A portrait is often defined with a little depth of field of effect that makes the person in focus really pop. Most smartphones can't produce this effect, but How-To Geek shows off a way to use a single Photoshop effect to create the same look.

Shooting photos using your camera's built-in flash can lead to harshly lit, unflattering photos, but if you're in a dark space you need something to light your subject. Try using a white balloon as a pocketable flash diffuser that you can have ready to use in seconds.

If you're a budding portrait photographer, you don't really need to drain your budget on a whole slew of backdrops for your shoots. It's better to choose a highly adaptable colour that can change dramatically depending on your lighting, like grey.

Video: You don't need a bunch of expensive studio lighting to take great portraits and headshots. In this video, photographer and educator Joe Edelman shows the different ways you can take great photos using just a single flash.

Many of us amateur photographers don't bother perfecting the composition of a portrait while we're shooting because we can just crop the photo after the fact. But as photographer and educator Joe Edelman points out, if you aren't filling the frame with your subject, you're just wasting your camera's precious pixels.