Lighting Techniques

What Award-Winning Night Sky Photography Teaches Us About Dramatic Lighting in Portraits
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What Award-Winning Night Sky Photography Teaches Us About Dramatic Lighting in Portraits

What Award-Winning Night Sky Photography Teaches Us About Dramatic Lighting in Portraits I’ve always believed that the best creative inspiration comes from unexpected places. This month, I’ve been reflecting on how a major international nighttime photography competition reveals principles that directly apply to our work in portrait retouching and beauty editing. DarkSky International recently announced the winners of their 2026 photography contest, and I found myself captivated—not just by the stunning imagery, but by what these winning photographs can teach us about managing light and shadow in our own specialty.

How to Light and Separate Brown Skin Tones Without Losing Warmth
Video Tutorials

How to Light and Separate Brown Skin Tones Without Losing Warmth

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from reviewing a shoot and realizing the lighting that looked gorgeous on a lighter-skinned subject is completely washing out your subject’s jaw line, or worse, creating highlights so cool they look almost gray against warm brown skin. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit, usually late at night with a client’s gallery due the next morning. When I stumbled across this CreativeLive tutorial on photographing brown skin tones, I recognized immediately that the photographer was solving a problem I’d been fumbling through on my own for years.

Two Lights, One Setup: How Karl Taylor Builds Airy Beauty Shadows That Don't Go Dark
Video Tutorials

Two Lights, One Setup: How Karl Taylor Builds Airy Beauty Shadows That Don't Go Dark

There’s a specific problem I run into constantly when I’m retouching beauty work: the shadows look either completely flat or oppressively dark, and neither one feels right. Flat shadows make skin look two-dimensional, which means I end up doing twice the work in post trying to sculpt cheekbones and collarbones that should have been lit properly on set. Dense black shadows swing to the other extreme, giving the whole image a dramatic, almost harsh energy that doesn’t match the soft, polished aesthetic most beauty clients want.

What Landscape Photographers Know About Light That Every Beauty Retoucher Should Steal
Video Tutorials

What Landscape Photographers Know About Light That Every Beauty Retoucher Should Steal

There’s a reason I keep a folder on my desktop called “Not Beauty.” It’s full of tutorials from photographers who have nothing to do with my usual world of skin smoothing and color grading, and it’s one of the most useful folders I have. When I burned out on wedding photography years ago and moved into beauty retouching, I thought I was leaving landscape and nature work behind entirely. What I didn’t expect was how much the discipline of outdoor photographers would reshape the way I think about light, patience, and the decision-making that happens before you ever open Lightroom.