Wow, it’s been a while since I gave up a serving of Saturday Link Lovin’. Lots of craziness over the last month: I went to Colorado, came home and shot sessions like crazy, then had a fire at home. But I’m back with another helping of the best portrait related articles for the week. Scratch that, I’ll go back a little ways to bring you up to speed.

• Challenge: Portraiture styles – Photocritic gives you a little inspiration to help break out of your normal portrait style. Like anyone else, I find myself getting stuck in a style once in a while and need a little nudge to break free.
• at night, drag and hang low – FlashFlavor’s Matt Adcock talks a little about using slow shutter speeds creatively combined with small kisses of flash. A good read, especially if you shoot weddings.
• Quick Tip: Pay Attention To Your Background – While not strictly portrait related, this article from Epic Edits has advice that should definitely be heeded by portrait people.
• Halloween Photography Tips – With Halloween coming up, you have to get your tips. Digital Photography School has you covered.

Reader Photo Highlights

The Sublime Light Flickr photo pool is getting rather popular. There are way too many great photos for me to highlight here, so I’m going to have to just pick a few. If you haven’t joined in yet, get crackin!

A couple of weeks ago, I told you that I got my hands on a Vivitar 285HV shoe mount flash (click for more on that).

My first impressions of the flash were positive. With it’s uber-manual controls and low price ($89 from Amazon), this is a tough deal to beat.

Then I ran off to Colorado for five days and decided to bring my new flash along for the ride. I has intentions on getting some really great family portraits in Rocky Mountain National Park, but thanks to it being 35 degrees, wind blowing 50 MPH, and it snowing off and on, it didn’t happen. Did I mention I was wearing shorts? Yeah, the portrait setup wasn’t happenin’, no way. The good news for me though is that we’re about to put our house on the market and move there, so many portrait opportunities still remain to be had.

But I digress. My sister in law is pregnant with twins. What a great opportunity to bring some gear and get some nice maternity shots for her and my brother! Armed with two small flashes I had the control to get some great portraits of them in their new home in Colorado.

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.

Photo by cloudnine

You now know how to create low key portraits using dark tones. Now you’re ready to move on to mid key portraits. Mid key lighting is simply lighting so that the overall tones in the photograph are somewhere in the middle. Not too dark and not too bright. That’s it. To make your portrait model stand out, you’ll want her to be the brighter part of the image.

Like low key lighting, this style of lighting lends itself nicely to one light portraits. Sure you can use more lights and reflectors if you want to, but you don’t have to. You can position your subject and key light in such a way that the light hits both the subject and spills on to the background. Because your subject will be closer to the light, she will automatically be brighter than the background, attaining the look you want.

Today is Blog Action Day. This means that I’m taking a day off from my normal portrait photography related articles and joining more than 7,000 other bloggers in talking a little bit about the environment.

I’m willing to bet you’ve already heard just about anything I could possibly say on the environment. Which is why I’m not going to go on a rampage trying to push an environmental agenda. After all, while I do care very much about the environment, I wouldn’t want to be a hypocrite. I drive a 3/4 ton Dodge Ram with a diesel engine in it (for good reason of course, like towing our RV). But I do my best to help out the environment as best I can in other ways.

So I thought I would instead point you to some resources that you might find useful if you want to find new ways of helping out our big blue home.

Here’s something that will scare you. The Breathing Earth simulator shows you in real time how much carbon dioxide each country is pumping into the atmosphere. Very cool.

The Make Me Sustainable web site is loaded with tools to help you find ways to trim the CO2 emissions from your life. I found that by implementing some simple changes to my lifestyle, my family has trimmed more than five tons of CO2 emissions per year. That’s impressive, considering my behemoth of a truck doesn’t weigh that much, and it’s made of steel.

Here’s another cool calculator. The Nature Conservancy has put together a really cool CO2 calculator that will compare you to others like you. Feeling competitive? See how much less CO2 you can dump into the atmosphere than your neighbors!

Did you see An Inconvenient Truth with Al Gore? There’s a new global warning flick produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. I haven’t seen The 11th Hour yet, but when it comes to Austin, I’m there.

Okay, so I know you likely expected to see an article up yesterday. But the very evening I was to write up yesterday’s article, a fire broke out in my kitchen. Let’s just say my priority was to put the fire out rather than write the article. Not that you’re not important to me…

Do you have any idea how big a mess a fire extinguisher makes? Believe me these pictures don’t even begin to do justice to the mess that was in every room in the house, and to the horrid stench that still permeates everything from the smoke. Not to mention the fact that the agent used in the fire extinguisher is an irritant, so we’ve got to get everything super clean before we can unleash my 14 month old in the house.

So what am I driving at? In my spare time I get to clean, not write articles. But in a couple days we’ll be back to normal around here. Until then, hang loose mongoose!