portraits

Brian Smith is a Sony Artisan, and a world-famous portrait photographer. His client list includes many celebrities and major players in the entertainment industry, and he is a recipient of the Pultizer Prize. For the past thirty years, Brian has been in the editorial and advertising photography industry, after having a photo make it into LIFE magazine at the age of 20.

Drawing upon this experience, Brian will be giving a lecture at the B&H Event Space soon. He's also celebrating the release of his recently published book, "Secrets of Great Portait Photography: Photographs of the Famous and Infamous."

We got to talk to Brian for a bit about how to capture better portraits. Here are his tips.

Todd Owyoung has been photographing concerts and musicians for years. He runs the very successful I Shoot Shows blog, and is always on the road, and blogging about his experiences. Todd is extremely active on Twitter as well. At a very young age, he's accomplished much, having photographed many major musicians that others would only dream of.

Todd found some time to answer a couple of questions for us about his methods of shooting, and about concert photography in general.

Andrea Gjestvang was recently inducted into PDN's 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch. She is a documentary photographer who hails from Europe. Andrea records the mannerisms of different types of people that try to resist change, and delves into various social issues and cultural differences.

Beyond this, though, her work has been in various magazines. We were able to take some time to talk to Andrea about her work, and what it's like to photograph her subjects.

Recently, we published Part I of a full interview with Wedding and Portrait Photographer David Ziser. Today we feature Part II, where we talk to him about touring, his blog, and business.

I've recently gotten my hands on the Nikon 85mm F/1.4G lens, and I have to say I'm not disappointed. I put the lens to the test by shooting portraits in my studio of three young ladies who are also budding photographers.

Not only did the lens live up to my expectations, it surpassed them. I used the lens with my Nikon D3s, and one Elinchrom Digital Style 600RX flash with a Rotalux Softbox 39"x39" light modifier.

On a recent photo safari with the B&H Event Space, we pulled random people off the streets of NYC for quick photoshoots with attendees. Throughout, I noticed timidness in many photographers while shooting portraits of people they didn't know. Your fears are going to hold you back from creating better portraits. If you can adjust your thinking a bit, and internalize some basic principles, you'll be shooting with confidence regularly. Here are a couple of tips to rid yourself of your fears.

As some of you may know, I was a combat photographer for nearly 12 years. When I retired from the service, I joined the American Legion. It's the largest veteran's organization that was established by military veterans back in 1919 to mentor and sponsor youth programs such as the American Legion Baseball League. My Legion Post 166 hosted a huge tournament and we all raised money to pay for the event. Since my talent is photography, the Post asked if I would set up a booth to make portraits of the atheltes and sell prints to help raise additional funds.