Education

In this video, Karl Taylor and Urs Recher experiment with and demonstrate the uses of a Parabolic reflector. Using a model who is wearing white against a white background, they produce a number of portraits demonstrating how to shape the Para light to separate the model from the background. The versatility of this practice is quite astounding as the photographer is able to stand in front of the light and have it still perfectly illuminate the model and is a simple one light set up.

When I began photography I didn’t understand the importance of lighting and the difference makeup has on an image. Looking back, if I would have first understood and attempted to master the techniques behind makeup, I would have understood the proper way to light my subjects when photographing them.

Glyn Dewis goes through his process of retouching a creative grunge image from start to finish, showing how he uses Photoshop as well as plugins from Topaz and the Google Nik Collection. This video is great for some quick retouching tips which includes a simple lighting effect using paint brush and is some excellent inspiration for filters and effects to add to your images. As always, Dewis shows you how to work non destructively so that you are always able to go back and tweak your many filters and layers.

FilmmakerIQ.com and RØDE Microphones have launched a new education series on sound! Starting with the included "intro" video showing the history of sound at the movies, John P. Hess and team have started a six part educational series which, in their own words, will cover science/microphones, recording, editing, foley, and ADR.

Our DSLRs have confused us. We obssess over the wrong things. Sharpness at 400%; bokeh characteristics of lenses produced from what-must-surely-be prancing magical unicorns; high speed burst frame rates that make cameras sound like gatling guns; 4k resolution to shoot better cat videos; 100 auto focus points that still won’t focus on what we need them to; and noise performance at 400,000 ISO. Absolutely none of these will make your photographs better. Shooting film will though, here's why.

Ever since I started diving into studio photography the term “V-Flat” has been a big mystery to me. Google and YouTube have been the quintessential resource for photography knowledge and for whatever reason there isn't much detailed information on how to construct a V-Flat or what purpose they actually serve. It took time to sift through the noise of nonsensical DIY fabrication and even more time to unfold the enigma of this studio essential.

Posing models is a challenge all on its own but adding a curvier model to the mix requires some extra considerations. Not all of us have access to the tall and thin models that grace the covers of countless magazines and in recent years there is a strong push towards representing a more average body type through the use of plus sized models. Let Sue Bryce show you how she tackles posing curvier models in this fantastic hour long tutorial!

I know that there are many of us around who may not yet have the confidence to say, "Hey, I should be getting paid for this, because I'm awesome!" Jay P. Morgan from the Slanted Lens gives you the kick up the backside that you need and provides you with 8 ways to get yourself ready to start making money in photography... Now.

In addition to lifestyle, I have an affinity for shooting natural light portraits/beauty/headshots - whatever you want to call them. It's not something I shoot often, but when I do, I'm reminded of how much I love it. In fact, you may recall a few months ago, I wrote an article detailing my ideal natural light setup for the black and white portrait / headshot photos that I occasionally shoot. In the article,

When teaching workshops and talking to other photographers, I’m constantly asked how I market myself to gain more exposure and business. While there are no surefire ways to insure your success when it comes to marketing, I have found four really unconventional ways to better market myself.

In this quick-and-easy tutorial, Howard Pinsky teaches you how to create the ring light effect in your subject's eyes using Adobe Photoshop. Applying a custom shape, layer styles and blending tweaks, Pinsky demonstrates an effective way to produce this reflection without using a physical ring light. Some experimentation with blending, size and effects will help you to create a realistic reflection that adds that extra point of interest to your photograph.

The premise for the Cutting Edge Tour headed up by Adam Epstein, five year veteran video editor and post production guru for Saturday Night Live, was a tricky one. I know because I spent a few days bouncing ideas around with him and looking at how to structure the thing. This review will set out specifically what you will (and won’t) find in the workshop.

In this Adobe Photoshop Playbook video, Bryan O'Neil Hughes suggests a variety of options to help you tackle noise when processing your photographs. Due to the improvement of pixel quality, noise isn't usually so much of an issue. However, it still can be a problem especially in your low light images.

I recently noticed that a handful of photographers were producing images that had a look as if they were stills captured from films. A couple of the most well known photographers of this genre are based here in New York so I got them together and challenged them to not only come up with a dynamic personal project on the fly incorporating this cinematic look, but to share with us how it is achieved. Read on to find out how it all went down...

I’ve always been enthralled with first person movie scenes, games and music videos. Clocking countless hours with Duke Nukem 3D in my parent’s basement on an old Packard Bell PC planted a seed that forever changed me. To this day I think The Prodigy's breakbeat electronic hit “Smack My Bitch Up” is one of the greatest first person videos of all time.

We all have our own motivation for the images we choose to make. Every photographer has that little voice, that driving force pushing you toward the goal, or that feeling in your gut when you really nailed it.

Maybe that works to your advantage now, but at some point, it’s likely to break loose and run wild…for better or for worse.

