Articles by Blake Riesenfeld

For someone who enjoys photography, people surprise me with their incompetence. I hope to teach you common mistakes you might be making, so that you can avoid them. Repetition in your photography. This often occurs with the use of presets, edits that you have saved and can be copy and pasted onto another photo. A good rule of thumb is to try to treat every photo like an individual. What works in one photo, won’t work in another. Over editing. Editing photos is about enhancement, not about creating a new photo. Before you adjust the exposure module, think about how it enhances (or doesn’t) your photo. When editing, everything should be intentional. Every time you make a decision to edit your photo, it is either enhancing or hurting your photo. Try to watch our for over-filtered, over-saturated, and over-exposed photographs. Cliché, silly, or uninteresting composition. Like editing, your composition should…

Shadows are created when light hits an object and reflects onto a surface. Although most shadows are black, but some can be in color. Translucent objects create shadows based on their color. Water is translucent, glass is translucent, and some umbrellas are translucent. If you put food coloring in water and put that in a translucent glass and put in an area where you can get shadows, the water will create a shadow based on the color you put in. You can do this indoors or outdoors depending on what you are trying to do. Instructions: Get a translucent watering pail or glass Fill with water Put food coloring of your choice into the water Mix it in Wait for sunrise or sunset Put watering pail or glass in front of a surface of your choice The shadow should be in color if you are doing this right Just be…