by Michelle Turner
Gels can be great tools to enhance the look of your flash photographs– they can be used to creatively change the light or to match the look of another light in the frame.  Most of the time when I pick up my flash for use off camera (OCF), I gel my flash to a certain color to change the color of the light that strikes my subject. Usually the effect is subtle, but you can also use gels(…)

by Rebecca Spencer
For my own images, my personal style is a simple clean edit with a nice pop of vibrant colour. There are lots of ways you can use post processing to achieve this and here I will show you what works for me.  I have found the easiest way to do this is through using level adjustment layers within Adobe Photoshop – levels are a simple way of making a big difference to your photo.

Before Image:

Here is the SOOC(…)

Picking up your camera, shooting, and challenging yourself is the best way to improve your photography.  The Creativity Exercises within the Clickin Moms photography forum are a great source for finding new ways to challenge yourself.  On the first Monday of every month the wonderful Sarah Wilkerson posts a new tutorial and challenges our members to shoot with the exercise in mind.  While the exercises are ongoing, at the end of each month we choose a few images as the(…)

by Alicia Gould

Photographers often ask each other “how many images do you show in your galleries?” The answer for me is always, it depends!  Each family I photograph is unique; they have different dynamics, different decorating styles and different reasons for wanting to book a session.  If you don’t take the time to find out some of that before the session, you could be wasting a lot of your time processing images that don’t mesh with their style.
Before the Photo(…)

by Megan Squires

RAW vs jpeg. If this is something you’ve pondered recently, chances are you are currently shooting in jpeg. And if you are shooting in jpeg, chances are you feel like you should be shooting in RAW. Just like that diet you committed to as your New Year’s resolution, you know you should do it, you know you’ll feel and look better if you do, and you know the end result will be something you’re so proud of.

But does(…)

by Melissa Koehler
Although I’ve been a photographer for many years now, I am proud to say that I am continually learning as an artist. When you first start out, the thrill of having someone want YOU to take their photo is amazing, isn’t it? It’s exciting preparing for that session, gathering up fun posing ideas and props. You photograph the session and it goes okay but maybe you’re still learning the ropes. We’ve all been there at one point and(…)

by Emma Wood
  

It’s amazing how different crops can change the mood of an image or even just enhance them.  By just making a few little changes, you can add a lot more impact and drama.   I try as much as possible to think about cropping and where I want to place my subject within an image before I shoot.  But there are times when I realize during processing, how much more powerful an image would become with a certain(…)

by Pam Korman
What is a double exposure? Quite simply, it is the combination of two images. How those images are combined can happen a few different ways. It can be done in a photo-editing program like Photoshop, after the fact, but I like the creative freedom that comes from deliberately planning and shooting one image on top of another. This can be done digitally (and I will talk about that in a bit) but, for me, the fun comes in(…)

by Kristin Ingalls
While some of my favorite portraits don’t have eye contact, or maybe even show a face, there’s no denying that strong eye contact is a great way to pull your viewers into your image. It can really help a viewer to connect with your subject. With older cooperative subjects it’s usually easy to get a mix of images with eye contact and without, but with the littlest ones it can be tricky. Here are some of my favorite(…)

by Stacey Haslem

Not too long ago, I was looking through all my images. As I continued to go through images taken over the last few years, I couldn’t help but notice all the images that originated in the bathroom. I had a beautiful collection of memories and stages of my little girl.
When approaching any image, whether it be in the bathroom or not, I always think about what it is I actually want to capture. Is there something in particular(…)

by Rachael Boer
Does this expression look familiar?

Or how about this one?

If you’ve ever photographed young children, you know they can be some of the most challenging subjects on earth. They are tiny balls of energy with a mind of their own and they may not be wild about letting you invade their personal space to get a photograph. Almost all of the families I photograph have at least one child in the 2-5 age range, so I have developed some(…)

by Courtney Keim
I think I always had this idea of dads and family portraits.  I think it started when I was young.  It’s not that my dad was not there.  He just was not in the photos.  He always told me it was the memories not the photo.  Then I married my husband.  And unfortunately, he is seriously just as bad when it comes to family portrait time.  To him, he’d rather be subjected to anything torture-filled if it meant(…)

by Beth Orey
A warm, quiet room, the soft lullaby of a white noise machine, a beautiful baby that curls up into any position and sleeps soundly, and the stunning photographer who’s making this all happen.  It’s every newborn photographers dream!  But it doesn’t always happen, unfortunately.  Sometimes we get those dream babies but (at least for me), more often than not, we have to work for it.  And even if you do get the awesome sleeper, do you really want(…)

by Heather Meyer

My four year old daughter has spent a good amount of her life in the hospital because of a chronic life
threatening disease. As time has gone by, I have become a huge advocate of taking pictures even when the circumstances are less than happy.

I have talked to many moms who are afraid to take pictures of their children when they are sad, hurting, experiencing serious illness or injury, or if they are hooked up to tubes or machines.(…)

Are you enjoying the CM birthday party this week?  The festivities are in full swing everywhere you can find us whether it be the forum, facebook, instagram, or here on the blog!  Do you follow CM on Instagram?  We’re having a party there as well with birthday related CMglimpse prompts and random drawings each day with prizes for those who tag their images with #cmis5!  Head on over and participate but first, read up on these great iPhoneography tips from(…)

Picking up your camera, shooting, and challenging yourself is the best way to improve your photography.  The Creativity Exercises within the Clickin Moms photography forum are a great source for finding new ways to challenge yourself.  On the first Monday of every month the wonderful Sarah Wilkerson posts a new tutorial and challenges our members to shoot with the exercise in mind.  While the exercises are ongoing, at the end of each month we choose a few images as the(…)

by Jenni Jones

Is your website doing what it is supposed to?

