Last weekend was the first time I have had the opportunity to use a beauty dish. I love experimenting with light and learning new ways to shape it. I must say that I was very impressed with the results. Before stepping into the studio and experimenting, I did my research and came across a few helpful articles on how best to use a beauty dish and how it works.

A beauty dish focuses diffused light onto your subject, giving a very soft light with decent falloff to help shape the face. It is best used for close up portraits and helps to evenly light facial features. The dish reflects light from the light source onto a dish which then reflects the light again onto your subject. The optimum distance to place the beauty dish from your subject is roughly double the dish size, obviously you can adjust this to get different effects. A beauty dish can be used as a key light or as a fill light to help give life to eyes and smooth out shadows. Beauty dishes come in different

Read the full post »

One of the problems that you will encounter as a new microstock photographer is the lack of adequate models. Sure you will have some friends, family or partners that would pose for some pictures, but not many of them would necessarily have had much modeling experience or maybe they just are not the right look for the shoot you are planning.

I have found that www.modelmayhem.com is a fantastic place to connect with models, makeup artists and even other photographers. This is a global community and you should be able to locate models in your home town using the search filters on the site. It is free to join and I would highly recommend it! Models listed on here have varying experience and expectations, some people will be willing to model TFCD or TFP usually the more experienced models would want to negotiate some sort of payment. You can view portfolio images of potential models and really get a good feel for how photogenic they are. This is definitely a great tool for the microstock photographer to not only build and develop a stable network of models, but also gain experience in working with different people. It is important to expose yourself to new models who may inspire you in different ways.

Not yet signed up to sell your images online? Well, read my site reviews and sign up for free today!