Family portraits are pictures of people and faces and not pictures of clothes—this is not a fashion shoot. If the clothes dominate the picture then I think it’s going in the wrong direction. I think clothes in the official family picture need to be simple, elegant and timeless. They should not call attention to themselves. I could probably do weeks of photo tips about what to wear in photos—and I just may do some of that later. But the quick answer I always give when people ask what they should wear in the picture is this: Solids are good /….

There are all kinds of group shots—families in front of houses, the directors in the board room, rock bands just about anywhere. There’s plenty of leeway for being creative when you shoot a group shot. But for the holiday card family portrait you can’t go too far wrong by showing everyone what people look like this year and I think that means you get in as close as you can. And the closer their heads are together the closer you can get. The more space in the picture that’s actual faces and the less space that’s walls and furniture the….

I must admit that there’s really not much I miss about shooting film. As much as I loved the darkroom, I was happy to dry my hands that final time after decades of wet developing. But I do miss my hand held light meter. Light meters were very cool toys and made us all feel like we were practitioners of a high technical art. They were beautiful precision instruments and just felt good to hold. When I was a photo student we used to play “Guess the Exposure” when we had nothing better to do. All you needed was a….

First of all, I want to make it very clear that no one suggested I do this and no one is paying me to say this. I’m doing this because I think I’m turning you on to an extremely valuable resource. Three times in the last three weeks I’ve been on the telephone with a customer support person at B and H Photo in New York City. I talked to three different people about three different subjects. I got a human on the phone in less than two minutes every time. In all three cases they: Gave me unlimited time;….

If you have plans to photograph the Queen of England this weekend you may want to pass on this tip. If, however, you don’t mind having a piece of trash attached to your camera in the interest solving a lighting problem and saving a few dollars this may be right up your alley. This is, I think, a very clever way to build a diffuser for an attachable flash. You simply rubber band the inner bag from a box of cereal on top of the flash—it’s really high-tech. (I used a ittle tape, too.) They actually sell a variety of….