As i defined in the last post, Glamour photography, is producing the most physically appealing picture of the model. So basically we can say trying the show the model more beautiful than normal in your pictures should be your main concern in Glamour photography. To take glamour pictures, you need, a camera, a model, lighting and some photography equipment. But having all of these together doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be a successful Glamour Photographer.

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First you should decide whether you want to be a professional glamour photographer or you just want to try this genre of photography. If you want to be a pro, you need to work hard and spend some money. If you just want to try and see what you can do, you can work with amateur models and home-made equipment.

Being a pro in Glamour Photography is quite hard, since there are so many successful photographers in the market. As a newly graduate from an art school it could be hard to compete with the “big dogs”. In this case you should learn to use light in different conditions, to be familiar with the settings of your camera to set the exposure perfect each time, to work with models, and should practice a lot. If you don’t have a studio or you don’t have enough funds to build a new one, don’t worry, you can always take the pictures on location. But you should have the equipment, like lighting systems, flashes, reflectors etc. If you have the necessary equipment studio wont be a problem.

Whether you want to be a pro or not, to take satisfying pictures you should learn how to use the light in portraits. In glamour photography, sharp shadows and too bright areas on model are not desired. You need to diffuse the light. It is not possible to take good glamour pictures without getting familiar with the use of lighting equipment and light itself. Read my posts about the use of light;

Using Light in Portrait Photography

Of course this writing alone is not enough to teach somebody about lighting in photography but at least you’ll get an idea about it. to learn more, you should read about it and practice.

Finding models and working with models are another issues of glamour photography. In order to have good results, you should know how to communicate with models and how to guide them for good poses. But first you have to find a model. If you are an amateur and looking for an amateur models, you can just ask a good looking friend of yours or try local art classes. For the ones who have an intention to be a pro i strongly advice working with professional models. Of course it is costly compared to buying a drink to your friend for the modeling but success is not a cheap thing… Success will consume your money and a lot of time until you get it. You can find pro or semi-pro models from modeling agencies. If you are asking “How will i find modeling agencies?”, just write the name of your city + “modelling agency” to the search bar of google and bingo. Actually Internet provides huge opportunities to find models as it provides huge opportunities for everything else. There are some websites that amateur or semi-pro models can be find especially in USA. To learn more about finding models and working with models read the articles below

Finding Models

Working with Models

There are lots of photography equipment that you can use for nature photography, but even most simple camera can be enough most of the times. And having a tripod and a shutter release cable will make the things easier for you under low light conditions.

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If you want to have significant results, increase the depth of field by using a narrow aperture such as f/16 or f/22 to keep every detail in focus in the scene. And as you know narrow aperture, lets smaller amount of light into the camera so your shutter speed may decrease and this is when a tripod comes in handy for preventing shaking.

Light

In nature photography, we mostly use daylight. Best light conditions for nature photography are “Golden Hours” which are first lights in early morning and the last hours of evening when the sun sets. Don’t miss that hours! Waking up early in the morning and giving up a couple of hours of sleep may reward you magnificent photographs of nature.

You can take pictures, in the different hours of day, but none of them will be as impressive as the “Golden Hours”. Especially in the noon when sunlight comes with a vertical angle and creates strong and dark shadows, taking nice pictures is really hard.

Rain

I already told that there’s no bad weather conditions for photography, actually bad weather conditions makes extraordinary images for us to capture and rain is one of them. Rain is the thing that keeps nature alive so it is one of the most beautiful natural events. One day try getting out to the nature or streets after rain but don’t forget to protect yourself and your camera from getting wet. Colors are more saturated after rain.

Equipment

As i mentioned earlier in this post, it is hard to tell must-have equipments, since even the most simple camera can be enough to take gorgeous shots. But of course some equipment will help you to take better pictures. A wide angle lens is good for mountains, valleys and large plains, while a tele lens helps you shoot animals and plants from a distance. If you have 300 mm-f/2.8 or 600 mm-f/4 lenses that lets a considerable amount of light in and allows you to shoot a distant subject with a fast shutter speed, then you have a great opportunity to take wild life shots.

Filters are also important at nature photography. Especially ND, natural density filters, increase the contrast and saturation thus helping you to capture better nature pictures. Nd filters, eliminates the reflections from non-metallic surfaces, including, glasses and water. Since you are taking nature pictures, eliminating reflections of water can be one of the things that you need. UV filters and skylight filters are useful too for eliminating UV lights. And graduated filters helps us to increase the contrast and saturation of the sky.

