Dodging and burning: Shaping the Light in your Portraits

3/13/2022 ISO 1200 Magazine 0 Comments

Have you ever taken a portrait where you just thought "this lighting is really beautiful"? But you got back home, you loaded that same file up onto your computer and suddenly the image just looks flat and dull and boring. Where did all that good lighting go?

Sean Tucker shows you how he finesses the lighting in his portraits using dodging and burning to accentuate and shape the light and shadow he captured on the day.

The dodging and burning techniques that Sean is going to show you today, are not about rescuing poor images, they're just about finishing the image off that you captured, accentuating the light that you caught in the camera on the day, and making sure that you're conveying it to your viewer in the way that your mind's eye saw it.

Remember, in this Sean´s series so far, he has covered natural skin retouching, accentuating eyes and portraits and today shaping the light on the face

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About Sean Tucker:

London based Professional Photographer and Filmmaker. Unsurprisingly, I mostly post nerdy photography stuff. Besides, I believe that a photographer who really sees, but has a cheap camera; will produce better images than a photographer with the best gear, but no vision... every time.

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Text, image and video via Sean Tucker | Order his new book | COLLECTION V