As your photography archive grows, so does the need to handle and protect that data. What happens if your computer doesn’t boot, or an image file won’t open? What if your home or studio gets robbed, or worse, catches fire? What if your backup drive fails, or your laptop gets stolen? These are all questions I ask myself when planning my backup strategy.

If you are into fantasy or photo-illustration style photographs, you are likely well aware of compositing, or shooting key elements separately and blending them in Photoshop. While compositing is made easier thanks to software solutions like Photoshop, have you ever considered how they are done without it?

I have only been shooting photography for a little over 3 years now. Things have progressed so quickly during that period of time that I haven't really had the chance to look back at the evolution of my photography. I had to think thing long and hard about the investments I have made over the 3 years and the things that really changed the game for me.

The guys from Film Riot catch ‘Guy Ritchie Disease’ and in the process teach you how to create the "Guy Ritchie" freeze frame effect. Whether you need an awesome intro title for your film or even a great effect for your own behind the scenes photography vlog, this Film riot video shows you how to create it in Adobe After Effects. If you’re more comfortable in Photoshop, you can put it together in there and then animate it in After Effects.

There is one thing we all share in common, regardless of what we shoot or what gear we use. When we raise the viewfinder to our eye, we take it for granted that we can actually see what we are photographing. Brenden Borrellini is completely blind, but that does not stop him making photographs and loving every moment of it. This is the fascinating story of the blind photographer.

LIVE NOW! One of my favorite things about Instagram has to be the community. Having followed Pei Ketron for years now and watching her work evolve has been an incredible learning experience for myself. Today, for FREE, she is working with PhotoShelter.com to offer a webinar on tips and tricks to building a following on Instagram. Why should you listen to Pei? For one, she has over 800,000 followers and a portfolio of work that includes Mercedes and Ona bags. A must see if you are intersted in taking your social media to the next level on Instagram!

Jeff Rojas is challenging you to see just how much retouching you can finish in 6 minutes. Dubbed the Dirty Edit Challenge, Jeff explains that sometimes you don't need to go overboard for certain clients. Maybe you're not getting paid enough, or maybe you have a ton of images that need retouching. In either situation, this is a great way to see what your strengths and weaknesses are in Photoshop.

If you are interested in creating the softest light with an amazing wrap around quality, look no further. The book light technique, coined by film maker Shane Hurlbut is so simple and basic, requires the most inexpensive light modifiers, yet gives you the maximum control over the quality of light.

Well renowned portrait photographer Gregory Heisler in his interview above with Maine Media Workshops + College, shares invaluable insight and advice for photographers. Heisler begins with a funny incedent that took place when he was starting off as a photographer. From there he goes on covering everything from the mistakes he made in business, to understanding and developing your unique style in photography.

What is Auto Exposure Bracketing? (AEB) is the setting on many DSLR cameras which allows you to take three different exposed images in quick succession. Often one image is under exposed, the second is mid range and the last is over exposed. AEB is commonly used for creating HDR (High Dynamic Range) images or giving you a range of options so that you are able to get the correct exposure in post processing.

In this valuable tutorial Glyn Dewis takes a quick snapshot and shows you how to pull detail from highlights and shadows to make it a beautiful image. Dewis mentions some great workflow tips and tricks in Adobe Lightroom as well as how to bring your image over, non destructively, to Photoshop camera raw.

When I was in High School, I took, among other things, an introduction drawing and painting class. At the beginning of the year, our teacher, Mrs. Yantz directed us to draw a landscape using either crayon, charcoal, pen or pencil. At the end of the session, she told us, excitedly, that we were going to tape our finished pieces to the chalkboard and our classmates would critique our work.

In this brilliant tutorial from Phlearn, Aaron Nace shows you how to create an artistic, composite image to replicate the double exposure effect. Despite being a little complex, the instruction is easy to follow. Nace’s great tips include: finding an appropriate blending mode, using detailed masking and grouping as well as using the gradient tool to add that extra something to your image.

Most of us love natural light and feel comfortable shooting with it – but how well do you really know how to utilize it effectively and to control it with precision? I just spent the day with Erik Valind, a New York City-based lifestyle photographer in his 'Controling Natural Light' workshop. Here are 17 simple ways to help get great results from better understanding and utliizing natural light.

Last year, photographer duo Dylan Howell and Sara Byrne (of Dylan and Sara Photography) posted an awesome video showing you how to create beautiful double-exposure photos in-camera, a technique popular in fine art, portrait, and wedding photography. I just stumbled across this awesome tutorial by event and wedding photographer Andrew Klokow showing you how to replicate this cool look quickly and fairly easily in Photoshop.

Inspiration spurs creativity and it is often you find a photograph or artist that influences your practice. In this Photoshop tutorial Ben Secret helps you recreate the look and feel of an image by matching contrast, tone and saturation. With these brilliant tips get a handle on colour and tone through imitation, but then have fun adding your own unique style.