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• First and the best; a classic; do not shoot towards the sun or sunlight. Directing your camera towards sun, makes the light measurement harder for your camera. Because in this condition contrast of scene increases, and cameras are not good at calculating the right settings in high-contrast scenes. Because of high contrast, if you set your aperture and shutter settings to get the right colors of sky, your subject on the ground will be so dark, on the other hand, if you set your camera to get the true colors of your subject on the ground, the sky will be washed out. So don’t shoot towards the sun or the sunlight. If you should;
• You can use, ND (Neutral Density) Filters. Neutral density filters reduces the amount of light that passes through your lens. There are several different types of ND filters; there are ND filters that reduces the amount of light equally all over the filter these are called solid Natural Density Filters and there are some that one edge of the filter is clear (only glass or plastic) and the other edge of the filter is neutral density and these are called Graduated Neutral Density Filters. Using graduated ND filters are better in this case, because neutral density part reduces the amount of light coming from sky and preventing it to be washed out, while clear part prevent the subject on the ground being too dark because this part is clear and has no ability to reduce the amount of light. You better see them yourselves;

• There is one more thing you can do; take two pictures from with different settings for sky and the ground. Settings for sky makes the ground too dark and settings for ground makes sky washed out. So take these two pictures, and put them in two different layers in photoshop. Remember one of them is with a washed out sky but the colors of ground is normal and the other one with too dark ground but the sky is not washed out. So place the one with dark ground (not washed out sky) as your bottom layer, and put the other one on it as a second layer, than remove the washed out sky using a soft eraser in photosop, till your sky with normal colors from the bottom layer appears.

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Color Temperature

This term defines color quality of light sources in K° (Kelvin). Redness increase and blueness decrease as Kelvin value of the light decrease, vice versa. So low Kelvin values create a warmer picture, and high Kelvin values create cooler pictures. You can make your pictures cooler or warmer on purpose, to create certain feelings. As an example; a mother hugging her baby look better in a warmer light. Average Kelvin values of some light sources;

• 1700K : Match Flame
• 1850K : Candle Flame
• 2800-3300K : Incandescent Light Bulb
• 3350K : Studio (CP) Light
• 3400K : Studio Lights, Lightfloods, etc.
• 4100K : Moonlight, Xenon Arc Lamp
• 5000K : Horizon Daylight
• 5500 – 6000K : Typical Daylight, Electronic Flash
• 6500K : Noon Daylight
• 9300K : CRT Screen

Colors of Daylight

• Daylight contains more blue in winter comparing to summer, also in a day with cloudy sky the light is cooler than a light in a day with a clear sky.
• Direct sunlight is a warm light.
• Light in afternoon is reddish and early morning light is more yellowish.
• Color of light gets close to blue as climb up to higher grounds like mountains or skyscrapers.

Effects of Colors on Feelings

BLACK : symbolizes power, elegance, mystery and it also symbolizes death, sorrow and sadness.

WHITE : Purity, cleanliness, innocence and goodness.

BLUE : Blue symbolizes loyalty, trust, intelligence, truth, wisdom and confidence.

RED : Red symbolizes so many different things, It is best defined as color of fire and blood but alos it symbolizes; love, desire, passion, strength, power, war, danger and determination.

GREEN : The color of nature, it symbolizes; freshness, harmony and growth.

YELLOW : It generally symbolizes; fun, energy and happiness. As in smileys

ORANGE : Since it is a combination of yellow and red it contains the effects of the both colors. Orange symbolizes; joy, sunshine, tropics and creativity.

PURPLE : Purple is a combination of blue and red which symbolizes; wisdom, mystery, magic and gloom (especially dark purple gives gloom and sadness feelings)

How to Use Colors in Photography?

Actually it is up to you, the limit is your imagination. If you want a color to dominate whole picture than you should give the color to the picture by using light source. (Ex. A wolf picture in moonlight that dominated by blue color.) To do this either you should use the daylight or change the color of the light source that you are using. If you are shooing indoors so you can change the color of light by placing colored thin papers in front of your light source, it can be the flash or a continuous light source. I’m using papers to balance the light most of the time by placing a blue thin paper in front of a yellow (warm) light to prevent the picture being unnecessarily warm.

Or you can use objects, clothes, backgrounds with different colors in order to give a certain feeling. You can combine the colors and create color contrasts, such as a white subject in front of a black background. A model dressed red, with a black background can look more sexy while a model with a pink dress in front of a white background looks more innocent. To learn about more examine the good examples, get inspired and practice…

Good Luck.

Shooting towards the sun or any other light source is often called a “mistake” especially in landscape photography”. Shooting towards the light generally creates washed out backgrounds, for example; completely white skies are not considered nice for landscape photographs. Also when you are taking portrait shots, if the sun or another light source is behind the model you’ll have a picture with a bright background and model will be darker.

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Cameras are not good or accurate at measuring the light in high-contrast scenes. In a high contrast environment that light source is behind your subject, if you measure the light from a single point on subject and set your shutter speed and aperture in respect of this; your subject will be in it’s real colors but the background will be completely white and washed-out. And if you measure the amount of light from the background which is brighter, you’ll have the correct colors of background while your subject is completely black. We will use second one in order to take silhouette pictures which means we will get the light measurement from background or light source itself.

Getting familiar with your camera is vital in silhouette photography as it is very important also in other kinds of photography. So you should know that the exposure settings that your camera recommends may not be correct in high-contrast environments. Take the shot with recommended settings then review it, if you like the outcome there’s no problem but if you don’t , switch the manual mode and try different settings; faster shutter for darker results , slower shutter for brighter results or high f values of aperture for darker results , low f values for brighter results. Also you can change settings while using Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority modes +/- 2 Exposure option of the camera.

You will see that it is not that hard to take a nice silhouette shot, try it a couple of times and you’ll get used to the settings. Remember, sunset and sunrise creates a sky with stunning colors, place your subject between your camera and the sun these times of day and you can take amazing pictures with silhouettes.

Examples;