your portrait on Photoshop make a duplicate of the image twice by pressing Ctrl + J two times, because we don’t want to affect the original image.

Naming the layers

Edit the upper layer name to ‘High Frequency’ and lower layer to ‘Low Frequency’. Hide the upper layer by clicking on the eyeball icon.

Applying Gaussian Blur Effect

Select the lower layer and go to the Filter and click on Blur then select Gaussian Blur and drag the slider to right to get a slightly blurry effect so that wrinkles and pimples disappear. Now bring back the visibility of the upper layer and select it.

Apply Image

Selecting the upper layer, in our case ‘High Frequency’ go to Image and click on apply image from the drop down menu. When the dialog box appears, select …

Primary Colors

Many of us know about the primary shades, we all have learnt about them in school. They are the colors that can’t be made by mixing two colors, they are primary colors of a color wheel. While a standard artist color wheel makes use of red, yellow and blue as primary colors many photographers think regarding RBG (red, blue and green) color spectrum.

Secondary Shades

Secondary colors are a result of the mixing of primary colors. On the photographers color wheel, these shades are orange, purple and green.

Tertiary Hues

Tertiary colors are created by combining the secondary and primary shades. For instance, when using the first yellow, blue and red hues wheel mixing the orange and red or green and blue would result in tertiary hues.

Complementary Shades

One of the most common links is between the …

The Classic Hands-On-Hip

It’s always a good idea to not leave your hands limp or rogue. Perching one arm on the hip, weight shifted to one side and relaxing your shoulders. This “Teapot” pose is so popular with models, it slims your figure and creates a tall and dignified look that makes the waist appears slimmer. Be sure to position your lifted arm that’s placed on the hip to show off any fancy accessories or nail polish art.

Use the Mirror

Pose in front of your new BFF, the mirror, until you are near perfect at it. Learn your body shape and pick sides and angles you love. Forget about feeling guilty about your vanity, and remember “all is vanity”. Use your imagination and pretend someone else is behind the mirror, camera in hand and snapping away. Keep your feet …

Work the subject!

Try shooting the same thing in as many ways you can that capture different aspects about it. After you shoot look through your shoot and critique your work. Be mindful of what worked and what didn’t and why. Editing your shoot is an important part of the learning process.

Study the work of other photographers.

Find something that inspires you and pay attention to what you like and try to mimic it. Then try to make it your own by bringing in something new and different.

Familiarize yourself with photography software!

Digital software is today’s darkroom & developing an image is just as important as how you shoot it. My favorite way to digitally polish my images is through Lightroom. It’s amazing what it allows you to do to an image without exposing yourself to chemicals or …

Bokeh

The aesthetic quality of blur out of primary image focus is known as bokeh. Light offers more light to areas not in focus but is near the object. Lens aberrations and aperture shape differences, cause the blur resulting to beautiful looks. There is both good and bad bokeh, in the bad bokeh, blur mostly distracts observers from the focus areas and is harsh hence ruins a photographers work. Good bokeh enhances the image look.

Panning

Panning is a photography technique that is mostly used to shoot moving objects such as sports cars, race competitions. It involves the horizontal, rotational and vertical movement of an image or video. To achieve best results of a sharp subject with a blurred background, you need to stay with an object as you frame and press the shutter button. It is among the old …