Regret is the worst feeling in the world but as humans, we feel it. There are times we all look back at, kicking ourselves thinking "if only I had known… I would've done it differently." I remember telling myself if I was ever given the opportunity to be heard, I'd collect a list of tips to share with others so they don't have to feel the frustration that often comes along with regret.

Sometimes aperture and depth of field can be a little tricky to get your head around, especially when you’re a new photographer. Matt Granger gives a quick run down of appropriate aperture settings to get the shot you are looking for. Granger mentions the possible aperture settings that will help you with focus as well as where your lens might perform at its best

All this week at the PRO EDU studio in St. Louis, Michael Woloszynowicz has been hard at work showing off his techniques for an upcoming tutorial series on creating fashion and editorial photography. Today at 11am CST, myself along with the rest of the video crew will be streaming his model test look demonstrations live from the studio.

In this great tutorial, Aaron Nace from Phlearn teaches you how to change hair color in Photoshop. He shows the trick to changing red hair to brown, black and blonde and this video also gives great insight into and cause for practicing your skills with blending modes as well as selective color and levels adjustment layers.

I recommend watching this very interesting (and brief) interview of Ramit Sethi on how to charge more for your work. Whether that work is photography, videography, graphic design or anything else, he has some interesting things to say including why charging what others in your territory are charging is a bad idea.

Every photographer knows that the eyes are the soul of a portrait. Besides the emotional aspect, there is one important technical factor that, if done right, will light up the eye of the portrait and enhance the connection with the viewer: the catch light. In this article we are not only going to understand catch light, but learn how to control it with this amazing video tip from Felix Kunze & Sue Bryce.

If you’re like me, you believe that within every photo there are a multitude of layers that exist. Whether it’s the eyes of our model, the body language of the engaged couple, or the overwhelming joy and love we see expressed in the smile of a groom seeing his bride for the first time, each photo we take, each photo we see,

Last month we shared a really impressive project of an underwater shoot in Bali done by my friend and conceptual photographer Benjamin Von Wong. He stated then that was only part one and that part two would be coming soon. Well, soon is here and he's sharing more technical aspects of how he made the project come to life.

Whether you’re traveling around or venturing out beyond your own backyard, cities offer an endless supply of interesting locations and moments for photographers. To take advantage of their potential you’ll have to not only identify the best compositions but also execute them well. Here are some tips that will help to take your city and cityscape photography to the next level.

Phoenix based model and photographer Shantia Veney took some time to make a quick three and a half minute video demonstrating how a constant, fluid, motion of dance-like movement looked in front of the camera. She explained on Facebook that the video was to simply show how to move gracefully from one pose to another and reminded her followers that different photographers may require different actions and pauses between poses.

From a retouching standpoint, there are few things more unpleasant or challenging than dealing with chunks of hair on the face, missing patches of skin texture and large folds of skin. Generally the existing tools in photoshop such as the healing brush or patch tool fail in these situations and we often end up with unnatural or unpolished results. When all else fails I often turn to a technique called texture grafting to deal with a multitude of issues.

A few weeks ago, I was chatting with a new friend via Facebook and he asked me to describe my most creative period of time and, if I could talk about what led to those circumstances. “Easy,” I said. “That moment is now - it’s right this minute.” I went on to describe how I’ve never been happier nor more focused on what I’m doing, how my work is being well-received, etc. But, later, when I thought about it, I realized that I was wrong (sort of).

Posing your subjects can be one of the most challenging tasks you have to face on shoot-day. If the person in front of your camera is not a supermodel who knows all the tricks, chances are you'll have to direct and pose that person (or people) in order to get pleasing images that make them look at their best. If you're in the business of photographing people, you should clear your schedule and watch this 2-hour B&H class as soon as possible.

Last month, Ryan McGinley gave the commencement speech at Parsons in New York. Ryan McGinley (NSFW), if you're not familiar, is one of the youngest photographers to ever be exhibited at the Whitney Museum, was named Photographer of the Year in 2003 by American Photo Magazine, is the former photo editor of Vice Magazine and has been featured in public collections at the Guggenheim Museum.

The music business is a brutal, cutthroat, dog-eat-dog world and I lived it for nearly 10 years. Since the age of 16, I struggled as a touring musician, surviving off nothing but cold Spaghettios and sleeping in a decade-old 8-passenger van. I was fortunate enough to explore the nation and see things that most will never see, but by the time I left the business I was completely burnt out.

A number of years ago, I read on a photography/marketing blog that there are reasons why we, as photographers, should think about working for free. As I was just then beginning my journey with my brand-new DSLR, I took the information with a grain of salt and imagined a day where getting paid to do what I love wasn’t some far-off pipe dream,

Frozen, The Hobbit, Toy Story, Wall-E, Jurassic Park... these are just a handful of the blockbuster movies over the years that have utilized Pixar's award-winning VFX software, RenderMan. In fact, RenderMan has been around since 1984 - used to render computer graphics in Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan. Now you have the chance to own the software yourself - for free! You read that right - FREE!