imagine that

Learn how your lenses ‘see,’ and improve how you make imagery. Different lenses can help you see creatively. Here’s five ways how.

To make good portraits, study human behavior.

Learn how to make stunning silhouettes with these five techniques.

Spice up your travel photography tip # 5: Use themes to shoot your travel stories!

Travel photo assignments differ, even when they’re on the same general topic.

Tell a story tipsy with content and brimming with beautiful imagery.

Travel is encountering a landscape of intangibles. Travel photography is an attempt to take them home.

Practice recognizing and using these basic lighting situations, and make your photos pop.

To get the shot: I zoomed the lens as wide as it could get and angled the shot so that the wood would distort. I saw the planks at the bottom of the shot, leading to his hand. I abstracted the window by cropping it above and on the right, so his face would float in the dark background. To get the colors to pop, I used Aperture priority and compensated for exposure by underexposing three quarters of a stop.

I also recommend bringing a clean plastic garbage bag and a few rubber bands, in case you are caught in the rain and have a camera in your bag. I went to Myanmar during their water festival in April, and was doused with water from a fire truck hose—but my camera equipment stayed dry inside a garbage bag I tied together with rubber bands.

Sometimes when I completely fall in love with a place, I want to stay indefinitely. Standing in the Sunday market in Bac Ha, Vietnam, my senses are overwhelmed by the colors.  My camera is on overdrive. I am in heaven. But I spend exactly one day in Bac Ha, leave the North of Vietnam, fly [...]

“What’s in a name?” says Juliet to the night sky, in the famous balcony scene of Shakespeare’s play. I bet she did not know about a baby girl who was so fat that when she sat in lotus position on her grandfather’s lap, folds of  her flesh hung in layers, so he affectionately nicknamed her [...]

Some of the things Burma gifted me are not limited by words. All photos Copyright Aloha Lavina. Tweet

Ironically, on a Sunday, I am surrounded by idols. The natural cave at Shew Oo Min, in Pindaya, has around 8000 Buddha figures brought here by pilgrims. Walking barefoot through the cave, on a cold wet floor, I glance at the inscriptions. Many of the pilgrims who have brought in Buddha figures or donated paint [...]

“Give money for blood for baby,” the woman carrying the child says to me at the Schwezigon Pagoda. Bare feet hurting from small pebbles on the ground as I walk, I turn away from her. If I hide my face, maybe she’ll turn away, too. She follows me. “Give money for blood for baby.” The [...]