July was a really great month here at Sublime Light. Here’s what readers liked most this month. For a full list of all articles published this month, check out the July 2007 archive page.

• 12 Surefire Tips For Better Candid Photographs
• 10 Tips For Better Portraits
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Portraits With One Light
• 9 Ways To Make Your Portrait Subjects Look Thinner
• I Bought Some Pocket Wizards. Now What?
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Metering For Flash
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Camera and Lights
• Portrait Lighting For Beginners: Accessories
• HowTo: Get The Wrinkles Out Of Musin Backgrounds
• Which Background Should I Buy?
• Heal Your Photos
• Don’t Take Your Finger Off That Shutter!
• Double Duty Studio Lighting For The Cheapskate
• Considering A Background Support Stand?
• Control Those Pesky Newborns With A Boppy
• Get Better Childrens Photos In One Step

Digital imaging enables Average Joe to do some truly amazing photo retouching. Software such as Adobe Photoshop allows you to easily zap zits, whiten teeth, wipe out wrinkles, remove fat, ditch scars, and well, just about anything. The ability to misrepresent yourself and others in photos is a real possibility. This has arguably led to some social problems in today’s society. Surely you’ve heard this before: teenagers everywhere (especially girls) feel increasingly self conscious given the flurry of perfect images thrown at them every day.

This issue was highlighted on July 16th when Jezebel wrote an article on how Redbook magazine retouched the hell out of Faith Hill’s photo. They even paid $10,000 for the original picture, and show it to you next to the retouched version.

Here’s a short film from Dove. With the help of makeup artists, hairdressers, and a Photoshop guru, the star of the video makes the transition from attractive but average woman to billboard diva. It’s an interesting little flick and I recommend you take the 70 seconds to watch (if for no other reason than seeing cool photo magic).

So this begs the question: should you use software to improve photos?

Sublime Light is a web site dedicated to teaching you to photograph people like a pro. For the latest articles, check out the home page.

If you take enough photos of people, eventually you’ll photograph someone who is either a little heavier or thinks that they are. This is especially true for those of us in the U.S., where obesity rates are sky high. The good news for you is that there are a few tricks you can add to your bag to help make your subject look thinner. You’ll get the photo, your subject will be happy with it, and everyone wins.

Lighting and Gear Tips

Short lighting and high ratio

1. Use short lighting. Short (or narrow) lighting is when your subject’s face is turned away from the camera, and the lighting is such that the lit side of the face is facing away from you. If you were to use broad lighting, the side closer to you would be lit, and it would make the face look larger. Read more on how to use short lighting.

2. Use a high lighting ratio. This goes along with the short lighting tip. Keeping your fill light dialed down means that your subject will stay more in shadow on the side opposite the key light. If part of the body is more in shadow, your eyes will tell your brain the person is thinner when you look at the photo.

I ran across some really cool stuff this week while taking a break from moving Sublime Light to the new host. Enjoy!

• DIY small flash water-proof housing – Strobist’s David Hobby brings you a really cool do-it-yourself solution for taking a SpeedLight into wet conditions, even underwater. Talk about opening up new opportunities for photographs.
• Happy Customers – Going Pro as a Photographer – Darren Rowse over at Digital Photography School hosts pro photographer Laura Novak to talk a little about what it means to turn any client into your next advertisement.
• Going to the Moo-vies – Photocritic introduces you to the coolest new printer around. They have some of the most awesome little products I’ve seen in a long time. Check it out!
• Making Coloring Pages From Your Photos – This is an awesome tutorial for anyone with kids. Coloring books are cool, but how awesome would it be to color a picture of yourself?! fototiller shows you the three easy steps to doing it in Photoshop.

This article is part of the ‘Portrait Lighting For Beginners’ series. This series is meant to help you go from a beginning photographer to making beautiful portraits.

Why start with just one light? Because you can get amazing portraits, that’s why. Did I mention less equipment, less complication, less cost, and less time? Oh, and once you’ve mastered portraits with a single light, using more lights is pure gravy. I have lots of lighting, but I break out a single light more often than I get out multiples. Many of you reading this have yet to really get into this lighting stuff, so you probably only have one flash. So it makes sense that the first article where we get into lighting setups would focus on portraits with just a single light.