The very idea of website analytics is enough to keep most people from even trying to mess with it. It’s overwhelming, nebulous, and probably the least sexy topic for photographers (well…that and taxes). But, knowing whether your website is effective and understanding what people are doing (or not doing) on your site is powerful, actionable knowledge. How will you know if you have an effective website if you don’t look(…)

by Celeste Pavlik

It wasn’t too long ago that I would seek out perfectly even, perfectly bright and perfectly direct light.  I quickly realized how much this style of shooting, while it isn’t wrong in any way, just wasn’t me.  I love capturing my subjects in pockets of light and indirect light, especially indoors.  What this means to me is finding light that gently meets the shadows on my subject.  Give me that and I’m a happy girl!

I think most of(…)

by Jennifer Dell
Ah, six month olds…my most favorite age to photograph. I love it when my littlest of clients starts to sit on their own and truly take in the world around them. They are usually very curious, happy and easy to work with. I honestly cannot think of a reason not to love photographing a baby at this age!  While they are sitting on their own and a few may be getting ready to crawl, a baby this age(…)

by Kristin Ingalls
When shooting portraits on an overcast day, the sky can act like a giant soft box creating soft, even light. You generally don’t have to worry about bright sunshine making your subject squint, dappled light coming through trees, or harsh shadows on your subjects. However, because this giant softbox is positioned directly overhead, it can be hard to have anything other than flat lighting, catchlights can be hard to come by, and portraits can sometimes seem flat and boring.
1. Try shooting from(…)

by Leah Cook
Recently a friend asked me for tips on shooting maternity sessions.  I started rattling off some ideas and decided to put them all in one spot.  Belly shots are some of my favorites for a lot of reasons.  They have definitely gotten a bad rap over the years and we’ve all seen the ‘what not to do’ images on those funny websites, but really they can be so beautiful.  It’s a time of anticipation, change and excitement…all of(…)

By Adele Humphries
Are you a rule-follower?  I am.

I get anxious even bending the rules – social or actual.  So no-one is more surprised than me to see that I have embraced the dreaded center composition in my personal style.  I had always understood this to be a big photography no-no so I avoided it at all costs, believing it to be a lazy, unimaginative and visually less pleasing method of composition.

Then, last Christmas, my husband surprised me with a 35mm(…)

by Lisa Tichané
If you read photography forums, you are probably aware that toddlers are supposed to be a photographers nightmare. They don’t listen to instructions, move all the time, run away from you whenever they can, drive their parents crazy, throw your props away and will probably hate all of the brilliant ideas that you had carefully prepared when you planned the shoot.  I have to admit that every single thing in this list is true (and can be even worse(…)

by Jaime Profeta
Much of the northern hemisphere is still blanketed by a layer of snow. Despite the fact that I too grumble about the cold weather and look at my summer photos dreaming longingly of warmer days, winter truly is a beautiful time! I decided to take a day to go out and shoot the landscape around me and use it as an opportunity to share some tips to help you go out and capture some of the wintery vistas(…)

Picking up your camera, shooting, and challenging yourself is the best way to improve your photography.  The Creativity Exercises within the Clickin Moms photography forum are a great source for finding new ways to challenge yourself.  On the first Monday of every month the wonderful Sarah Wilkerson posts a new tutorial and challenges our members to shoot with the exercise in mind.  While the exercises are ongoing, at the end of each month we choose a few images as the(…)

by Narelle Bailey
Have you ever caught yourself thinking “I could make great images if only my home looked like it came right out of Pinterest”? I know I have.  There are times when I have felt like my favorite photographers (especially the lifestyle ones) must all have beautiful homes with high ceilings, great big windows with magnificent light everywhere.  Most of all they must have absolutely no mess or clutter.  How else can their photographs look so good?

I thought about(…)

by Jessica Holden
The crux of shooting in manual—in fact the crux of photography itself—is the exposure triangle: ISO, shutter speed, and aperture. Composition and focus aside, every shooting decision you make affects how much light will be recorded onto your “film,” which in the case of digital photography is your camera’s sensor.

The three facets of exposure for both digital and film cameras are ISO (which correlates to film speed), shutter speed, and aperture. In selecting the exposure for any given(…)

by Elicia Graves

A little over a year ago my family moved from Texas to California, downsizing our living space by 50%.  We sold much of our furniture because there was simply no room for it and adjusted to smaller rooms and living areas. Our new little house has lovely light in two of the bedrooms and that is where I do almost all of my indoor shooting.  Sometimes I struggle to come up with something fresh and new in the(…)

by Emily Potts
When I photograph sessions, I always want to ensure I create as much variety in my imagery as possible. Having a lot of different looks to show my client means that I have an increased opportunity to sell products like canvas collections and albums. Being able to maximize each pose helps me create many different looks… even if I’m working on a tight schedule. In this post, I’ll walk you through how I take one pose and use(…)

by Cassandra O’Leary
I have taken some fantastic workshops recently and all of them have been rather thought provoking. They have all made me look at my journey as a photographer, where I started, what my first loves were, how it felt to photograph things when I started out, where I want to go, what my photographic goals are. You get the point. I have realized now that everything is connected! I can see what it is that I love about(…)